We Are Surely Being Tested

This is much bigger than any one issue. But here is a small sampling of recent issues in which this dynamic is playing out.

A yeshiva school bus in Williamsburg, NY that has covered windows so the students shouldn't see anything happening on the street on their way to school. 

An elementary school in Lakewood that requires girls to line up to have the length of their hair measured to ensure it fits the arbitrary rule someone made up. 

Jewish women and girls wearing burkas, completely covering their entire bodies, including hands and faces, on the streets of Israel.

Photo Credit: www.rationalistjudaism.com

 An IKEA catalog with absolutely no pictures of women. By design.

Every single time a new development appears, the arguments are the same.

Some people are horrified by what new rules/practices/restrictions are being imposed in the name of tzniut*.

"This is not Judaism! This is not Torah!" they decry. "This is exactly the sort of thing that drives young people away from Judaism!"

And the counter reaction, totally predictable, is always "Who are we to judge!?" or "It's not your community. Why do you care?" and my personal favorite, "How dare you cause a chillul Hashem** by judging them?"

Every. Single. Time.

Personally, I fall on the side of being horrified by what is being sold as an attempt to increase holiness. But this is not really about my personal opinion. I'm trying to make a larger point here.

Clearly, the Orthodox Jewish community is working something out. And it isn't pretty to watch.

There is a fundamental split between outlooks. Are these new stringencies good for the Jews? Do they make us more pious and closer to God? Do they show how much we value holiness and what we're willing to sacrifice for it?

Or are these new stringencies not good for the Jews? Do they take us away from the essence of Torah? Are they merely a reflection of an obsession with men separating themselves from women?

Further, do we have a right to rebuke other Jews when we feel they have lost their way? Are we obligated to speak up when we think a core Torah value is being perverted?

Or is it a higher value to live and let live, especially when one is not being required to comply?

One thing is certain. We are surely being tested.

And frankly, I don't think we're earning such a good grade.

---

*generally translated as modesty, but actually more nuanced than that. Tzniut, in its fuller sense, is related to the spiritual practice of not calling attention to oneself and not being overly concerned with externality.

** a desecration of God's name

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love The 24 Hour Clock

There are plenty of things that take getting used to when you move. Especially when you move to a new country. Especially when you're an American moving to Israel.

Making aliyah is definitely easier if you're coming from anywhere else in the world where the metric system is already in use. But when you're an American, used to pounds and ounces and feet and miles and dollars and writing MM/DD/YY and AM/PM, it's disorienting.

My smoothest adjustment was buying food in kilos instead of in pounds. It wasn't that hard. A kilo is 2.2 pounds, so it was pretty easy to do the conversions in my head.

I would like to say that, once I started earning shekels, I stopped thinking in dollars, but that's not really true. I just learned to stop doing it all the time. And I learned that sometimes, it's best not to attempt a conversion. Like when ordering a bowl of soup in a restaurant in Israel.

A life lesson for new olim: DO NOT convert the shekel price of a bowl of soup in an Israeli restaurant to dollars. Just don't do it.

For awhile, I had my iPhone's weather app set to Celcius.

And I used this little ditty that I learned from an old friend and fellow blogger as a guide:

30 is HOT
20 is NICE
10 is COLD
0 is ICE

But I switched back.

Because Fahrenheit is so much more precise.

And familiar.

And doesn't require me to do any conversions in my head.

I have to be honest. I really resisted giving up the AM/PM thing. I hated that I couldn't find an AM/PM digital clock to buy. And it annoyed me when people would schedule an appointment for 16:00. Why can't they just say 4 in the afternoon? I didn't like the way 16:00 taxed my brain.

Does it sound like I'm whining? I don't mean to. It's just that there are so many things you have to relearn when you make aliyah. I kind of resented having to relearn how to tell time.

Recently though, the time thing began to make sense.

Once, when flying internationally, my husband and I confused AM and PM on the itinerary and ended up with a 14-hour overnight layover instead of the 2-hour late morning layover we were expecting.

The 24-hour clock makes sense because there's only one 14:05 and only one 8:22 per day. So there's much less room for confusion.

So let's do lunch Cafe Greg at 13:00. And we'll catch a movie at Yes Planet at 21:30.

Hey! I think I'm getting the hang of this living in Israel thing.

Buying Frozen Spinach in Israel

I really am going to teach you a trick about buying frozen spinach in Israel. But first I want to tell you why I think it's important, even if you don't like spinach. ¹

In 1991, Tzvia Ehrlich-Klein published this little guidebook to help people make the transition to everyday living in Israel. It was full of useful information.

When she published her guidebook, most olim from America lived in a mercaz klita (absorption center) when they first arrived in Israel. Phone calls were made on public phones using asimonim (telephone tokens).

Asimonim. Photo credit: jr.co.il

We're talking a decade before Nefesh b'Nefesh was even founded.

I'm working on an updated guidebook, chock full of helpful hints for today's olim. Because as soon as olim arrive in Israel, we have to learn tons of new things. Sometimes, a neighbor will give us a useful tip. Other times, we have to learn the hard way. 

My goal is reduce the amount of trial and error by equipping olim with practical, useful information.

Like this.

I knew that the Hebrew word for spinach is תרד- tered. But it took me years to figure out that there are (at least) two different kinds of frozen spinach sold in Israel. 

I definitely noticed that the frozen spinach pellets I was using came in two sizes. I just thought it had to do with differences in the factory that produced them.

I was wrong.

Turns out, the larger pellets are called עלי תרד (spinach leaves) and are frozen spinach leaves. They take longer to defrost and always end up wrapped around the blade of my immersion blender.

Spinach leaves

The smaller pellets are called מדליוני תרד (spinach medallions) and are minced or chopped spinach.

chopped spinach medallions - much better for my green smoothies

I think you can see why I got confused. I just looked for the word תרד. Unless you see them side-by-side, the bags are virtually identical.

While we're on the subject, notice the red oval at the top of the bags pictured above. That's the Sunfrost logo. They are the most widely available brand in Israel. Sunfrost offers lots of varieties of frozen vegetables, beans and rice and the quality is very good. They also tend to be more expensive than other brands.

Now that I've shared my spinach tip, I want to hear from you. I know that if you've been living in Israel for more than an hour, you've got at least one.

So, what have you figured out about life in Israel that you'd like to pass on to new olim?

Or what small mistake did you make that you'd like to warn others about?

Here are some topic areas to get your creative juices flowing:

• food shopping
• celebrating chagim in Israel
• public transportation
• dealing with government offices
• crucial Hebrew vocabulary
• running a household, utilities
• money and banking
• education
• shopping in general

Feel free to respond in the comments below, or email TipsForOlim@gmail.com. That's also the email address to use if you'd like to be updated when the guidebook is ready for purchase.

¹ The reason spinach is so awesome in green smoothies is because you can't really taste it. All those nutrients and, despite its reputation, there is absolutely no bitter taste. Spinach for the win!

Stories and Tips to Ease Your Transition to Israel

As my own aliyah journey unfolds, and as I continue to learn new things about how daily life works in the Holy Land, I've published lots of practical tips for managing our new lives in Israel, both on this blog and in Facebook posts.

After almost seven years in Israel, I'm ready to take these random tips, add tons more, and put them all together in a neatly-organized, practical guidebook for olim.
 
I'm envisioning a book full of tips and stories about the kinds of things olim learn from neighbors and from one another. 

Or from trial and error.  

Or just from error. 

Things like:

• Finding trash bags that actually fit your kitchen trash can 
• Surviving your first asifat horim (parents' meeting)
• Figuring out which item near the sign is actually on sale
• Cooking a vegetable you've never seen before
• Knowing which Facebook groups are best to turn to when you need specific advice
• Mastering the Hebrew slang that is really critical for olim
• Learning what time of year strawberries and fresh garlic are in season
• Adjusting to Sunday being, ahem... Israel's Monday 
• Cleaning your floors without an American mop

My goal is to produce an encouraging guidebook, full of concrete tips as well as amusing stories. I want it to be both fun to read and truly practical.

To make this happen, I'm going to need lots of input from olim of every vintage, whether you got off your aliyah flight yesterday or have been here since before the Six Day War.

Please feel free to comment on any or all of these.

1) Do you have a funny/cute/embarrassing story of a mistake you made as a new olah/oleh? For example, did you wash your clothes in fabric softener for a year because you didn't yet know the word for detergent?

2) Do you have a serious story of a mistake you made as a new olah/oleh from which others can learn? For example, did you fail to respond to a piece of Hebrew-language mail that you really should not have ignored?

3) What's your #1 tip for living successfully in Israel, even if you've been here for years? Can be something practical or maybe a motto you've adopted.

4) What did it take you awhile to figure out that you wish someone would have explained to you from the beginning? For example, it took me almost seven years to notice that there's a difference between frozen chopped spinach and frozen spinach leaves.

So, what small thing have you figured out about life in Israel that you'd like to pass on to newer olim?

Or what small mistake did you make that you'd like to warn others about?

Feel free to respond in the comments below, or email TipsForOlim@gmail.com.

They Ruined the Kotel for Me

Photo credit: attractions-in-israel.com

Like so many other people, visiting the Kotel was an important part of my first-ever trip to Israel. To be honest, I pushed off going until the end of the trip. The Kotel! I understood it had potent, concentrated spiritual power. And I was a little afraid of it.

When I finally built up the courage to experience it for the first time, my husband and I walked to the Kotel Plaza. He went to the left and I went to the right. We agreed to meet back at a certain point in 20 minutes.

Once under the spell of the Kotel, I started weeping. I cried for so long that I was still crying when it was time to meet my husband in the plaza area. Unable to explain why I was crying, we went into the Rova and sat at a restaurant. And I was still crying. 

I couldn’t understand what had come over me. And I certainly had no words to explain it to him.

You would think that such a powerful emotional experience would knit me to the Kotel forever.

But you’d be wrong.

Let me state for the record that I am an Orthodox woman, married to a rabbi, now living in Israel. The Kotel ought to be a spiritual sanctuary for me. It is not. I hardly ever go to the Kotel anymore.

The purity of my first experience has been ruined - by politics, by power games and by overt sexism.

There is a 26-second video currently circulating on Facebook of a Japanese man at the Kotel. He is pictured hugging the Kotel, crying out. I don’t understand Japanese, but it would be clear to anyone that he is praying and crying with great feeling. At the end of the video, he falls into a bowing, prostrating posture.

I don’t know what religion, if any, this Kotel visitor follows, but I do know that Shinto and Buddhism are the two main religions in Japan. Chances are pretty excellent that he’s not a Jew. Despite that fact, he is permitted to worship in his own distinctive way at the Kotel. No one harasses him. No one arrests him. No one attempts to kick him out of the Kotel area.

And yet, actual Jewish women who wish to worship in their own distinctive way at the Kotel, with tallit and tefillin and Torah scrolls, are routinely harassed and have been arrested.

Men routinely sing, dance, shout and pray out loud on their side. Bar mitzvah boys are frequently accompanied by small groups of musicians who drum and sing.

Photo credit: Herschel Gutman Photography

However, when Jewish women gather in a group to pray, they are accused of being disruptive. They are maligned for compromising the purity of the Kotel. They are called an array of unspeakable names. They are routinely slandered.

I personally don’t pray with tallit, tefillin and rarely get near a sefer Torah.  But it’s hypocritical, at the very least, to say that a non-Jewish man can prostrate himself at the Kotel, praying to his god(s). Visitors of all the world’s religions can pray there to the gods they worship.

But Jewish women are obligated to behave as if the Kotel is an Orthodox shul?

Either the Kotel is a spiritual home for all of humanity or it’s an Orthodox shul whose visitors must abide by halacha.

You can’t have it both ways.

Here are a few other ways the Kotel has been ruined for me.

Women, even elderly women, have no alternative but to stand on plastic chairs in order to watch a Bar Mitzvah taking place on the men’s side of the mechitza. It’s a breach of derech eretz to not have found a safer, more dignified solution in all these years. If men had to stand on plastic chairs to watch a family simcha, you can bet this situation would have been addressed a long time ago.

It took me awhile to understand why, whenever we went to the Kotel, my husband reported having no problem getting a space right at the Wall. Women would be standing three deep, waiting for a space directly at the Wall. Then I realized that the women’s section is a fraction of the size of the men’s section. I suspect it’s gotten smaller over time.

Look at the first image, above. You can clearly see the disparity.

I grant that there are times, like Birkat Cohanim, when men really need more space. So build a moveable mechitza for those times if you must. But why are women disadvantaged with significantly less access to the Wall 100% of the time?

Besides having the lion’s share of space, the men’s side also has tables and umbrellas.

Since I’ve been in Israel, I’ve learned that the Kotel isn’t anywhere near as important, or as holy, as Har HaBayit (the Temple Mount). So the Kotel itself, despite its significant reputation, is simply not an important part of my Jewish life.

In the meantime, I'm waiting for this:

The Third Temple according to the prophet Yechezkel (Ezekiel)

When Women Pray Out Loud

Three years ago this month, I wrote about a powerful spiritual experience I had with a group of Jewish women I had never met.

It was early one morning in Medzibuz, Ukraine. I walked to the tziyun of the Baal Shem Tov to pray.

As I walked alone down the path, I heard women singing. It was very loud. I opened the door and I saw, right away, that it was overheated and packed beyond reason. There must have been a hundred women in a room that's about 400 square feet, standing wherever they could, amidst six large kevarim.

I was about to turn away to leave when the arms of a stranger pulled me in. And I entered something unworldly. A hundred women were chanting.

Twenty-four times they sang this verse from Tehillim.

Hoshia et amecha uvarech et nachalatecha orem v'naseim ad haolam.
Save Your nation and bless Your inheritance. Tend them and raise them up forever. (Ps. 28:9) 

Over and over, louder and louder, hands raised to the heavens.

Beside me, an old woman put her hands on the head of a young woman. A bracha that the young woman should find her zivug flowed from the old woman's lips.

After the 24th repetition, the prayer leader signaled the end.

Absolute silence.

Tears sprang up in my eyes. I heard weeping all around me, saw the precious faces of women I didn't know, wet with tears.

The collective prayer of these women raised me to transcendence. I was no longer in rural Ukraine. I was somewhere else, somewhere higher.

This is the power of women at prayer, when we are free to pray out loud. The lack of this has been a painful deficit for me for a very long time. I came to Ukraine and found it there.

Last night, almost exactly three years later, I found it again.

My husband and I traveled to Tiveria with one of my Torah teachers. She and I were hoping for a brief, private meeting with Rabbanit Leah Kook. Rabbanit Kook is married to the mekubal Rabbi Dov Kook and is the granddaughter of Rebbetzin Batsheva and Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky.

We were told that the Rabbanit has kabbalat kahal, where she meets the public, from 6-7 PM. We arrived in Tiveria just before 6 PM and located the address we were given. We walked through a gate, down a dark path to a locked door.

There was one other woman already there waiting. Within a few minutes, two other women had arrived, including one older woman completely covered, except for her face and hands, in a shimmery grey cloth.

At 6 PM, Rabbanit Kook herself, wearing a purple snap-on vest cum apron embroidered with the words l'kavod Hashem Yitbarach (to the honor of God, the Blessed One), unlocked the door and, with a huge smile and good spirits, welcomed the five of us in. Up a short flight of stairs, we entered a small, simple room with a table, about 15 chairs and floor-to-ceiling bookcases, filled with sefarim.

More women came in while the Rabbanit stood by an interior door, held onto the doorpost, and prayed.  I was in that small room for about 35 minutes and I was completely, utterly and uncomfortably out of my element.

It didn't become clear until just before we left that we weren't going to be able to see her privately. Instead, we got a window into the power of what Jewish women's prayer can be when there are no men around.

It seemed to me that most of the women were regulars who knew exactly what to expect. I, however, was nothing if not dumbfounded. I felt like the most ignorant Jewish woman in the history of the universe. While the 15 or so women recited some text in a distinctive, unified cadence, patting their thighs to keep rhythm, I struggled to figure out what they were saying. Eventually,  nafal li ha'asimon (the penny dropped) and I realized they were reciting Tehillim.

The Rabbanit screamed Toda Abba! (Thank You Father!) a dozen times. She shouted Anachnu ohavim otach! (We love You!) over and over. And when she closed her eyes and screamed Moshiach! thirty times or more, I knew I had never seen anyone pray this way.

One woman brought a small vial of scented oil, which was passed around. Each woman said the bracha borei minei b'samim, blessing God for being the Creator of different types of fragrances, to which everyone else answered amen, before breathing in the scent. Brachot said out loud seemed to be a big thing, because the Rabbanit gave out cups of water and each woman who took one made a shehakol out loud, again with everyone answering amen.

The Rabbanit went back into the kitchen and brought out a large metal bowl, dinged from much use, filled with dough. In keeping with the mood of the room, she made the bracha for taking challah loudly. Then she did something (okay, yet another thing) I never saw before.

She took the bag with the challah that she had broken off and rubbed it on her knees and on her eyes and said, lo ko'ev (it doesn't hurt/it shouldn't hurt). Then she passed it around and everyone had the chance to rub the bag of dough on the part of her body that needs healing.

Everything I saw was so otherworldly that I'm sure I don't remember the exact sequence. I do remember that Tehillim 20 (Lamnatzeach Mizmor L'David) was recited at least 12 times, over and over, with the same cadence, the same specific emphasis on the final words Hashem hoshea haMelech.

When I agreed to go to Tiveria, I had no clue about any of this. Today, I have a completely different awareness of how one's relationship with Hashem, and with tefillah, can be.

Even if one is a woman.

We Don't Have Any Idea What Jerusalem Really Is

When my nephew, who is now in his early 30s, attended  Reform Hebrew school, he learned the story of Purim. He told me his teacher informed the class that if Mordechai was too hard for them to pronounce, they could just refer to him as Uncle Mordy.

I've often considered that story emblematic of what's so sad about certain forms of American Judaism. It's so watered down as to be tasteless pabulum, completely lacking the ability to engage the soul. Most Jews, I venture, have no clue about the depth, richness and vibrancy of authentic Judaism.

The other evening, after working at home for too many days in a row, I needed to air myself out. My husband and I went out to dinner. The meal over, I wasn't ready to return home, so we drove into Jerusalem to see if a certain Jewish bookstore was still open. It was after 10 PM when we arrived. Happily, the lights were on, the doors were open, the shelves were fully stocked and the cash register was humming.

Since we've made aliyah, I like to joke about the old days, referring to them as "back when we had money". Back when we had money, we would go into New York for a few days in June and go on a Jewish book buying spree. It's been years since I went into a Jewish bookstore with nothing specific in mind, just to see what's new that might catch my attention. My favorite thing to do in a bookstore is to scan the shelves and wait to see which books sing to me.

So we're in this Jewish book warehouse store in Jerusalem and everything I see is in Hebrew. Surely they must have some English books somewhere. I ask in Hebrew ?איפה הספרים באנגלית - where are the books in English? The clerk grunts, points and says something basically unintelligible to my ear. But he pointed, so I have a clue in which direction I ought to move.

Behold, there's a gorgeous wall full of Jewish books in English. Because I'm such a book fiend, many of the titles are familiar to me, but there are a few gems I long to own. A book titled The Soul of Jerusalem calls my name. It's the teachings of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach on Jerusalem, complied by Rabbi Shlomo Katz.

I'll be honest. I don't usually understand Shlomo Carlebach. His words sound magical and his distinctive phrasing - "Open your heart to the deepest of the deep, my sweet friends, my holy brothers and sisters" - are poetic and engaging, but I never feel like I've grasped the essence of anything he said. That fact notwithstanding, Jerusalem has its own magic.

I bought the book.

And it drew me in almost immediately. Late Friday night, I was reading and enjoying, if not the specific learning, the feeling, the spirit of the book.

Then, a passage stopped me in my tracks.

Sometimes, you take a Yiddele and you tell him, "You have to keep Shabbos, put on tefillin, do a few tricks here and a few tricks there and that's all there is to it. That is all there is to Yiddishkeit." - p. 65

And with this brief passage, it hit me. We have no idea. We don't know. We have been living without the Beit HaMikdash, without the Holy Temple, for 2,000 years. At best, we have a diluted practice of Judaism. We're in the same boat as my nephew's Hebrew school classmates. Even those of us who live religious lives. Even those of us who live religious lives in Israel, we only have an inkling. We don't know the true power of living in the Presence of the Divine. We don't know what it's like to live with the Beit HaMikdash at the center of Jerusalem and at the center of our Jewish lives.

We have stumbled along for 2,000 years, doing our best to preserve what we can preserve. We have bent to the will of our host countries. We have clung to what we can. But we've lost the heart of our heritage. We've lost the supremacy of being able to visit God in His palace. We don't have any idea what Jerusalem really is, what Judaism really is.

My soul bleeds over the distortions that people call Judaism today. I'm especially sensitive to the "hadrat nashim" indignities that are increasingly foisted upon women in the name of the Torah. In my weaker moments, they enrage me. But ultimately, they are lint on a satin dress. They are meaningless perversions. They are gnats, easily flicked away. They are not the ikkar, the essence, of Jewish life.

Pesach, which is just days away, is the celebration of an important geula, of a redemption, of the Jewish people. Pesach is a placeholder for the geula shalayma, for the full, complete and eternal redemption of the Jewish people. The coming of Moshaich and the rebuilding of the Beit HaMikdash will restore us to a true understanding of what Jerusalem really means, of what Judaism truly is.

Until then, we are engaged in a kind of playacting. We are holding a place until the real thing shows up. It's not meaningless, but it's not the whole story. No matter how strong our commitment to Jewish law, Jewish practice, Jewish life is, we need to remember that, without the Beit HaMikdash, without the presence of God in Jerusalem, we do not know, we cannot experience, Judaism in its fullest expression.

My we each be blessed to personally experience the restoration of the soul of Jerusalem, to which Reb Shlomo hints in this magnificent volume.

The Relentless Way History Repeats

When I was in graduate school, studying Jewish history, we learned about the lacrimonious theory of Jewish history - the idea that Jewish history is basically a millennia-long tradition of persecution.

This perspective, most closely associated with Kevin MacDonald, a controversial professor of psychology at California State University, ignores the miracles, the achievements and the glories of Jewish history in favor of the oppressions, expulsions and massacres of Jews throughout the ages.

I mention this because I have been thinking about Jewish history quite a lot lately. I've been thinking about it because I feel very much like I'm living through it. Of course, in a very real sense, we are always living through history. What we consider our daily lives today will someday be taught as history to the generations that follow us.

But the burden of history today is much heavier today. The sense that we are reliving the history of European Jewry in the 1930s is much stronger, more palpable.

In the early 1930s, when the Nazis took over in Germany, approximately 38,000 German Jews (about 7% of the Jewish population) emigrated, primarily to neighboring European countries. Sadly, many of them were later rounded up when the Nazis took over those countries as well.

Today, we watch antisemitic acts, acts of terror and death, on a very frequent basis. In January, four Jews were killed in a kosher grocery store in Paris. This morning, there is news of an attack in a synagogue in Copenhagen, Denmark. These are just two incidents in a swirl of deadly antisemitism rising in Europe. The echo of the 1930s reverberates loudly.

It's an eerie feeling, living my daily life - writing for clients, buying groceries, having dinner with friends, doing laundry, making food for Shabbat - and knowing that the Jews are, once again, being targeted for death, just because we are Jews.

Most of my life, at least in this lifetime, I lived in a protected sphere of relatively mild antisemitism. Decades ago, a friend from middle school accused me of being "such a Jew" because I reminded her about money she owed me. That's probably the worst incident of antisemitism I experienced personally.

Now, Jewish families in Europe (and in other parts of the world) are reassessing their lives and are considering the wisdom of staying put versus up and leaving. I'm grateful that I am already in Israel. I'm grateful that I don't have to agonize over whether to stay and fight or cut my losses and split.

I am profoundly aware that we are living in times when Jews are once again being forced to ask themselves difficult questions. The conversations that happened around kitchen tables in Berlin and in Frankfurt am Main, in Hamburg, in Breslau and in small towns throughout Germany in 1933 are happening again, this time in Paris and in London and in Baltimore and in New York.

Has the time come, yet again, to leave?

For those brave Jews who collect their worldly possessions and leave with dignity before things get much worse, and for the Jews who refuse to leave, and for the Jews who deny that there is anything to be overly concerned about, and for the Jews who have already left and resettled in the Holy Land... for all of us, may this be, finally, the very last time Jews have to leave anywhere.

May this be the final shifting of the Jewish population as we await geula together in Israel.

The Courage of Olim

In case you don't read the Times of Israel, click here to read my latest post. I discuss how humbling it is to be an immigrant lacking the skills necessary to communicate in Hebrew.

Spiritual Balm for a Jewish Woman's Soul - Part 3 (of 3?)

This is Part 3 of a blog-based conversation between me and dear friend and fellow blogger Ruti Eastman who challenged me to articulate what I think a Jewish woman's spiritual path looks like. You know, if it isn't going to include shul and all that.

I'd like to acknowledge at the outset that there are Torah-observant Jewish women who are happy with their roles. Not subjugated happy. Genuinely happy. That may even be the majority of Jewish women.

But I'll be honest. I'm tired of hearing all about a woman's spiritual path being defined primarily by her family and her home. I'm not tired of hearing about it because it's unimportant. I'm tired of hearing about it because it's incomplete.

Because here's the rub.

Not all Torah-observant Jewish women have husbands. Or children. Or even homes of their own. Or they did at some point but don't anymore. Or they don't yet, but hope to some day. How is a woman supposed to express herself as a soul if she lacks a husband, a child, a kitchen, a home?

My personal situation is blessed. I have a husband (a rabbi even) and, thank God, a healthy marriage. Though empty-nesters now, I have raised children. I have had my own home (and my own kitchen) for at least 30 years. I don't love my family and my home any less than other Torah-observant Jewish women do. But a marriage, a family and a home, as much as I love these precious things, was never enough for me. Not when I was building a career, not when I pursue intellectual goals and definitely not when I want to grow closer to Hashem.

Does that make me so out of the ordinary? I know so many women like me that I forget that not everyone's itch is so difficult to scratch.

During the course of this blog conversation, I've begun to articulate a paradigm, a new way of amplifying Judaism. This paradigm explicitly articulates multiple ways a Torah-observant woman can reach toward the Infinite, throughout all the stages of her lifetime.

First, some underlying assumptions: The most well-known, the most widely recognized Jewish rituals are generally in the male domain. What women do is often internal. Even our rituals in the physical world are often done privately. So it may seem like we're not doing much at all.

It occurs to me that defining the Jewish woman's role is tricky in the same way that defining what ought to happen at a Bat Mitzvah is tricky. For boys, the Bar Mitzvah, for the most part, is fairly well scripted. But a Bat Mitzvah can be recognized with a very wide array of events. Even for our own daughters, we did very different things because they are different people. We had leeway with daughters that I believe we would not have had with sons.

Hineni moochanah u'm'zumenet. Now I'm ready. I'm proposing this conceptual model as a way of illuminating the spiritual path of a Jewish woman, of answering the question, "What does a Jewish woman actually do?"

You might recognize it as a variation of bein adam lechavero and bein adam lamakom with one major difference. Beneath each category are some of the spiritual activities open to Jewish women. The lists are meant to be illustrative, not comprehensive.

BETWEEN A WOMAN AND HER FAMILY 

(Acknowledging that this path is not open to all women at all times.)

• Number One is definitely giving birth. Granted it's not exclusively Jewish. And my soul wishes that Judaism offered some kind of ritual for a woman to honor the moment of birth, the moment when one body becomes two (or more). Nevertheless, there is no denying the raw spiritual power of conceiving, nurturing and bringing forth life.
• Raising children and teaching them about Hashem
• Teaching Torah to your children
• Making/taking challah
• Lighting Shabbat and Yom Tov candles
• Taharat HaMishpacha
• Shalom Bayit - growing and working on self in order to contribute to a peaceful marriage
• Carrying responsibility for shaping the individual family members into a unit 

BETWEEN A WOMAN AND OTHER PEOPLE

• Chesed - general neighborly kindnesses as well as contributing time and/or money to organizations that specialize in acts of chesed
• Derech eretz - the requirement to treat other people with respect and honor
• Hachnasat orchim - bringing guests into the home
• Bikur cholim - visiting the ill
• Praying for the welfare of others
• Giving tzedaka (charity)
• Avoiding lashon hara (gossip and hurtful speech)
• Facilitating the spiritual growth of others, bringing them closer to Hashem
• Building community

BETWEEN A WOMAN AND GOD

• Learning Torah 
• Hitbodedut - ongoing, private conversation with Hashem
• Emunah - strengthening her belief that everything comes from Hashem
• Anticipating geula - actively, not passively, waiting for Redemption
• Hakarat HaTov - the absolute discipline of noticing and acknowledging Hashem's many kindnesses throughout the day 
• Loving Hashem
• Tefillah - in whatever form prayer works for the individual woman
• Singing and dancing to Jewish music
• Simcha - serving God with happiness

This model is a paradigm in development. I share it with the belief that we could strengthen a lot of Jewish women and bring them closer to God and to Torah if we spoke more openly about, if we placed more value, as a community, on the many ways that a Jewish woman can actively express the spiritual power of her soul.

How I wish someone had explained Judaism to me like this when I was a newbie.

Spiritual Balm for a Jewish Woman's Soul - Part 2

This is the next installment of a blogging experiment. My delightful friend for decades and fellow blogger Ruti Eastman and I are having a blog-based conversation about how, in the absence of many of the rituals and accoutrements that accompany Jewish men through their lives, Torah observant Jewish women express ourselves spiritually .

In my first installment, I wrote about being finished with shul and, to a large degree, with formal prayers in the siddur that were written with the assumption that the person praying is male. I asked for women to share how "we, as Jewish women, nurture our souls... what we actually do. How we invite the sacred into our lives. How we talk to God. How we live as spiritual beings without the accoutrements that surround Jewish men. How we experience the holy. What things we say, read, think, believe, study and touch that define our Jewish lives."

The most common reactions I got were from women who suggested that maybe I'll be happier praying exclusively with women, or finding a partnership minyan or just concentrating on Hashem and not thinking about the limitations of the ezrat nashim while I'm in shul.

I feel unheard.

Whenever I write about these issues, I hear from people who react, in predictable ways, to the questions Jewish women like me raise about our tradition. People sniff anything that smacks of feminism and jump in with their reactions to the issue of the role of women in Judaism. I've been having those conversations since 1988.

It's old ground. I'm don't mean to sound hostile. I am genuinely tired of people counseling me about how to fit in better with normative Judaism.

Normative Torah observant Judaism is broken when it comes to Jewish women. It's skewed so heavily toward the masculine that the feminine has trouble being recognized, let alone valued.

What I want now is a new conversation.

To be completely fair, we did get two responses on point.

One woman told us her spiritual energies are deeply connected to learning and teaching Torah. Another said that she concentrates on "compassionate outreach to cholim" and Spiritual Healing. 
 
That's what we're looking for here. How do we recognize the spiritual acts of Jewish women?

I know there are women who have it. Women who are surrounded by their own flavor of holiness. Who are completely content in their relationship with God, who have no need for shul, for daf yomi shiurim, for the whole male package.

But their voices are whispers.

Ruti and I are on a mission to locate, capture and amplify those voices. We want to empower Jewish women - converts, ba'alot teshuva, FFBs  as well as the not yet religious - with a positive articulation of the spiritual lives of Torah observant Jewish women.

Ruti recently sent me an essay by Rabbi Aron Moss of Sydney Australia in which he says, "Men have stronger bodies, women have stronger souls." He also writes, "Women are more soulful than men. While men may excel in physical prowess, women are far ahead when it comes to spiritual strength. Women are more sensitive to matters of the soul, more receptive to ideas of faith, more drawn to the divine than men. The feminine soul has an openness to the abstract and a grasp of the intangible that a male soul can only yearn for."

Very poetically expressed, Rabbi Moss. But it doesn't answer the question.

What do Jewish women DO to express all that spiritual power that rabbis tell us we have? How do the souls of Jewish women manifest in the world? How do we name, so that we can recognize, when a Jewish woman is engaged in a spiritual act? Further, there is tremendous valuing of the rituals of Jewish men. How do we create a culture where Jewish women's spiritual lives are clearly identified and also valued? What does it look like, sound like, feel like when a Jewish woman is expressing herself in the spiritual realm?

This is our quest.

Spiritual Balm for a Jewish Woman's Soul - Part 1

What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open. 
   - Muriel Rukeyser

If you're a Jewish woman who is completely content with your place in the Jewish world, my words are not intended for you.

But if you are a Torah-observant Jewish woman and there is a restlessness in your soul, a sense that things are not as they should be in your Jewish life, I am speaking to you.

I have written many times about things in the Orthodox world that infuriate me as a Jewish woman - the tendency to use collective language when referring exclusively to Jewish men, excluding women entirely, the subconscious misogyny that has otherwise progressive men making decisions that negatively impact women, the absolute disrespect of women evidenced in the women's sections of many synagogues, feeling marginalized on Simchat Torah and more.

These are all things that needed to be said, so I said them. But I am tired of saying them. I am tired of being hurt by these things. It is wearisome to be angry for decades. My soul needs something positive to rest on.

I was so often offended by what I experienced in so many Orthodox shuls over such a long period of time (e.g. having to enter through a small door in the back instead of using the main doors, not being able to see when the aron kodesh was open, not being able to kiss the Sefer Torah, not being able to dance and sing without worrying that some man was going to feel it was his right to silence me, not being able to hear the davening, not being able to see the Sefer Torah when it was raised during hagbaha, being completely disregarded in the delivery of the drasha, inferior seating, etc. etc.)  that it became all but impossible for me to pray inside a shul.

It gradually dawned on me that I'd had enough trying to accommodate myself to a model of prayer that really didn't work for me. Since so much of my discontent comes from synagogue-related experiences, I stopped going to shul. I am no longer willing to participate in an institution where the secondary nature of my presence is communicated so powerfully. I am no longer willing to be a passive participant, an audience member, in someone else's prayer service.

You're a woman who loves going to shul? Kol HaKavod. I have no issue with your choice. It just wasn't working for me. And, for the most part, I've been content crossing shul attendance off my list of Jewish experiences. But I've had a nagging feeling, a residue, of guilt. Am I being a bad Jew if I don't want to go to shul?

There's more.

I often resent the siddur. That's the truth. There are so many tefillot that were written with the assumption that the person praying is male, that it interferes with my desire to talk to God. In the morning, I am reminded of the importance of showing up to the Beit HaMidrash early. I pray in the merit of the Avot, the forefathers, but never in the merit of the spiritual power of the Imahot, the foremothers. The reference to brit mila in bentsching. Even the Shema, the central prayer of Jewish faith, references the gender-based mitzvot of tzitzit and tefillin. These are just a few examples.

I have a hard time transcending these recurrent reminders that I am not male. While trying mightily to speak to God in the language of the siddur, I find myself constantly needing to reorient my gender identification. I am perpetually alert, scanning the text, asking myself, "Am I going to have to step over my un-maleness to say the words of this prayer?"

A friend for decades and fellow blogger Ruti Eastman refers to the Orthodox shul as a Moose Lodge and the siddur as their manual. In so doing, Ruti intends no disrespect, nor is she minimizing the importance of the synagogue for men as a place of communal prayer. She's using humor to remind me that the Orthodox shul and the siddur are, really and truly, part of the masculine domain. Her humor helps me vanquish the last remnants of Jewish guilt I feel about the fact that shul and the siddur don't nourish my soul.

If I'm crossing shul and the siddur off my list of Jewish activities, what then is the substance of my Jewish spiritual life?

I have long maintained that we tend to confuse the masculine trappings of Jewish worship with Judaism itself. The tools of a Jewish man's observance, including tallis, tefillin, Sefer Torah, siddur, lulav & etrog, gemara, etc., are so concrete, it's easy to identify them as essentially Jewish. And they are. But only for a portion of the Jewish people.

I can understand the actions of the liberal Jewish traditions which have deputized women to be the liturgical equivalents of men. They saw an imbalance and, assuming that communal prayer was a central pillar for all Jews, made it possible for Jewish women to be included.

I get it.

But it's not my solution.

From the ancient words of Aishet Chayil to the controversy surrounding partnership minyanim today, in the Orthodox world, our identities as Jewish women have, in large measure, been publicly defined in contradistinction to Jewish men. We often say what Jewish women don't do, but we fail to emphasize what the spiritual life of an Orthodox Jewish woman actually looks like.

Jewish women are not simply Jewish men, plus or minus a few mitzvot. And whether she is ever a wife and/or a mother, the Jewish female exists as a soul in relationship with her Creator; she needs something more than a husband and children to define her spiritual life. As a community, we have failed at articulating, much less valuing, the range of possible spiritual paths for traditional Jewish women. Lacking much of the paraphernalia that defines Jewish men, the Jewish woman's pathway to God is often so subtle that it completely escapes our notice.

I want to help us notice. I want to write about the ways we, as Jewish women, nurture our souls. I want to write about what we actually do. How we invite the sacred into our lives. How we talk to God. How we live as spiritual beings without the accoutrements that surround Jewish men. How we experience the holy. What things we say, read, think, believe, study and touch that define our Jewish lives.

I want to hear from women for whom articulating the specifics of their spiritual path is effortless, and from women for whom articulating the specifics of their spiritual path is confronting. I can tell you what I do. But I want a follow-up essay to represent a broader spectrum of women's voices.

I invite you to comment below, or to email me at rivkah30 at yahoo dot com to share how you express your soul. With God's help, and with your input, I'll have more to say about distinctively feminine pathways to God.

The Pain of Exile

When I go to sleep at night, my head points towards Jerusalem. By bus, I can be at the Kotel in under an hour. By car, in even less time. My family members are all healthy and, to varying degrees, thriving. My best friend is also my husband. There is food in my refrigerator and money in my bank account. My brain and body function as they should and my soul is awake and striving. I am very blessed and I know it.

At the same time, there is a deep pain in the world. More accurately, there are many pains, many assaults on my peace of mind. The world is at the mercy of hateful, irrational, murderous enemies. Politicians would like to see my people disappear off the face of the earth. A threatening, worldwide epidemic swirls around us, as does the peril of global economic collapse. So many people hate my people. I can't bear to read the news anymore. Just scanning the headlines make me nauseous.

Among the Jews, each day I see new evidence of an alarming, treacherous imbalance of masculine and feminine spiritual energy, leading to all manner of corruption, exploitation and abuse. Much of it in the name of religious sanctity. Feh! On this point, I have restrained myself from writing more, fearing opening Pandora's box and creating an avalanche of ill will towards God and the Torah.

When I talk to my husband about these manifold pains of exile, he reminds me to look upon all this heaviness with my geula vision. So I tap into the part of me that connects with the approaching redemption of the Jewish people. I remind myself that, at the End of Days, we are being asked to give up our belief in any power other than Hashem. We must be cleansed of all idolatrous doctrines. In order to be ready to receive the power of a God-centered universe, we must cease having faith in any authority other than Hashem.

The pain of exile weighs awfully heavily on me some days. But then I remember that we're in the midst of Hashem doing His best to get us there quickly. All the chaos is meant to demonstrate that there is nothing to rely on besides Him.

When I remember, I whisper, "Ein od milvado." There is nothing, there is no one to rely on except God.

And my soul is soothed.

Learning More About Geula

Perhaps you've read or heard or seen something about the impending redemption of the Jewish people and you want to know more. Where do you turn?

I've put together this preliminary list of  blogs, books, videos and websites in English that can help you learn more. I'm sharing this catalog of resources with the hope that it makes it easier for you to learn and stay connected.

I'm definitely not claiming that this is a comprehensive list, but it is a beginning. If you know of a resource I didn't include, please comment below and I will happily update the post.

BLOGS (subscribe to receive updates by email)
Absolute Truth
Bat Aliyah
Dreaming of Moshiach
End of Days
Geula613 - last update Feb 2014
Geulah Perspectives
Mashiach's Wife
Moshiach Blog Network
Mystical Paths 
Rabbi Lazer Brody 
Rabbi Nachman Kahana
Shirat Devorah  
Tomer Devorah
Yeranan Yaakov


BOOKS
Avtzon, Gershon - Geulah: What We Await
Burgeman, Nechama Sarah Gila Nadborny - Princess of Dan
Fishman, Tzvi - Days of Mashiach
Kramer, Chaim and Avraham Sutton - Mashiach: Who? What? Why? How? Where? and When?
Morgenstern, Arie - The Gaon of Vilna and his Messianic Vision

Rivlin, Rabbi Hillel - Kol HaTor (The Voice of the Turtle Dove) 

Schochet, Jacob Immanuel - Mashiach: The Principle of Mashiach and the Messianic Era in Jewish Law and Tradition
Winston, Rabbi Pinchas - Survival Guide for the End of Days
Winston, Rabbi Pinchas - 2016
Winston, Rabbi Pinchas - Talking About the End of Days
Winston, Rabbi Pinchas - Geulah b'Rachamim
Winston, Rabbi Pinchas - Talking abut Eretz Yisroel
Weitzman, Rabbi Yecheil - The Ishmaelite Exile

 VIDEOS
Rabbi David Bar-Hayim - Is This Achalta d'Geula?
Rabbi Pinchas Winston - Geulah b'Rachamim Music video
Geulah b'Rachamim Seminar Part 1
Geulah b'Rachamim Seminar Part 2
Geulah b'Rachamim Seminar Part 3
Rabbi Moshe Wolfson - Teshuvah: 5775 The Year of the Geulah!

WEBSITES
About Moshiach
Geula Watch Facebook group
Moshiach on Chabad.org
Please Tell Me What the Rebbe Said 

If you have found this list of resources helpful, please consider making a contribution to the Raising Awareness about Redemption campaign so we can create more content that helps Jewish people understand this stage of Jewish history and prepare themselves for the geula.