Shabbat Bo

Written by Debbie Young Tuesday, 31 January 2006

Shabbat Bo

Today is Rosh Chodesh. In years long gone this was a significant holiday, for the sighting of the new moon would define when all the other festivals would fall, and in this weeks Parashah, Bo, we hear about the setting of the month which will be first in the calendar, at Pesach time. The monthly festival of Rosh Chodesh was marked by special sacrifices, solemn convocations, family festivities, and a day of rest for women, supposedly in reward for their refusal to participate in the episode of the golden calf which we will read in a few weeks. After the calendar was fixed, and the temple was destroyed, Rosh Chodesh slowly receded as an important date to be marked other than through a few liturgical additions.

Recent years, however, have seen a rise in so called ‘Rosh Chodesh Groups’, which emerged in the late 1970’s as The Women’s Liberation movement was gaining momentum and women were seeking each other out to gather in groups and explore the nature of women’s spirituality (or their own personal spirituality) and their role or non-role within Jewish ritual. Women have been ordained in the UK for 30 years now, and I certainly didn’t feel like I had to overcome my gender to gain admission to the college – in fact I am indebted to those women who have come before me and made it so easy for me today. And so we are gathered here today, student Rabbis, male and female, who will all have different hopes and ambitions for their lives in the rabbinate.

But do we perhaps skate over the differences between us as men and women? I have recently been feeling more and more aware that however ideological we may be about equality in the college, we may be skating over and ignoring problems that still exist, and our communities may not be as open as we are. We female students may still face real battles to achieve what our male colleagues will find much easier. A male rabbi offered me, a few weeks ago, his thesis on the matter; congregants are often looking to the rabbi to be their ‘Pater’, the Father in a Priestly mode – a magician and a male authority who can make it all ok and whose word goes. How can we as women fit into this model, and do we want to? The pressures of family life often mean women will choose the smaller positions or smaller communities, but can we really generalise about ‘women rabbis’ as a homogenous group? Or, for that matter, about congregants and their needs and demands?

I feel I am taking a risk flagging this up, and I can predict the eye rolling here and among the wider community as I talk about ‘feminist issues’ (somehow feminist seems to have become a dirty word of late). Am I trying to find excuses and place blame for why women generally do not get the principal posts at the bigger synagogues (The LJS being a notable exception in the last few years)? Is there really a glass ceiling in the rabbinate? Am I just whining at nothing, am I just sore at the limitations I feel are holding me back, and unfairly putting part of this down to gender? Well, even if I am, I think it is imperative that we begin to address these questions as a student body. While we are all individuals, men and women, regardless of gender, we can’t ignore that women rabbi’s are a new phenomenon in the grand scheme of Jewish life, and our generation is going to have a key role in defining what it means to be both women (or men) and rabbis’, purely because the fight for ordination has already been won, we now have the space to explore who we are, and what we want our rabbinate to model.

As the Israelites stand on the brink of an epic journey in this week’s Parashah, let us not become complacent about our journeys, and what they can or might be. The Rabbinate will take work whether we are men or women, gay or straight, a bit green or somewhat worldlier, and we will all come at it differently. But let us not become complacent or forget our questions, doubts and challenges. It must have taken tremendous strength for the Israelite women to resist their husbands, sons, and brothers calls to join in the revelries of the Golden Calf. Perhaps once a month, on Rosh Chodesh, whether alone or in groups, we can create a space to re-ignite our own resistance and challenges to the predominating mould, to injustices that it is often easy to dismiss or overlook, and time to rethink or restate who we wish to see ourselves, and our Rabbinates become.
Debbie Young