There once was a boy who became a bar mitzvah with such ease that his rabbi suggested when he grew up he consider becoming a rabbi himself.
The boy replied to the rabbi: ‘You mean men can be rabbis too?’
That’s one example of what Rachel Biale calls “the huge revolution of women” in Jewish life.
“There was a time in Judaism when women were basically relegated to the traditional enabling roles, like running the temple gift shop and the oneg Shabbat, with fairly little religious and intellectual meaning,” said Biale, who directs community education at the Marin Jewish Community Center. “Since the women’s movement of the 1970s that’s totally changed. Now they’re the rabbis and the leaders.”
The JCC in San Rafael will soon celebrate the growing roles of women in Judaism when it launches a new program in January, “Women Who Shook the Jewish World.”
Over the course of five months the program will combine lectures, theatrical and musical performances, gallery exhibits and other special events featuring women who have taken active and visible roles in building community, developing spiritual life and transforming politics in the Jewish world.
The opening season, running Thursday, Jan. 17 through May 9, includes Israeli Knesset member Yael Dyan, author Anita Diamant, and Professors Susannah Heschel and Marcia Falk. There also will be a musical performance by the renowned East Bay women’s a cappella group Vocolot and a panel discussion featuring prominent Jewish female leaders in the Bay Area.
The program is being organized by the JCC in collaboration with the Marin office of the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation and 16 other Jewish organizations.
Biale called the women’s movement “one of the most important revolutions in American Jewish life in the last several decades” that, along with the creation of the state of Israel, “is one of the most significant, positive events in Jewish history in the 20th century.” Aside from comprising half the population, women, she said, “have propelled the Jewish community to re-examine itself in a way that’s very creative and energizing.”
The Jewish Community Endowment Fund seems to agree, providing “Women Who Shook the Jewish World” with a $27,000 grant.
The program also is being funded by individual donors from a group of Marin female lay leaders called the Eshet Lapidot Circle, or Firebrand Women, who are helping to plan the program’s fall 2002 season.
Eshet Lapidot, said Biale, refers to the prophetess Deborah from the Book of Judges, “one of the few women who are mentioned in the Bible as great leaders.” While traditional commentators interpret her as the “wife of Lapidot,” Biale said the feminist interpretation is that Deborah was “divinely inspired.”
One of the speakers, Diamant, will actually address this issue of women’s voices in the Bible on Feb. 21. Her novel, “The Red Tent,” is a national bestseller centered around the biblical character Dinah, the daughter of Jacob who has barely a mention in the Bible.
But first on Jan. 17, Dayan, chair of the Knesset Commission on the Status of Women, will talk about women in Israel. As a public figure, Dayan has introduced a great deal of legislation aimed at advancing the rights of women in Israeli society.
On March 21, Heschel will address the woman’s place in American Jewish life today. Heschel, a leader in the Jewish women’s movement, is best known for her encounter with a traditional male rabbi who said, “A woman on the bimah is like an orange on the seder plate,” resulting in the inclusion of oranges on the seder plates of many Jewish feminists.
Falk, a Berkeley author, will appear along with Vocolot on April 14 for a combined talk and musical performance. Falk is the author of the feminist liturgy “The Book of Blessings.” Vocolot is known for performing songs reflecting the spirit of women, and Cantor Linda Hirschhorn of Vocolot, along with Fran Avni, did a musical adaptation of the book in their CD “Marcia Falk’s Blessings in Song.”
Finally, on May 9, there will be a panel discussion on the role of women in leadership in the Bay Area Jewish community. It will include Phyllis Cook, executive director of the Jewish Community Endowment Fund; Anita Friedman, executive director of the Jewish Family and Children Services; and Maxine Epstein, director of the Marin regional Jewish Community Federation.
Although the second season is still in the planning stages, Biale envisions that it will go beyond just the spiritual and political realm to address Jewish women’s contributions to cultural life. She has high hopes that the program will appeal to both women and men, and that it will eventually expand beyond Marin.