Strong Women
Judy Chicago, The Creation from the Birth Project, 1982
Dear friends,
Divine though it may be, the Torah was written by and about men. We can see direct lines between the Tanach and the abortion law in Texas, the backwards attitude toward parental leave in this country and the war on women around the world. All of this provides one of the most exciting opportunities religion has to offer: the chance to participate in reshaping it through new practices and re-interpretation of the ancient texts. I feel empowered when I can see the direct line not between the Torah and the current expressions of the patriarchy but between the Torah and the work of feminist artists like Judy Chicago, or even singers like Cardi B.
I get especially excited when a young person clues me in to the subversive feminine voice in the Torah. These past weeks I’ve been learning from a 13 year old young woman named Willow, a member of the Shul who will be rising to the Torah at her Bat Mitzvah tomorrow. She looks at this week’s parashah and doesn’t see the story of Jacob leaving Canaan to Mesopotamia to find a wife, but of Rachel, who sets her eyes on a young man that turns up at the well, and decides to create a family with him.
When Rachel’s father, Laban tricks Jacob into having sex with her older sister, Leah (and in that act solidifying their marriage), the Torah points our attention to Jacob. But in Willow’s narrative we are looking at how this impacts Rachel, as well as Leah. When a decision to leave and head back to Canaan after 20 years happens, Willow sees the two women as the initiators of that move.
The amazing thing is that once you make that switch in your mind it’s hard to see the text of Genesis as anything but that way.
In God, Sex and The Women of the Bible, Rabbi Shoni Labowitz z”l wrote: “When you change the story, you can change the whole culture. This is what the patriarchal era did in history, and women have the power now to correct it.” Labowitz, who knew well how the (male) rabbis over the centuries diverted the story toward an even more male-centered approach, seems to be suggesting that the Torah may be more gender-neutral than we are used to thinking about it, and can therefore be reclaimed by women through interpretation.
The contemporary practice of Midrashey Nashim, stories and commentaries on the Torah written by women is an important piece of this work. Women like Tamar Biala and Chana Thompson, who take the traditional form of Midrash, stories that flesh out the stories in the bible, but do it with a woman’s viewpoint are hard at work. Yael Kanarek, whose Re-gendered Bible flips all the genders in the Torah to create a new impression on the reader, is a downtown artist deeply engaged in Torah and its reboot.
And just like in any of the struggles for women’s liberation, we shouldn’t forget that men can play an important role as well as allies. The struggle for a just Torah is the struggle for a just society for all of us. Perhaps we could all start with hearing the women in the stories of this week’s parashah, as Willow has helped me do.
If you’d like to give that a try, a wonderful place to start is in the Shul’s Women of the Bible Chevrutah, led by Elana Ponet. For more info click HERE.
I hope you can join us this evening for Kabbalat shabbat at the 14th Street Y (or on Zoom), where we will have a conversation about one of Rachel’s strongest and strangest moments in Torah, and the echoes we might see of her actions today. We will be joined by Yacine Boulares, a wonderful French-Tunisian saxophone player and composer.
Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Misha