Some 40 years ago, when I was about to give birth to my daughter, my husband and I asked our rabbi whether he could help us create a ritual to welcome a baby girl, similar to a brit milah for a boy. The rabbi responded: “We have enough rituals. There’s no need for any more.” So our daughter’s birth was acknowledged in the traditional Orthodox way—my husband got an aliyah, during which the baby’s name was announced, and there was a perfunctory singing of siman tov u’mazal tov—all while my baby and I were still in the hospital.
Although I felt a need to publicly celebrate my daughter’s birth, things became hectic, and we let the opportunity slide. But the need remained, unsatisfied. For her first birthday, however, we invited friends and family to our home for a belated baby-naming ceremony, at which we talked about the basis for her name and the person she was named after. To my knowledge, this was the first ceremony of this type in our local community, a small suburb of New York City. Although baby-naming ceremonies for girls are now common in some Orthodox shuls, they are still infrequent in my community, but they do sometimes occur.
Bat Mitzvah
Around the time of my daughter’s birth, other people asked the same rabbi about the permissibility of having a bat mitzvah celebration. The rabbi’s response: A girl could have a public celebration of her bat mitzvah only if she could explain why becoming a bat mitzvah was religiously meaningful to her. (Boys, of course, were not held to a similar standard.)
I will never forget the sheitel-wearing grandmother of a bat mitzvah girl who reluctantly accepted an aliyah, and then become overwhelmed with tears at coming so close to a Sefer Torah.
Nevertheless, by the time my daughter became a bat mitzvah, it was customary in our community to have a celebratory party for a bat mitzvah as extravagant as that for a bar mitzvah. However, whereas boys were expected to leyn all or most of their Torah portion, give a d’var Torah, and make a siyum on a significant amount of learning completed with their fathers, there were no similar expectations for girls. Some girls chose to learn with their fathers; others chose to do a ḥesed project; and a few leyned their Torah portion or Megillat Esther at a women’s tefillah service. But many were content to read a d’var Torah written by the rabbi after some discussion with the girl.
When my daughter chose to learn mishnayot with me, it was such a novelty in our community that the rabbi made a point of announcing from the pulpit that our mother–daughter Mishna learning was the first in his experience. And, with the rabbi’s approval, my daughter gave a d’var Torah and made a siyum on her learning at her bat mitzvah party, but (at the insistence of the rabbi) without reciting the Kaddish.
Women’s Tefillah Group
In the mid-1990s, energized by a Jofa conference, several women in our community decided that we wanted to form a women’s tefillah group. A delegation approached the rabbi to seek his approval, and (surprise!) we were rebuffed. The following year we changed our strategy. A member of our group who was respected by the rabbi and perceived as being motivated by a desire to get closer to God (rather than by feminism) told the rabbi that we were starting the tefillah group in private homes and were not seeking his approval, but only telling him as a matter of courtesy.
Our tefillah group met monthly on Shabbat mornings. We operated in an ambiguous environment. The rabbis of the community (by now the community had grown large enough to support several shuls), when asked, said they were opposed to the group, but they didn’t denounce it from the pulpit. After some behind-the-scenes drama that I was unaware of at the time, they permitted our ads to be included in the annual shul dinner journals. However, the local day school was not as accommodating. My daughter, then in junior high school, came home one day upset that her teacher had told the class that davening in a women’s tefillah group was as great a sin as eating pork.
Nevertheless, during its ten-year existence, the tefillah group encouraged women in our community to learn to leyn and lead davening, enabled women who had never before come close to a Sefer Torah to get an aliyah, and saw close to a dozen girls celebrate their bat mitzvah by leyning at our group. In addition, women who did not want to take on synagogue leadership roles got an opportunity to give divrei Torah, which encouraged them to increase their Torah learning. I will never forget the sheitel-wearing grandmother of a bat mitzvah girl who reluctantly accepted an aliyah and then become overwhelmed with tears at coming so close to a Sefer Torah.
Our community does not currently have a women’s tefillah group, but this year held a women’s Megillat Esther reading for the first time.
Talmud Study
My daughter’s junior high school had other troubling ideas. Although she had learned Gemara in sixth grade at the affiliated elementary school, the junior high offered Gemara only to boys. When my husband and I questioned this policy, we were told that girls were neither capable of nor interested in learning Gemara. When we disagreed with this assessment, the school administrators proved their point: The girls were offered a voluntary Gemara class instead of lunch. Needless to say, no girls chose to give up their lunch break.
Today there are many opportunities for girls and women to study Talmud at a variety of levels. Recently, though, Stern College of Yeshiva University announced that it was canceling its beginner and intermediate Talmud classes due to low enrollment. The college reversed its decision after an outpouring of public protest. But what was most striking to me was that, reminiscent of my daughter’s junior high school experience, one of the reasons for the low enrollment was that Talmud classes were often held at the same time as required secular subject courses.1 (The male students at Yeshiva University don’t have such a conflict, because that school schedules Judaic studies classes in the morning and secular classes in the afternoon.)
I was pleasantly surprised—shocked, actually—to find that many members of my community were supportive of my studying for semikhah.
Shul Leadership
By the 2000s I had switched to a smaller shul in the community and become active in its leadership, first as a board member and then as an officer. This shul had never had a woman president, but the shul constitution had been drafted (intentionally, by me) without gendered pronouns, thus not limiting the position to men and permitting co-presidents. In 2008 the then-president and I approached the rabbi to discuss my desire to serve as president of the shul. He acknowledged that I would make an excellent president and that there was no halakhic prohibition against women serving in that role, and that, indeed, other shuls in the Orthodox Union had had women presidents—but he said he wanted to think about whether it was appropriate for our community. After consulting with his rebbeim, he concluded that it was too controversial. He relayed that one of his rebbeim had said that under no circumstances should he allow a woman to be president, and the other had said that he would allow it only if no man (whether qualified or not) would agree to take the position after having his arm twisted. Of course, such a man was found—one of the founders of the shul who had not been involved in its governance for the previous ten years.
Mann Tracht un Gott Lacht
But (wo)man plans and God laughs. I found myself too hurt and angry to continue to be involved in shul affairs. Instead, I used that time to take additional classes at Drisha Institute for Jewish Education. At Drisha, I was exposed to high-level learning of Jewish text and discovered a love for Gemara. Over time, I gradually increased the hours I spent learning at Drisha and reduced the hours spent working at the law firm where I was a partner. Eventually I decided to learn full-time, which led to my attending Yeshivat Maharat.
I was pleasantly surprised—shocked, actually—to find that many members of my community were supportive of my studying for semikhah. Several years earlier, one of my Maharat classmates had been told that Maharat students and alumnae were not welcome to give shiurim in the community, and another was told that she could teach in the shul only if her connection to Maharat was not mentioned. But my graduation from Maharat was announced in the shul bulletin, and I was invited to give classes at two of the shuls in the community. I have since given numerous shiurim in the community. Even as I have been introduced as a graduate of Maharat, I feel that the rabbis and some members of the community are uncomfortable with my using the title rabbanit or referring to my having semikhah, so I don’t do either
Looking back on the past 40 years from the vantage point of a single Modern Orthodox suburban community, I have seen change in some areas, not so much in others. Although we have made some progress, we still have a long way to go.
