Twenty-five years—the blink of an eye as Jews count time. Who would have imagined so many gains in twenty-five years, building on the first twenty-five yet advancing far beyond expectations? Who would have envisioned 3,300 women in Jerusalem’s Binyanei Ha’umah joyously celebrating the Hadran, the completion of the daf yomi cycle, and representing many more thousands of women the world over? Who would have imagined thirty-nine incoming students at Yeshivat Maharat, more than the incoming registration at most other rabbinical schools? And suddenly there are several independent institutions in Israel that grant women semikhah, and new programs everywhere encouraging women to write halakhah. We are all familiar with women’s tefillah groups and partnership minyanim, yet today, we also witness women leading Orthodox shuls. Women are poskot on hotline conversations and ask and answer she’elot of their rabbis. They teach Gemara in Orthodox high schools and davening at summer camps. Today, more women recite the mourner’s Kaddish at a minyan, sheva brachot at a wedding, and Hamotzi at the Shabbat table. Some women are counted in a mezuman per respected poskim. And, although we take it for granted by now, no girl is left behind in celebrating bat mitzvah.
With so many new roles and responsibilities that Orthodox women have stepped into, like women of modern societies everywhere, why would one suggest a paradigm of distinctive and equal or equivalent roles and responsibilities as an appropriate definition of Orthodox feminism? Are we not like other feminist movements in which women have entered male-dominated cultures and flourished in them in undifferentiated, interchangeable roles? This is a respectable philosophical position that grows out of feminism’s central focus on gender equality.
Nevertheless, I believe that our message as Orthodox feminists is that equality does not mean identicality, but rather equal value roles and distinctive status for women and men. Why?
• Because we are daughters of a tradition that has bestowed upon us many significant gender-differentiated roles—a tradition that we love and respect.
• Because in the fullness of that love and using halakhic tools of reinterpretation, distinctive roles that are discriminatory and disabling should be brought to a standard of gender equality and human dignity, replacing injustice with justice, as in divorce law.
• Because opponents of gender equality have appropriated the language of distinctive roles as a cover for excluding women and limiting roles, we must always pair “distinctive” with “equal.” Women’s dignity and human rights, to which being created b’tzelem Elokim entitles us, must not be violated.
• Because work remains to bring distinctive roles up to the gender equality standard, and this paradigm handily links the two value systems.
• Because Orthodox women continue to observe their inherited halakhic, gender-differentiated responsibilities even as they take on new roles formerly closed to them.
• Because we have observed significant areas in which Orthodox women’s assumption of historic male roles does not make them identical to men’s roles, as in learning, prayer, and other practices cited here that we celebrate.
• Because we believe that there is something satisfying about differentiated roles and responsibilities that goes deeply into human consciousness and is beneficial to human relationships and that we should take care not to obliterate.
The paradigm of “distinctive and equal” allows Orthodox feminists to model and share insights about differentiated roles with others who interpret gender equality as equivalence in every area of life.
• Because distinctive roles for men and women can have unique value in self-identity and commitment to inherited tradition.
• Because distinctive roles may bring us to experience nearness to God.
• Because it may well be a psychosocial reality that when an obligation—a mitzvah—is assigned to a particular gender, there is greater likelihood of fulfillment.
For all these reasons and more, retaining gender distinctions while integrating gender equality is the best fit for a faith that carries its past into its future. I provide two examples of the paradigm, one where the “distinctive and equal” model can work in presentday Orthodoxy and one where it does not, and thus undergirds injustice.
Separate Seating in Synagogue
Why hasn’t the entire class of Orthodox women bolted from separate seating in shul, which identifies Orthodoxy as distinct from liberal Judaism and which outsiders see as primitive and sexist? Is it only because halakhah mandates separate seating, a continuation of separate gates for men and women in the Temple in Jerusalem, with its issues of women’s impurity? Or is there a greater sense of the presence of God here when you come as a gendered individual than when you come as part of a family unit? Is there something more satisfying, or perhaps more vulnerable, in the heightened awareness of male and female in this holy space? Or is it because the rabbis who shaped the law also understood the shul to be not only a holy space but also a place for community building, the camaraderie of friends? Often, when men and women gather in social settings, they voluntarily separate into same-sex groupings.
I must confess to liking the women’s section, although I suspect that I would also like sitting next to my husband, were this my community’s mandate. But for me, “liking” applies only where I can see and hear everything, the space is tidy, the bindings of siddurim and ḥumashim are not torn, and the women’s section altogether conveys a sense of dignity and inclusion of the worshiper. And I will admit that where architecture and space limitations require a balcony, if it has proper sight lines, good sound, and dignified seating, I prefer to sit there rather than in a fishbowl below.
But everywhere in prayer, we must expect equal dignity, not just in seating but in hearing the community’s “amen” to a woman’s Kaddish, in providing children’s services so both parents can daven, and, as shuls have increasingly done, in integrating a woman’s public reading of segments of prayer such as those for the State of Israel and for its soldiers who protect Israel from its enemies.
Regrettably, only a small minority of Orthodox shuls meet these standards today. Yet where women and men have become more vocal on the matter, their communities are often highly responsive
Jewish Divorce Law
Jewish divorce is the most potent example of injustice that can creep in when “distinctive” lacks the “equal” component. Where did this injustice begin? I believe with a misreading of Deuteronomy 24:1–4, in which a husband is assigned the responsibility of giving his wife a get, the formal writ of divorce. Over the centuries, misogynist cultures allowed the biblical pericope to be read as a husband’s control and absolute right—surely an invitation for mischief in an already contentious situation. The get became a tool. Today, in Israel, where all Jewish divorce is mediated in the rabbinic courts, extortion is rampant— in 30 percent of the divorce cases at all socioeconomic levels. Worse, thousands of women worldwide suffer as agunot, imprisoned in dead marriages as the husband withholds the get for spite or blackmail.
What is equally tragic about Jewish divorce is that the law’s intent, or God’s intention, was the opposite— to protect the wife from being literally pushed out the door in the extant, irrevocable, oral divorce. How to protect her? With the formal status a get assigns her as a divorcee and thus remarriageable; also by forbidding a husband to pass her on to other men as property. Just read the magnificent human rights pericopes of Deuteronomy—in which divorce law is embedded—to understand that Divine intent was to protect her with the mandated get.
Yet, also over the centuries, enlightened rabbis muted a husband’s power by introducing protective legislation— for example, the Talmudic principle of kofin oto, coerc-ing the husband with public lashes to give his wife the get as he simultaneously proclaims that he is acting of his own free will. What about situations in which the recalcitrant husband was not available to the court for lashes? Again, eminent and compassionate rabbis developed halakhic methodologies to undo the marriage at its origins (kiddushei ta’ut, bitul kiddushin) to release a wife from becoming an agunah. (See article by Esther Macner, pp. 26–31 of this issue.) This was a clear-cut case of rabbinic will finding a halakhic way to undo an abuse.
Just as we dreamt big dreams, not that many decades ago, of women entering the system more fully and receiving all of its gifts as women, so can we realistically anticipate the halakhic end of iggun and divorce abuse.
The problem today is not the recalcitrant husband, but recalcitrant judges in the rabbinic courts who are strict in their broad interpretation of a husband’s rights in divorce—that is, total control. The problem today is also a community that has largely assumed a role of bystanders- with-no-voice and without applying the corrective of equality and human rights. Here, the paradigm speaks to us with urgency.
But I am optimistic. Looking back at the accomplishments of the past twenty-five years, I feel that it will surely not take another twenty-five to eliminate blatant injustice in halakhic divorce and a blight on our tradition. As Orthodox women, and with the help of men, we can organize, influence, politicize, teach, press, and reinterpret the system to totally eliminate abuse. Just as we dreamt big dreams, not that many decades ago, of women entering the system more fully and receiving all of its gifts as women, so can we realistically anticipate the halakhic end of iggun and divorce abuse, beginning next year, or perhaps the year after, and into the next few thousand years as a faithful Orthodox community.
Distinctive and Equal
In sum, offering to interested others the distinctive and equal model of Orthodox feminism may be a role for Orthodox feminists to play. We can share insights about differentiated roles and engage in respectful conversation with others who interpret gender equality as an equivalence in all areas of life. We believe that distinctive gender roles for men and women can have unique value in self-identity, interpersonal relationships, and commitment to inherited tradition, but we also have much to learn about this as yet unfinished journey.
I’m fine with the women’s section. I like hearing eishet ḥayil sung to me by my husband and children. And for all the world, I would not want anyone to take away from me the lighting of the candles, the incredible privilege of ushering in the holiness of Shabbat. Yes, I am a distinctive and equal feminist.