The Matriarchs and the Torah of Hesed (Loving Kindness)

Dedicated to the memory of my grandmothers Rivkah Kahanov-Alpern and Ada Neubauer-Ramon, of blessed memory

Introduction

Like most of the ideological movements that have left their mark on Judaism over recent centuries, the feminist spirit, alive in Judaism for several decades, has introduced additions and changes to the liturgies used in Jewish worship. The most prevalent liturgical change, which is slowly filtering into egalitarian synagogues around the world and thence into the language of the modern siddur, is the addition of an invocation of the matriarchs (imahot) alongside that of the patriarchs (avot) in the opening blessing of the central prayer in the Jewish service, the Amidah:

Blessed are you Adonai, God and God of our ancestors, God of Abraham, God of Isaac and God of Jacob, God of Sarah, God of Rebecca, God of Rachel and God of Leah, the great, mighty and awesome God, the supreme God, Who bestows acts of loving-kindness and is Master of all, and Who recalls the loving-kindness of the Avot [patriarchs] and brings a Redeemer to their children's children, for the sake of His name, with love.¹

Nevertheless, an interpretive-theological vacuum surrounds the meaning of the expression "God of Sarah, God of Rebecca, God of Rachel, and God of Leah," even among congregations that include it in their liturgy. In what follows, I shall argue that the invocation of the matriarchs should be seen as a reference to divine loving-kindness (hesed) as embodied in the personal example of the acts of loving-kindness that the matriarchs of the Israelite nation brought to bear on their surroundings. These acts of loving-kindness are perceived in the midrash as an ultimate expression of the monotheistic-ethical perspective, in which loving-kindness is viewed as the epitome of the covenant between humans and the Divine.²

From a theological point of view, the version of the Avot blessing brought down in the traditional siddur emphasizes the memory of the acts of loving-kindness that God bestowed upon the patriarchs and of those that the patriarchs bestowed upon others. As we shall see below, this emphasis apparently reflects a theological-liturgical development in the understanding of God's covenant with the patriarchs. Where an earlier version of the blessing had emphasized God's granting of the land as an inheritance to the seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the later version implies that the essence of the blessing is to direct the consciousness of the person at prayer to the deeds of loving-kindness that lead to an encounter with the Divine.

Simultaneously with this liturgical move, if not overtly related to it, beginning in the tannaitic period and particularly from the talmudic period onwards, a rich midrashic tradition developed that widens and magnifies the place of the matriarchs and gives their relationship with God a central place, sometimes one even more expansive than that described in the biblical text. This tradition, which until recently has remained marginal in Jewish consciousness, compares the status of Sarah, matriarch of the nation, to that of Abraham, the patriarch. It is occupied with the question of who the matriarchs were and discusses how God was revealed in their lives, often by way of expressions of personal piety that are characterized as deeds of loving-kindness. In some of these texts, the matriarchs' exemplary performance of such deeds leads God to prefer their merits over those of the patriarchs.

These texts, which offer a different, sometimes revolutionary perspective regarding the status of the matriarchs in the shaping of Jewish religious consciousness, do not lessen the weight of the Sages' patriarchal worldview, on account of which the matriarchs were not mentioned in the patriarchal blessing and are largely absent from the siddur. Indeed, it would be inaccurate to attribute the Sages' interest in the religious experience of the matriarchs to an increasing appreciation for women or an aspiration to redress their inferior status; rather, their intention was to emphasize the presence of God in the small details of the matriarchs' everyday lives.³ The midrashim express a profound admiration...