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A Women's Service
- State University of New York Press
- Chapter
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A Women's Service One Sabbath morning a Learned Woman, along with a little band of equally Learned Women, called for me at my home in a Boston suburb. From Brookline, we began our walk in the direction of Cambridge . Into the town of Alston, past the clutter of buildings and stores and nothing to refresh the spirit except a wedge of pizza from "The Leaning Tower of ... ," which of course we don't avail ourselves of, the latest flavor of ice cream from the local Brigham's, which we likewise eschew. Up the steep ramp of the Cambridge Street Bridge we lean, past the New England architectural motif of workers' quarters-threefamily frame houses with three-tier corner porches facing, wherever it can be managed, it seems, the repair lot of a gas and autoservice station. On we walk. At last we see ivy-clutched Harvard buildings. Curves of football stadium, mews, closes, yards above which domes of green, blue, and gold raise their heads so high in the Harvard air that the winds that play above them speak only to weather-vaned roosters and cods. Oh, the painful triumph and triumphant pain of this Sabbath not-riding! Grimed Harvard athletes grunt and sweat through the rules of their game with no idea that this little limping group beyond the cyclone fence (the Learned Woman and her hobble-footed friends) are moving by rules of a different kind. Past burning feet we walk. Past the rub of nylon stockings on the plastic innersoles of pumps. Past blisters. Past the squeeze of the bunion joint, that foot-bound Chinese princess of no-running, until we appear to be stepping high, like Tennessee Walking Horses, out of our own feet for very tenderness. We might have carried sneakers but carrying is forbidden. We come at last to Hillel House in Somerville, into a room full of women, and piled-up sheets of xeroxed paper. In Hebrew. "I'm afraid I can't ... ," I say. 141 142 LIFE NOTES "I'll translate for you," says the Learned Woman. "These are quotes from two rabbis of ancient times. The first said, 'It is commanded to you to teach Torah to your daughter.' The second, 'He who teaches Torah to his daughter, it is as though he had taught an idiot.' " "Why both?" I ask. The Learned Woman tilts her head and smiles. "This is what we start from." Below the sayings, some lines of prayer. The Learned Woman explains what lies between those lines. "The traditional blessings are said by men. They have the responsibility of saying them daily. For women, for us, other words have been substituted." I ask what would happen if women said the same words as the men, and whether that would seem ridiculous to people, as if women dressed themselves like firemen and ran to a house that wasn't burning, rushed out in trucks, ran up ladders, hosed with water a house in which there was no fire. "Jewish life has been in flames for centuries, that's true," the Learned Woman answers judiciously. But Jewish women, I gather, have been told these are not their flames. "And certainly," I say, "this is not their hose? No hose, no blessing?" "Hold off," the Learned Woman answers, smiling, "on your questions, if you can, till after the service." She consults her watch and says she hopes they start on time. Then she motions that they are about to begin. The Ark that holds the Torah is a brown cupboard on a card table. There is another table, with its hind legs folded under itself and resting on a tall narrow box. The wide black stripes and knotted fringes of the prayer shawl that covers the table come near to touching the floor. "That's the reader's lecturn," the Learned Woman whispers. "They've tried to provide a proper reading angle for the Torah when it's set on the table." Now a tall, slender woman removes the Torah from the Ark. As she turns with her burden to face the company of women, she begins to sing in a clear, high voice. Her face and body are almost painfully thin. She has been chosen for this moment, no doubt, A Women's Service 143 because of the purity of her voice, but is it also, somehow, for the fragility and narrowness of her wrists and fingers? How heavily the heavy Torah body rests on that skinny hand...