Making Progress
This Dvar Torah was adapted from one written by Rabbi Emily E. Segal, the senior rabbi of Temple Chai in Phoenix and is the immediate past president of the Women’s Rabbinic Network.
Photo by Library of Congress on Unsplash
Years ago, I was invited to speak on a panel about the role of women in religion alongside three other women religious leaders: a protestant pastor, a Muslim scholar and a very involved practitioner of the Bahai faith.
I happily agreed to be on the panel, and then I received in my inbox the details of the event including its title: “Women in Religion: Have We Come Far Enough?” And I said aloud to my computer: “No!”
To my mind, if we were asking the question, we already had the answer. What could truly be “far enough?”
It was reminiscent of the time when Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was asked how many women on the Supreme Court would be “enough,” and she answered, “Nine.”
Our Torah portion this week, Ki Teitzei, comes from the book of Deuteronomy, and it contains the most commandments of any portion in the entire Torah: 74 in total.
They range from ethical commands such as making sure to leave some olives left over on your trees or some crops in your field for the poor to harvest, to the confusing command prohibiting combining wool and linen into a single fabric.
Among the many commandments in this week’s Torah portion, we encounter quite a few that center around the lives and power — or lack thereof — of women.
These include how a man should behave when he wants to cohabit with a beautiful female captive; how to treat a less-loved wife and her children regarding inheritance; what happens when a man falsely accuses his wife of not being a virgin when they were married, and on and on.
There are even disturbing commands, such as the rule that when a young woman is raped, her attacker must marry her.
Some of these cases and laws — in fact, many of them — clearly have the intention of protecting women in vulnerable situations, even if they sound truly terrible to our modern ears.
Still, this does not erase the truth that Torah certainly does not reflect a society and a mindset in which women had equal societal or familial standing.
It is a simple fact that women do not have equal voice in Torah; they technically were considered the property first of their father, and then of their husband.
And while some laws in our Torah portion and in Torah generally were intended to protect women, it would not be easy or reasonable to make the case that this is true of all Jewish scripture’s laws and anecdotes involving women.
While there are incredible examples of women playing key roles in Torah’s narrative, we cannot rationalize away the fact that far more men than women are given key standing in Torah and in classical Midrash, and far more men are simply named in comparison to women in Torah…
It is also important to state explicitly that the issues of representation and equality that we encounter between women and men in Torah do not even take into account the even more difficult task of finding voices and stories that represent experiences of nonbinary and genderfluid folks of the LGBTQIA+ community generally.
Torah represents a worldview that was very binary in nature and often focused on fitting people, animals, times and actions into clear-cut categories. Fascinating modern commentary and midrash digs into this, but our Torah does not speak with that voice without our efforts to search and create.
The question arises: what should we make of passages like the ones we find in our Torah portion this week that so clearly display the power imbalances and limitations that affected the lives of women in the ancient world?
What I would suggest is that we have the ability — and in fact, the responsibility — to hold multiple perspectives and reactions at the same time.
First, we must realize that we cannot expect Torah to come from a modern sensibility, with our contemporary understanding of genders, gender roles, diversity and gender justice.
If we want the plain meaning of the Torah text to reflect our understanding of the equity of all people, then we are setting up an impossible expectation that will leave us wanting.
Torah reflects the cultural and societal context in which it was written and codified, even as it contains timeless wisdom and relevance and holiness.
Therefore, though we might want to see so much more, and even though the broader context wasn’t revolutionized, we can acknowledge and be proud of the steps our ancestors took to protect those in vulnerable positions, including women.
At the same time, we can want more, and we can insist on more for ourselves. We can study and create interpretations and midrashim that represent and reflect the value and empowerment of all people of all genders.
We can learn how to make our community as welcoming as possible to people of all genders.
And looking in particular at the role of women in Judaism and in society, we can acknowledge how very far we have come, even as we acknowledge how very far we have yet to go.
When I was invited to be on that panel back in Chicago, my own Rabbi, Amy Perlin, reminded me: “Don’t forget to tell them how far we’ve come!”
And she was absolutely right: We are now in the 53rd year of women being ordained as rabbis and the 103rd year of bat mitzvah ceremonies.
Women are now being ordained as rabbis in all of the major movements including Modern Orthodox through Yeshivat Maharat.
There is an incredible flourishing of scholarship, leadership, liturgy, ritual, art, and music from individuals of all genders, which is an incredible blessing to the Jewish community and to the world writ large.
Progress is made through bravery, hard work, encountering difficult truths, supporting each other, in fits and starts, in ways that are messy and complicated, difficult and beautiful, and real.
We must work together to bring closer and closer the day when we won’t need to ask if we’ve come far enough — because the answer will be evident in front of our eyes.
May we see that day, and may we make it happen, together.
Shabbat Shalom
