Daughters of the King: Women and the Synagogue (A Survey of History, Halakhah, and Contemporary Realities)

LOOKING TO THE FUTURE: CONCLUSIONS

Paula E. Hyman LOOKING TO THE FUTURE: CONCLUSIONS In his insightful depiction and analysis of an American Orthodox synagogue of the early 1970s, the sociologist Samuel Heilman posits sexual segregation as a "symbolic absolute" for an Orthodox synagogue. It is men, he notes, who fulfill "public ritual requirements." Consequently, "even the space ... [of the synagogue] assens public dependency of female upon male vis-a-vis religious responsibility." Heilman also points out that "[w1hen the women occasionally shush the men in order to better hear the service, they are usually ignored-the implication being that it is not imponant for them to hear, for they are not legitimate participants in the house-of-prayer activity." I Throughout Jewish history, the synagogue has been primarily the domain of men. Judaism has traditionally limited the role of women in the areas ofpublic religious activity and has proclaimed that women and men have different religious responsibilities. Yet, that gender separation tells only part of the story. Despite their marginality and secondary status within the synagogue, in many Jewish societies women have exhibited a profound attachment to the synagogue that transcends their exemption from public communal prayer. From the Roman period when one Juliana donated the mosaic floor for the prayer hall in a North African synagogueJ 298 C(1ntemp(1rary Realities to the sixteenth century when Dona Gracia Mendes funded a synagogue in Salonika, which was named "Sinagoga de la Senora" in her honor/ women have helped to support and adorn the synagogue. While they generally did not attend the synagogue with the regularity of men, some women, particularly in Western Ashkenazi culture of the early modem period, were assiduous in their participation in public prayer in the "woman's shul." For example, GJuckel of Hameln, the clever and pious memoir writer of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, referred in passing to her daughter Esther's daily presence in shul." Women's role in the synagogue has changed with time and place. Recent analysis of archaeological and inscriptional evidence indicates, for example, that there may have been no separate women's gallery in ancient synagogues.S The women's section ofthe synagogue appears to have been a far more vibrant locale in medieval and early modem Western and Central Europe than it was in medieval and early modem Islamic countries (where there were no prayer leaders for women worshipers and, in some cases, no expectation that women attend the synagogue at all). In the nineteenth century, the Jewish confrontation with modem Western thought led to the integration of women into the main space of the nonOrthodox synagogue and, in our own time, to the acceptance of women, primarily in the United States, as religious leaders for the entire congregation. Recent changes in the status ofwomen in contemporary American society have influenced Jewish women of all religious backgrounds to explore the role of women in Judaism and to seek expanded opportunities for religious expression and leadership. The distinction made between the public and private spheres, which defines women's domain as the domestic one and is so common in traditional cultures, no longer reflects the social reality or values of the vast majority ofAmerican Jewish women. It is no surprise, then, that so many Jewish women have expressed a measure of discontent with a religious role that developed under vastly different patriarchal social conditions and that is based upon presumptions about women's lives and natures that are no longer valid. This book is a product of a new social reality for women and of a changed female consciousness. In giving voice to women's experience in the synagogue throughout history and in contemporary settings, it reflects the seriousness with which women are now examining both our personal perceptions and our history. It also reflects the growing consen- 299 ---------- .--------Looking to the Future: Conclusions sus that the study of women's behavior and social status is a valid subject for scholarly investigation. What is associated with women can no longer be dismissed as trivial and unworthy ofscholarly interest, as was the case just a few years ago with such topics as women's Yiddish religious literature or immigrant Jewish women's political mobilization. By introducing the analytic category ofgender, the new field ofWomen 's Studies has alerted scholars to the centrality of gender in ordering and analyzing human experience. It cannot simply be assumed that women 's and men's historical...