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Davening As A Woman
Karla J. Worrell
Sermon: August 23, 2013
Temple Beth-El (Richmond VA)
I want to talk tonight about prayer, and what it means to me to daven as a Jewish woman. Prayer has been a significant part of my life since childhood. Of course, on my journey to Judaism, the form, structure and theology of my prayers has changed. However, Judaism has only deepened my commitment to prayer. Davening plays a central role in both my personal and communal life, so it was natural that the first group I joined at Beth-El was the Morning Minyanaires. I was fortunate to begin my daily davening journey with such a welcoming and supportive group.
For all of us, Jewish prayer has obstacles we must work to overcome: Hebrew fluency, davening speed and the pursuit of kavanah meaningful focus - are a few examples. Davening as a woman, I also had the challenges of seeing myself as part of the minyan as well as finding myself spiritually in the words of the prayers.
In Conservative Judaism, we often speak with pride about being egalitarian, but do we stop to think of what that really means? What does being egalitarian require of us? One morning, a few years after joining the Morning Minyan, one of our members had a yartzeit. Since we often fell short of ten, he invited a couple of friends to join him so he'd be able to say Kaddish. One of his friends sat in the row in front of me. Shortly before time to pray, he turned and said, with a mischievous grin, to his friend past me in the rear, "Oh, that's right, you count women in your minyan here" I responded with a smile and said, "Yes, and that's why I converted here and not at your shul"
When I've told that story, most women - and many men too - want to stop and cheer at this point, BUT this isn't the end of the story. All I'd done at this point was give a quick comeback. It's what I did next that really mattered: I davened together with him and the rest of the minyan knowlegably and with kavanah. By the end of the davening, I'd earned his respect, regardless of his beliefs on counting women. Being part of an egalitarian community isn't what gets us counted; it's participation that gets us counted. And participation isn't limited to the times we are able to make it to a minyan or services either. I've found that davening at home allows me to explore both the prayers and melodies we use here, as well as different prayers and melodies, praying at my own pace. Having learned from Rabbi Creditor, and others, the structure and meaning of the prayers and services has allowed me the flexibility to explore the prayers and find my place spiritually in them. Davening at home - whether once a week or every day - not only builds my knowledge and skills, but also my spiritual and emotional connections to the prayers. This is what makes prayer real and meaningful and allows me to pray with kavanah.
As women, it's all too easy to sell ourselves short in settling for the superficial of "inclusion" as a substitute for "participation." But if we do, we'll miss out on the deep richness of our faith - settling for shallow political correctness instead of real connection.
Imagine if we had done this in US politics: won the right to vote and hold office but focused more on inclusion than our participation. Would we have women able to be elected and serve with skill and distinction in local, state, and federal offices? I dont think so.
When it comes to Jewish liturgy, we often settle for the superficial in other ways as well. We use the inclusion of the Matriarchs as a way to feel included without looking beyond this to find our personal place in the prayers - both those that mention the Patriarchs, and those that don't.
If the prayer doesn't include feminine references, we can tend to - consciously or subconsciously - exclude ourselves from the text rather than finding, or making, our own connections to it.
We don't do this with other areas of Jewish worship. The tzitzit on both of my tallitot are the traditional white. The tefillin I wear every weekday as I daven shacharit are the same halachic black as a man's. As proud as I am to be a woman, I wouldn't want it any other way.
That's not to say there's no room for us to express our femininity. We can attach our white tzitzit to beautiful tallitot and carry our tefillin in bags that express our pride in keeping the mitzvah as women. However, most of us would probably be offended if we were told we must wear pink tzitzit or purple tefillin because we are women. Or, as in the case of Women of the Wall until just recently, that we must wear our tallit like a scarf rather than fulfill the commandment to wrap ourselves in the tzitzit the way men traditionally do. We would be offended to be told we must feminize these aspects of Jewish worship rather than be included in doing them in the traditional halachic way with the community. But when it comes to the words of prayer, we've told ourselves that they must be feminized for us to be included.
Don't misunderstand me, I think it's great that we all now thank God for "creating me in the Divine image" rather than men thanking God they "weren't created a woman," and women that they are created "according to God's will", and that we include the Matriarchs in many of the prayers where we do. However, it isn't just the fact their names are there that makes it meaningful, but the dimension that they add to the meaning and purpose of the prayer. For example, prayers like those after an aliya, for the ill, or at a baby naming, open with "mi-sheberakh avoteinu" literally, "(May) He who blessed our ancestors" Since God blessed both the Patriarchs and the Matriarchs, it adds to the blessing to have both women and men named. We want those being prayed for to be blessed just as they all were.
As much as I find meaning in the inclusion of the Matriarchs in much of our liturgy, it might surprise you to learn that, as a woman, I'm offended by the inclusion of the Matriarchs in the Amidah.
To understand the reasons why, it's important to understand the reason the Amidah begins the way it does in the first place.
Most people, men and women, think of the opening phrase, "Elohei Avraham, vElohei Yitzchak, v'Elohei Yaakov" "God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob" as simply a way our rabbis chose to describe God. If this were all it was, it would be wrong to exclude the Matriarchs from such a description, since He was certainly their God as well.
But, if all the rabbis who created the Amidah wanted to do was identify God, then, "Eloheinu v'Elohei Avoteinu" and "Our God and the God of our Ancestors" would have been more than sufficient.
Rather, in forming the core prayer of Judaism, the rabbis sought to connect us to God through the core concept of Judaism: Covenant with God, as revealed in the Torah.
The story of Moses and our deliverance from Egypt begins our shared narrative as a distinct people and not just a family-clan. When God speaks to Moses for the first time from the burning bush in Exodus 3:6, God identifies Himself as, "the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob."
By opening the Amidah with this phrase from Torah, our rabbis link us - each of us, men and women - to Torah and our covenant with God. They want us to understand that, as Jews, we approach God by way of our unique covenant. The petitions we make on weekdays and the praises we offer on Shabbat and Holidays in the Amidah are rooted in that covenant. When we use the phrase, "God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob" we are invoking the covenant, and our covenantal right to petition the Creator of the Universe!
Every time we daven the Amidah, we are also personally affirming the covenant and connecting to our sacred history. Although the Matriarchs are part our history, they were not the ones God made our covenant with. I don't believe God was being misogynistic; just that He worked within the social structures of the day, in which it was men who made the covenantal contracts - not men and women.
To return to my earlier political analogy; we don't deal with our civil Patriarchal history by feminizing it. Most of us would be shocked if our child, grandchild, niece or nephew told us they had learned in school that George and Martha Washington were our country's first President, or that the U.S. Constitution was created by our "Founding Fathers and Mothers." We accept our country's Patriarchal past while taking our rightful place in its egalitarian present. We understand that to revise our history would diminish women's struggles to achieve all that we have today.
If someone told me that I had to distort our county's historical narrative for me to have the right to vote or hold a political office today, I'd be offended. To tell me I can't take my place in accepting Torah or our foundational covenant without distorting our spiritual narrative is equally offensive to me. I don't want to begin my petition to God with a lie.
For me to add the Matriarchs to the Amidah, would be saying that I, as a woman, don't have the power to affirm the covenant unless I can feminize it in some way. To engage in spiritual revisionist history like this, would take much of the power from this prayer because, for me, every time I daven the Amidah with kavanah -stepping into the covenant and making it my own - I make it egalitarian. I not only connect with God and covenant, but with the generations of Jews past, present and future who davened this prayer in its traditional form. I connect to klal Yisrael as a Jew and as a woman.
As a Jewish woman, I want to step up and take my place in our living stream of history rather than disconnect from Torah and covenant. I don't want to revise history - I want to write the next chapter. We, not the Matriarchs, are the women that need to become part of the Amidah.
Yet, for all I've said about not adding the Matriarchs to the Amidah, there is a prayer we will daven in the upcoming holiday season where I believe women should and could be inserted, yet even our egalitarian siddur gives them no voice.
If you'll turn to page 218 in Siddur Sim Shalom, you'll see "Geshem", a piyyut or liturgical poem , which is inserted in the Musaf Amidah of Shemini Atzeret, when we begin adding "mashiv ha-ruach" to our prayers until Passover.
This prayer is specifically a request to God, as we enter the autumn rainy season, that He would grant us life giving rain because of the *merits of our ancestors* Each verse links an ancestor to water then asks that, in their merit, we be granted water. As you can see, the verses recall Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron and Israel's Tribes. But where are the women? I'd at least expect to see Miriam on the list. After all, don't our Sages teach us that it was in *her* merit that the rock that gave water followed the Israelites on their desert journey? Where is Miriam?
This piyyut is not a covenantal piece, nor a core piece of liturgy connecting klal Yisrael like the Amidah itself. There aren't halachic restrictions on amending it like there are with the Amidah. I hope our next Conservative siddur will include the verses for Geshem featuring Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Leah and Miriam written by Mark Frydenberg and translated by my teacher, Rabbi Simcha Roth (z"l). Even the addition of just the Miriam verse would add richness to the prayer. It would make saying Geshem more meaningful for me if she were included.
I hope all of you here tonight have learned a little and that you'll daven with more awareness of the depth and power of our liturgy - for both women and men - in the year ahead. I look forward to davening with you all.
Shabbat Shalom
* May be found here: http://neohasid.org/resources/geshem/
