Rabbi/Raba/Maharat/Rav Rahel Berkowitz: “I am a woman, and I am me, and I don’t know.” (1/30/18)

Face to face(s) with the Orthodox world's second female rabbi. On the controversy I just espoused by using that term, on the oxymoronic continuity of our tradition of change, on the challenge of recognizing difference in the pursuit of equality, and the unsung story of the “maharat.”

This insane portrait was made by Gabrielle Amar.

In Spain, I asked a friend, the son of a renowned chef, about how he found good, local tapas bars online. This was a few nights into our trip, when I began to recognize the futility of my “authentic tapas” searches into Google. He told me he typed his searches in Spanish. His answer was so simple. And yet so brilliant. A lesson immediately lit off in my head: language can only express so much. When it doesn’t align with the culture of its subject matter, language is limited in what it can reveal. I took that lesson with me when researching Rahel Berkowitz.

I had first heard about Rahel in October in passing conversation. She was introduced to me as the “second Orthodox woman in the world to be ordained by an Orthodox [and male] rabbi.” I know of many female rabbis, but they belong to more progressive traditions. I had never, however, heard of an Orthodox female rabbi before. I wanted to learn more.

I tried searching “Rahel Berkowitz” online. Scant biographical material. I searched “first Orthodox woman rabbi.” Lila Kagedan, ordained in 2015, popped up. I was struck by the recent date. I kept modifying my searches and resorted to a long list of female rabbi first’s on WikiPedia (because a list of thirty names is a much more Jewishly accurate answer than a single name). I learned that Regina Jones of Berlin was the first woman to receive smicha (ordination) and to be recognized as a rabbi. Sally Preisand is the first rabbi to be ordained by the Reform Movement, the first female rabbi to be ordained in America (1978) and the second in the world to be officially ordained. Sara Hurwitz was ordained by an Orthodox male rabbi and is the first woman to be ordained as a “rabba” -- the female gender form of rabbi (2009).

The use of the term “rabba” bore its share of criticisms. The position of rabbi is traditionally held only by men, because “rabbi” is gendered. “I’m a rabba” is grating, and is heard, to some as “I’m a female man.” So after Hurwitz’s ordination, she established Yeshivat Hamarat, the first yeshiva (Jewish Orthodox learning institution) offering Orthodox women, according to their website, the “opportunity to become ordained as clergy within the bounds of halakha (Jewish law code) so that they can serve their communities as spiritual leaders.” Note the gentle language of “clergy” and “spiritual leaders.” And “rabbi” is nowhere to be found.

I had to keep refining my searches to learn more about Rahel. My language changed from “rabbi” to “rabba” to “maharat.” My desire to get better insight into the world of female Orthodox Judaism, like my hunt for good tapas, was impaired by my ignorance of the close connection between culture and language. Orthodox Judaism is a culture separate from my own, in many ways, and holds it own language -- not one of different characters and sounds, but of different worldviews and symbolic meanings. Lesson #1: you can’t search “good tapas” in English and expect much. Lesson #2: You can’t search “female rabbi” in the Jewish Orthodox world and expect much either.

So, I concluded, Rahel is one of the first two women in the word (the other, Dr. Meesh Hammer-Kossoy) to be ordained by a Jewish orthodox institution and to hold the title of maharat. This was only in 2015. Now, Yeshivat Maharat, despite constant pushback from the Rabbinical Council of America (as demonstrated in the language of their “Policy Concerning Women Rabbis") already holds 21 graduates.

It’s crazy to think that the collection of Jewish Orthodox first’s -- starting with Sara Hertwitz’s as the world’s first Orthodox raba and continued by Rahel and Hammer-Kossoy as graduates of the first institution to ordain and recognize Orthodox women as clergy -- have taken place within the last 3-9 years.

What am I supposed to make of all of this? What has this last decade said about change in Orthodox Judaism? And about my understanding of both halakha and women within Orthodox Judaism?

I grew up in a happy Disneyland of a Reform synagogue (“temple” is too pagan, so I’ve been told). I remember designing my own kippah in kindergarten, and all 65 of my classmates and I donning them at a Shavuot festival, some bedazzled with flowers and glitter; others covered in basketballs and cars. (Only boys wear kippot in Orthodox circles). My classmates and I would sit in Friday pre-Shabbat services wedged between boys because my teachers thought we’d talk too much if we were sitting next to friends of the same sex. (Men and boys sit separately from girls and women in Orthodox synagogues, and oftentimes, can’t see one another). The school rabbi at my elementary school, my middle school, and two of the rabbis at my high school were all women. (The position of rabbi is held only by men in Orthodox Judaism.) All of the cantors I knew, while growing up, were women. (In most Orthodox circles, women voices aren’t even supposed to be heard. The order intends to keep men focussed on prayer and away from lustful distractions… I experienced this for the first time this past fall, while singing and dancing with a bunch of Orthodox seminary girls at the Western Wall on Friday night. Their teacher had come over and shushed us and told us to stop singing because the men on the other side of the wall could hear us. They all scattered so quickly and I was so confused.)

I grew up not knowing of anything else. I wasn’t aware of the politics, of the protest laced in the words of the ordination plaques in our rabbis’ offices, in the titles on their name tags, in their outfits.

There’s a revolution happening right now within Orthodox Judaism. It’s a revolution led by members whose intent is, interestingly enough, not to disrupt, a revolution not moved by protest, not motivated by the destruction of tradition, or the demand for reform to religious law, truth or practice. And I feel like this revolution hasn’t gathered the attention that it deserves.

When Rahel Berkowitz defined Halakha (the Jewish body of law; comprised of the mishnah, laws, and gemarah, or commentary) literally, even before either of us could jump into the tempting realm of personal interpretation, I experienced a great paradigm shift. (No, this is not where I admit the sudden realization that I am destined to become a rabbi. That one’s for my friend Charlotte.) Halakha, she told me, comes from the root “holech,” which means “to walk/go” in Hebrew. That idea was totally new, but it also felt strangely familiar, as if I had learned it and forgot it and was just reminded of its brilliance. Being introduced to it was like watching dust being beaten from an old rug and watching its colors unfurl.

Quoting her grandfather, Rabbi Eliezer Berkowitz, she continued: “Halakha is the bridge over which living words get transformed into deed.” I found it interesting: the idea of Halakha as not a bridge between time but between intentions; the idea of Halakha itself as time.

Take the changing role of women in Judaism. Rahel explained that in the Mishnah Brachot, women, slaves and minors are considered exempt from saying the Shema (the most fundamental prayer in Judaism claiming God’s oneness) and wrapping Tefillin (a ritual object) because, at the time the text was written, they were all considered non-functioning agents. They were under the auspices of someone else (though not necessarily lesser than them). Husbands were in charge of their wives; masters were in charge of their slaves; parents were in charge of their children. It would be a “farce,” to use Rahel’s language, for a slave to have said the Shema because the master was their be all and end all -- not God. But we no longer live in a man’s reality now, Rahel reminds me, so we should feel required to do it, like many other mitzvot.

Our tradition is one that is fixed in perpetual movement -- even the traditions that more observant strains of Judaism obsess over upholding. We’ve seen ourselves evolve from Temple and sacrificial Judaism to Rabbinic Judaism; from the Ten Commandments to fierce debates on law, reminding us that the “Torah is not in heaven” (Bava Metzi 59); from exile and the splintering of Sephardic, and Romaniyot and Ashkenazi and Mizrachi traditions; from the decentralization of text study to include lay people; from prayers yearning for Israel and those no longer applicable with the actualization of a modern Jewish state. What made Rahel’s point so profound was that it changed the way I define tradition and relate to it. My tradition has not survived by fighting against time, contrary to my initial belief. Rather, it has survived by evolving, going, "walking” with it.

Time and tradition play a happy game of tug of war in my day-to-day life: while eating in restaurants that serve non-kosher options; while trying to plan my Saturdays. And the tension between modernity and tradition is sustained and propagated by the very fact that this tug of war is part of our tradition, an unending saga. But Rahel’s words made me reconsider seeing the tension between time and tradition as a war, and if forces of opposition even exist between the two.

This article is supposed to be about Rav (her preferred honorific) Rahel Berkowitz: the second maharat in the world; the granddaughter of esteemed scholar and author Rabbi Eliezer Berkowitz; observant Jew and feminist (Jewish feminist or feminist Jew -- I don’t think either part can be minimized to the place of descriptor); pioneer and founder of modern orthodox Shira Chadasha (an experimental, boundary-pushing orthodox synagogue in the German Colony of Jerusalem); a reconciler of modernity and tradition; a Talmud scholar; an author.

I met her, sat down in a quiet classroom, and tried catching up to a pour of insights and anecdotes within a minute of pressing “record” on my phone. I asked Rahel about her opinions on a few aspects of Judaism or Jewish practice that have become hotbeds of feminist critique in recent years: on sniut (the Jewish concept of modesty, which she believes shouldn’t discriminate; she shares she was still unsure of whether it is religion or society that sexualizes the body); on the mechitza, the line separating women and men in places of worship (“it’s the access to ritual, not the separation, that bothered me"); on ”Women of the Wall,” a group pushing for women’s equal access to ritual and practice at the Western Wall (she is not an active member of their fight, and does not feel close spiritual ties to the Wall, but believes “it should belong to everyone, without a monopoly, [so] therefore their struggle is important”); on men’s recitations of prayers thanking God for not making them women (the intention is to express happiness for being able to fulfill a mitzvah, and less about the inferiority of women, she claimed); on the notion that women are on a higher spiritual plane than men and are therefore exempt -- and kept -- from fulfilling the same commandments as men (“that idea never spoke to me”).

At the same time, this article really isn’t about Rahel. Yes, her courage and resilience and personal journey of becoming a maharat are admirable, and deserve praise. But this piece is really about the system that Rahel’s fought against, the system in which she has both earned the title of a spiritual leader and is not considered as one. I’m not talking about Judaism, with its many denominations. I’m talking about Orthodox Judaism.

I wanted to get Rahel’s opinions on feminism. I have a complicated relationship with the term “feminist” and have never really strongly identified with it. This is partly because I never grew up feeling inferior to boys (things have become more complicated, though, as I have gotten older, as my friends have gotten older, with the #metoo movement, with my exposure to other cultures’ treatment of women). Part of it is because I find strains of feminist thought antagonistic, calling for the superiority of women, which I feel detracts from the movement’s original push for equality. And partly because I don’t know how to make sense of real differences between men and women -- biologically, psychologically and emotionally -- and I don’t know how to reconcile them when it comes to explaining what an equality that recognises some kinds of difference looks like.

I asked Rahel if and how she recognizes differences between girls and boys and how she integrates them into her understanding of feminism. Feminism, to her, means advocating for women, demanding that they hold higher positions in the work space and that they obtain equal wages. But it is also about ensuring that women receive support for issues that women only have to face, like maternity leave and maternal services, access to reproductive health services and check-ups and other screenings, such as checks for ovarian and cervix and breast cancers.

She recognizes that our bodies are different from men’s bodies, that our bodies’ needs are different from men’s bodies, that our hormones react to drugs differently. “Where I get torn is [recognizing] our biology is different; but to say we’re emotionally different -- I get nervous about that,” Rahel told me. She talked about how our sensitivity and emotional intuitiveness have become handicaps. Women’s biological and emotional differences are often used “to the detriment of women.” “My brain can do and comprehend things just as a man’s can,” she said.

It’s one thing to differentiate between biology and intellect. But how am I supposed to explain our emotional orientations? Are they only shaped by external experience and gendered constructs? Or do differences in biology influence our emotions, our psychology, even gender constructs themselves?

I have this clear memory of a dear role model telling me benignly, when I was maybe nine or ten, that he believed women were too emotionally unstable to become president. I didn’t understand his position for it to offend me (although I think my current disappointment in my younger self is now making it up for the both of us).

Now, for the first time, I am wondering if I am so curious about the complexity of human emotion and subjective experience because of what I feel as a girl, because of what I know as a girl, or because of what I feel or know as a human being.

Rahel joked that God was testing her feminism -- hascha’ah pratit -- when she became pregnant with fraternal twins, and had to figure out how to go about raising a boy and a girl equally according to her visions of equality. She found herself struggling when she, after trying to avoid the question, decided to give her son a kippah and tzitzit (male-gendered ritual objects) and not her daughter. Despite her attempt at not “gendering” ritual objects or practice, her daughter, one day at the pool, turned to Rahel in conversation and told her, “Ima, girls don’t wear tzitzit.” Rahel was horrified. “Where did she learn that from?” she asked herself.

Rahel made me pause the interview when we talked about her private practice of wrapping Tefillin at home; the shame keeping her from sharing her practice, and the bewilderment she sometimes experiences from seeing the reflection of a woman donned in traditionally-male ritual objects in a mirror struck me. Her shame speaks to the influence of her Orthodox community and of the values deeply-embedded in her, a free and independent thinker. I find it interesting that as much as we want to see our identities as malleable, our genders as totally fluid, our history isn’t.

You won’t find me wearing a “raise boys and girls the same” shirt, or at a protest against the gender binary. But it’s interesting to note the real and serious harm we’ve internalized from gender roles; not because I think femininity and masculinity -- or discerning differences in biology -- are inherently problematic, but because they sometimes distract from the underlying spirit of our humanity: our right to question, to think, to transcend. Our gender can even conflict with our humanity.

Rahel shared a story with me. Her daughter had come home from school one day and was confused because her teacher, during the day’s lesson, had told the girls to connect to their “womanly selves” in answering various questions. “What does that even mean?” her daughter asked Rahel. “What, am I supposed to imagine my womb?”

We both laughed. Rahel told me that while teaching in class, and in the outside world, she tries to engage her whole self -- her creativity, her analytical mind, her sharp wit, all of which have been revealed in our hour -- and not just her “womanliness.” I’m surprised when she tells me she doesn’t have an answer to a few of my questions, the annoying ones holding political undertones or dealing with existential matter. And it’s refreshing. “I am a woman, and I am me, and I don’t know,” she tells me. That sufficed.

I’m imagining the blank Google search engine now. But it’s inside of my mind, not on my computer screen or phone this time. In it contains infinite explanations about my dreams and memories and questions and curiosities and personality traits and capacities for various skills. I wonder what would pop up with the language I chose. I wonder what I would find if I were to search “woman” versus “me” versus “I don’t know.”