A Lazy Blogerrette

I went to a conference today about the power of blogging, and realized that its probably not good how lacksadasical I am about updating, not to mention editing. So, I decided to edit, starting by copying/pasting some Facebook notes I wrote recently (within past week) about a book I finished over shabbat, "Carnal Israel", by Daniel Boyarin: http://www.amazon.com/Carnal-Israel-Talmudic-Historicism-Cultural/dp/0520203364

Here is the Note, originally entitled: "Thoughts on "Carnal Israel" (Woohoo! I Am Like Hollywood: I Have Sequels. And Sex.)":

I recently finished reading "Carnal Israel" by Daniel Boyarin.* I think the book is brilliant. It posits a positive sexual ethic to be found in strands of rabbinic Jewish culture in Late Antiquity. I hope to post highlights of the book I found interesting**. Before I do so however, I would like to delineate some of my own attitudes when it comes to the relationship between Judaism and sexuality:

My faith in Judaism is based on a few premises:

1. There is a God who created the universe. I feel this God's presence in my life, and find it in the beauty of this world. This God may have created the universe through the Big Bang and Evolution, however, what matters is not how He (or She - my God is genderless, since She is un-corporeal. Thanks Maimonides.) created the universe, but why. Since I assume a sentient Creator, I assume there was a purpose to creation.

2. If so, there must be a document to communicate to humans what this purpose is and/or how to serve this purpose. I believe that the Torah is such a document. As for why I believe it is the Torah and not another document, that is beyond the scope of this note. I do believe however, that while human beings do have free choice, God also plays a role in major historical/intellectual phenomena, so if there is a Christianity, somehow God wanted there to be a Christianity, same thing for Islam, or feminism, or any other major religious or intellectual movement that played a major role in history.

While these two premises may be (a gross oversimplification of) the intellectual basis for my faith, emotionally, my faith in Judaism is enabled by what I see as two related tenets of Judaism: 1. All people are created in the image of God, and, therefore, holy.*** 2. Sexuality and sex is essentially a positive force, albeit one that can be misused.

I do not think I would be able to believe in a God who did not view all people as equal, or in a faith that saw such an essential part of human nature and such an essential and pleasurable activity as negative. In the modern era, for sociological reasons too complex to fathom in the form of a Facebook note, sexual behavior (or professed sexual behavior - how many of us truly practice what we preach?) has become a marker of belonging, defining one as part of Jewish Orthodox society. I believe that to judge a person by their sexuality, when it is such a deep and basic human need, violates the first tenent of Judaism - that all people are equal, meaning we have no right to judge others - provided that their behavior does not violate the equality of others, i.e. is not harmful to other people.

On this note, I believe that the one moral rule that can be applied to sexuality is: Do not consciously use sex or your sexuality to hurt yourself or others. In doing so, I draw a distinction between halacha and morality. For the basis of this distinction, please read the writings of Yeshayahu Leibowitz.****

Of course, I still struggle with elements of sexual halacha, and I will try to delineate these struggles in a separate note. For now however, I wanted to show how Judaism's (generally) positive attitude towards sexuality is essential to my religious faith.

As an aside, many of the negative sources that do exist come from Europe in the Middle Ages, and were in direct dialogue and influenced by a negative discourse on women's sexuality/sex in general that was occurring in the Catholic hegemony of the era.

* http://www.amazon.com/Carnal-Israel-Talmudic-Historicism-Cultural/dp/0520203364

** Favorite new fact, courtesy of this book: The ideal ancient Greek male had a small penis. Today "people" - I am not really sure who these people are, since none of the people in my life who fuck men have made this claim - say that bigger is desirable. All this just goes to show how size really doesn't matter, and different societies have these very arbitrary definitions of "good" that are no more than projections of fear about male masculinity.

*** See verse 27: http://www.mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/pt0101.htm

**** http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/leibowitz-yeshayahu/#JewFaiJewLaw

Yechezkel 16

In chapter 16, 6 of the book of Yechezkel, Yechezkel says "Bedamayich chayi", in or through your blood you shall live. This verse seems rather problematic, and is often translated as "despite your blood", even though this translation is not the best literal interpretation of the prefix"be", which usually means in. This essay will attempt to explore the appropriation of this text about female blood into a rabbinic framework that valued male blood as an exemplar of the Covenant.

The most obvious female blood is the blood of the afterbirth in which the baby is wallowing when God takes mercy on her. This blood is made explicit when Yechezkel says, (16:6) "I saw you wallowing in your blood" .However, perhaps in a more metaphoric way, this scene is referring to menstrual blood and the blood of virginity as well: Both play a part in conception; menstruation is a sign that a woman's body is in a stage where it is able to bear children, while the blood of virginity symbolizes the beginning of sexual activity. These latter readings of female blood gain credence from context: In the story recounted by Yechezkel, the woman in question is found by God as a baby, wallowing in her blood. She is then abandoned until she reaches the start of physical maturity - i.e. menstruation - and grows up to be His wife, thus losing her virginity to Him. It is only when the marriage is consecrated that the baby-woman is fully divested of her blood: (16:8-9): I passed by you, and looked upon you, and behold it was the time of your love; I spread my wings over you and covered your nakedness. I swore to you and came in a covenant with you…and you became mine. I washed you with water; I cleansed your blood from you and covered you with oil.

This washing off of blood is a consecration, symbolized by anointment with oil. This ritual washing is analogous to the washing of menstrual blood in a mikvah, a purifying act that confirms a woman's part in the Covenant, as evidenced by the fact that if she has intercourse sans immersion, she receives karet, a punishment of cutting off that is used when one violates commandments that signify one's partnership in the Covenant of Israel, such as not eating hametz or keeping Yom Kippur. This interpretation is strengthened by the fact that here the washing away of blood is part of Israel's entry into a monogamous relationship with God, whereas in later prophets, Israel's violation of that monogamy, a theme discussed later on in this chapter, is often compared to niddah.

The mikvah analogy in "And I washed you with water and rinsed your blood from you and I covered you with oil" can be applied to the bloods of afterbirth and of virginity as well, since both are washed off in the mikvah, leading to re-entry into a state of kedusha, here typified by the act not just of washing with water, but also of covering with oil.

"Badamaich chayi" - We live, literally through the blood of birth, the blood of virginity that starts the process of conception, and the menstrual blood that signifies a woman's ability to conceive. Women often live, literally, in this blood.

The midrash transposes this feminine ideal onto masculine milah ideal of Shemot 12. It explains that the blood spread on the doorposts was that of circumcision. This reading makes sense because circumcision was a prerequisite for eating from the korban pesach, and, like the act of spreading blood on the doorpost, symbolizes one's counting himself in the nation of Israel and using a physical marker to identify himself as such. The pasuk used as evidence for the doorpost blood being circumcision blood is the one from Yechezkel 16 - an ironic choice given that, as previously mentioned, Yechezkel 16 is explicitly dealing with female blood.

The implication of the madras -which has since been circumscribed on Ashkenazik circumcision liturgy - is that the "through your blood" in Yechezkel is that of circumcision: It is through circumcision blood that we, as a nation, continue to live, and continue to carry out the covenant with the God of Abraham. While the issue of covenant certainly does appear in the pesukim, thus lending some credence to this view, I find it problematic to impose an ideal of male sexual blood onto a very viscerally feminine scene, one very much grounded in the anatomical detail of the woman's body. Even according to the pshat of the pesukim, this story is clearly meant to be a metaphor - however, the metaphor is conscious of its own symbolism, and is therefore making a very conscious decision to make itself one of specifically feminine imagery. If the gender were of secondary importance, there would be no need to ground the image so much in the physical details of her body.

Of course, the male blood is easier to read into Shemot: No uncircumcised man may eat of the korban Pesach, so there clearly is a connection between Pesach and milah. If the Exodus is entering into a new stage of the covenant - a stage that was foreseen at the brit ben habetarim and that will eventually entail a new covenant in the form of a set of laws at Mount Sinai, then it makes sense for this sacrifice to be intimately bound to circumcision, which embodies both the old Abrahamic covenant and the new legal-Torah covenant, as well as the continuity between the two. Thus, to eat the Pesach uncircumcised would be to accept the Covenant through one bodily action while denying it with the other. This covenantal duality is echoed in the relationship between the blood on the doorpost from the korban and the eating of the korban: The blood is a public display of covenantal acceptance, while the eating of the korban at home, in the private realm, is a private acceptance of the covenant.

Thus, smearing the blood is a form of bringing the covenant of family into the realm of covenant as community/nation. This foreshadows Israel's development from a set of bet avot - the standard family form mentioned in Shmot chapter 12 - to tribes, in the desert, and to a unified nation, in Israel - which was, after all, the ultimate purpose of the Exodus, embodied in Shmot 6:7-8 "And I will take you to me for a nation…and I will bring you to the land where I stretched My hand, to give it to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and to give to you as a heritage, I am God."

Korban Pesach in general, especially when comparing its Shmot and Vayikra versions, seems to be dealing with two conflicting paradigms: The Vayikra version is the male paradigm, which entails a) only circumcised males eating it b) each man and his house taking a sheep, an active acquisition of property very much associated with masculinity, c) temple worship, by its nature an all-male domain. No woman was allowed to be in the area where the sacrifice was slaughtered. The Shmot version is the family paradigm, wherein it is each man "and his house", and the sacrifice must be eaten at a shared familial meal, where children ask questions. Qumran deals with the tension between these two paradigms by simply negating the familial one, having men eat the sacrifice at the temple, though this may be a symptom of Qumran's general attitude towards women and family life.

It is interesting that the midrash chooses to address the male paradigm with a metaphor that, in its most plain meaning, is referring to female blood, because, when it comes to the korban pesach, male and female blood can be seen as almost polar opposites. The male blood of circumcision enables eating from the sacrifice; it is a prerequisite for doing so. Female blood however, prevents one from eating from sacrifices or engaging in temple-related ritual. The male blood of circumcision transfers protection to the door, turning it into part of the Pesach ritual, while female blood transfers impurity to household items, preventing them from being used in kodshim rituals.

Some modern scholars have suggested that the doorpost, as an opening, represents a womb, therefore making the blood on the doorposts the metaphorical birth blood of the Jewish people. This tantalizing interpretation, though it works well with the verses of Yechezkel 16, is not mentioned by the midrash. Furthermore, since birth blood, like menstrual blood, renders a woman unable to partake of sacrifices, it is hard to associate such blood with a sacrificial ritual.

Perhaps it is no coincidence that in transforming the Yechezkel text from one of femininity to masculinity, the midrash transforms the text from one of passivity to one of action, for passivity is associated with the feminine, activity with the masculine. By connecting the two texts in the way that it does, the midrash is reading passivity into activity and vice versa: Activity and reliance on God are two halves of a whole, and neither is complete without the other, just as, in many midrashic texts, the male and female are incomplete without each other. (An example of this is the midrash where man and woman were originally one being and are literally two halves of a whole - a tale that echoes Plato's Symposium), and just as the family sphere, associated with women, is incomplete without the more public sphere associated with men - i.e. each paradigm of Pesach is incomplete with out the other.

This is essentially a reading of a female text into a patriarchal ideal, in which it is circumcision that signifies the covenant, that enables redemption, protects from death, and enables one to engage in worship of the Divine by eating the sacrifice. If the blood of the womb-shaped doorpost is truly circumcision blood, then it is only by swabbing the male (milah blood) over the female (doorpost as womb), that protection is achieved, for the woman, who bleeds every month and cradles life between her thighs, is unknowable, and therefore, dangerous.

The association of women with both death and life can be seen from many ancient cultures, where women were associated with earth - a place both of life (flowers, fruit, wheat, etc.) and death (burial), and it was often women who were tasked with communicating with the dead (for example, the baalat ov in Shmuel). Womens' bodies, portals between the worlds of pre-birth and life*, where expected to act as portals between the worlds of life and death as well. Death meant going down towards "sheol", symbolizing both going down into the earth, but also, entering sheilah, the great unknown. for death, like women, represented a vast unknowable.

In this context, one wonders if it is purely coincidental that in so many myths, it is women who bring evil in the world through knowledge -whether it is Eve bringing knowledge of good and evil, or Pandora bringing knowledge of various ills when she opens her box. Here, women are uncovering and revealing, whereas patriarchal society has long had a need to conceal women by keeping them away from the public sphere and covered in modest clothing. Women are also more "hidden" than men in that, unlike men, women have their gonads inside of their bodies. Is it pure coincidence that societies so obsessed with covering up and protecting women have mythologies that put women in a situation of revealing and exposing, that cultures that fear the unknowability of women have them as givers of the original knowledge?

Here are some mythological figures to consider:

• Sphinx – a female guardian of knowledge, with the power both to reveal and to conceal, who can kill you if you give a wrong answer
• Persephone/Demeter – represent both death/underworld and spring/rebirth/harvest. The seasons, the earth's lifecycle, is based on a mother-daughter relationship: When Persephone is in a world of death, her mother can not bring forth life (i.e. can not mother), resulting in winter. The agricultural cycle is also like the cycle of a woman's body, which at times flowers and at time hibernates. Each menstrual cycle results in loss of life (winter) that brings upon it a new cycle, with new potential to conceive (spring).This mythic story associates women both with trees and flora (life), and with the earth (both death and life)
• Furies are women
• Fates are women – determiners of both life and death
• Circe – can grant immorality, but this immorality is death in the sense that one is frozen in time/place, bringing the end of life as man knows it. Thus, her sexual power grants both life and death, or rather, life as death.
• Eden – links women, who bring both knowledge and death into world, with life (Chava is "the mother of all life", to sex (since a knowledge of nakedness immediately follows eating of the fruit) but the nature of the link is unclear.

I am still not sure exactly what the link between these figures is, or why so many societies seem to have mythologized woman into life/death dualities associated with agriculture and knowledge, but I do believe that it is worth pondering.

* I am using these terms for convenience; the question of if/when a fetus becomes life, and the qualitative difference between life in vitro and life post vitro is beyond the scope of this essay.

Thoughts on Rape

My alma matter recently started a blog where people can anonymously share harrasment, rape, etc. experience: http://untilitszero.tumblr.com/

Reading the accounts, a few things stand out: 1. The number of women who refuse to use the word "rape" for what happened to them, even if it clearly falls under that category. As one woman put it, "According to the legal definition of rape, it falls into that category. But I don’t like the word rape—it has too much weight, too much blame, and far too much victimization implicit in it.". As another woman put it, "I hate the idea of being a victim. I want to claim control—responsibility?—back. So I say that he was an asshole who sexually assaulted me, or a hook-up gone wrong, because to use the word rape would be far worse.", or as yet a third woman put it, "
And in spite all of this I have struggled with the term “rape” to describe my experience. I never reported what happened. The word rape, the process and mystique around it seems like a crude weapon that hurts the rape victim more than anyone else. Anyone who has ever pressed rape charges is a much braver person than I am." In our society, the rape victim is dichotomized, treated either like a victim whose experience was so terrible that the only emotion one can feel for her (or him) is pity, that her life will be a wreck forever, a feeling of mercy so overwhelming that it dehumanizes her, turning her into an object to be felt sorry for rather than a subject to be related to and sympathized with. On the other hand, there is the rape victim as slut, as she who deserves it. This coin of the dichotomy rears its ugly head in too many of the stories, where women felt that the assualt was somehow their fault, that they had not resisted enough, that they had put themselves in a situation of vulnerability and therefore they somehow "deserved it". A lot of this seems to be related to two factors: 1. Lack of clear consent guidelines 2. Use of alcohol

In many of the cases, the women resisted to a certain extent, but were not sure if they resisted "enough" for the case to be constituted as harrasment or rape. To quote one woman, who, it is clear from her account, was actually raped:"I honestly don’t know if what happened to me can be construed as rape. I never once actually said the word “no”. I wish to God I had.I don’t consider this rape, because I never once vocalized my desire for him to stop. Regardless, almost the entire time, I didn’t want to continue. I honestly could not tell you why I didn’t say stop; maybe it was the alcohol. I still sometimes blame myself, and I’m still too ashamed to tell my mom. I’m her perfect little girl and I can’t possibly do anything wrong. I still hate myself for being so fucking naive about the whole situation. To this day, I have not had sex again. I refuse to unless I am in a committed relationship; I will count that time as being my first."


A lot of the doubt experienced by victims stems from the current paradigm of consensuality in our society: Unless there is active, physical resistance, it is not rape. A woman must resist enough to prove she didn't really want the intercourse, as if the assumption is that sans such resistance, she does want it in some form or another, to some degree. This paradigm is harmful, not only because it makes women who did not phyiscally reisst or not resist "enough", feel that the assualt is somehow their fault, or even feel that what happened to them can not be categorized as assult, but also because it sends men the message that a) women want sex, as a de facto postion, unless stated otherwise b) if a woman resists a little but not a lot, its not rape/a part of her wants it. This leads men to classify their actions as consensual, when they may not be, and gives rapists a way to justify their actions: As they go through with it, they remind themselves that she really does want them, that her protestations are simply a show - if she didn't really want it, she would resist them more strongly. Lest you think I am exaggarating, I will quote from a would-be-perpetrator who stopped himself from assualt: "She began politely refusing without ever saying “No.”

“It would be weird,” she said.
“This is my parents’ house.”
“Someone could come home.”

She was probably sending clearer messages than I remember, but I wasn’t trying very hard to figure out that she meant “No,” but to find holes in her excuses.

I got tired of listening to her excuses. I picked her up (she is a very small person) and carried her down three steps from her kitchen to the basement.

She did not fight back.

I must have been hearing “No. Stop,” but at that point in my life, I believed that to be what girls had to say, according to society. I honestly thought she wanted me to continue.

I put her down on the floor (carpeted) and put myself above her. She still did not fight, even though she had a clear shot at my testicles.

Then I looked at her.

I couldn’t believe myself. In an instant it became clear to me that what I had been previously thinking of as entirely normal was obviously horrifying.

I apologized and left.

I can’t even imagine what she felt.

She has since forgiven me (she says), and she has never told our mutual friends, and for both facts I am eternally grateful."

Another major factor in these accounts is alcohol usage - As a friend of mine recently said to me, "I'm not sleeping with anyone tonight - I am way too drunk for anything to be consensual". My friend was wise, but our culture encourages people to get to a point where their actions are not consensual, due to alcohol intake, and sees the settings in which the drinking happens as foreplay - parties are meant to end in hookups. Somehow, drunk sex is seen as being in a different realm than sober sex, that there are sexual actions justifiable while drunk that are not justifiable while sober. Our society needs to not hold this double-standard, but rather to stress that one is responsible for all sexual decisions, even under the influence. I find it strange that we excuse women who are licentatious while drunk, but not men who rape while drunk. It is a double-standard: If men are to be subject to the legal censure of drunk sexual actions, women must be subject to the same censure for their actions. Of course, societal censure is part of the problem - sober women who sleep around are merely considered sluts. Maybe if women did not have to get drunk to receive societal permission to have sex, these murky situations would not happen. At the end of the day, I think that if two equally drunk people fool around, provided there is no physical coercion (locking of the door, in my opinion, counts as such coercion, since it makes the person feel trapped, especially if they are drunk), I do not beleive it is rape merely because one of them is feeling violated - unless that person gave palpable indication, whether physical (which includes inactivity - if you lie still as a board, it should be obvious you do not wish to be there), or verbal, that they did not wish to have sex. If however, a less-drunk person has sex with someone so drunk they have no idea what they are doing or what is going on, I do consider that rape, even if the drunker person expresses no resistance.

One woman's account summed up perfectly the complications of being raped while drunk: "I went to an after-party for one of the big events on campus, and we were all playing drinking games... He warned me that the beer was ‘high gravity’ but I didn’t know what that meant I was not calculating for the high-alcohol beer, and so that night I ended up *totally* smashed, in his room, hooking up with him.

Up to that point, everything was consensual. However, it came out that he didn’t have condoms, and I never have sex without one. Though I’d stopped drinking, the alcohol kept kicking in stronger and stronger. I basically passed out on the bed, though I was semi-conscious—and then suddenly he started touching me again. Even though I felt assaulted, I didn’t care enough to stop him. I just didn’t have the energy. And when he asked “can I get on top of you?” I didn’t answer. But I remember all of it.

The reason I hesitate to call it rape is that I don’t think he realized that I wasn’t interested. I only said “I don’t think we should,” instead of “NO.” He tried to ask, even if he took silence for the wrong answer. Legally, no matter what I’d said, the amount of alcohol I’d had makes it rape, but I feel like that is slightly unfair—he was drunk, too…. I don’t know. I got myself drunk, with his help. I indicated that, with a condom, I was interested. But there was no condom, and it hurt … and I didn’t fight back. I didn’t report it, because I was confused about what to call it, so how was I going to start some legal shit if I didn’t even know for sure who to blame??"

Here, a woman voiced lack of consent - "I don;t think we should" - and still is saddled with guilt. Having sex with someone who voiced lack of consent is rape - even while sober, but because he was drunk too and our society gives a pass to drunk sex, she doubts his guilt, even though - given that she could not move and he was thrusting inside of her - we must assume she was much drunker than he was, leading to a power differential within the sex that is legally constituted as rape.

Perhaps we should not think of a black/white distinction - assault/not assault, rape/not rape, but of a spectrum of coercion and consensuality, with different places along the spectrum incurring different legal punishments. We should aim for a paradigm of positive consent - that is, consensual sex should hinge not merely from lack of physical or verbal resistance, but rather, should hinge on positive expression of consent - whether verbally (in an S&M case, a verbal consent before one starts engaging in the S&M scenario, and an agreed upon safeword. It is rape if that safeword is violated.) or physically. anything less than this should not be considered purely consensual sex. Of course, at which point on the lack of consensuality scale the law should get involved is another story.

I will close with two things: 1. The midrash asks how Esther could have slept with Achashveirosh, and concludes that she resisted. How did she resist? "Esther lay as still as the earth". The midrash assumes that lying still, completely unresponsive, is a form of resistance. So too, should the modern world - unless this stillness has been discussed/agreed upon beofre hand as something that turns one/both partners on, it should be taken as a sign that the person does not wish to be engaged in the sexual activity that their partner is trying to engage them in. 2. In an effort to destigmatize sexual harassment, I am sharing my own experiences: http://untilitszero.tumblr.com/post/4530545930/account-16

Thoughts on Living Together

I haven't posted in a while, for two reasons a) busy-ness b) writing these posts requires intense focus and can be draining, because I am writing about something that really matters to me.

In the next few days I will try to post the following: A. Thoughts on an article I read B. Thoughts on Rape C. Finish Up the Sperber Stuff D. Thoughts on the halachik process

Here is A:

I recently read an article that said breakups of those who live together are comparable to divorce in terms of logistic complications and emotional damage. I thought this was interesting, because in Judaism, having sex and living together can be enough to constitute a marriage, worthy of an official divorce document should things not work out - perhaps the rabbis were on to something. The article noted statistics for gay and straight couples. This bothers me. By noting the different statistics, the article a) was working off of an assumption of sexual binaries, which I find problematic b) implied that there is some sort of cosmic difference between gay and straight couplese necessitating separate categorization. Assuming that each behavior is as moral and normative as the other, why should it matter whether the man/woman in question happened to be sleeping with a man, or whether they happened to be sleeping with a woman? What matters are behaviors - monogomous v not, long-term, long-distance, live-in v live-apart - these do speak to large lifestyle differences worthy of separate statistical categorization, but who you choose to seek this lifestyle with should be irrelevant. As a matter of fact, why did this poll not have a separate category for incestuous relationships or abusive relationships - things that are surely much more relevant than gender. The only way I can think of sexuality being pertinent, is that this was of living-together non-married couples, and marriage is not an option for most gay couples. Perhaps the study should have weeded out gay couples who would have been married were they legally allowed to do so.

Another interesting thing was that most men polled said they viewed living together as a "test-drive" to see if a long-term romance was possible, while most women viewed it as a gateway to marriage. I think this is interesting because it shows the different expectations men and women have about relationships, expectations that are taught to them by our society. Women are socialized for marriage to a much greater extent than men, and are socialized to get married younger than men. Men are socialized to be in some sort of stable relationship by the time they are in their 30s, but are not viewed as failures if unmarried and childless, the way that women often are.

To me, this statistic is further evidence that the sexual revolution often disempowers women, who are still chained to social expectations about marriage and long-term relationships, but no longer can use sex as a means to get those, since they are expected to give sex to men sans those things, giving the man, who is not socialized towards those same objectives, less incentive to give the woman the comittment she needs from him in order to be a validated member of society.

The statistic that marriages where people lived together first have a slightly higher divorce rate also makes sense in this context: People who live together first are giving their relationshio a test-drive, speaking to a doubt that may be evidence of a larger but subtle problem in the relationship, while people who get married without living together first, are making a leap of faith - and this attitude, of "I love you and am going to make sure our marriage works, so I don't need a test-drive", may lead to a more succesful marriage, because it shows determination to make it work, whereas the other couples may lack that degree of determination.

My general theory on living together is that often couples move in out of convenience: You are sleeping together, so you spend most of your time at someone's apartment, and then it becomes a question of convenience - you are practically living together anyway, so why not move in - especially if there is financial incentive to do so or one of you has a lease about to expire. The problem is, that then you might be together for ten years, without having ever paused to examine if this is someone you want to be in a relationship for ten years with, without having made a conscious decision to do so and spoken about other issues. You might even get married, if you're at the point where you feel society demands it, or that "we've been together for five years, so it's time", but then at some point one of those major undiscussed issues come up and - presto, separation.

Of course, there are many couples who make conscious, well-thought out decisions to live together, couples who stay together for a lifetime, and even couples who move in out of convenience but wind up being happy together for a lifetime. I am also not saying that longevity is necessarily a good way to measure relationships; it is largely a holdover from the assumption that marriage (ie lifetime monogomous child-producing hetero relationship) is the "best" romantic option. Perhaps it may be better to measure relationships in terms of intensity, or how happy you are during minus how sad you are during the breakup. Perhaps not.

Dr. Sperber: Part 2

Dr. Sperber's book is concerned with the permissibility of women receiving aliyot in relation the role of the posek, the rabbi who makes halachik decisions. As such, his book is essentially one of case-studies in the halachik process, with women's aliyot being the central case-study.

Before I go on, I should say all translations, as well as paraphrases and analyses of the text, are unauthorized and are my own. Thus, any inconsistenices are the results of my flaws, and should not be attributed to the work itself.

Dr. Sperber starts off his book with a baraita brought in Megillah, 23,a: "All can be appointed to receive one of the 7 aliyot, even a woman and even a minor, but the sages said a woman should not read in the Torah because of "kavod hatzibur", communal respect.*" This is mirrored in a parallel source, Tosefta Megillah 3, 11, Lieberman edition, page תשכו 356: "All may receive on of the 7 aliyot, even a woman or a minor, but we do not bring a woman to read in public".

Dr. Sperber explains the Tannaitic material as follows (this is a translation as well as a paraphrase of his words on pg. 19): From a primary perspective, everyone can read (for receiving an aliyah included actually reading from the Torah in those days)**, including women. This was the halachik situation at one point, before "the sages said" otherwise, in the 3rd century CE, or later. What did the sages said? They said that it is becoming of a woman to not read....If there were no problem of "communal respect", then the halacha would remain in its primary form, that is to say, that women would be able to be called to the Torah and to read from the Torah.

Dr. Sperber then brings a ruling of the Gaonic rabbi, David Pardo, in his work חסדי דוד על תוספתא מגילה, קו עמוד ד, ליבורנו 1776 דצ ירושלים תשלא: "Even though they said a woman should not read from the Torah because of communal respect, if she has already received an aliyah, she should not stop, because according to the essence of the law she is permitted to read. And this is the language of the source in front of us, that we do not bring a woman to read, but if she has gone up on her own initiative, we do not stop her, for this enactment was only made because of communal respect".

Personally, reading this passage, I wondered if perhaps the entire concept of partnership minyanim and women services can be classified as the case of a woman who "has gone up of her own initiative", since the prayer arrangements were not initiated by men, ie the community did not "bring a woman to read", but by women who felt that larger participation was essential to their religious experience ie "has gone up of her own initiative", and that whether or not this trend is a good thing, once it has started, "once she has gone up...we do not stop her".

To return to the Dr. Sperber text: Dr. Sperber then goes on to cite the book ספר הבתים by Rabbi David Barabi Shmuel Kochavi, that a woman may read from the Torah in a prayer service that takes place inside a house, for "communal respect" only applies to a synagogue situation.*** Dr. Sperber also cites Ranni Yaakov Emden in his book "Migdal Oz", in which he says that if the Torah is being read in the house of a woman who has recently given birth, then the woman may read from the Torah, for "communal respect" applies only to "large congregations/great masses of people", and refers to not makig women's reading from the Torah a frequent occurence.****

Dr. Sperber than goes on to cite Rabbi Benzion Abba Shaul, (אןר לציון, חב, אורח, פרק ט, י"ם, תשנג, עמ פו), that the reason the Shulchan Aruch included the beginning of the baraita, that women may receive an aliyah, despite ultimately concluding that they may not do so due to communal respect, is in order to teach that in a place where there is no fear of communal respect being violated, such as a situation where one family is praying together, and the woman is the head of the household, then women may read from the Torah and receive alioyt. He concludes however, by saying that the matter requires further study.

The implication of this halachik responsa is that in any situation in which communal respect is not violated by having a woman receive an aliyah and read from the Torah, she may do so, and the family situation cited was merely meant to serve as an example of one such case. Carrying this implication to its larger conclusion, if in synagogues today, there is "no fear of communal respect being violated", then women may read from the Torah and receive aliyot in modern synagogues.

In the next section, Rabbi Dr. Sperber attempts to delineate a definition of communal respect and to see if the concept applies to today's synagogue situation.

First however, he concludes by examining the phraseology of the beraita: ""The sages said" expresses a language of "That is not appropriate", as opposed to "That is forbidden". The phrase...indicates a tradition of stringency. An examination of other times the phrase "The sages said" appears in the Talmud, makes a clear impression (if not an absolute proof), that the saying of the sages is not in the realm of a new decree of something forbidden stemming from the power of the rabbis, but rather, a practical enactment in a halchik policy designed to prevent a certain outcome."

* An alternative, perhaps more accurate translation: "respect for the congregation".
** Today, aliyot work as follows: Each week, on the Sabbath, a portion of the Torah is read out loud, during prayer services. This portion is divided into 7 sections. An official reader appointed by the community reads out loud, chanting the words according to a specific tune known as trop. For each of the seven sections, an individual is invited up to the bimah, the stage upon which the Torah is read. This individual then recites blessings over that section of the Torah reading, and stands until the official reader has finished reading the section out loud. It used to be that there was no official reader. Instead, 7 individuals would be called up, and would each both recite the blessings over their portion and read their portion out loud, according to the tune of the trop.
*** This may be an extra support to partnership minyans that take place in houses. Indeed, most often, the alternative prayer services set up to be more inclusive of women do not take place in the main sanctuary. Does this lessen the "communal respect" issue?
**** In Rav Emden's words I wonder if we might seek a lessen for sensitivity to the needs of women who have just given birth or are the primary caregivers for young children. Today, if a woman has just given birth, her husband goes to synagogue to recite certain public blessings on her behalf, while she usually stays at home with the baby. Perhaps Rav Emden's words speak of a situation of bringing prayer-services to the woman, so she does not have to miss out because she can not leave the house. In general, a model of domestic worship, in which public prayer convenes in the private sphere, may be a way of enabling more women with young children to be part of public prayer. This is not to deny the need for men to shoulder more child caregiver burdens, so that the norm is for childraising to be an equal parnership, with couples having the option of deviating from that norm and choosing for one parent to be the primary caregiver, as opposed to the current norm in which the mother is the primary caregiver. It is to acknowledge however, that given current reality, finding molds of communal prayer that accomodate this reality may be productive for the moment, and that biology does not make it likely that this reality will change for mothers with infants.

Dr. Daniel Sperber

I recently read a book by Rabbi Dr. Daniel Sperber, who is an expert on the development of Jewish law. The book is entitled "The Way of Halacha", and it was published in Hebrew, by "Reuven Mass" press, in Jerusalem, in 2007. It was a present from my friend Z. It is called דרכה של הלכה in Hebrew. To my knowledge, there is no English version available. I will try to summarize some of his arguments. Because the book is long, this may take me a few posts. In general, there may be times when my posts are summaries of articles/books I think are relevant to the Modern Jewish experience as it pertains to gender/sexuality, because I intend for this blog to be a sort of resource-bank as well as a forum for sharing my opinions (and discussing them - please feel free to comment on posts :) )

I will note before I begin that while Dr. Daniel Sperber does conclude that women in today's day and age are allowed to peform aliyot, he himself does not institute the policy of women's aliyot* in the synagogue where he is the rabbi. I think this is a recognition that while it is up to religious leaders to formulate theories and laws of religious change, and provide opportunities for such change for those who desire it, change can not be imposed, but ultimately must come from the bottom up. Thus, it is important to find a theoretical framework for women who want aliyot to feel comfortable pursuing them, without forcing women who do not want aliyot to take them. Of course, feminist theory argues such women only do not want the aliyot because they themselves have internalized the views of their male opressors. Had they only not been brain-washed, they would surely want to read from the Torah in public. Such a theory however, deprives women of agency, thus being mysogynist in its very attempt to be feminist. It is also elitist and imperialist, in that it imposes its own value-system on a subjugated population. Thus, it opresses in its attempt to liberate.

* To receive an aliyah (plural: aliyot) is to read in public from the Torah scroll during prayer services.

Miscellaneous Updates

There has been much going on in the world of gender, especially in the world of Judaism and gender, but business and laziness have prevented me from blogging. I apologize to my readers, and will try to be more regular* about blogging in the future.

First of all, Eshel, the an Orthodox GLBTQ group, held an extremely succesful shabbaton that was positively reported on by major Jewish publications, including the Jewish week.

Second of all, The Jewish Press, a more religiously right-wing paper, has recently been publishing some encouraging articles. They currently have a column about infertility, aimed at helping women who are experiencing difficulties in conceiving, which is very important given that infertility once was both stigmatized and taboo in more right-wing communities. They also recently published a letter about open-mindedness and shidduchim, which gives a male perspective about a system often cited for its negative impact on women: http://www.jewishpress.com/pageroute.do/47238/

There was even an article urging parents to not force their children to date before they are ready. There is also a column on women's impact on Jewish history, and most recently, an article on the female Rennaissance artist Artemisia Gentileschi, whose stunning painting of the Esther story can be seen at the Metropolitan Museum of Art: http://www.jewishpress.com/pageroute.do/47303

The Jewish Press also has a decent number of female columnists, even though they mostly write about stereotypically feminine issues such as home, family and relationships.

I think it is important to note the progress at the Jewish Press, since, as a Modern Orthodox Jew, it is very easy to judge the yeshivish community. I personally do not often read the Jewish Press, but believe it is important to occasionally read Jewish publications from different sectors of Judaism, including the yeshivish community.

Third of all, I discovered that I actually know someone who was likely killed by domestic violence: Shelley Danishevski Covlin, who went to my synagogue and who I ate meals with a few times in the communal sukkah. I realized she had passed away, but did not know that it was suspected her husband, who she was involved in a divorce and custody battle with, had killed her - cause of death was strangulation.

I hope her death will cause the Orthodox community to be more aware of domestic violence, but I also hope that she will be remembered not just for the way she died, but for the way she lived, and how she was both a succesful career woman and a wonderful mother. I admire the efforts that my synagogue, Lincoln Square Synagogue** has made to memorialize her.



** Also called "Wink and Stare synagogue" for its progressive mechitza, which is half-glass. Here is a picture of the main sanctuary. Men and women can both see what takes place on the bimah, which is in the center. They can also both see what goes on on the opposite side of the mechitza. This photo was lifted from a cute love-story that took place thanks to the partially invisible mechitza. Full story can be seen here: http://www.seraphicpress.com/archives/2005/06/

* Does that phrase make me sound like a fiber commercial?