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1. Women and Sacred Power
- University of Illinois Press
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1 1 Women and Sacred Power Rambam (1135–1205) mentions in his writing the adoption of alien dance-customs by the Jews in Egypt, when he describes a bride taking a sword or rapier in hand and executing a sword-dance before her wedding guests. He of course prohibits this sort of dance as opposed to Jewish morals and altogether alien to the spirit of Jewish tradition. —Zvi Friedhaber, “Dance among the Jews in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance” When scholars say that women are more concerned with ritual than with theology, the implication often is that ritual is somehow less noble, important, or sophisticated than theology. While men sit and ponder and write about complex metaphysical problems, women jump up and down and ask the spirits to cure their children of the flu. This sort of dichotomous and androcentric thinking is of little use in grappling with women’s religions. —Susan Starr Sered, Priestess, Mother, Sacred Sister Women’s Texts and Rituals When I tell people that I study “religion and dance,” the response almost always makes me wince. I often hear, “David danced before the ark and all that, but what else is there?” Apparently no one remembers Miriam: a prophet and leader of Israel, she is the icon for dance in the Torah. Of the many overt passages on dance in the Bible, most refer specifically to women’s role as leaders of ritual for the community of Israel. The supreme example is the prophetess Miriam, who led women in dance and song after the crossing of the sea. 2 chapter 1 So what happened to Miriam and these dancing women? And why do people remember David rather than Miriam? Those questions became a starting point for my investigation into the relationship between women, dance, and ritual around the world, especially in the West. Through my investigation, I concluded that Miriam not only danced, but she danced a Torah lesson. And even though the many Jewish female ritual leaders who followed her tradition seldom received credit for their important leadership, they were also teaching Torah values to their community through their dance and music. My conclusion is meant to be a bit jarring, although it is not a simplistic idea. It considers the complexity of Torah interpretation, the range of Torah meaning, and the limits set on acknowledging Jewish women as transmitters of Torah tradition. The questions I ask along the way involve historiography, ritual, and culture in the study of Judaism. But first there is the issue of dance itself. In the Western world, study of dance has often been removed from its base in religious ritual. It has frequently been feminized into a realm for the Anna Pavlovas, Isadora Duncans, and Martha Grahams among us. Yet the Eastern world has the devadasi temple dancers of Juggernaut, the ritual dancing of Thai girls, and Balinese sacred dancers. When the world dances, women are often the dancers. In most of the world, dance is also commonly a part of religious ritual. For instance, African warriors’ rites of passage, Native American Sun Dance ceremonies, and Hopi Kachina dance practices are the subject of numerous fascinating studies in the fields of anthropology and sociology. Significantly, it seems, these are dances performed by males. But what of women’s dance rituals? What happened to the biblical tradition of women leading the community in celebration? And from a broader perspective, where are the dance rituals of Western society? It is not that this material is absent from scholarship; there are, for example, anthropological studies of European dance rituals. But this is not a subject that is likely to be included in a religious textbook. With the exception of Carole Meyers’s “The Drum-Dance-Song Ensemble,” there has been scant attention to this role of women in biblical and Jewish traditions. There are many reasons for the absence of information. One is the post-Enlightenment rational approach to religion and Judaism, which stresses philosophy and written text over performance. As Susan Sered indicates, women were not always recognized as religious ritual leaders because of their use of movement, dance, and music rather than doctrine. Their emphasis on ritual and ritual movement is somehow interpreted as primitive, or less developed. Or their activities are called “cultural” [54.226.94.217] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 11:00 GMT) Women and Sacred Power 3 rather than religious because they do not take place in a temple, church, or synagogue. In Judaism, however...