Fringy Madness

Week before last, I went to Shabbos morning services at Netivot Shalom in Berkeley, and wrote a long rambly memo on it to myself, which got some happy conversation going. I noted that in the shul's literature it states that everyone is to cover their head, and adult Jews are to wear a tallis, but that both of these are optional for women over the age of twenty. I was confused, never having heard that twenty was the age at which women traditionally could decide whether to wear a tallis or not.

Anonymous from Netivot Shalom wrote:

"As for the women over 20 thing...the whole asking grown women to cover their heads was a huge shul issue a few years ago, with many older women saying that they hadn't grown up with it and DID not feel comfortable with it. The age 20 thing was supposed to be a generational compromise (to reflect that people who had grown up in the shul WOULD be comforable with it), and the age limit was supposed to increase a year every year...but I'm not sure that it has in practice. We've all been a bit distracted with the move to the new building.... "

Anonymous from Netivot Shalom 2 (married to the first Anonymous) wrote:

"For the age 20 thing, after the rabbi decided to require women to wear head coverings and tallesim, it was decided that they couldn't enforce this on older women who spent their whole lives without doing this. The compromise is that they took the age from the first year when the bat mitzvah girls were required to wear them and they've been increasing the cutoff age annually. In reality, most regularly attending women wear a head covering and a tallis except the rabbi's wife who I guess didn't agree with his decision."

The Balabusta, when she attends shul, (or when she davens at home), wears a tallis (the same tallis she got as a bat mitzvah gift from her parents). Having learned that yarmulkes are getting more, not less, aggravating for her as she gets older and wears her hair fluffier, she has abandoned them for a variety of hats, mostly black and floppy.

I grew up in a synagogue where a tallis on anyone was an oddity. I wore mine for my bat mitzvah, but it was never intended I should wear it to services at Emanu-El after that. I sometimes wore it to pray at home. It wasn't until I began to attend Conservative services as an adult that I began to wear it regularly to daven in public.

The Jewropean said...

"As an Orthodox reader, I am surprised the rabbi would actually force women to do this. Here, women are proud they aren't required to wear tallis and tefilin because their bodies are holier than men's. (If anyone wants a detailed explanation, I can post one).

I have never seen an Orthodox woman wear a tallis though, though different kinds of headcoverings are not uncommon. Many unmarried women choose to wear a had or a cap in shul, same for married women who don't wear a wig, and some even wear a hat in addition to a wig."

Alan Scott responded:

"As a different Ortho individual than Jewro, I'd just like to highlight that even according to us, halachically there is no actual prohibition on women choosing to take on the mitsva of tefilin, or tallit, or lulav, or musaf, etc.
And that "women are holier than men" thing *really* irks me. It's fluffy reverse sexism meant to mask real sexist attitudes some have against women. Next they're gonna tell us that Kohanim are less holy than Israelites, because of *their* extra mitsvot. There are much more reasonable, equitable understandings of obligational dimorphism out there."

And the Jewropean responded to THAT...

"alan scott,
I'd never say they're forbidden. Actually my choice of words "aren't required" was explicitely chosen in order not to exclure it as a volontary act.
And while the statement that women are more holy might annoy you, it is definitely implied by Chazal. It also is an explanation why women have less BINDING mitzvos.
I strongly reject any abuse though and especially using that statement as an excuse to prevent them from taking on voluntary mitzvos."

The idea that women's exemption from certain mitzvot is based on a superior feminine holiness definately annoys me, simply because it seems obvious that, gracious as it is, it's just not true. Not that women aren't holier--the Balabusta sees some evidence there ;)--but that historically speaking, it's not the reason for exemption.

But I am a third-wave Jewish feminist rabbinic school dropout with hat hair. I have a complicated relationship to exemption and tzitzit.

On the simplest level, I attend synagogues where the custom of the community is that women wear tallisim and yarmulkes-or-some-equivalent. Truly, I don't give it an enormous amount of thought. It's what people do, me too. I assume my daughters, if I should have some, will, although they could become old-school Reform or hard-core Chassidic for all I know. It's ordinary, in my neck of the woods, to compliment a Sisterhood macherette on a pretty tallis she picked up on a trip to Israel.

Now, back when I was applying to rabbinic schools, I had a very tense conversation about tefillin with JTS. They informed me that whether or not I was required to lay tefillin (which I don't, never have, although I sometimes think about it for several minutes at a time), would depend on the decision of their board. This made me intensely cranky. If they were going to obligate me, I wanted a decision made with some halachic solemnity, not a year-by-year whim of the board's. Didn't go to JTS, so it was never an issue. It was only later that I started to understand the compromise position the Conservative movement was taking around women and time-bound mitzvot--essentially that if you want to be a woman who gets such male privileges as smicha, you take on male obligations.

Now that is where the third-wave Jewish feminist with hat hair starts to pick at the threads of tradition and get cranky again. Because it makes sense, from one standpoint, and none at all from another. If we are going to admit that 1. Women have been exempted from time-bound mitzvot and their trappings and 2. Women have been excluded from crucial sources of authority in Jewish communities and that 3. Those two things are directly connected, then presumably if we change 2, we change 1. Right? Right.

Or not. I sometimes have an uneasy feeling that when we do this, we are signing on to generations of spitefulness and condescension towards women's Judaism. There is an elaborate spiritual life and body of practical knowledge that developed in the absence of men's obligations and learning. My enthusiasm for it was largely slammed in rabbinic school. And of course, the basic concept of two classes of women seriously underlines the inequity that's there. All Conservative men are obligated to lay tefillin, even though most of them don't. If they want to go to rabbinic school they will. Simple. For women...you can be a perfectly observant Jew and NOT lay tefillin, or you can be the kind of Jew who gets to be a rabbi, and obligate yourself to the REAL Jew's mitzvot. Erk. I see the logic. But I also see the nasty subtext.

Does this make any sense? I wear a tallis myself, but I bristle at the notion that rabbinic authority can override generations of tradition that state a woman does not need to. I don't like the idea that for women to be given respect and authority in the community they must prove they're good enough by doing things the guy way. At the same time, I'm aware of exactly how powerless Jewish women have historically been because they were exempted, excluded, and shut out from sources of Jewish knowledge and authority, and that all this talk about gender differences and women's superior holiness counts for less than nothing when a get is on the line. Why shouldn't I take for myself/obligate myself/just be another Jew out there...?

Anyway, I also didn't make it to Beth Abraham again, since I spent the night in San Francisco, and spent Shabbos morning drinking coffee and talking to my parents. Maybe next week, excpet I may be out of town. This is taking a while for me to do.