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

THE IMPACT OF THE JEWISH WOMEN'S MOVEMENT ON THE AMERICAN SYNAGOGUE: 1972-1985

Rela Geffen Monson THE IMPACT OF THE JEWISH WOMEN'S MOVEMENT ON THE AMERICAN SYNAGOGUE: 1972-1985 In 1963, a relatively unkown Jewish woman named Betty Friedan launched what became the contemporary feminist movement with the publication of The Feminine Mystique. 1 The National Organization for Women was formed in 1966 on a platform of political and social change. It was organized around small consciousness-raising groups, largely in response to Friedan's articulation of "the problem that has no name." Friedan wrote about college educated women who suffered from depression and general malaise even though, as wives of professional men and mothers of healthy children, they should have been happy. The root of their unhappiness lay, according to Friedan, in how society structured the role of women, encouraging higher education before their marriage but, once married, limiting their options for intellectual and professional satisfaction. In 1972, the organized Jewish women's movement began when Ezrat Nashim, the fledgling Jewish women's study group turned consciousnessraiSing group, took on an activist orientation.2 There had been some move toward including women in ritual and communal life prior to that time. One example of this is the 1956 responsum of the Rabbinical Assembly Law Committee, written by Rabbi Aaron Blumenthal. which permitted 228 Contemporary Realities women to be called to the Torah, and thus allowed the institutionalization of the Bat Mitzvah. It was undoubtedly the involvement in and exposure to the civil rights movement and the American feminist movement, however , that motivated a small group of highly educated, traditional Jewish women to push for equality within the Jewish community.~ Precisely because they were traditional, they chose the synagogue, the central institution ofJewish life, as the major arena in which to fight for women's rights. Jewish women understood well that the synagogue was more than a house of worship, and that to be public persons within the synagogue, whether in the ritual or secular sphere, was symbolic of full citizenship. Even women who were not particularly observant began to attend synagogue meetings and to express what roles they wanted for themselves and their daughters. Some of them were accused of being hypocritical, because they seemed motivated to participate in synagogue life only because of this issue. Some of their critics said, "Let them come to services regularly , participate in all synagogue activities, and observe the Sabbath and dietary laws-then we will consider their 'bid' for full participation in synagogue ritual." However, such women viewed their protest as a political as well as a religious act, even though it took place within the framework of a religious institution. At the same time that they were fighting to be counted in the minyan (quorum for worship), to have Torah honors, and to have Bat Mitzvah ceremonies for their daughters on Sabbath morning, they were also struggling for greater representation on synagogue boards and to be committee chairpeople and officers of congregations. They saw a link between the ritual and the secular roles within the synagogue. The exclusion of women from secular leadership roles was a direct derivative of their exclusion from ritual roles, for if the president of the synagogue sat on the bimah as a perquisite of his office, then a woman could not be president because she could not sit on the bimah. Whether or not the vast majority of women who fought for synagogue rights understood these links, they intuitively sensed that they existed. In addition to nonreligious women, in the early and mid-1970s there were also women involved in the movement who were much more knowledgeable about Judaism and who fought from a different perspective . They sought recognition as full-fledged members ofthe congregation for reasons that came out of a deep commitment to the Jewish tradition and a desire to enhance the quality of their own lives as Jews. These 229 The Impact ofthe Jewish Women:S Movement on the American Syna90fJue women. a small group in comparison to the former group, were generally well educated and quite observant by the standards of the right wing of the Conservative Movement. They had studied dassical Jewish sources, attended synagogue regularly, and observed many other ritual commandments . For these women, the prayer "May He Who blessed our fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, bless the members of this holy congregation, them, their wives, their sons, their daughters, and all that belong to them... ," which was recited every...