FORTY YEARS OF BEING

A FEMINIST JEW IN ISRAEL

A BOOK OF ESSAYS and REFLECTIONS

NAOMI GRAETZ
 ‫אַ ְר ָ֘ ָבּ ִ֤עים שָׁ ָ֨ ָנה ׀ ָ֘ ָא ִ֤קוּט בְּ ד֗ וֹר‬
‫וָאֹ ֗ ַמר עַ ִ֤ם תֹּעֵ ֵ֣י ל ֵָבֵ֣ב ֵהֵ֑ם‬
:‫ֹא־י ְָֽדע֥ וּ ְד ָר ָ ָֽכי‬
ָֽ ָ ‫ְְ֝ו ֗ ֵהם ל‬
‫אֲשֶׁ ר־נ ְשׁ ַבּ֥עְ תּי בְ אַ ֵ֑פּי‬
:‫ל־מנוּחָ ָֽתי‬ ְ ֶ‫אם־ ְ֝ ְיבֹ ֗אוּן א‬
)‫ יא‬- ‫ י‬:‫(תהילים צה‬

“Forty years I was provoked by that generation;

I thought, ‘They are a senseless people;
they would not know My ways.’
Concerning them I swore in anger,
‘They shall never come to My resting-place!’”
(Psalms 95: 10-11)

:‫הַ ּיוֹשֶׁ בֶ ת בַּ גַנים חֲבֵ רים מַ קְ שׁיבים לְ קוֹלְֵך הַ ְשׁמיעיני‬

)‫יג‬:‫(שיר השירים פרק ח‬

My friends who sit in the gardens listen to my voice and encourage me to speak”
(adapted from Song of Songs 8.13)

‫כך אף על פי שישראל עסוקין במלאכתן‬...‫היושבת בגנים חברים מקשיבים לקולך השמיעני‬

‫ ועוברין לפני‬,‫ וקורין קריאת שמע‬,‫ וביום השבת משכימים ובאים לבית הכנסת‬,‫כל ששת ימים‬
‫ בני הגביהו קולכם כדי שישמעו‬:‫ והקב"ה אומר להם‬,‫ ומפטירין בנביא‬,‫ וקורין בתורה‬,‫התיבה‬
‫ ולא תחרחרו‬,‫ ולא תקנאו זה את זה‬,‫ ותנו דעתכם שלא תשנאו זה את זה‬...‫חברים שעל גבכם‬
]‫א [יא‬:‫(שיר השירים רבה (וילנא) פרשה ח‬....‫ ולא תביישו זה לזה‬,‫זה עם זה‬
THOU THAT DWELLEST IN THE GARDENS, THECOMPANIONS HEARKEN FOR
THY VOICE: CAUSE ME TO HEAR IT…. So although Israel are occupied with
their work for the six days of the week, on the Sabbath they rise early and go
to the synagogue and recite the shema’ and pass in front of the ark and read
the Torah and a passage from the Prophets, and the Holy One, blessed be He,
says: ‘My children, raise your voices so that the companions standing by may
hear ' … and take good heed that ye do not hate one another nor be jealous
of one another, nor wrangle with one another, nor shame one another…
(Midrash Rabbah - The Song of Songs VIII:17)
This Collection of My Works is Dedicated to My Beloved Family

My Parents who gave me the gift of life!

Charlotte (Sarah Gittel) Lebovics z"l

Edward (Yehezkel) Lebovics z"l

My Children who make me proud every day!

Rabbi Ariella Graetz Bar Tuv

Rabbi Tzvi Graetz
Avigail Graetz

My Sons and Daughter in Law who make my children happy!

Menash Bar Tuv

Dr. Shirley Graetz
Eitan Herman

My Grandchildren who are a source of great joy!

Itamar Yehezkel Bar Tuv

Harel Meir Bar Tuv
Uriah Avshalom Graetz
Meirav Sara Bar Tuv
Ayelet Lucy Graetz
Talya Miriam Graetz
Shira Esther Salam Herman Graetz

My Sister
who made the stunning tallit on the cover of this book for my 50th
birthday

Menorah Rotenberg

And Most Important of all to

My Partner in Life and Soul Mate

Rabbi Michael Graetz

 PREFACE ix

Section One: THE BIBLE AND MIDRASH 1

1. Introducing Jewish Feminist Approaches to The Hebrew Bible 3

2. Women Who Speak to God 15
3. Trauma and Recovery: Abraham’s Journey to The Akeidah 29
4. Father of the Bride: Of Fathers and Fathers-in Law 49
5. The Missed Opportunity for Intermarriage and Conversion 59
6. Rabbinic Commentaries On Biblical Women: The Case of Dinah 71
7. Queen Vashti, Grace Is Deceptive 77
8. Miriam and Me 83
9. The Concubine of Gibeah: The Case for Reading Intertextually 95
10. Is Kinyan (Purchase) Of Woman Only a Metaphor? 113
11. The Samaritan Woman from A Jewish Perspective 135
12. The Other as Partner—A Feminist Jewish Perspective 143
13. Ruth and Naomi: A Counter Midrash 163
14. Nebalah--The "Outrage" of Women Treated as Meat 167
15. The Survivor as Witness in the Bible and Midrash 177
16. "And he saw that there was no MAN about" (Exodus 2:12) 185
17. Intertextuality between Judges 4-5 and the Book of Ruth 199
18. Aaron's "Silence" Upon Hearing of His Sons' Death by Fire 211
19. The Effect of the Conquering of Laish on Future Generations 225
20. Metaphors Connecting Jeremiah and Jezebel: The Case of Dung 233
21. “I Lift My Eyes to The Mountains”: And Behold! 265
22. The Demonization of Laban: Arami Oved Avi 287
23. Witness or not? “Lo Nishar Ad Ehad” (Hebrew) 313
24. The Red Tent, a Novel (a book review) 317
25. Sarah Laughed (a book review) 319
26. Celebrating the Lives of Jewish Women (a book review) 323

Section Two: VIOLENCE AMONG JEWS 327

27. Wifebeating (encyclopedia article) 329

28. Jewish Law: The Case of Wifebeating 341
29. The Jewish Book News Interview 361
30. Jewish Sources and Trafficking in Women 369
31. Judaism on Prostitution 391
32. Abuse in The Orthodox Jewish Community 395
33. Yes, David! Some of You Did Beat your Wives Today 399
34. Spouse Abuse: Tips On Helping a Loved One 401
35. Sins of Omission (a book review) 405
36. Jewish Women/Jewish Men (a book review) 411

Section Three: PRAYING AND BEING: AN ISRAELI PERSPECTIVE

417

37. Deconstructing Prayer: Prayer is not a Foreign Language 419

38. Can an Orthodox Feminist Pray at the Wall? 423
39. A Feminist Review of the New Israeli Siddur: Va’ani Tefillati 427
40. The Torah: A Women’s Commentary (a book review) 437
41. A Feminist Mother's Prayer on Her Son’s Induction into the IDF 445
42. The Rabbi's Wife: The Rebbetzin (a book review) 449
43. The Status of Women in Masorti Judaism: A Prescriptive Approach 453
44. A Little Too Close to God (a book review) 459
45. We are Women, Let Us Roar 463
46. Choose Life: Youth Violence 465
47. The Day the Sky Fell in 467
48. Keeping Our Israeli Kids Jewish 475
49. Reflections on Being Married to a Rabbi 479
50. Can There Be Peace Between the Houses of Jacob and Shechem? 485
51. Women and Religion in Israel 499

Section Four: THE PEOPLE OF THE BOOK 547

52. Choice and Sacrifice (Lech Lecha) 549

53. Legacy of Hurt (Hayei Sara) 551
54. Identity Theft and Elder Abuse (Toldot) 553
55. The Unwilling Father-In-Law (Vayetze) 555
56. From Joseph to Joseph (Vayigash) 557
57. Who’s Afraid of the Golden Calf (Ki Tissa) 561
58. Halfway to 120 (Kedoshim) 563
59. God, the Abusive Husband (Bemidbar) 565
60. The Not So Double Standard (Naso) 567
61. The Silencing of Miriam (Be-ha-alotcha) 569
62. The Daughters of Tzelophad (Pinchas) 571
63. The Three Moses's (Devarim) 575
64. Trafficking, Conversion and the Captive Woman (Ki Tetzei) 577
65. Our Pregnant World (Rosh Hashanah) 581
66. Home for Purim: The Missing Mothers (Purim) 583
67. The Not So Merry Widow (Tisha B'av) 587
 Section Five: ENCYCLOPEDIA ENTRIES 589

68. Rabbis, Female (Sage) 589

69. Judaism (Sage) 591
70. Judaism (Masculinities) 595
71. Domestic Violence (2nd ed. Encyclopedia Judaica) 597

Section Six: AN INTERVIEW AND 9 REVIEWS OF BOOKS 601

72. Interview with Marlena Thompson 603

73. Review by Leslie Cohen 607
74. Review by Toby Myers 611
75. Review by Jack Riemer 615
76. Column on Silence is Deadly by Naomi Ragen 619
77. Review by Susan J. Landau-Chark 621
78. Review by Robyn Sassen 625
79. Review by Joel Wolowelsky 631
80. Review of Unlocking and S/HE by Fran Snyder 639
81. Review of Mystery Novel by Jack Riemer 647

SOURCES REFERRED TO IN THIS BOOK 649

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 683

PREFACE: REFLECTIONS ON FEMINIST JEWISH APPROACHES
TO THE BIBLE AND THE MAKING OF A FEMINIST JEW IN
1
ISRAEL

In 1992, I made a list of “How I became a feminist Jew.” This is what I

wrote then:

1. I enjoyed Junior Congregation until I turned twelve when I moved upstairs

in the main synagogue (to the women’s section) and became an usherette.
The 5th grade cantillation class, where we learned how to read the Torah
trope, was wasted on me. because they were irrelevant—who ever heard of a
female Torah reader. I did not enjoy prayers in camp and I always tried to
escape. I flunked Judaic subjects in high school despite my fluent Hebrew.
2. I read Betty Friedan when my first born daughter Ariella was five months
old and thought my life was wasted and over and wished I could begin it
again, unencumbered by marriage and children. I wrote an impassioned,
single-spaced two pages bemoaning my fate and then forgot all about it.
3. My active synagogue participation began in Omer when Ariella was 10
years old with the realization that if I did not serve as a role model for the
community, my daughter would not consider it natural either to participate
and lead services for her Bat Mitzvah.
4. I began to learn all the issues--reading the quarterly Conservative Judaism
and everything else I could get hands on; convincing my husband the rabbi
of the correctness of this (as well as myself). First I learned how to chant a
haftarah and then decided I could do Torah reading as well if not better than
my husband and began doing it for more than forty years.
5. I began to write midrash when I returned from my “wasted” sabbatical in
1985.
a. This resulted in the investigation of rabbinic midrash to see what were its
attitudes towards women, and a
b. conscious writing of midrashim which reflected the feminist approaches of
Judith Plaskow etc.
6. My participating in the first (and only) Jerusalem International
Conference on Women and Judaism: Halacha and the Jewish Woman (1986)
and in a feminist conference in Ireland: where I gave papers on the topic of

1
This is forthcoming in Melilah: Manchester Journal of Jewish Studies
viii
rape of Dinah which lead me to a more radical approach which I then
tempered (do not throw out the baby with the bath water).
7. My need for a support group and desire to set up a resource library led to
starting a branch of the Israel Women’s Network in the Negev.
8. My trip to Russia (in May 1987) led to a feeling of sisterhood vs. identity
and loyalty to my religious group.
9. My dialogue with Arabs, made me think, am I a feminist first or a Jew?
Israeli? Is there a contradiction? I thought so then--if we were being honest
with ourselves.
10. I then began to think “What does it mean to be a feminist Jew?” To
whom is the ultimate loyalty? This was in the wake of the First International
Jewish Feminist Conference in 1988, which was also when the Women of the
Wall first met.

Being a Feminist Jew in Israel

I have been a Feminist Jew in Israel for more than forty of the 50 years I've
lived in Israel. What does it mean to be a feminist Jew in Israel? In describing
myself as a feminist Jew I am making a statement. Obviously there is no one
party line for what it is to be a feminist and that is true more so of being a
Jew. It gets even more complicated when we connect the two. Just as Judaism
is not monolithic, so there are many feminisms. I think that it is safe to say
that all feminists agree on three things. 1)There is such a thing as patriarchy.
2) It is necessary to be critical of this patriarchal society and finally, after
critically examining society it is necessary 3) to take action, protest and
attempt to change this society that we criticize. Both the Jewish feminist and
feminist Jew recognizes all of the above. The difference perhaps is in the
degree to which one is critical. Namely, what is one willing to overlook?
Where are the red lines? How deeply do we wish to go? Do we want to
undermine the entire enterprise to make a point? Often the latter seems true
of the committed Jewish feminist. The feminist Jew might be critical but she
will press the brakes when the protest, action and attempt to change seems to
be veering out of control and/or if it means being written out of her home
community.

Feminist Judaism vs. Jewish Feminism

When I try to distinguish between the concepts of Jewish feminism and
feminist Judaism, I often get confused. Yet I think it is important to make a
distinction. It is a matter of priorities. In today’s parlance, it is connected with
identity politics. It is true that by making this distinction I am falling into the
trap of ignoring and/or conflating other important issues. To clarify, I find it
helpful to think of myself as an American Jew who has chosen to live in
ix
Israel, whereas the Jewish American still lives in the U.S. Yet, if I ask my
close friends and relatives who have a similar trajectory as mine--namely
Hebrew Day Schools, Hebrew speaking, Zionist Camps and Higher
education in a Jewish Institution-- what they call themselves, they will all
describe themselves as American Jews. The majority of Jews who live in
America--who have no connection to Israel, do not attend synagogue and do
not know how to read Hebrew--and are very loosely connected (if at all) with
the Jewish community should be more accurately described as Jewish
Americans. It is not so easy to differentiate with the Jewish feminist or the
feminist Jew. There are many Jewish feminists whose main allegiance in the
past was to feminism, who became interested and totally involved with the
2
Jewish part of their identity and thus became feminist Jews.
When I am confronted with a conflict between my feminism and
Judaism I will push the envelope as far as I can but will ultimately remain
steadfast to my sense of being a Jew. I follow this principle in my academic
writings. Thus in challenging the tradition to change, I have not left the camp,
despite the fact that much needs to be done. Although it is more common and
natural to refer to myself and others like me as Jewish feminists, it is probably
more accurate to see ourselves as feminist Jews. Those many women who
are activists in liberal causes and/or are in academia would probably describe
themselves as Jewish feminists. Presumably they would follow their
conscience in deciding their loyalties to the “cause” and/or scientific rigor.
However, there are many like myself, who while engaged critically with our
texts, also tweak our approach and try to find some saving grace, if possible
in the same text. This is actually easier than one thinks, since Judaism is not

2
I think that Letty Cottin Pogrebin and Phyllis Chesler are excellent examples of
this. Pogrebin, a well-known feminist journalist was one of the founders of Ms.
Magazine, but then later wrote a book called Deborah, Golda, and Me: Being
Female and Jewish in America (1991). Today she sends out a weekly digest of
articles which reflect her very liberal political and religious views. See the article
where she talks about this in 2014, when she received an award from Hadassah.
http://njjewishnews.com/article/19024/author-describes-return-to-
judaism#.U2zipVfDX8M. Chesler, a prominent academic psychologist, started out
by writing about Women and Madness (1972) and later got involved in the Women
of the Wall. She co-edited a book with Rivka Haut (a well-known publicly
identified Orthodox feminist Jew) Women of the Wall: Claiming Sacred Ground at
Judaism's Holy Site (2002). Both Chesler and Pogrebin (whose politics today are
diametrically opposed) were participants and leaders in the famous women’s
Passover Seders that started in 1976 in Esther M. Broner’s living room. Both also
initially rebelled against the religious strictures of the Jewish homes they came
from.
x
and has never been a monolith. The approach to text is traditionally one of
dialogue and thus one can always find an opposite opinion.
Being a feminist (religious) Jew in Israel, used to be more of a problem
than it is today—although Orthodox women are reviled for being feminists
(especially in their own community where it is still very much an “F” word).
To feminists in Israel being a religious Jew (or identifying as a Jew rather
than as an Israeli) is equated with sleeping with the enemy. I have
experienced the sense of being welcome in neither group because of my
affiliations—on the one hand as a Conservative Jew (not accepted by the
Orthodox) and as a religious Jew (not accepted by the secular). This is of
course changing as more and more women with strong Jewish backgrounds
awaken and re-discover the inequities in our tradition. The ferment in
Modern Orthodox Communities often seem like a re-invention of the wheel
as they discuss women’s place in the synagogue, the wearing of tallit and
tefillin, but I find it exciting to view and comment on and try to be part of
3
this revolution as often as I am allowed in.

Personal Background and Personal Growth as a Feminist

A word about who I am. I am a woman who will be 75 by the time this article
will be in print. I am, first, the product of modern Orthodoxy: thirteen years
of Ramaz Day School (Manhattan), and thirteen years of Massad Hebrew-
speaking summer camps in the Poconos (Tannersville and Dingman’s Ferry).
This was followed by six years at the Jewish Theological Seminary (B.H.L.
1966 in Jewish History) and five years at Cejwin camps, while doing my
B.A. and M.A. at City College of the City University of New York in English
Literature. I married young (before turning 20) in 1963 to a rabbinical
student. In 1967, we moved to Israel after the fervor of the Six Day War—
for a year or two—and never returned to the States. We lived in Jerusalem
for five years where I had several teaching jobs, two children, and many
economic difficulties.
My life began again when in 1974 (also after a war) we moved to Omer.
A very small town north of Beersheba in the Negev. We blossomed as a
family (and had a third child). Small town life agreed with us all.

3
See Naomi Graetz, “Women and Religion in Israel” in Kalpana Misra and Melanie
Rich (eds.) Jewish Feminism in Israel: Some Contemporary Perspectives
(Hanover, NH: University Press of New England: 2003), 17-56. Of course the
development in the Modern Orthodox world has improved by leaps and bounds
since I wrote this article and today there are Orthodox women called Maharat, who
are essentially rabbis in all but name.

xi
Congregational life was a challenge, but since Israel did not really know what
to expect from pulpit rabbis and their wives, we made the rules as we went
along. Professionally I grew and got very involved in my teaching and
research career in English. I also rediscovered feminism.
It is clear to me that my sense of being a feminist Jew began in our
synagogue in Omer in 1975—the year my youngest daughter Avigail was
born. I was in a new community that was feeling its way and to escape the
responsibilities of mothering I went to the synagogue on Shabbat, leaving her
care to my older daughter, Ariella (who was then a very responsible seven-
year-old) for two blessed hours. In our synagogue, women were counted in
the minyan out of necessity (we did not have enough men at the beginning).
Ironically, given my past history in Day School, I decided to learn how to
leyn, i.e. to read the Torah with the trope, the musical notes or cantillations,
in our congregation. Fortunately, I have a good voice—and an alto one, so it
was not very disruptive to our male congregants. I took it very seriously and
prepared diligently—studying the text as well as learning how to chant
correctly.
For me, Torah reading was formative because I really got to know
the text and in preparation for this reading often argued with Scripture as I
prepared. Our kehillah was on the cutting edge of women's participation and
involvement, and I was very influential both locally and nationally. It took
me almost ten years to articulate what I was feeling. As I began to write
midrash in the mid 80’s, I began to incorporate my work in my teaching in
the Department of English as a Foreign Language at Ben-Gurion University
of the Negev. To justify doing this professionally, I gave two workshops on
“The Use of Culturally Familiar Material in EFL: The Case of Sarah” at a
Conference at UCLA (1987) and “Using Biblical Tales in the EFL
Classroom” at the Second International Conference on Teaching English to
Speakers of Other Languages in Jerusalem (1988). I did not realize at this
time that I would eventually become a serious independent feminist Jewish
bible scholar.
From the late 60’s (after reading Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique
written in 1963, the year I got married) to the mid 70’s I found feminist ideas
to be too threatening to me when I was busy working at supporting a family
and raising three children. I had no time to think about my ascribed roles. I
was afraid to explore the conflicts between who I was becoming, my place
in the family and my place in the community. I opted out when friends in
Beersheba and Omer asked me to be part of their consciousness raising
groups. I limited myself to the smaller issues of my relationship to Judaism—
it was safer for me than to explore the larger issues.

xii
 I grew into feminism through Judaism. I subscribed to magazines (Ms.,
Lilith, and Conservative Judaism). I regularly roamed the university and local
library and read whatever was available (this was before I began reading on-
line). My sister sent me books (fortunately, there were not too many in the
early days). I was on top of whatever was being written. But until the mid-
seventies, I was not a participant. I enviously followed from the distance of
Israel the writings and doings of many of my feminist Jewish friends and
former acquaintances. I also read much of was being written by Jewish
feminists such as Susan Brownmiller, Robin Morgan, Marge Piercy,
Shulamit Firestone, Gloria Steinem among others who were not at all
engaged with their Judaism (although I believe their social consciousness
was certainly influenced by it).

Writing as a Feminist Jew

My turning point was 1985 when I went on my first sabbatical and discovered
alternative ways of looking at Jewish texts. I discovered modern midrash in
my sister’s library by reading copies of manuscripts lent to her by Marc
Gellman. Later I encountered other exemplars of midrash in some of the
alternative journals that were being published then. I felt the need to write
that summer when I turned forty-two. I was on my first sabbatical in Ramah
New England. I was away from home, family, and friends—alone at camp as
a middle-aged woman. It was a strange experience. I began a long letter home
describing what I saw around me. I brought to this letter my sense of being
an outsider. I had never been to Ramah, but I had mythologized it in my mind
and I saw that it had clay feet. I had serious issues to address which were
worthwhile sharing with more than my family and friends.
I was an outsider because I came from Israel and was the oldest
person in camp. My critique of the prayer in the camp became a topic of
4
discussion and launched my writing career. When I returned to Israel, I had
an intense need to express myself and poured out these feelings by writing
midrash. These tales, which followed the order of the Book of Genesis, were
subsequently revised. Seven more gushed out of me during an extremely
fertile writing period of three months. When the first one about Sarah was

4
See "Prayer is a Foreign Language: An Open Letter to the Ramah Community,”
The Melton Journal, (Spring 1987), 24.
xiii
 5
accepted for publication, I was thrilled. There had been rejections before this
one and would be rejections after.
I began to look at midrash from an academic perspective by chance. I
wanted to share my midrashim at an international conference being organized
by Penina Peli (1986). She suggested instead that I write about what rabbinic
midrash had to say about women in the Bible. Since I had just finished
writing about Dinah’s rape, I chose to write about “Rabbinic Attitudes
towards Women: The Case of Dinah". Although the paper was first presented
in Jerusalem and later in Ireland (July, 1987) at the Third Interdisciplinary
Congress on Women, it was only published in 1993, in a completely different
version. That too was by chance, when Athalya Brenner called me and asked
if she could republish my articles on Miriam and Hosea in a collection that
she was editing for Sheffield Press. Over the phone I told her that I had an
unpublished article about Dinah. The book was going to press soon, but since
she did not need to get permission to print it, she asked me to send it to her
6
a.s.a.p. and thus it appeared in one of her first volumes.
I and my Omer friends became active in the politics of the Masorti
(Conservative) movement in Israel on the issue of the right of women to be
ordained in Israel as rabbis. We studied the texts, interviewed congregations
all over the country. My Omer friends (not only in the congregation) became
actively involved in feminist interests, forming study groups and getting
involved in local political and health issues concerning women. This activism
lead to my serving on the national board of the Israel Women’s Network for
two years. By then I was writing my book about wifebeating, Silence is
Deadly: Judaism Confronts Wifebeating (1998). I was staking out a position
as an independent feminist Jewish Bible scholar.

5
“Sarah’s Three Lives” in The Journal of Reform Judaism (Summer, 1986), 43-8.
This appears in my S/He Created Them: Feminist Retellings of Biblical Tales (1993,
2003).
6
These three articles are still widely quoted because of the popularity of Brenner’s
collections. "Dinah the Daughter," in Athalya Brenner (editor), A Feminist
Companion to Genesis (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993), 306-17; "Did
Miriam Talk Too Much?" in Athalya Brenner (editor), A Feminist Companion to
Exodus to Deuteronomy, (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1994), 231-42; and
"God is to Israel as Husband is to Wife," in Athalya Brenner (editor), A Feminist
Companion to the Latter Prophets, (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995),
126-45.
xiv
This Book
This book is essentially a collection of works that I have written over a period
of about 30 years and which were either not included in Unlocking the
Garden and/or were published after 2004. The articles and essays are uneven
in length and tone. Some are easier to read than others are. There is some
repetition in terms of message and content. While I always try to be user
friendly in my writings and explain terms, I do not always succeed, and for
that, I take full responsibility. I have grouped my writings into six sections:
Women in the Bible and Midrash, Violence and Abuse among Jews, Praying
and Being from an Israeli Perspective, The People of the Book, a short
section with some encyclopedia entries and an additional section with
Selected Book Reviews of my books (most of them about Silence is Deadly).
There is no need to read the articles in any particular order—there is no
chronology here. An explanatory page is part of each section. Rather than put
the credits and/or permissions at the beginning of the book, I indicate the
credits in a footnote for each article.

Graditude and Thanks

On March 3rd 2017, I went in for a routine angiogram and discovered that I
had an 85% blockage of my right coronary artery. I am grateful to the fine
doctors in kupat holim clalit, the HMO to which I belong and for their taking
seriously my minor complaints. Since my father died a few days before he
turned 74, I am very conscious this year of my mortality and the fragile hold
we have on life. Hopefully, the stent which they inserted, will give me some
additional and qualitative years to enjoy life.
I am exceedingly fortunate in having a wonderful support group of
friends and family. Our children grew up in Omer and our grandchildren
come to visit on a regular basis. Today they live in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and
Hoshiyah. We have seven magnificent grandchildren, ranging from our
oldest who is in the army, down to our youngest who is four years old. Our
family consists of educators, bible scholars, mindful Buddhists, novelists,
photographers and three rabbis. We are truly blessed. My husband, Michael
Graetz continues to be my partner in love, my inspiration, and the person
with whom I can argue in hevruta style over both sacred troubling texts and
mundane burning issues. For the past couple of years, I have been teaching
two Tanakh groups, one in English and the other in Hebrew, and to them I
especially thank for their faithful attendance and insights. I have come full
circle, in that I now have two more communities of learning where I can share
my ideas.

Omer, 2018
xv
Section One: THE BIBLE AND MIDRASH

The first article in this section "Introducing Jewish Feminist Approaches to

the Hebrew Bible" is based on a talk that I gave in Sweden. It has been
translated into Swedish and appears in a textbook that is still being used.7
Since it has not been published in English, I thought it could serve as an
introduction to this book. The second article "Women who Speak to God" is
a talk I was commissioned to give and then never did until many years later
when the Swedish institute asked me to give regular talks to their students
spending a year in Israel. I revised the talk and prepared a handout for it and
enjoyed teaching their diverse student body who made the journey to Omer,
especially to study with me and to learn about our synagogue. Most of the
articles in this section have appeared in print or in on-line publications in
some form or another. Some of these papers found a home in journals and
some did not (mostly through laziness on my part about rewriting and
submitting them). Of interest in the vetting process is the paper on Trauma
and Recovery which I gave in Melbourne and which found a home in the
Reform Journal after being rejected by Conservative Judaism for mixing up
midrash with bible! In general, CJ has served as a home for many of my
articles and book review essays, so I have to thank them and their editors
over the years for the input into my scholarly endeavors. Many of the articles
in this section are papers that I have given at the SBL Annual and
International Conferences since I began attending them regularly in 2009.
Since most of them have not been published, some of them are in a raw state
and I have included material that was either in a handout form or in my power
point presentation that accompanied these papers. I started getting interested
in art and the bible and when I present usually have the visuals available.
Incidentally, if anyone wants copies of these power points, I will be happy to
send them on an individual request basis. I have also added several book
reviews in this section which were really essays.

7
“Judisk feministisk bibeltolkning – en introduktion” [Introducing Jewish
Feminist Approaches to the Hebrew Bible] in Att tolka Bibeln och Koranen:
Konflict och forhandling edited by Hanna Stenström (Lund, Sweden:
Studentlitteratur, 2009):67-77 [in Swedish].

-1-
-2-
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCING JEWISH FEMINIST
APPROACHES TO THE HEBREW BIBLE8

The Essence of Feminist Judaism

Before discussing what a feminist Jewish approach to the Bible is, it is
necessary to attempt to draw a portrait of elements that constitute or typify a
Jewish approach to the Bible. Hanna Stenström wrote that “The limits of
interpretation are not related to the past, they are formulated by living
9
communities in an ongoing process of negotiations and struggles.” This is
precisely the Jewish approach to text. The Torah is "a living tree to those who
uphold her and whoever holds on to her [instructions] are happy" (Proverbs
3:18). The Torah includes the story of the birth of the Jewish people and the
origins of the Jewish legal system.
For those following a literalist approach, the five books of the Torah
were revealed by God to Moses and Israel at Mount Sinai. The words of the
Torah are not merely a record of the past, but the expression of God’s will,
10
and therefore Torah is the ultimate source of authority in this Jewish view.
For those who follow this approach, one may protest or question God's will,
but it remains the final source of authority as it is written in the Torah. Thus,
little effort can be made to eliminate abuses against women that exist in the
Torah by radically overhauling the entire received system. Indeed, this view
may lead to denying that any such abuses exist in the Torah altogether. The
view is that God's will would not do anything to harm women. If we perceive
abuse, the fault must be in the way we understand Torah. This view, thus, is
capable of generating explanations of Torah law which "explain away" what
appear to be abuses against women in the Torah. Using Hanna Stenström's

8
This is a continuation of the article in Melilah. It is based on the talk I gave at a
research seminar in Uppsala University, October 15-16, 2007 and relates to what
the Christian feminist Hanna Stenström wrote. This talk was translated into a
Swedish textbook: “Judisk feministisk bibeltolkning – en introduktion”
[Introducing Jewish Feminist Approaches to the Hebrew Bible] in Att tolka Bibeln
och Koranen: Konflict och forhandling edited by Hanna Stenström (Lund, Sweden:
Studentlitteratur, 2009), 67-77 [in Swedish].
9
"When Holy Texts become battlegrounds. Feminist interpretations of the Bible and
the Qur'an, with special emphasis on the New Testament."(paper preceding mine at
conference in Uppsala)
10
One can consider Blu Greenberg to be representative of the first approach. See
Blu Greenberg, On Women and Judaism (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society,
1982)
-3-
terminology, one can argue that this approach is also that of the
fundamentalists, for she writes that fundamentalist movements also make
claims that support an understanding of religious traditions as static,
unchangeable and unified.
Those who take a more anthropological approach view the Torah as a
human creation, which, like any human creation, must be studied and
understood in its social context. From the perspective of this view, there is
no inherent authority in the Bible text. Thus, abuse and women’s disabilities
in Biblical law derive from the social status of women at the time. If, in our
time, Biblical law translates into disabilities for women, then we need to
11
effect a radical transformation and rethinking of Judaism.
A third view takes a more middle ground. These are those, like myself,
who, because of our religious orientation, respect the authority inherent in
the traditional text. However, since our feminism is inseparable from our
religious orientation and is viewed as part of our concepts of spirituality and
holiness, its teachings must be integrated. We bring to the texts questions
from our time and seek to uncover meanings that we believe are dormant in
the text, that relate to these questions. We anchor our creativity within the
text. Authority evolves out of the dialectic process of closely studying the
text, because of its importance and religious weight, while interpreting its
12
meaning in terms of our own feminist and religious consciousness.
Whatever the approach to the Torah, Jews consider the Torah to be our
primary book, it is our heritage. Our association of the Torah with the
synagogue is further re-enforced because of the extensive use of Biblical
phrases and allusions to events, places, and people from the Bible in the
prayers and blessings found in the siddur, the Jewish prayer book.
Jewish people are expected to be literate, so that we can read and
understand our sacred texts. Text study is the meaning of religious
experience, even the experience of "revelation." The ideal is that the text

11
Judith Plaskow can be considered a representative of the second approach. Judith
Plaskow, Standing Again at Sinai: Judaism from a Feminist Perspective. (San
Francisco: Harper & Row, 1990).
12
Although Phyllis Trible was Protestant, she warranted an entry in the Jewish
Woman’s Encyclopaedia. See: https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/author/trible-phyllis .
Her article "Depatriarchalizing in Biblical Interpretation," which originally
appeared in JAAR XLI (1) in March 1973 was reprinted in Elizabeth Koltun
(editor). The Jewish Woman: New Perspectives (New York: Schocken, 1976), 217-
40. I believe that it is a key to understanding the third or "middle" approach that
feminist Jews take. Her later work Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of
Biblical (Fortress Press, 1984) did not attempt to “depatriarchalize” the Bible.
-4-
represents a continuous medium on which Jews base their relationship with
and their supplication to God.
The feminist Jew is influenced by general feminism—but tries to
13
remain loyal to her sense of being Jewish. She may define herself as a
feminist Jew or a Jewish feminist. She may feel that Judaism and Feminism
are two competing "ism"s, but she persists in seeing value in both. As a
feminist she might be tempted to reject Judaism in its entirety—when the
stakes get very high—but she too, like the non-Jewish feminist, considers
this throwing out the baby with the bath water. Rabbi Rebecca Alpert
recognizes that "Exile from one’s Jewishness is not necessarily the answer to
the feminist dilemma.... [on the other hand,] All of Judaism is called into
14
question by feminism...."
The Bible is not just another book to the feminist Jew and she will
criticize those who treat it as such. For instance, Ilana Pardes (1992) who
wrote about "Counter traditions" in the Bible, acknowledges her debt to
Mieke Bal (1987), the influential feminist scholar. Yet Pardes
unsympathetically criticizes Bal's statement that the Bible's message is only
an issue for those who attribute religious authority to these texts "which is
15
precisely the opposite of what I am interested in.” The baby referred to
above, the canon, has to be treated with care, if it is not to be abandoned.
According to Alan Levenson, writing about us: "Jewish feminists are in
the awkward position of having to revision a Biblical legacy while at the
same time debunking tendencies to place the blame for the patriarchy, the
West's oppression of women, and even the Holocaust on the 'Biblical' (read)
16
Judaic heritage." In the words of Tikva Frymer-Kensky, we are aware on
13
Although I use the female gender to describe a feminist, I recognize that there are
many Jewish male feminist Bible scholars out there, today more than in the past,
since gender studies, feminism, masculinity, and even feminist masculinity have
become popular and respectable areas of inquiry in academia.
14
Rebecca Trachtenberg Alpert, "Sisterhood is Ecumenical: Bridging the Gap
between Jewish and Christian Feminists," Response: A Contemporary Jewish
Review XIV: 2 (Spring 1984), 12.
15
Ilana Pardes. Countertraditions in the Bible: A Feminist Approach. (Cambridge
MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 26-33. Mieke Bal, Lethal Love: Feminist
Literary Readings of Biblical Love Stories. (Bloomington, IND: Indiana University
Press, 1987). Cited by Alan Levenson, “Jewish Responses to Modern Biblical
Criticism,” Shofar 12/3 (Spring 1994), 107.
16
Alan Levenson, “Jewish Responses to Modern Biblical Criticism,” Shofar 12:3
(Spring 1994), 109. This was a very real issue in the early days of Jewish feminism
and unfortunately still is. See Susannah Heschel, “Anti-Judaism in Christian
-5-
the one hand, that "Israel was neither the creator of patriarchy nor the worst
perpetrator in the ancient world,....[and that] the patriarchy of Israel was part
of an inherited social structure....nevertheless, we make a profound statement
17
when we acknowledge that the Bible is patriarchal."
Feminism make us suspect the authority of our texts, since we have been
written out of the texts and we suspect that God was not necessarily speaking
through those men who are responsible for a sexist type Judaism. Yet the
feminist Jew is very much in a relationship with Judaism—even if the
relationship is acrimonious. She may be angry; she may be apologetic; but
she strongly identifies with her Jewishness and wants to either change it or
live with it (or both)—either in a state of conformity or rebellion. In other
words, she has not written off her tradition. She may threaten the status quo;
the establishment might view her as heretical—but she considers herself a
member of the fold, even if there are attempts by the establishment to
marginalize or silence her voice. She believes that by her efforts, and those
of others, that Judaism can (and should) be transformed. Our view of
patriarchal Judaism is that if we look at it with fresh eyes (read feminist) we
can change it. Most important of all, the feminist Jew “owns” her tradition
and feels that she has right to stretch its limits and will even point to those
(males) in the tradition who did the same.
The relationship between feminism and Judaism can be described as one
in which two different world views conflict. The feminist values relatedness,
connection, togetherness, sisterhood whereas Judaism posits separation and
holiness. The Jew is commanded to set himself apart from other nations in
order to be holy. The rationale behind it is stated explicitly in Leviticus 19:2
"You shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy." Holiness consists of
both ritual purity and separation. To retain the chosen status, the nation is
commanded, among other things, to separate itself from other gods (and
goddesses), from idol worship, from foreigners (the gentiles) from forbidden
foods, from women after childbirth and from menstruating women.
The Sabbath is a day which separates itself from the rest of the week and
the Jew is commanded to observe this day, to set it apart and to engage in a
totally different relationship to all of creation. Part of this change of mind-set
includes restrictions on "weekday" behaviour. The havdalah ceremony

Feminist Theology,” Tikkun 5: 3 (1990), 25-8, 95-7 and Judith Plaskow, “Blaming
the Jews for the Birth of Patriarchy,” in Evelyn Beck, editor. Nice Jewish Girls: A
Lesbian Anthology (Watertown, MA: Persephone Press, 1982), 250-4.
17
Tikva Frymer-Kensky. "The Bible and Women’s Studies." In Lynn Davidman
and Shelly Tenenbaum, eds., Feminist Perspectives on Jewish Studies. New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1994), 18.
-6-
which marks the end of the Sabbath, sanctions hierarchy and separation—it
creates an “other-them” relationship. The priestly laws assume a patriarchy.
God on top, the High Priest as intermediary (only he can go into the Holy of
Holies to sacrifice), the lesser priests below, and still downwards, the Levites.
Further down are the normal Israelites and below them are their wives and
children.
To retain the chosen state, men are required to be circumcised, which
separates them from the gentiles and of course from women, who are often
seen as being ritually polluted or impure, i.e. the other. Part of the separation
involves making boundaries, definitions—one group is inside, the patriarchy,
the chosen, and then there is the other, the non-patriarchal. Those who are on
the inside are in a hierarchical relationship; those on the outside have a more
level relationship.
Thus, when a feminist approaches a Jewish text, and rejects the
separation inherent in the patriarchy, she threatens the traditional Jewish
reading of the text. She comes to it bearing anti-hierarchical and anti-
patriarchal biases. She notices gaps in the texts—those that leave women out;
those that do not name women; those that misrepresent women or those that
punish uppity women. She will challenge those who want to minimize the
possibility of multiple meanings of text, of those who ignore the findings of
source and form criticism, archaeology and linguistics.
She will want to read women back into the text, missing a woman's
presence, when the traditional reading has not noticed her absence. She will
uncover the texts of terror that have served as warnings to women to stay in
their place: the acrimonious relationship of Abraham's wives, Hagar and
Sarah; the sibling rivalry between Sister Leah and Sister Rachel; the non-
participation of Dinah in her rape; Jepthah's nameless daughter; the sex sirens
and temptresses: Delilah, Potiphar's (nameless) wife; the story of the
suspected adulteress (Sotah) and the most frightening story of what can
happen to an unprotected woman in a lawless society (the concubine at
18
Gibeah).
She will have noted that the people (and land and cities) of Israel are
depicted with feminine metaphors—often uncomplimentary ones and are
both at the mercy of the ruling god who is sometimes depicted as an angry
husband. She, or rather, in the case of my feminist colleague Mayer I. Gruber,
he, will acknowledge that the message which prophets transmitted from on
high in order to make this world a better place in which to live "can be
hazardous for men and women" and that with the help of the ever-expanding
18
Phyllis Trible, Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives.
(Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984).
-7-
discipline of Biblical studies we can "see further beyond what the prophet/ess
saw and thereby supply the antidote to some of the poison that the prophet
19
may have mistaken for medicine."
We have seen that the relationship between feminism and Judaism has
many points which can be described as points of conflict. It might seem that
within these parameters, the relationship of the feminist to the Bible is
hopeless. Is it possible to treat feminism and Judaism as capable of
harbouring similar systems of value? If we look at the writings of feminist
Jews, we find that they are unwilling to give up on Judaism; they try and
point to similarities rather than emphasize differences. How do they (we) do
it?
Perhaps the most obvious way is to take an apologetic, whitewashing
approach. Rather than admit that there is something wrong with our tradition,
we engage in comparison with other religions, seeing ours as less sexist than
others, or look at historical context—contending that gender was not an issue
20
for our forefathers. The danger of doing this is that it can lead to acceptance
of what is and encourage lack of effort to make change. Hanna Stenström
pointed this out early in her paper when she writes:
Work for change inside faith communities often relies on the
conviction that the Bible and the Qur’an – or at least central parts of
them – support the cause of women, if properly interpreted. Gender
equality… is often understood by believing women to be anchored in
the centre of the tradition, or in the work of the founder of the tradition.
At the same time, the patriarchal traits are understood as secondary,
for example as something brought in during the tradition of
interpretation and use of the texts.
This is very clearly the case in the Christian tradition. In early forms,
and even today in more popular forms of feminist interpretations of
the New Testament and feminist Christian theologies, Jesus is
understood as the friend of women, who treated women as equal with
men and lived according to an ideal that was distorted by the Church

19
Mayer I. Gruber "A Re-Evaluation of Hosea 1-2: Philology Informed by Life
Experience." In Ingrid Rosa Kitzberger (editor), The Personal Voice in Biblical
Interpretation (London: Routledge, 1999), 173-4.
20
In my book Silence is Deadly: Judaism Confronts Wifebeating (Northvale, NJ:
Jason Aronson, 1998), 157-70, I devote an entire section to Apologetics in Jewish
sources. See Saul Berman, “The Status of Women in Halakhic Judaism,” in The
Jewish Woman. Elizabeth Koltun, editor (New York: Shocken Books, 1976); Blu
Greeenberg, “Marriage in the Jewish Tradition,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies
22:1 (1985).
-8-
 during the centuries - in fact, the problems already begin after only a
21
few decades, with Paul.
But the problem with this approach is that it allows us to relax and not
criticize our own tradition, something which is antithetical to the feminist.
Another approach is to ask "who owns the tradition?" What is authentic?
What is inauthentic? Who decides? In this approach we take an anti-
22
monolithic approach to text. Levenson calls this "pluriformity." There are
majority and minority opinions. Both are preserved, not only in the Talmud,
but in the Bible as well. There are more ways of reading the text than can be
imagined and there is no one right way to relate to the sacred traditions. In
fact, one can argue that the rabbinic tradition of interpretation was just
continuing to make this point in its multiple reading of the Bible. The rabbis
encourage us to read and reread the Bible: "Turn it and turn it again, for
23
everything is in it." This is the basis of a Midrashic approach to text.
Although midrash was mostly created by male rabbis, there is nothing to stop
the modern writer and reader of the Bible from creating new midrash which
re-examines texts which may be unfavourable and unsafe for women and
refashions, reinterprets and revises them. One can also uncover and recover
women's stories and refocus the stories so that women take their proper and
rightful places. This approach can harmonize the Bible and feminism because
it views the Bible not in its fixed text but as "work in progress."
For example, we can look at similarities between Jewish experience and
female experience and point to both groups being identified as an oppressed
people. Just as the Jew was endangered by anti-Semitism and assimilation;
24
so are women threatened by sexism and the need to conform to male values.
In Rebecca Alpert’s opinion, the "feminist priority has deep roots in Jewish
tradition. The Torah, the prophets, and the authors of rabbinic Judaism all
21
See her introduction to Att tolka Bibeln och Koranen: Konflict och forhandling
edited by Hanna Stenström (Lund, Sweden: Studentlitteratur, 2009), 67-77 [in
Swedish]. The reference here is from the original paper which I was sent prior to
the conference.
22
Alan Levenson, “Jewish Responses to Modern Biblical Criticism,” Shofar 12:3
(Spring 1994).
23
Avot 5:22. "hafokh bah vahapekh bah d'kholah bah”
24
This was argued by Aviva Cantor, an early feminist and one of the founders
of Lilith the independent Jewish Feminist quarterly magazine in her book
Jewish Women/Jewish Men: The Legacy of Patriarchy in Jewish Life (San
Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1995). See my “Review of Aviva Cantor's
Jewish Women/Jewish Men,” in Bridges: A Journal for Jewish Feminists and
Our Friends 6:1 (November, 1996), 107-10.
-9-
expressed concern about the conduct of human relationships and the need to
incorporate people who were considered marginal, often referred to as "the
stranger, the widow, and the orphan." She sees as priorities the end to war,
poverty, reallocation of scarce resources and sees these goals are "rooted in
25
Jewish values and Jewish sources."
Or we can model ourselves on the rabbinic approach to text which often
presented the very Biblical texts that dictate the hierarchy of priests and kings
as texts which mandate learning and knowledge as keys to power. Although
there may be some debate as to whether women should partake of the
democratic pursuit of learning—the opening has always been there and it is
26
up to women to grab the opportunity. Part of the democratic preaching of
the rabbis is the relationship to others which is often sympathetic—we should
not do to others as we would despise being done to ourselves, a powerful
message which can be translated to include women. The Jewish world claims
that its purpose of being a chosen people is not to conquer but to engage in
Tikkun olam (perfecting the world). This is totally compatible with feminism.
One might also argue that we all share the same God and come from the same
place. Finally, it is possible to look at certain constructs which on the surface
seem to be inimical to equality and see them as being grounded in feminist
concerns. We see examples of this in the work of two feminist theologians,
Marcia Falk and Rachel Adler.
Marcia Falk has suggested the potential of Shabbat, which has separate
categories of work and rest; and Kashrut, which separates milk from meat, to
be originally anchored in a concern for humanity and the environment. She
writes that "as feminist theory applies itself to Jewish culture, it need not
argue against the maintenance of all ideas and practices that separate Jews
from other peoples. She argues that not all "dualistic separations built into
Jewish rituals" are necessarily harmful. She feels that we can choose what to
keep, what to let fall by the wayside, what to re-create so that they "reflect
27
our experiences as women and our values as feminist Jews.”
Rachel Adler, in her watershed book, Engendering Judaism, refuses to
be bogged down by the image of an abusive god. She says that if we

25
Rebecca Trachtenberg Alpert, "Sisterhood is Ecumenical: Bridging the Gap
between Jewish and Christian Feminists," Response: A Contemporary Jewish
Review XIV: 2 (Spring 1984), 12-3.
26
R. Eliezer vs. Ben Azai on tiflut (see B. Sotah 20a)
27
Marcia Falk, T. Drorah Setel, et al. "Roundtable: Feminist Reflections on
Separation and Unity in Jewish Theology." Journal of Feminist Studies 2:1 (1986),
122-3.
-10-
pathologize God's violence, our options for response are narrowed. She feels
that if we accept the metaphor of an abusing God then we are perpetuating
distrust and the only thing to do is to reject such a God. This she finds
intolerable since if we discredit the prophetic message we are also
discrediting the ethics of social justice to be found in these texts. Instead she
writes of a bat kol, a feminine voice that shapes the masculine voice of God
and the prophets, revealing the interdependency of God and humanity. This
interdependency leads the way to a better world which women and men build
28
together.
Are there limits to new interpretations? At what point does interpretation
become dangerous and no longer God’s word? Is interpretation free of all
restraints? It is interesting that in Mishnah Avot (3: 11) the rabbis deny a place
in the world to come to anyone who "interprets the Torah in a contemptuous
way". I would argue that this exclusionary attitude stems from fear. Feminist
Judaism is “dangerous”. It is challenging, but it also opens doors. The
feminist Jew is interested in being inclusive, not exclusive, and as such offers
us new readings filled with hope, glimpses of God, and opening interpretation
to all.
To illustrate this, I have chosen to end this article by quoting part of a
29
poem by my contemporary, the late Jewish feminist Bible scholar, Tikva
Frymer-Kensky:

Not all women are mothers:

Some women cannot,
some will not,
and some never get the chance.
Biology is not destiny,
women are not nature,
women who do not mother are still women.
A woman who does not mother is not less than a man.

28
Rachel Adler, Engendering Judaism: An Inclusive Theology and Ethics
(Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1998).
29
Both Tikva and I were born in 1943. We both attended the City College of New
York and the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. I was in many Bible
classes with her where she blossomed and learned ancient Sumerian languages.
After becoming a well-known Biblical scholar (Assyriologist), she became a
feminist Jew when she had a “click moment” after being passed over for an
academic position for which she was more qualified. This was told to me by her
husband, Rabbi Allan Kensky when I visited him in Wilmette, Chicago after her
untimely death in 2006.
-11-
But—I am afraid to say this aloud:
A woman who gives birth is more.
Maybe only for that period from conception to birth,
a woman who gives birth is more.
Touched by sacred mission,
containing magic action,
channeling the destiny of all,
redoing creation,
and, maybe, even altering it.

I am afraid to say this aloud:

Perhaps I should shout it from rooftops.

WOMAN CAN BE MOTHER

MOTHER CAN BE CREATOR

But maybe it is enough to whisper it.

Powerful whisper,
secret sigh of a sacred society.
Soon I will be an ordinary person again,
with all the cares and joys of men and women,
working and loving and seeking God.
Now is my chance to feel myself touched by divinity,
tapped for a sacred role.
Now is my hour to add to the kingdom,
share in the power,
rejoice in the glory.
To partake for a moment in foreverness,
30
and spend a little eon in the One.

This excerpt is the end of a long poem in a chapter entitled “Midpassage”. It

begins by tracing the lines of Tikva’s immediate family and goes back
millennia to both biblical women and those from the ancient near east the
with whom she was so familiar. To me her book Motherprayer: The Pregnant
Woman’s Spiritual Companion represents the completion of the full circle.
Tikva began her career as a biblical scholar and was exposed to feminism.
30
Tikva Frymer-Kensky, Motherprayer: The Pregnant Woman’s Spiritual
Companion (New York: Riverhead Books, 1995), 84-5.
-12-
 31
She became a Jewish feminist in her later writings. I believe that from the
90’s she realized that the personal is indeed political and that at this juncture
she became a committed feminist Jewish Bible scholar.

31
From the 90’s through her untimely death, Tikva Frymer-Kensky published
several books: In 1992, In the Wake of the Goddesses: Women, Culture, and the
Biblical Transformation of Pagan Myth (New York: Macmillan, Free Press). In
1995, Motherprayer. In 2002, Reading the Women of the Bible: A New
Interpretation of Their Stories (New York: Shocken Books). In 2006, Studies in
Bible and Feminist Criticism (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society). Her
commentary on the book of Ruth came out after she died. She wrote it together
with Tamara Cohn Eskenazi in 2011. Ruth: the traditional Hebrew text with the
new JPS translation. JPS Bible commentary (Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication
Society).

-13-
-14-
 32
CHAPTER TWO: WOMEN WHO SPEAK TO GOD

I plan today to deal with women in the Bible who relate to the Deity by
speaking with God or to an emissary, messenger or angel. The typical
common denominator for all these communications with God have to do with
the woman's desire for fertility and God's will (or lack of will) in granting her
a child. The theme of the barren wife repeats itself over and over again in the
Bible: We have the favored wife who is unable to conceive and desperately
desires a child, a divine promise to her (or her husband) for future conception,
and finally a chosen son who is born after divine intervention. With the
notable exceptions of Deborah and Miriam, most women who appear in the
Bible and Midrash are there by virtue of their reproductive capacities. The
women of the book of Genesis appear at liminal, turning points in their life-
history: youth, marriage, parenthood. They often appear by wells or springs
and soon become wives or mothers; they are often barren women, or have
problems associated with sexuality or fertility. Those who are about to have
children have predictions about the birth and lives of their children sent to
them by divine messenger. Many of these women engage in deception in
order to further the careers of their sons or husbands. The God of Genesis
seems to be partial to marginal people of both genders. That god is the god
of the tricksters who use deception to deal with the power establishment.
Although their positions are circumscribed by the men around them, the
women exercise great power over these men in situations involving the
family, children and sexuality. It is the women who are the critical ancestors
for the proper continuation of the Israelites. The women's wishes and God's
wishes are one in this respect. A number of the women are portrayed as active
tricksters who, like Eve, alter the rules made by men.
Eve
Eve is both the "first woman" and the first woman to be spoken to directly
by God (Adonai Elohim). After she has eaten from the forbidden fruit, God
asks her "What have you done?" And she answers, "the serpent (nachash)
duped me, and I ate." God's response to this declaration is to first punish the
serpent. Then God says to the woman: "I will make most severe your pangs
in childbearing; In pain shall you bear children. Yet your urge shall be for
your husband, And he shall rule over you" (Gen. 3:13-16). After this God
tells Adam that he will be punished as well for doing as his wife said, i.e., for
eating from the tree which He commanded him not to eat from. This is
followed by Adam naming his wife Hava; God making clothing for Adam
32
This is an unpublished talk which I occasionally give to visiting groups from
abroad.
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and his wife; God banishing both of them from the garden of Eden, Adam
knowing his wife Hava and her bearing the first two children Cain and Abel
with God's help.
Much has been written about this first woman. I just want to point out
some facts that are often overlooked. In chapter two, it is the man alone (not
generic man, but Adam specifically) who is commanded not to eat from the
tree of knowledge. [Note, how immediately after this, it says that it’s not
good for man to be alone. What is the connection between the two? Possibly,
it is easier to “go on a diet” when there is someone to help you—
unfortunately that’s not what happened!!! It’s more like co-dependency. ] It
is God who creates a fitting helper for Adam, yet "forgets" to tell her not to
eat from the tree. She does "know" that it is forbidden. This is clear from her
words to the serpent, but it does not say who told her. One can argue that the
serpent opens her eyes to the potential in the tree and that the women's action
of initiative is interpreted by God as an act of rebellion that has to be
punished. But is she actually punished? Had she not done what she did, the
world would have been a boring place for God. Yet something had to be
done--otherwise mankind would dominate the world.
Why did she have to be put down so quickly? What was behind God's
over-reaction to Hava's initiative? The threat to God as stated in the Bible, is
that once Adam (generic mankind) "has become like one of us, knowing good
and bad, what if he should stretch out his hand and take also from the tree of
life and eat, and live forever!" So God banishes him (!!) from the Garden of
Eden, to till the soil from which he was taken. (Gen. 3:22-23) Yet if one reads
this text between the lines, Hava gains the power of life. It is Adam who will
return to the dust he came from and will die, not Hava. She (and all women
with her) are rewarded with the ultimate gift of perpetuating life, of bearing
children.
She acknowledges God's gift to her when she gives birth to Cain. She
names him and says: "I shaped a child (yeled) equally with God/I created a
man (ish) together with God." This is in contrast to the previous birth when
Adam indirectly and passively created his wife-partner. God put him to sleep
and the woman (ish-ah) was born of him. By her use of the word "ish" when
she gives birth to Cain, she usurps Adam's role as bearer of life.
The implication of God's words to the first woman is that although you
have "stolen knowledge of good and evil" which clearly includes knowledge
and ability to procreate, you won't get away with it completely. There will be
a price to pay: labor pains and subordination to one's husband--who is going
to be angry with you in the future when he realizes what he has lost. He will
look for someone to pay--for eternity, for the loss of an easy life, the need to
work hard, and dying at the end with nothing to show for it. Further
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resentment will result when Adam realizes what capabilities Hava has,
capacities that he does not possess, "Maternity-Envy" as it were. The laugh
is on him. Adam gave birth to her, but she has usurped the birth-giving
powers from him. Because he is physically stronger, sometime in the future
he will take back these powers by claiming the children as his.
Though she comes out the winner and in the future Hava will be known
as Eym kol hai, women will forever be defined and limited by their role as
mothers. In Genesis 2-3, she gets this ability by her initiative, by grasping at
knowledge. However, in Genesis 4, when she has a third son, Seth (Shet),
and chooses his name, her explanation is that God has appointed me another
seed instead of Abel (4.25). Thus from this point on it is God, not she, who
will be the "protagonist of procreation".
Though the woman will no longer be equal to God in pro-creating, she
will continue to name her children and will look at the gift of pregnancy and
birth as "if it were an outcome of a transaction between God and her alone."
These transactions evidenced in maternal naming-speeches "serve as a
female counterpart to the long conversations men have with God concerning
seed and stars." They also are a form of women's serving notice to men and
God: As Ilana Pardes writes: "Through the naming of her sons, the primordial
mother insists upon her own generative powers and attempts to dissociate
motherhood from subordination. By taking pleasure in her creativity she
attempts to undo God's punishment in Genesis 3:16, to misread God's linking
of female procreation with sorrow and with subjugation to man."
Hagar
The story of Hagar leads to a wider discussion of the barrenness of the
patriarch's wives, the annunciation scenes, and the wives' position as mother
of the patriarch of the next generation. Hagar the bondmaid (shipchah) and/or
slave, (amah) qualifies as an abused (second) wife. She is "one of the first
females in scripture to experience use, abuse, and rejection." She is a triple-
fold alien: from her country, in her status and in her sex. She is an Egyptian
living in Canaan; she is "single, poor and bonded". She is a powerless object
whose status is contingent on that of her mistress, Sarah, the wife of
Abraham.
Yet the angel of the Lord speaks to her. The first occasion is when she
is pregnant with Abram's seed:
[Abram] cohabited with Hagar and she conceived; and when she saw
that she had conceived, her mistress was lowered in her esteem. And
Sarai said to Abram, "The wrong done me is your fault! I myself put
my maid in your bosom; now that she sees that she is pregnant, I am
lowered in her esteem. The Lord decide between you and me!" Abram
said to Sarai, "your maid is in your hands. Deal with her as you think
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 right." Then Sarai treated her harshly, and she ran away from her. An
angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water...and said, "Hagar,
slave of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?"
And she said, "I am running away from my mistress Sarai." And the
angel of the Lord said to her, "Go back to your mistress, and submit to
her harsh treatment." And the angel of the Lord said to her, "I will
greatly increase your offspring...."(Gen. 16.1-10)
When Hagar has her son Ishmael, Sarah is again incensed and this time
tells Abraham to "cast out that slave woman and her son..."(21.10) This time
"Hagar has lost her name....Moreover, the absence of dialogue continues to
separate the females. Inequality, opposition, and distance breed violence."
Although the matter distresses Abraham greatly, not because of Hagar but
because it "concerned a son of his" (21.11), God tells him not to be
"distressed over the boy or your slave; what Sarah tells you, do as she
says....As for the son of the slave-woman, I will make a nation of him, too,
for he is your seed."
It appears that God identifies with the oppressor, not with the oppressed.
God and Abraham are complicit in the decision to cast out the object, the
slave-woman of no account. Abraham cares only about his seed, his son, not
about the woman. It is Sarah who cares about being supplanted and who
initiates the act. It would appear that the Bible sympathizes with Sarah's
plight when it writes that it is a "loathsome" situation when "a slave girl
supplants her mistress." (Proverbs 30:23)
Yet the attitude of the Bible to Hagar is very sympathetic. The angel
clearly "cares" about her and talks to her; for she is a victim who is given an
unequivocal message to stay a victim. Go back to this oppressive situation.
Stay rather than run away. Your reward will be a son who will be a strong
warrior. She is the battered wife who runs away yet doesn't know what to do
with herself and thus returns to the abusive situation.
What does it mean that the Angel sees the suffering of the despised
woman, the Egyptian stranger (ha-ger). What are the parallels between his
promises to her and to Abraham? Compare the fact that the Angel of God
speaks twice to Hagar and only once to Sarah. The rabbis themselves wonder
at the fact that God speaks to Hagar and explain it by saying that "Abraham's
household were used to seeing angels up close" because of his close
relationship with God.
There is another midrash which reveals this aspect of Hagar as an abused
wife in which it is implied that because Hagar has not empowered herself by
leaving, she is doomed to always be in the servant status. The angel asks her
where she is going. She only knows where she is coming from. So she is told
to go back and take more abuse, since she doesn't know how to use her
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freedom. Does this midrash encourage Hagar to fight for her freedom or does
it encourage her to remain in servant status? Ultimately the advice she is
given is to stay where she is and to suffer for the sake of her future child. The
message is that women have to accept abuse because their own lives have no
intrinsic worth--their lives have worth only for the sake of others, in this case
her son. This message is a message of sacrifice for a greater cause.
But the damage is not only to Hagar. Like battered women everywhere,
the children suffer. We know that the batterer often had an abusive father
who beat him and/or his mother. Hints of this are seen in the blessing (or
perhaps curse) given to Hagar by the divine messenger:
Behold, you are with child
And shall bear a son;
You shall call him Ishmael,
For the Lord has paid heed to your suffering.
He shall be a wild ass of a man;
His hand against everyone,
And everyone's hand against him;
He shall dwell alongside of all his kinsmen (Gen. 16.11-12).
It is possible that Ishmael, who has witnessed that God has not "paid heed to
[her] suffering" will grow up with a chip on his shoulder, perceiving that
"everyone's hand [is] against him" and that "his hand [will be] against
everyone". Yet, it is interesting that when Abraham dies, Ishmael shows up
at his father’s funeral, together with Isaac. And even more interesting is that
in rabbinic literature, Abraham’s second wife, Ketura (Gen. 25:1) is often
considered to be Hagar. Rashi (Rabbi Sholomo Yitzchaki b.1040- d. 1105)
writes commenting on this passage, that Ketura is Hagar and she is called
thus, because her acts are pleasant like incense and she tied her opening so
that she could not have other children from the day she left Abraham. So
clearly they have a soft spot for her.
Sarah
We have seen that God and his messengers speak extensively to Hagar. When
we look at God’s conversations with Sarah we see that they are connected
with "laughter" (tzehok). The Lord (in the form of three men) appeared to
Abraham (Gen. 18), on a hot day, when he was sitting outside his tent--and
Sarah was presumably inside. He asked them to rest, brings them water and
some food and they accept his hospitality.
Abraham orders Sarah to use choice flour to knead and make cakes and
himself runs to the herd and takes a choice calf and prepares it for his guests.
They ask him where his wife, Sarah, is and he says, she is in the tent. Then
one guest said "I will return to you next year and your wife Sarah shall have
a son." Sarah, who was listening at the entrance to the tent, laughs to herself
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when she hears that she will have a child? I'm old and withered, after my
menopause. Am I to have enjoyment, with my husband so old? How can I
have a son, she chuckles to herself. God, who is everywhere, hears her and
says to Abraham, "Why has Sarah just laughed, saying how can I give birth,
since I am too old?" (Diplomatically censoring Sarah's other thought, that
Abraham is too old as well) "Doesn't she know, that nothing is too wondrous
for me. I will come back to you at the appointed time next year and you will
see that Sarah will have a son." Sarah, who must have been privy to the
conversation that God has with Abraham lied, saying, "I did not laugh" for
she was frightened, in awe of God. And He said, "Yes you did, you laughed."
Thus we can see that God's revelation to Sarah, revolves around her
laughter. Although it is Abraham who gives the name Isaac to his newborn
son, it is Sarah who has the naming speech: "Sarah said, 'God has brought
me laughter; everyone who hears will laugh with me.' And she added, 'Who
would have said to Abraham That Sarah would suckle children! Yet I have
borne a son in his old age.'" (Gen. 21: 6-7).
The laughter (tzehok), however, turns ugly, when Sarah sees Ishmael in
the act of "metzahek" and uses that as a pretense to send him away. Much has
been written about the leit motif of "tzehok"?
Lori Lefkovitz writes of the anarchic voice of women which challenges
patriarchal order and which has to be listened to. Although God's manner of
speaking to Sarah is very indirect, compared with his speaking to Hagar, it is
Sarah's voice that Abraham is told to listen to and heed. Lefkovitz reads
Sarah's "eavesdropping on angels and laughing at God" as an allegory of
women's experience in history. Women position themselves to "overhear"
the plans of gods and men as a survival strategy. What is insidious behavior
for men, she writes, is normative for women.
Why does Sarah laugh? Does she laugh because she finds the idea of
conceiving a child in old age ludicrous? Is it with delight? Or, is it with
bitterness (having wanted a child for so long, and now to have the promise
come so late in life, when she is tired, depleted of energy)? God is also not
sure why she laughs, he has to ask Abraham why she laughed. Sarah,
responds with ambiguity, yet she is regarded highly by God who gives her
authority over Isaac's future, as well as authority over Hagar and Ishmael.
"Listen to Sarah," God tells Abraham. If Abraham represents the masculine
need to honor, obey, be dutiful, Sarah can be understood as representing the
feminine need to laugh, to be subversive, to point the way through
indirection. Both polarities are represented and both are respected by God.
Yet strangely enough the rabbis ask: Why were the matriarchs barren?

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One answer is: R. Levi said in R. Shila's name and R. Helbo in R. Johanan's
name: Because the Holy One, blessed be He, yearns for their prayers and
supplications.”
Yet there are those rabbis who would diminish the relationship of God
with Sarah and focus on the worldly relationship of husband and wife:
R. ‘Azariah said in R. Hanina's name: So that they might lean on their
husbands in [spite of] their beauty. R. Huna and R. Jeremiah in the name of
R. Hiyya b. Abba said: So that they might pass the greater part of their life
untrammelled. R. Huna, R. Idi, and R. Abin in R. Meir's name said: So that
their husbands might derive pleasure from them, for when a woman is with
child she is disfigured and lacks grace. Thus the whole ninety years that Sarah
did not bear she was like a bride in her canopy” (Midrash Rabbah - Genesis
XLV: 4).
Rebecca
There are matriarchs who are devious and subversive and they too are
approved by God. Rebecca eavesdrops on Isaac and Esau, who then uses the
information to tell Jacob how to steal the blessing. Rachel steals; Leah tricks
Jacob in the marriage bed. Women are often represented as subverting male
intentions in the very process of fulfilling God's plans.
To start a discussion of Rebecca, we should look at the annunciation of
her birth to Abraham in Gen. 22.20-24 which is positioned directly after the
Akedah (the sacrifice of Isaac) and before the death of Sarah. The fact that
her birth is announced is unusual, since in most cases daughters are not
mentioned in genealogies. The link between her annunciation and Gen. 24
has been noticed by the biblical commentators Ibn Ezra (Gen. 22.20) and
Rashi (22.23) and Ramban (22.23). In the Midrash (Gen. R. 57-Albeck) it
says "When Abraham was still standing on mount Moriah, trembling with
fear from what he had just gone through, they came to tell him that the wife
of his son was born."
Had Isaac died, there would have been no heir to the blessing. Rebecca
ensures the continuation of this blessing; Sarah's death is recorded and
Rebecca is her substitute and successor. Gen. 24.7 makes this explicit.
Following this in Gen. 25.22-23 Rebecca goes and inquires of God and is
answered by means of an oracle which informs her of the future of the twins
in her womb. Rebecca is the only woman in the Bible of whom it is related
that God spoke directly: not to the husband. Rebecca's knowledge of the
destiny of her children influences her actions directly to favor her younger
son Jacob above his older brother Esau and even to deceive her ageing
husband.
Rebecca is a complex character. On the one hand she is an ideal wife,
hospitable to humans and beasts, humble (she covers herself with a veil),
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decisive and purposeful in her behavior. But the latter two characteristics also
lead to future tension between her and Isaac. On the one hand her
decisiveness is what leads her to become Isaac's wife through an act of total
unconditional faith--leaving her home to go to an unknown land and
husband--in an act of faith similar to (or even greater than) Abraham's and
Sarah's. It is her choice; she has the last decisive word. She is a doer, a strong
woman married to a weak man. She, not Isaac is designated as the one to
guard the divine blessing of descent (24.60)
Isaac had difficulties in carrying the blessing and passing it on to the
next generation. Were it up to him, the blessing would have been passed on
to the wrong son. It is Rebecca whose role it is to pass the blessing on to the
right son. God has chosen her: This is the meaning of the annunciation, her
being the divine answer to the prayer of Abraham's servant who was sent to
find Isaac a wife (24.15). She is the one, who when pregnant, asks God, and
receives an answer from God, in which she is informed that the youngest son
will be the one to receive the blessing. (25.22-23). Yet despite her
importance, like the other matriarchs we have seen, once her role of
protectress of the future is completed, the focus shifts from her to her son and
she disappears from the scene--even her death is not noted in anyway.
Miriam
In contrast to the matriarchs, the memory of Miriam lingers on. She is
referred to as a prophet. There are four prophetesses known to us by name:
Miriam and Deborah, who were bards, whose prophecy was in the form of
poetry. Huldah (2 Kings 22:14-20; 2 Chron. 34:22-28) and Noadiah (Neh.
6:14) who lived in the period of literary prophets. The prophet Micah
includes her as part of the triumvirate (Moses, Aaron and Miriam); there are
hints of her authoring the Song of the Sea and her being connected with the
well of water that nourished the people of Israel in the desert.
God speaks directly to Miriam, -- in anger-- and not related to her
maternal functions.
If God is likened to a father figure in this episode, then the "spit in her
face" is of divine origin and leaves its mark in the form of leprosy. So one
could say that God speaks to her face as well, but in furious anger at her
rebellion.
Miriam is recalled in Deuteronomy where it is stated: 'Remember what
the Lord your God did to Miriam on the way as you came forth out of Egypt'
(Deut. 24.9). What did he do? He spat in her face and marked her with
leprosy.
Yet she is also a woman whom the Rabbis chose to see as a positive role
model: an advocate of the biblical command to mankind to 'be fruitful and
multiply,' specifically, in criticizing Moses for not having sexual relations
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with his wife, and in encouraging the Israelite males to marry while in Egypt
despite Pharaoh's decrees against Jewish male babies.
There are many examples of a Miriam whom the Rabbis admire. One
instance is their explication of Numbers 12.14f., where it is written clearly
that it was the people who did not journey until Miriam was returned to them.
The Rabbis, however, say it was the Lord who waited for her. Not only that,
but the 'Holy One, blessed be He, said: "I am a priest, I shut her up and I shall
declare her clean" (Deut. Rabbah 6.9). If God, portrayed as a concerned
doctor, intervenes in Miriam's case and personally treats her illness, surely it
follows that Miriam was someone to be reckoned with.
There are many midrashim which have to do with Miriam's 'well',
which is said to have been one of the ten things created during the twilight
before the first Sabbath of the creation (B.T. Pesahim 54a). One of the few
songs of the Bible, an obscure fragment of an ancient poem, is read by many
Rabbis as referring to this well:
Spring up, O well -- sing to it--
The well which the chieftains dug,
Which the nobles of the people started
With maces, with their own staffs. (Numbers 21.17-19).
Since this verse which comes after Miriam's reported death (Numbers 20.1)
is followed by a statement that there was no water for the congregation (20.2),
the Rabbis write that Miriam's gift to us after her death was her song, which
could cause the waters of her well to flow. The proviso was that the right
person had to know how to address the well to get it to give water. Moses,
who knew only how to hit the rock, was not that person; clearly a woman's
touch was needed. According to R. Hiya, you can go up to Mt. Mevo and see
Miriam’s well located near the sea of Tiberias, where lepers go in order to be
cured. (Midrash Tehilim (Buber) 24:6)
Miriam is called a prophet in Exodus 15. Though the Bible does not
relate any examples of her prophesies, the Rabbis interpret the passage 'And
His sister stood afar off' (Exod. 2.4), to mean that she stood afar 'to know
what would be the outcome of her prophecy', because she had told her parents
that her 'mother was destined to give birth to a son who will save Israel.' That
prophecy, they say, is 'the meaning of: 'And Miriam the prophetess, the sister
of Aaron, took a timbrel' (Exod. 15.20).
Manoah's Wife
“God summons a certain barren woman in the book of Judges to help stir the
people of Israel out of their submissive attitude toward their foreign ruler.”
She is told by God's emissary that she will become pregnant and will bear a
son. She is a nameless woman, but God speaks directly to her and tells her to
abstain from alcohol and forbidden food. The story contrasts the woman’s
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perceptive qualities with the feeble character of her Danite husband, Manoah,
33
meaning “rest,” and presumably of all other men of that time” (p. 123). This
woman becomes Samson's mother and is known only as eshet Manoah,
Manoah's wife. Yet it is clear that God prefers to speak to her and relates to
her husband as a buffoon. God conceives a plan of deliverances, starting with
a divine revelation to this woman who has not yet conceived a child….God’s
deliberate choice to collaborate wither testifies to her virtue. (p. 124). “Her
wish to protect her son and her commitment to God’s plan are translated into
a plan to protect the son from his father” (p. 124) . She is identified by the
Rabbis as Hatzlelponi,, whose name is mention in 1 Chron 4:3 as a
descendant of Tamar and Judah. She is in the list of the women of valor in
the midrash. “The special connection between God and Hatzlelponi is
marked by the deliberate inclusion of the Hebrew letter heh in the beginning
of her name. It is inserted for carrying out God’s plan. This woman of
strength embodies the concept of the chosen (p. 127).
Since this reading later becomes a haftorah, a parallel reading to Naso
in the Book of Numbers, the message is clearly delivered, juxtaposed to the
parasha which includes The Sotah, the woman whose husband suspects her
of adultery and puts her through the test of the bitter waters and the Nazir,
the man who takes a vow to abstain from alcohol and shaving his head.
Again we have a woman who is responsible for carrying out God's will,
who is chosen by God, after much personal suffering, to produce the very
special offspring who will change Israel's destiny. Although both Manoach
and his wife continue to be part of the early stories about Samson, they are
not serious actors in his affairs. In marked contrast to Rebecca and Isaac who
are opposed to Jacob’s intermarrying with the daughters of the land, and
succeed in sending him back to the “old country” to find a wife; Manoach
and his wife (who are referred to as Samson’s mother and father, and not by
their own name), do not succeed in convincing Samson not to marry the
Philistine girl. In fact, he convinces them that it is God’s plan and they help
facilitate the marriage.
Hannah
The last woman we will look at is Hannah. In the opening chapter of the Book
of Samuel we meet Hannah, the desperately unhappy barren wife. She is the
beloved wife of her husband, who respects her as a human being with value
in her own right. He doesn't care that she has no children: "Hannah was his

33
All page numbers are from Nurit Eini-Pindyck, “Hatzleponi,” in Praise Her
Works: Conversations with Biblical Women, Penina Adelman, editor (Philadelphia:
JPS, 2005): 123-133.
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favorite, for the Lord had closed her womb" (1 Sam. 1:5). When she wept
about her plight, her husband, Elkanah said to her, "Hannah, why are you
crying and why aren't you eating? Why are you so sad? Am I not more
devoted to you than ten sons?" (vs 8)
Hannah, doesn't agree--she defines her role in term's of society's dictate
that she have children and thus is open to Penina's tormenting of her--as was
Sarah by Hagar. There are similarities between Hannah and Sarah's stories,
and that is probably one of the reasons why Hannah's story is the Haphtarah
of Sarah's story on Rosh Hashanah. However, Hannah is the agent here. She
sacrifices her son--by giving him to God--in contrast to Sarah who has no
agency when her son is taken from her to be sacrificed without her
knowledge. [Most midrashim show Sarah being approached by the devil
about the sacrifice of Isaac and she is ends up dying thinking he has been
killed; I would like to interpret it differently, perhaps she gives up her life in
exchange ke-neged for his being spared.]
Hannah's desperation leads her to take steps to ensure that she will
conceive. At Shiloh, she stood before the Lord (Septuagint) in the temple
praying. She makes this vow: "O Lord of Hosts, if You will look upon the
suffering of Your maidservant and will remember me and not forget Your
maidservant, and if You will grant Your maidservant a male child, I will
dedicate him to the Lord for all the days of his life; and no razor shall ever
touch his head" (vs 11).
Thus she prays directly to God who hears her words for when they went
back home to Ramah, Elkanah "knew his wife Hannah and the Lord
remembered her. Hannah conceived, and at the turn of the year bore a son.
She named him Samuel, meaning, 'I asked the Lord for him'" (vs 19-20).
Hannah determines her sexual destiny. Her desperation leads her to take
direct steps to realize her deepest desire. In her prayer, after delivering her
son to the High Priest, she says: "My heart exults in the Lord; I have raised
my horn high (I have triumphed) through the Lord. My mouth is wide (I
gloat) over my enemies, I rejoice in your deliverance" (2:1). Although much
of Hannah's prayer has been incorporated into our prayer, the rabbis are not
thrilled with a woman who has so much power. In a discussion of Hannah's
prayer in the Talmud, they realize that women who are that desperate to
conceive might go outside the law to get seed. They juxtapose Hannah's
situation with the adulterous women, the Sotah, of Numbers 5. They have
Hannah saying to God: "If you will not look upon my affliction, I will go and
shut myself up with someone else in the knowledge of my husband Elkanah,
and as I shall have been alone, they will make me drink the bitter waters of
the wife suspected of adultery, and since you cannot change your own law,
which says, "the adulterous woman falsely accused of adultery will be
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cleared and conceive seed," this will do the trick and I will conceive
(Berachot 31a-b).
The rabbis are aware of the potential anarchy that might occur if women
determine their own sexual destinies and this helps us understand why
according to halakha, procreation is required only of men. This may be
technically true, yet it is the woman whose pain is depicted both in the Bible
and the Midrash.
Why are so many of the matriarchs barren? There is a midrash which
implies that suffering leads women to pray to God, and "The Holy One,
blessed be He, yearns for their prayers and supplications." In Yebamot 64a,
the answer to why were our ancestors barren, is because God longs to hear
the prayer of the righteous.
The theme of God's power and His need to have his people supplicate
Him is seen in a midrash in which a query is addressed to the rabbi: Why are
so many households in Israel unable to have children? The reply is: because
"God who loves them with all encompassing love, and takes joy in them puts
them through a purity test of suffering, so that they will come to him and beg
for mercy. The questioner goes on: Isn't it possible that the reason is that our
forefathers chose women out of lust for them, so that God punished them by
making the women they married barren? The answer: Many of our men are
pre-occupied with occupations which force them to absent themselves from
home and thus they do not have frequent intercourse with their wives. Take
a lesson from Abraham, Rebecca, Rachel and Hannah who were childless for
many years and in the end had beloved children to gladden their hearts. Why
did it take them so long? Because God "loves householders in Israel with an
utter love and rejoices in them, He purifies them (through suffering) in order
that they should urgently entreat Him for compassion."
The problem of suffering is a clear link to Zion, the suffering people of
Israel, depicted as women.
Zion: the barren woman
The linkage of the barren woman with Israel is picked up in the prophets,
when Zion is personified as a barren woman (Isa 54:1). The midrash makes
this linkage clearer when it discusses the seven barren women: "Zion" is
included at the end of the list of woman who are barren: Sarah, Rebecca,
Rachel, Leah, Manoah's wife and Hannah. This is to show that there will be
a happy ending to Israel's state of barrenness and uprootedness, just as the
barren mothers ended up having children, in particular Rachel who was the
beloved wife and who cries over her children, but in the end sees them
successful in the far future. Thus the fulfillment of the prayers of childless
women ends up being consolation texts of the prophets.

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Conclusion and Discussion: Suffering and Barrenness
I would like to leave us with three questions: The first is the serious one of
suffering—what is the purpose of suffering? What are the pros and cons?
Are there any pros, when, you are the one suffering? The second is related.
What, if anything, is achieved by barrenness? Finally, what does the word
mean?
In Hebrew the root AKAR has many associations:
akeret bayit housewife
ikar chief, most important,
la'akor to uproot,
akar barren

Think about it!

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-28-
CHAPTER THREE: TRAUMA AND RECOVERY: ABRAHAM’S
34
JOURNEY TO THE AKEIDAH

In the concluding paragraph of an article on the Akeidah, the late Tikva

Frymer Kensky wrote that “in its stark horror and ambiguous statements, the
story of the Akedah remains the central text in the formation of our spiritual
35
consciousness.” In Genesis 22:1 it begins, “After these things, God tested
(nisah) Abraham,” in which God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son. As
Wendy Zierler puts it, “Abraham offers no emotional or ethical response to
36
the command. He simply sets out with his son to do God’s bidding.” The
Akeidah (Gen. 22:1–19), the binding of Isaac, is considered to be the ultimate
spiritual moment, when a man expresses willingness to sacrifice his beloved
son to demonstrate fealty to his Lord. This central text has continued to
horrify generations, and in Sören Kierkegaard’s words, arouses “fear and
37
trembling.”
The Hebrew for a burnt offering that goes up to God is olah, and is used
to describe Abraham’s offering of his son. The Sages understand the test
(from the word nisah) to mean a trial, one of many trials—physical and
psychological incidents that retarded Abraham’s adjustment in Canaan and

34
"Trauma and Recovery: Abraham’s Journey to the Akeidah," CCAR Journal:
The Reform Jewish Quarterly Volume LVIII, No. 4. (Spring, 2012): 29-50.
This paper started out as “Trauma and Recovery: The Akeda and the Holocaust
in the Collective Memory of the People,” given at the Second annual
conference entitled Aftermath: The Politcs of Memory at Monash University in
Melbourne in June 2011. A rewritten version of this paper was given at the
Society of Biblical Literature International Meeting in the unit of Psychology
and Bible in London, July 2011. A version of this article appears on the Web
Edition of Sh'ma: A Journal of Jewish Ideas, dated September 19, 2011
(http://www.shma.com/2011/09/trauma-and-recovery-abraham%e2%80%99s-
journey-to-the-akedah/). I would like to express thanks to my three critical
readers: Sidney Bloch, Michael Graetz, and Menorah Rotenberg and to the
anonymous readers of the CCAR Journal which published this article.
35
Tikva Frymer Kensky, “Akeda: A View from the Bible,” in Beginning Anew: A
Woman’s Companion to the High Holidays., Judith Kates and Gail Twersky
Reimer, eds. (New York: Touchstone, 1997), 144.
36
Wendy Zierler, “In Search of a Feminist Reading of the Akedah,” NASHIM: A
Journal of Jewish Women’s Studies and Gender Issues (2005): 10.
37
Sören Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, trans. Walter Lowrie (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1941). This material was prepared for Religion Online
by Ted and Winnie Brock.
-29-
 38
endangered his marital status. According to the midrash, fiery associations
are among the many obstacles Abraham had in his journey before he got to
the point of bringing his son Isaac as an olah. Another obstacle was the
famine in the land, which caused Abraham to go down to Egypt.
The King James Bible, however, translates, the word, nisah, as “tempt,”
not as “test”! To tempt is to solicit to sin, to entice, to entrap, with the purpose
of bringing about the fall of a person. The KJV may have translated it in this
way because the translators were influenced by Rashi’s reading of the
Talmud. If that is so, then who is the subject of the temptation?
“SOME TIME AFTERWARDS” Some of our Rabbis say (BT
Sanhedrin 89) that this line refers to after the incident with Satan who
accused [God] saying “From all of the festive meals that Abraham
made, he did not offer You a single bull or ram.” God responded,
“Everything Abraham did was for his son. Yet, if I were to tell
Abraham to sacrifice him before me, he would not delay.” (Rashi,
22:1)
39
Is it God being tempted to play with Abraham, as he did with Job? Or
is God testing Abraham to see if he gives into the temptation of filicide that
was widespread in his time?
One might ask where God was during these trials or temptations. Why
was there lack of moral guidance to Abraham? From a theological
perspective, what is worse, the problem of an abusive God/father who
demands sacrifices of his son/people or a God who tempts people to sin?
Looking at Abraham from a relationship perspective and in particular
with his troubling relationship with God, I can understand the transition in
his character from one who fights back to protect his family and the other
who abandons his family to fate. There is no contradiction if we view
Abraham as a person who has experienced trauma and abuse as a son, a
brother, a husband, and a believer. If we regard him as a multiple victim of
PTSD (posttraumatic stress disorder), then Abraham behaves consistently
when he heeds God’s call to sacrifice Isaac. To see how this works, we must
look at the back story of Abraham’s life, which is to be found in Rabbinic
midrash and commentary. It is possible to argue that the midrashim we will
be looking at are supplying us with the original “censored” text, especially

38
Cf. Pirkei Avot 5:3.
39
Jon Levenson in The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1993) discusses the Akeidah in conjunction with the Book of
Job.
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 40
the one having to do with Abraham’s near death by Nimrod in the furnace.
We will start with two midrashim that explain Haran’s death.
The first one depicts Terah as a manufacturer of idols. Abraham
destroyed these idols. His father was furious and seized him and delivered
him to Nimrod. Nimrod throws him into the fiery furnace saying, “Behold, I
will cast you into it, and let your God whom you adore come and save you
from it.”
Now Haran was standing there undecided. If Abram is victorious,
[thought he], I will say that I am of Abram’s belief, while if Nimrod is
victorious I will say that I am on Nimrod’s side. When Abram
descended into the fiery furnace and was saved, he [Nimrod] asked
him, “Of whose belief are you?” “Of Abram’s,” he replied. Thereupon
he seized and cast him into the fire; his inwards were scorched and he
died in his father’s presence. Hence it is written, AND HARAN DIED
41
IN THE PRESENCE OF [AL P’NEI] HIS FATHER TERAH.
The Rabbis translated al p’nei as “because of”; that is, he died because
his father manufactured idols!
According to Aviva Zornberg in her book The Murmuring Deep,
“Nachmanides treats the fiery furnace midrash as not only historically true
but essential for the meaning of Abraham’s narrative.” There is no good
reason why this narrative is omitted from the biblical text, but as Zornberg
points out, “the repressed persecution story leaves us with a significant
42
gap.” She states the case even more strongly:
In this stark retelling of the midrash, the essential fact is that
Abraham’s brother was killed by his father, who had originally
intended Abraham’s own death. By handing him over for execution,
Terah is, virtually, killing him. And when he is saved, his brother’s
actual death is directly attributable to Terah…This memory of horror
43
is not recorded in the written biblical text.
The other midrash is less well known and speaks of attempted fratricide:

40
See Yair Zakovitch, “The Exodus from Ur of the Chaldeans: A Chapter in
Literary Archaeology,” in Ki Baruch Hu, Ancient Near Eastern, Biblical, and
Judaic Studies in Honor of Baruch A. Levine. R. Chazan, W. W. Hallo, and L. H.
Schiffman, eds.(Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1999), 429–39.
41
B’reishit Rabbah 38:13.
42
Aviva Gottlieb Zornberg, The Murmuring Deep: Reflections on the Biblical
Unconscious (New York: Schocken Books, 2009), 147.
43
Zornberg, Murmuring, 189.
-31-
 And Haran died “al p’nei” his father Terah. Until this time no son had
died before the father. And this one, why did he die? Because of what
happened in Ur Casdim. When Abram was shattering Terah’s idols;
and they were jealous of him and threw him into the fiery furnace. And
Haran stood by, adding fuel to the fire and was enthusiastic about the
flames. Therefore, it is said that Haran died before his father Terah. In
Ur Casdim. The name of the place is like the fire (urim), relying on a
44
verse from Isaiah 24:15, “honor the Lord with lights.”
In this source Haran is among those jealous of Abraham and fanatically
wishes to participate in his murder. Haran is the one, in this text, who is in
charge of stoking the fire in the furnace, and he is in the process of feeding
the fire when the flames shoot out and consume him. In this Midrash both the
brother and father are out to kill Abraham. Haran is gleeful while making the
fire as hot as possible so that killing Abraham will “make his day.” Thus
according to these two midrashim, Abraham has experienced abuse at the
hand of Nimrod the king, his father, his brother, and indirectly by God.
Besides using the tools of Rabbinic midrash and later looking at some
modern poetry to comprehend Abraham’s action, I find Judith Herman’s
45
book Trauma and Recovery very useful for her description of PTSD:
Traumatic events are extraordinary, not because they occur rarely, but
rather because they overwhelm the ordinary human adaptations to life.
Unlike commonplace misfortunes, traumatic events generally involve
threats to life or bodily integrity, or a close personal encounter with
46
violence and death.
This of course is what, according to the midrash, Abraham has certainly
experienced. Herman writes that “the person may feel as if the event is not

44
P’sikta Zutarta (Lekach Tov) Gen. 11, 28. I thank Michael Graetz for bringing
this source to my attention.
45
Judith Herman, Trauma and Recovery (New York: Basic Books 1992, 1997).
The 4th edition of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)
defines trauma occurring when “the person experienced, witnessed, or was
confronted with an event or events that involved actual or threatened death or
serious injury, or threat to the physical integrity of self or others,” and “the person’s
response involved intense fear, helplessness, or horror.” Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th ed. (Washington, DC: American Psychiatric
Association, 1994), 427, 428.
46
Herman, Trauma and Recovery, 33.
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 47
happening to [him]…a bad dream from which [he] will shortly awaken.”
Herman points out that the victim who suffers from PTSD may feel
a state of detached calm, in which terror, rage, and pain
dissolve…Perceptions may be numbed or distorted…Time sense may
48
be altered, often with a sense of slow motion.
These may have been Abraham’s feelings as he went up the mountain, slowly
but inexorably.
When we return to Genesis 11:26–32, we find lacunae that leave much
to the imagination. The text does not say why they left, nor does it say why
they stayed in Charan. Was Terah alive when Abraham and Lot left? What
did Abraham feel about leaving? Would he have liked to stay and comfort
his father? Did his love for God get in the way of making amends with his
father?
Clearly there is a need for even more “back story,” which the
commentators and the midrash continue to provide. According to Ibn Ezra
on Genesis 12:1, Abraham’s father, Terah, lived for another sixty-five years
in Haran and in taking his grandson Lot away from him, he severed the family
relationship and deprived Terah of his grandson Lot. When the family leaves
Egypt, after strife with Lot, Abraham proposes that his nephew’s herdsmen
separate from his. Abraham already separated Lot from his grandfather and
country and now he does so from himself.
Why is Abraham so much a master at separation from his close family?
Is this a fatal flaw in him? According to Judith Herman, “The core
experiences of psychological trauma are disempowerment and disconnection
49
from others.” If this is so, can it account for Abraham’s ease in letting Lot
go, then Sarah (with the real possibility of losing her), and then Hagar and
Ishmael and finally Isaac?
It would seem that the Sages picked up on this as well. For in a famous
midrash the Rabbis try to change the order of the text to show that Terah died
50
in Charan. Why do they do this? To show that Terah was wicked, and like
all wicked, are called dead even during their lifetime. Why do they do this?
They do this so as not to detract from Abraham’s greatness.
Yet in this same midrash we read that Abraham was afraid that people
would say, “He left his father in his old age and departed.” Therefore, God

47
Ibid., 42–43.
48
Ibid., 56.
49
Ibid., 133.
50
B’reishit Rabbah 39:7.
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reassured him by saying: “I exempt thee (l’cha) from the duty of honoring
thy parents, though I exempt no one else from this duty.” The Rabbis deduced
this from the emphasis GET THEE (LECH L’CHA), where lech (go) alone
would have sufficed. And this is why God recorded Terah’s death before
Abraham departed. So one part of the midrash implies that Terah is the old
father that Abraham dishonorably leaves behind, and the other says that
Terah is an evil person whom Abraham had the right to leave behind.
What are we to make of this contradiction? I find it strange that the
Rabbis would prefer to reverse the order of the biblical text rather than
acknowledge that Abraham had the right to detach himself from a possibly
abusive father. In reading Kierkegaard, I am struck by how the second half
of the midrash is a perfect example of the “teleological suspension of the
ethical.” And this first act of “suspension of the ethical” later permits him to
51
do other unethical acts. Could it be that the Rabbis sensed something murky
in Abraham’s past when they referred to him as a Job-like figure and vice
versa and that God’s test of Abraham is similar to Job’s because of Satan’s
52
intervention?
What are we to make of a God who submits to a challenge of Satan and
plays with people like sport to the flies? Who unfairly puts his people to a
test, puts temptation in their way, to see how great is their faith, their love for
Him?
It is difficult to accept Kierkegaard’s conclusion that God tempted
53
Abraham to prove his faith by rejecting morality. This kind of faith is seen
by many as “religious” only in an extreme or fanatical way, and as such a
kind of idolatry, or perversion of religion, which always factors in a moral
51
“If such be the case, then Hegel is right when in his chapter on ‘The Good and
the Conscience,’ he characterizes man merely as the particular and regards this
character as ‘a moral form of the evil’ which is to be annulled in the teleology of
the moral, so that the individual who remains in this stage is either sinning or
subjected to temptation (Anfechtung). On the other hand, he is wrong in talking of
faith, wrong in not protesting loudly and clearly against the fact that Abraham
enjoys honor and glory as the father of faith, whereas he ought to be prosecuted and
convicted of murder.” Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, 39.
52
BT Sanhedrin 89b; see also Midrash Tanchuma on Lech L’cha 10; Zornberg,
The Murmuring Deep, 185.
53
For a discussion of this see Eugene Korn, Review Essay, “Windows on the
World—Judaism Beyond Ethnicity: A Review of Abraham’s Journey by Joseph B.
Solveitchik, edited by David Shatz, Joel B. Wolowelsky and Reuven Zeigler, and
Future Tense by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks,” Meorot 8 (Tishrei 5771/September 2010):
1–9.
-34-
dimension. Besides what does God gain by having an exemplar of faith act
immorally? Why tempt him to do so? This is the sine qua non question that
has plagued generations of readers, both religious and secular, when they
confront the text of the Akeidah.
In previous work I have discussed the effects of a God who abuses his
54
people. Some of these images include executioner, mass murderer, and
divine deceiver. These images are problematic because God acts unethically
or immorally, uses excessive force, and sometimes doesn’t offer an
55
opportunity for repentance. Most of us would prefer not to contemplate a
God who is too dangerous to approach and too incomprehensible to make
sense of, a God who might simply demand extreme and devastating behavior.
We avoid all thought of the paradox that the very foundation of the world
56
might also contribute to its devastation.
Another troubling image of God that I will point to briefly, since I have
written so much about this elsewhere, is that of God the husband/lover of
Israel, who has total power over his female people. In one midrash we see
Abraham depicted as a woman, a daughter whose father owns the house she
lives in and is aroused by her beauty and wants to show it off to the world.
NOW THE LORD SAID UNTO ABRAM: Go Forth from your Land
etc. (12:1). R. Isaac commenced his discourse with, “Listen daughter,
and look and incline your ear; and forget your people, and your father’s
house” (Ps. 45:11). R. Isaac said: This is a mashal, about someone who
traveled from place to place and saw a birah (building, castle, capital
city) burning. He wondered: Is it possible that this birah doesn’t have
a leader? The owner/master of the birah looked out and said, “I am the
master of the birah.” Similarly, since our father Abraham was
constantly wondering, “Is it conceivable that the world is without a

54
See Naomi Graetz, “The Haftarah Tradition and the Metaphoric Battering of
Hosea’s Wife,” Conservative Judaism (Fall 1992): 29–42; and Naomi Graetz,
“Jerusalem the Widow,” Shofar 17, no. 2 (Winter 1999): 16–24. Both articles
are reprinted in Naomi Graetz, Unlocking the Garden: A Feminist Jewish Look
at the Bible, Midrash and God (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2005).
55
Eric A. Seibert, Disturbing Divine Behavior: Troubling Old Testament Images of
God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2009), reviewed by John E. Anderson for Review of
Biblical Literature, March 2, 2011, by the Society of Biblical Literature.
56
These thoughts came from a talk given by Kenneth Seeskin, “The
Destructiveness of God,” at the conference Philosophical Investigation of the
Hebrew Bible, Talmud and Midrash, in Jerusalem, June 26–30, 2011, sponsored by
The Shalem Center.
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 leader/guide/master/ruler?” God looked out and said to him, “I am the
ba’al, the owner of the world the Sovereign of the Universe.” So let
the king be aroused by your beauty, since he is your lord (Ps.
45:12): Let the king be aroused by your beauty and show it off to the
world. Since he is your lord, bow to him (Ps. 45:12): hence, THE
57
LORD SAID UNTO ABRAHAM: Go forth etc.
Abraham is again depicted as a woman, this time as the unformed little
58
sister, in another midrash on the same verse. Here she offers herself up to
be sacrificed in an act of kiddush HaShem or martyrdom. The idea that God
is Abraham’s lover appears also in Maimonides in the Mishneh Torah. Here
it is Abraham who is obsessed with God and has what can only be described
as lovesickness.
Halakha 2: [Love] is an attribute of Abraham our father, who was
called “his beloved” because he worshiped him out of love. And it is a
quality that was commanded by Moses in that we are to “worship our
God” …
Halakha 3: What characterizes proper love? That a person should love
God with a great excessive, very strong love, until one’s soul is bound
up in love of God and is obsessed by this love as if he is lovesick; and
his mind is not freed from the love of that woman; and he is always
obsessed by her, whether it is in his resting or rising, or whether he is
eating or drinking. Moreover, the love of God in the heart of those who
love Him is obsessive, like the commandment to love with all your
heart and soul (Deut. 6:5). This is alluded to by Solomon who stated
through the Mashal, “for I am sick with love” and in fact all of the
59
Song of Songs is a mashal/parable about this issue.
Rabbinic literature is sensitive to these images of God the lover and the
obsession with the beloved, but do not necessarily see them as troubling, full
of potential menace, and contributing to abuse. Lovesickness, is pathological
by nature—it affects decision making, it distracts one from what is moral. It

57
B’reishit Rabbah 39:1.
58
Midrash Tanchuma Lech L’cha 2.
59
Maimonides, Hilchot T’shuvah, chs. 2 and 3.
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 60
further dislocates one who is already fragile. Furthermore, love should not
61
harm.
When Abraham is depicted as a dependent woman, he is, like Herman’s
62
traumatized patient, primed for God: “The greater the patient’s emotional
conviction of helplessness and abandonment, the more desperately she feels
63
the need for an omnipotent rescuer.” The fact that he loves God and God
loves him makes it seem natural to follow God to wherever and whatever he
demands.
Despite the threats hanging over him, the Rabbis are at great pains to
make it look as if Abraham is an active willing participant in what God
demanded of him. A midrash says that God was with him when he willingly
offered (nadavta)…to enter the fiery furnace and would have emigrated
64
sooner to the land if he had been permitted to do so earlier.
What is the nature of the God Abraham is expected to follow? The
Rabbis write that this God places the righteous in doubt and suspense, and
then He reveals to them the meaning of the matter. That is why it is written,
“TO THE LAND THAT I WILL SHOW THEE.” The Rabbis view this
putting of the “righteous in doubt and suspense” as a sign of God’s love.

R. Levi said: “Get thee” is written twice, and we do not know which
was more precious [in the eyes of God], whether the first or the
second…And why did He not reveal it to him [without delay]? In order
to make him even more beloved in his eyes and reward him for every
word spoken, for R. Huna said in R. Eliezer’s name: The Holy One,
blessed be He, first places the righteous in doubt and suspense, and
then He reveals to them the meaning of the matter. Thus it is written,
TO THE LAND THAT I WILL SHOW THEE; Upon one of the
mountains which I will tell thee of; And make unto it the proclamation

60
Aviva Gottlieb Zornberg develops this idea in her first book, The Beginnings of
Desire: Reflections on Genesis (New York: Doubleday, 1996): 86–93. However,
Zornberg does not interpret this as pathology or abuse on the part of God.
61
Love Does No Harm: Sexual Ethics for the Rest of Us is the title of a book by
Marie M. Fortune (New York: Continuum, 1995).
62
Zornberg, Murmuring, 178, writes that at the moment of the Akeidah,
“Abraham’s fear and desire make him ripe for the sacrificial act” (emphasis mine).
63
Herman, Trauma and Recovery, 137.
64
B’reishit Rabbah 39:8.
-37-
 that I bid thee (Jonah III, 2); Arise, go forth into the plain, and I will
65
there speak with thee (Ezek. III, 22).
In addition, the Rabbis are making an equation between Lech L’cha and
the Akeidah. Lech L’cha is also a foundational text, because it encourages
(perhaps in the case of going up to the Land of Israel, even enshrines) leaving
loved ones behind and it encourages detachment. Perhaps if Abraham (and
others who wish to leave) would think it out clearly, they might hesitate to
follow the lure of Lech L’cha. In both cases God does not reveal his intentions
66
to Abraham until the very end.
Zornberg refers to Rashi’s explication of the verse “to the land that I
will show you.” Rashi writes that God “did not reveal which land
immediately, in order to make it precious in his eyes.” Zornberg builds on
this to show that “the effect of suspended naming is to achieve an
intimacy…tantalize him and endow him with an experience of mystery.” She
interprets this as suspense. She describes this as follows: “He will travel
without solid ground under his feet… [he will be] off balance… [it will be]
a painfully tantalizing process, in which delay only increases the horror of
67
realization.” Whereas she reads this positively, I read this as further abuse.
Instead of giving Abraham agency, God keeps him in his power and cruelly
tantalizes him until the end. Surely this is not a sign of love.
In a transaction with Abraham in Genesis 15, God appears to
Abraham in a machazeh (a vision), telling him that he will protect him and
provide for him. Following the b’rit bein habetarim (the covenant of the
pieces of animals), Abraham falls asleep and a great dread of darkness falls
upon him. He has a nightmarish vision of a smoking oven and a flaming
torch, which according to Zornberg reminds him of Nimrod’s fire. She writes
that
forgotten, repressed, absent from the biblical text, is the story of the
fiery furnace, in which the child Abraham was thrown, to test his faith
in the invisible God…Its total absence from the written biblical text
suggest that it is an unthinkable, even an unbearable narrative,
68
banished from Abraham’s memory.

65
B’reishit Rabbah 39:9.
66
I would like to thank Menorah Rotenberg for this insight, personal
communication.
67
Zornberg, Murmuring, 137.
68
Ibid., 188.
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 It is unbearable because Abraham is being treated as a pawn by God. If
he were truly a partner, God would share with him what is on his mind, so
that Abraham can react appropriately, take into account all options and then
make up his own mind. On the surface, this is what God seems to do in
Genesis 18:17 when he says: “Am I to hide [lit. cover up, mechaseh] from
Abraham that thing which I do.”
Initially God treats him as a full partner, but since He goes on his
way to do what he had planned to do all along, destroy the town and its evil
inhabitants (except for Lot and all his family), what is Abraham to make of
all this? Why did he not continue to protest? Did he end up being a passive
bystander, or was he complicit in the destruction as the Israeli poet Meir
Wieseltier (b. 1941) writes in his poem “Abraham”:
The only thing in the world that Abraham loved was God.
He did not love the gods of other men,
Which were made of wood or clay and of polished vermilion…

He did not appreciate anything in the world, only God.

He never sinned to Him; there was no difference between them.
Not like Isaac, who loved his coarse-minded son; not like Jacob
Who slaved away for women, who limped from the blows that God
gave him at night,
Who saw angelic ladders only in dreams.
Not so Abraham, who loved God, and whom God loved,
And together they counted the righteous of the city before they
wiped it out.

Wieseltier sees a straight line from Abraham’s willingness to see Sodom

wiped out and his willingness to sacrifice Isaac in the name of love.
I would not go so far; for I see his acquiescence to what eventually
happens as being the way a traumatized soul such as Abram has reacted to
what has happened in his past—and he has already done the unthinkable by
casting out his first born son.
Yet one can argue that Abraham shows great initiative in Genesis 14
when invaders took his nephew Lot from Sodom. I use Herman’s words to
view this is as a form of
recovery [which] is based upon the empowerment of the survivor and
the creation of new connections. Recovery can take place only within
the context of relationships; it cannot occur in isolation. In [his]
renewed connections with other people, the survivor re-creates the

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 psychological faculties that were damaged or deformed by the
69
traumatic experience.
Thus, when Abram heard that his kinsman had been taken captive, he
went in pursuit as far as Dan and brought back Lot and his possessions. And
when the king of Sodom said to Abram, “Give me the persons, and take the
possessions for yourself,” Abram said to the king of Sodom, “I swear to the
Lord, I will not take so much as a thread or a sandal strap of what is yours;
you shall not say, ‘It is I who made Abram rich.’” So it is here that Abraham
takes the moral high ground, something he has never done before.
Unfortunately, this is to prove the exception to what I am claiming is his
usual way of acting and Abraham reverts to his previous behavior in Genesis
16 when the story of the interaction between Sarai and Hagar is highlighted.
Without any protest, Abram passively heeds Sarai’s request to take Hagar so
she can have a son through her. When Sarai blames Abram, “The wrong done
me is your fault!” (chamasi alecha), and makes him feel guilty, Abram again
passively gives in to Sarai and says, “Your maid is in your hands. Deal with
her as you think right.” Why this lack of concern about his potential seed? Is
it fear of his wife? Is it because he knows that Sarah was also once taken and
traumatized? Is this why he allows her some leeway when she lashes at those
around her? It doesn’t help that God condones Sarah’s abusive behavior
through His agent who tells Hagar to submit to this abuse from Sarah. I don’t
want to exonerate Abraham because of the abuse he has suffered in the past,
but it seems that Herman’s explanation, about the cycle of abuse passing on,
is valid here. Herman writes:
The protracted involvement with the perpetrator has altered the
patient’s relational style, so that [he] not only fears repeated
victimization but also seems unable to protect [him]self from it, or
even appears to invite it. The dynamics of dominance and submission
70
are reenacted in all subsequent relationships.

For sure the trauma that afflicted Abraham is passed on to Isaac in the form
of passivity in the face of abuse—and this trait will be passed on to the
biblical family. Abraham’s tears, according to the midrash, blinded Isaac. As
he held the knife “tears streamed from his eyes, and these tears, prompted by
71
a father’s compassion, dropped into Isaac’s eyes.” And Isaac will, in turn,
69
Herman, Trauma and Recovery, 133.
70
Ibid., 138. Note, since I am talking about Abraham, I have changed the gender
from female to male.
71
B’reishit Rabbah 56:8.
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turn a blind eye to the cheating and neglect that Rebekah and Jacob inflict on
Esau. Jacob, too, will be a passive parent when it comes to not seeing the
family dynamics taking place with his own children. The inappropriate
parenting that has taken place in Abraham’s household is thus passed on to
the next generation.
In addition to trauma and abuse, there is also the issue of attachment and
lack of attachment. There are many types of attachment. John Bowlby was
the first to use the term when he encountered trauma during World War II.
He described attachment as a “lasting psychological connectedness between
72
human beings.” He believed that the emotional bonds formed by children
with their mothers had a continuous impact on their life choices. In this
theory it is important that mothers are available to their child’s needs and that
the child knows that the mother can be depended on to give him a sense of
security. Abraham’s father is identified in the bible, but his mother is given
only a name in the Talmud—Amathlai the daughter of Karnebo:
R. Hanan b. Raba further stated in the name of Rab: [The name of] the
mother of Abraham [was] Amathlai, the daughter of Karnebo [from
Kar, “lamb,” Nevo (“Mount of) Nebo”]; [the name of] the mother of
Haman was Amathlai, the daughter of Orabti [from Oreb, “raven”] and
your mnemonic [may be], “unclean [to] unclean, clean [to] clean.”
[Haman’s grandmother was named after an unclean animal (raven, cf.
Lev. 11:15; Deut. 14:14); but Abraham’s grandmother bore the name
73
of a clean animal.]
I am assuming Amathlai was never present for Abraham in his life. One
can only speculate on her absence and her detachment from her three sons,
and it is not clear what purpose the Midrash has in even assigning her a
name—and more curious the connection to Haman’s mother.
Perhaps the Talmudic text hints at an insecure attachment that is caused
by stressful life events, such as neglect, death, abuse, and migration. In this
situation you keep looking and hoping that someone or something will come
74
about to give you back what you lost. Did Abraham’s lack of attachment
begin in early childhood or later when he had his life spared, and his brother

72
John Bowlby, Attachment and Loss, vol. 1 (London: Hogarth, 1969), 194.
73
BT Baba Batra 91a.
74
Perhaps Haman’s lack of confidence in himself, and the need to build himself up
by destroying the “other,” namely Mordecai and the Jews, is blamed on his
mother’s absence. But the similarity ends there, since Abraham’s mother is
associated with har nevo (and a clean animal) and Haman’s mother with an unclean
bird.
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Haran was sacrificed in his stead? Perhaps it begins around the time of the
Akeidah.
According to Phyllis Trible, the Akeidah, first and foremost, tests
Abraham’s willingness to detach from his son so as to be able to turn to God:
To attach is to practice idolatry. In adoring Isaac, Abraham turns from
God. The test, then, is an opportunity for understanding and healing.
To relinquish attachment is to discover freedom. To give up human
anxiety is to receive divine assurance. To disavow idolatry is to find
75
God.
Thus it would appear that God tempts Abraham to turn away from human
attachment and choose divine attachment instead. Trible says this is to
disavow idolatry, but surely Abraham’s eagerness, to “over-worship” God,
his excessive love of God, and his willingness to sacrifice his son to prove
his love, may be considered a form of idolatry. On the one hand, Abraham
wants to carry out what was a secure clear-cut command given by God, the
source of all his security. Yet he is given a contradictory command not to
sacrifice by the angel. Can this be another major factor contributing to his
insecurity? There is
no certainty when God’s commands contradict conscience and
morality. Abraham is faced with the fact that he must challenge God’s
commands, for they are contradictory. Both cannot be acted upon! If
he totally disregards the first one, he is destroying a revelation from
God, and breaching his own sense of security in God. If he totally
disregards the second he is violating his own sense of justice and
76
ethics, and also ignoring a Divine revelation.
God, too, appears to be insecure about Abraham’s love. Why did he doubt
him and put him to the test? If, as Judith Herman maintains, “traumatized
people lose their trust in themselves, in other people, and in God,” it is logical
that God, who knows all about the trauma Abraham has experienced, would
doubt Abraham’s total faith in him. This would help to explain, why with the
backing of Satan (as with Job), He would be tempted to put Abraham to the
test.
According to Rashi, Abraham was ambivalent about whether to
choose his love of his son or his love of God. It is clear that God wins out,

75
Phyllis Trible, “Genesis 22: The Sacrifice of Sarah,” in Women in the Hebrew
Bible. Alice Bach, editor (New York-London: Routledge, 1999), 278.
76
Unpublished paper by Rabbi Michael Graetz, “Abraham, the First Masorti Jew,”
published as a weekly column called pina masortit on ravnet for about ten years,
date unknown.
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but the cost is that he loses his son Isaac. According to Wendy Zierler, “The
outcome of the Akeidah is that Isaac no longer appears in the story as
Abraham’s loved one. Perhaps even more startling, by the end of the story
77
God is not Abraham’s loved one either.” In the words of the poet, T. Carmi
(1925–1994) in his poem “The Actions of the Fathers”: “The voice from on
high disappeared…And the voice within him (The only one left) said: Yes,
you went from your land, from your homeland, the land of your father, and
now, in the end, from yourself.”
Until the momentous, horrific, command of the Akeidah, Abraham has
only followed orders: lech l’cha, asher arecha, sh’ma b’kolah, kah na, etc.
What Abraham suddenly understands, in his moment of truth, is that his
unavailable mother figure, Amathlai, and three past father figures, Terah,
Nimrod, and God have sacrificed him to what they perceived as the greater
cause. Terah, perhaps in protecting his status as an idol producer and for the
love of his younger son, Haran, offered him as a sacrifice to Nimrod. Nimrod
who literally wanted to burn him up and succeeded in doing so to his brother
Haran, so that nothing was left of him, and who truly was an olah. Finally,
God, who is so fixated on getting Abraham to accept the covenant and enter
the promised land that he allows and even encourages Abraham to act
dishonorably in leaving his father behind, using his wife Sarah, sending off
Ishmael and Hagar at Sarah’s request, and, most of all, in what has been
referred to as the great testing of Abraham, telling him to sacrifice his
remaining son in order to prove his obedience and faith. It is not clear what
78
exactly is God’s motivation, hence all the speculation over the generations.
However, Abraham’s greatness is that he breaks his own cycle of
abusive behavior by not following his previous role models and by not
sacrificing Isaac. In Zornberg’s words: “Abraham’s work is to fathom the
compulsions that led to filicide; to know in the present the full force of an
experience of terror that lies enfolded in his past; to wake from his trance at
79
the angel’s call.”

77
Zierler, “Feminist Reading of the Akedah,” 20–21.
78
Yair Lorberbaum gave a lecture as part of the Tikvah Center for Law and Jewish
Civilization Public Lecture Series at NYU: “‘Take now thy son, thine only son
Isaac, whom thou lovest’: Was Isaac Truly Beloved by Abraham? By God?”
(November 30, 2010). In this talk he suggested that the source of all this testing is
God’s insecurity and jealousy of Abraham. He simply wants Abraham for himself
and puts all sorts of obstacles in his path—including keeping him childless for so
many years. And now when there is a child, he tries to get Abraham to get rid of it.
79
Zornberg, Murmuring, 200.
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 God does not tell him to sacrifice the ram instead of Isaac (tachat
80
b’no). It is Abraham who SEES the ram and has a “click moment.” The
Hebrew hints at this magnificently by using the word “achar”—in fact the
81
cantillations, the Torah trope emphasize it (ah-ch-ah-ah-ar). There is
another way! “Vayisa Avraham et-einav, vayar, v’hinei, ayil ACHAR ne-
82
echaz bas’vach b’karnav” (Gen. 22:13). Abraham makes a physical effort
(vayisa) to raise his eyes; and then he SEES (vayar) an alternative (achar).
There is another way. There is an out; he can truly see what is in front of him.
Despite the hinted complication of the word (bas’vach, also a maze), it
suddenly seems very simple. The ram (ayil) is for him. The “hinei” is
representative of the two mentions of hineini (Here I am) in the text when he
was willing to slavishly follow God’s demand. Abraham is truly here, now,
in this new moment of truth, as is the ram, the substitute for his son. He
says, “I can stop the cycle of violence.” Even though God has demanded
proof of his love, he does not have to burn his son as a sacrifice. He has
something else to offer, “ACHAR”; and this strange usage offers the reader

80
The expression “click moment” is usually associated with feminism. However, it
probably originated with photography—the moment that the photographer frames
the picture in her mind, using her eyes as the guide, which is the artistic moment of
truth—then s/he clicks the button and preserves this vision for the future. It has
been suggested to me that one can look at the three-day time frame of the journey
to Moriah as a period that Abraham put to use by reflecting, confronting his past,
and building up resilience. And so when he returns (v’nashuvah) to his lads, he is
on his way to finding alternative behaviors to his abuse. It is true that one can argue
that recovery is a process rather than a click moment, but I am not sure that
Abraham has completely recovered (nashuvah); for his previous behavior has
consequences for which he cannot totally make amends (t’shuvah). Furthermore,
the sparseness of the text and the leitmotif of “seeing” that repeats itself over and
over lend themselves to the click moment associated with both feminism and
photography.
81
I am fully aware that I am taking liberties with my interpretation of Achar; but
since the vocalization is the Masoretes’ choice, one could also punctuate it and
therefore pronounce it as acher. So I am doing it both ways!
82
The Torah: A Women’s Commentary, 103, translates this as: “Abraham lifted his
eyes: he now could see a ram [just] after it was caught by its horns in a thicket.”
The Etz Hayim Torah and Commentary, 120, translates this as: “When Abraham
looked up, his eye fell upon a ram, caught in the thicket by its horns.” In the
commentary it writes: “'a ram behind [him]' or a 'ram, later [caught].'” It points to
some manuscripts that say this is “'a single ram'” (ayil echad), which differs by
only one similar-looking letter."
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closure by taking us back to the beginning of the story, achar hadevorim ha-
eleh. It is something different, pointed to him by the Angel, something new
that can lead into a more promising future—when there will be no more need
to sacrifice. His greatness is that he does not have to be a repeat offender or
83
a “serial” sacrificer.
At the decisive moment when he SEES the ram he, of his own
volition, chooses to sacrifice it rather than his son. Abraham has two potential
models of God. One is that of an unswerving worship in Maimonidean
fashion: an obsessive worship of God as a lovesick man. But God does not
tell him to worship Him that way, and Abraham chooses to follow the second
command, the Angel’s. The Angel, is the ACHER, the one who gives him a
way out. He is also divine, but his message is that it is okay to sacrifice the
ram, and not the son. So even though it is the only action Abraham takes on
his own initiative with no specific command from God, it is because he has
been able to decide on his own that some of God’s commands do not have to
be obeyed literally and can be carried out symbolically. The ram is tachat
84
b’no, in place of his son, but that is Abraham’s decision.
His decision is not to inflict any more abuse, to realize that he can
avoid repeating the abuse (the attempted filicide and fratricide) that was done
to him in the past. He can say, I have choices, and this is what I choose. This
is his real test, the one where he reaches deep into himself and with great
courage defies God’s temptation of him to repeat the pattern of abuse. This
test he passes. He has avoided the temptation. He has achieved autonomy or
agency. He has, in Herman’s terminology, recovered from his trauma. He
has chosen not to use the model of Maimonides’ love, but one of his own
choosing.
Herman suggests several steps of recovery—and as a psychiatrist,
she would probably tell Abraham to go into analysis. According to her, for
successful recovery it is necessary to go through three stages:
We need to understand the past in order to reclaim the present and
the future. An understanding of psychological trauma begins with
rediscovering the past. The fundamental stages of recovery are:
1. Establishing safety
2. Reconstructing the traumatic story

83
Ruhama Weiss uses the term in Hebrew “oked sidrati” (a serial sacrificer) to
describe Abraham. See her article in Hebrew, “Blind Sarah” on the Kolot Web site,
http://www.kolot.info.
84
See Michael Graetz, “Abraham, the First Masorti Jew,” n. 43 above in this paper.
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 3. Restoring the connection between the survivor and his/her
85
community.
One can argue that the angel, by offering an alternative, has created a safe
environment for Abraham to choose his own model of worship. The midrash
has helped him reconstruct the traumatic primordial story of the fire and the
abuse he has suffered in his past history. Now all that remains is to restore
the connection between himself and the community. It would seem that the
latter is the easiest, because we all know that when he sends Eliezer off to
find a wife for Isaac, he is ensuring a future connection between himself and
the community. Yet, we cannot forget that the trauma he has inflicted on both
of his sons has resulted in neither of them communicating with him for the
rest of his life.
Part of this has to do with God’s place in the previous scenario of
86
abuse. Where is God in this scenario? Has he retired totally from
Abraham’s life in disgust? I like the idea of the abusive God saying (like
some parents), “Well I acknowledge my mistakes, I am doing t’shuvah and
yes, I may have been abusive while you were growing up, but now you are a
grown-up, you are a free person and I am proud of you, in that your first act
was NOT to repeat the abuse that I have raised you with. And now you must
take responsibility for your own actions.” Sadly, however, as a result of
previous decisions, Abraham must still cope with the death of his wife
(possibly his fault according to the midrash) and the disappearance of and
non-communication with his son. These are not punishments, but
consequences of previous abusive acts. What has been done cannot be
undone, but the steps forward will hopefully teach the next generation how
to behave—and note that both his sons do indeed come to bury him.
Abraham is a complicated human being, for morally speaking, he can
argue with God over the fate of Sodom, yet can be morally neutral about
sending Ishmael away and willing to slaughter Isaac. Once he has been
willing to overstep the boundary of being a moral human, God never again
addresses Abraham directly. Yet he does become more sensitive to others.
He marries Keturah, has more children, provides for them during his lifetime,
and sends Eliezer to arrange a marriage for Isaac and Rebekah. Thus
Abraham serves as a quintessential exemplar of humanity and the cycle of

85
This is from a nice summary of Herman’s Trauma and Recovery on the Web site
http://www.uic.edu/classes/psych/psych270/PTSD.htm.
86
See too my depiction of God (in the first person) in the Akedah issue of Sh’ma
(September 2011): 8.
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stories illustrates human complexity in dealing with trauma. In this sense,
there is recovery.
Wilfred Owen (1893–1918), who died in action during World War I
on November 4, 1918, hints in one of his most powerful poems, “The Parable
of the Old Man and the Young,” that Abraham actually “slew his son.”
Although there are midrashic sources that hint at Isaac’s slaughter at his
87
father’s hand, these are not mainstream, and so it is only fair to give
Abraham the last word.
In two summations of his traumatic life he says to Avimelech: “When
God made me wander (‫ ) ַכאֲשֶׁ ר ה ְתעוּ אֹ תי ֱאֹלהים‬from my father’s house” (Gen.
20:13); and he says later to Eliezer: “The LORD, the God of heaven, who
took me (‫ )לְ קָ חַ ני‬from my father’s house and from my native land” (Gen.
24:7).
There is poignancy here, for Abraham recognizes in retrospect that
he was unable to feel mourning at the time. And this is part of his recovery
when he says about himself that he had been forcibly taken from his father’s
home and his homeland by God, forced to wander and possibly be mislead
by God (hitu). For it was indeed God who took him from his birth land. This
is the trauma from which Abraham almost never recovers. It is what is
inscribed on his heart and possibly at the root of his tortuous love affair with
God. This trauma, to a certain degree, is the one that we as a people, starting
from Abraham through the aftermath of the Holocaust, have experienced, as
one big tattoo inscribed, not only on our arms to identify ourselves, but as a
trauma that, as in the prayer of the Sh’ma, has literally and figuratively been
inscribed on our hearts and in our psyche. It is in the poet Haim Gouri’s word,
our “heritage,” and the fact that according to him, while Abraham did not
88
slaughter Isaac, in the end, we are “born with a knife in our hearts.” The
continuing question is how to preserve memory of this suffering and at the

87
See Shalom Spiegel, The Last Trial, trans. Judah Goldin (Philadelphia: JPS,
1967).
88
Haim Gouri, “Heritage”:
The ram came last of all. And Abraham did not know That it came to
answer the boy’s question— First of his strength when his day was on the
wane.
The old man raised his head. Seeing that it was no dream
And that the angel stood there— The knife slipped from his hand.
The boy, released from his bonds, Saw his father’s back.
Isaac, as the story goes, was not sacrificed. He lived for many years,
Saw the good, until his eyes dimmed. But he bequeathed that hour to his
descendants. They are born With a knife in their hearts.
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same time recover from this very memory of our trauma. We need to figure
out how to live lives that have meaning, nourish generations to come and
help them in turn deal with the complexity of our lives and a seemingly
remote and at times absent or quixotic God.

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CHAPTER FOUR: FATHER OF THE BRIDE: OF FATHERS AND
FATHERS-IN LAW

When we think of in-laws, we usually think of the hated mother-in-law, the

one who never releases her hold on her son, who bad mouths the new bride
to the young man, who strikes fear in the woman’s heart, because she is so
critical. According to Marianne Hirsch,
"mothers-in-law bear the brunt of the pervasive fear and contempt for
mothers—and therefore of women—that define our culture. The
mother-in-law is the adult version of the evil stepmother in the fairy
tales of our childhoods. Our culture projects onto her all its discomfort
with maternal power and powerlessness. She is a comic figure…Men
(husbands) come between women (mothers and daughters), and
women (daughters-in-law) collude in the hatred of women (mothers-
89
in-law)."
But in the bible, except for Naomi, there are no mothers-in-law and she is the
exception in that she puts Ruth’s needs above her own, or perhaps there is a
convergence of needs, so they work together as a team.
In the bible it is the fathers-in-law who take center stage and they can
be divided into two groups: those who have their sons-in-laws interests, i.e.
the good fathers-in-law and those who thwart them at every turn, i.e. the bad
fathers-in-law. The two obvious bad ones who thwart their sons-in-laws are
Saul and Laban who cheat them of their brides and make demands of them.
Another bad father-in-law is the Timnite, in Judges 15 who takes away
Samson's wife. The two good ones who are clearly supportive of their sons-
in-laws are Yitro and strangely enough the father-in-law of the Levite of
Judges 19. They like them, give them advice and comradery. The Levite's
father-in-law doesn’t want him to leave, he coaxes him to stay so much that
the Levite has to flee. Yitro is the ideal father-in-law: he has Moses' interest
at heart, gives him sound advice and then like the good father-in-law doesn’t
stay around or overstay his welcome even though Moses would like him to.
Finally, as a point of contrast, there is a good mother-in-law, Naomi and
Judah, a bad father-in-law to his daughter-in-law Tamar.
I first began to look at the father-in-law theme and these pairs of
fathers-in-law and sons-in-law when I noticed that the only two places where
the word ḥoten appears are in the story of Yitro and The Father of the
Concubine in Judges 19. So I decided to investigate the whole phenomena

89
Marianne Hirsch, "Reading Ruth with Naomi," in Reading Ruth, Judith A. Kates
and Gail Twersky Reimer, eds., New York: Ballantine Books, 1994): 309-310.
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and ask several questions, always keeping Yitro and the Concubine's father
in mind. It is true that in the case of Saul and David the root of h.t.n. is there,
as it is in Genesis 34: 9, 1 Kings 3:1 (va'yitchaten shlomo et pharaoh) but it
is the form of lehithaten (marrying into a prominent or royal family). A htn
90
is "a relative by marriage" depending on the context. It is a relationship of
91
"affinity" rather than "consanguinity". To me, the big puzzle was why
neither Jacob nor Laban refer to each other as a hatan or hoten. Is it that they
are not in relationship—except one of acrimony—the master over the worker,
the cheater vs. the cheater—never in harmony? Despite this, Laban is the one
who has his daughters’ interests at stake. I will come back to Laban and Jacob
in my conclusion. This exception to the rule, i.e. the non-use of the root htn
to describe relationship, eventually hijacked my paper.
I had several general questions to ask about all of my fathers-in law.
1. What kind of fathers are these men?
2. Do they act appropriately to their daughters?
3. What is the relationship between fathers-in-law and their sons-in-
law?
4. Is the relationship one of expediency? Antagonistic or positive?
5. Is there male bonding?
6. What do the sons-in-law and fathers-in-law gain from this
relationship?
7. Do these relationships shed any light on the relationship between
fathers and daughters?
8. Do the fathers-in-law care about their daughters, do they have their
interests at stake?
9. Is there any emotional connection to their daughters—or do they
regard them as chattel?

I was also interested in seeing if there is evidence of any intertextuality

between the cases? And what are the criteria for identifying intertextual
usage? In his thesis Jordan Scheetz, describes intertextuality as the
"tendency, where a text quotes or alludes to another text and through
the quote or allusion the meaning is changed or broadened…. One sees

90
See T.C. Mitchell, "The meaning of the Noun HTN in the Old Testament," VT 19
(1969):93-112.
91
"Entry on hatan", Gerhard Johannes Botterweck, Helmer Ringgren , eds.,
Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament: hmr-YHWHV (Wm. B. Eerdmans
Publishing, 1986): 270-278.
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 the “transposition,” the words in a new context with a new
92
denotation."
He raises 3 points: 1) Is it any time a same or similar phrase is used by two
or more texts? 2) Is the usage intentional or incidental? And 3) How does one
distinguish between the two?
According to Michael Fishbane, the motivation for intertextuality is
93
exegetical . Some of the intertextual issues I am interested in are:
1. Does the fact that only the Concubine's father and Yitro are referred
to as ḥoten mean anything? One could argue that both Yitro and the
Concubine's father have their daughters' interests at stake, but this
seems superficial if we closely examine the text. Note that Yitro
dumps Tzipporah on Moses and doesn't take any further interest in
her. And think of the consequences to the concubine of her father's
attempt to be hospitable. On the other hand, Yitro is certainly a better
father in law than the one in Judge's 19; The Levite clearly cannot
stand his f.i.l. and leaves in the night, fleeing the scene—almost like
Jacob.
2. Does the fact that Judah and Naomi use their D's IL to promote the
Davidic line mean that these texts have something in common?
Tradition makes connections of course and there is the convenient
wrap up at the end of Ruth.
3. I find it odd that the only ones who protect their daughters are Laban
and the Timnaite's father—and yet they are both considered villains
both in the bible – and in the latter's case both he and daughter end
up as collateral damage.
Much has been written about the intertextuality between Saul and Laban: To
cite one example:
"Saul is a Laban, only with the power to kill. …[B]oth Saul and Laban
changed the terms of their agreements. Scripture points to this striking
similarity, and does so in a way as to make the point unmistakable.
Jacob was faultless in his dealings with Laban (Gen. 31:36). David
was faultless in his dealings with Saul (1 Sam. 19:4). Laban deceived

92
Jordan Scheetz, The Concept of Canonical Intertextuality and the Book of Daniel,
Dissertation, Wien University (2009): 7-8.
93
See Michael Fishbane's three works: The Garments of Torah: Essays in Biblical
Hermeneutics. Bloomington and Indianappolis: Indiana University Press, 1992;
Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985; and
“Revelation and Tradition: Aspects of Inner-Biblical Exegesis.” JBL 99 (1980):
343-361.
-51-
 Jacob by withholding the promised daughter (Gen. 29:25). Saul
deceived David by withholding the promised daughter (1 Sam. 18:19).
Jacob escaped from Laban (Gen. 31:17-21). David escaped from Saul
(1 Sam. 19:12). Laban pursued Jacob (Gen. 31:22-23). Saul pursued
David (1 Sam. 19:11,18-24). Laban's daughter deceived him (Gen.
31:33-35). Saul's daughter deceived him (1 Sam. 19:13-16). Rachel
lies about the teraphim (Gen. 31:33-35). Michal lies with the teraphim
(1 Sam. 19:13-16). Laban wants to know why he was deceived, when
the answer should have been obvious (Gen. 31:27). Saul wants to
know why he was deceived, when the answer should have been
obvious (1 Sam. 19:17). The writer of the book of Samuel is making
94
the point very clear—he wants us to see Saul as a Laban."
Of course, one could argue the opposite, that the author wants us to see
95
Laban as Saul! J.P. Fokkelman was among the first to establish the
connection between the two: both are poor and cannot pay mohar for their
brides, the father-in-law of both is their employer; and there are many
intertextual words like ‫ נ ְַחבֵּ את‬in Genesis 31:27 and 1 Samuel 19:2.
Laban and Jacob's relationship is one of mutual dislike and distrust,
yet Laban has his daughters' interest in mind: in our town, we don’t let the
younger marry first; and he threatens Jacob that if he lays a hand on either of
his daughters he will come after him. Saul in contrast has a love/hate
relationship with David—much of it has to do with his fear of being usurped
as king and also as a beloved figure by his own children (Michal and
Jonathan). And unlike Laban he relates to his daughters as things—they are
objects to be bartered and interchangeable with each other. According to
Barbara Green,
"Saul draws his daughter Michal as an object to be given, as a snare
to bring someone down, and as an alibi for his own hand, as well as to
be a wife for David. He sets her up to diminish her husband, though
96
that intended result is not his to manage fully."
Whereas Laban respects his older daughter’s right to marriage, Saul gives
Meirav away to another man, just like that—as a whim, so that David will be

94
Douglas Wilson, http://www.dougwils.com/Book-of-Samuel/saul-among-the-
prophets.html
95
J.P. Fokkelman, Narrative Art and Poetry in the Books of Samuel II: The
Crossing Fates (1 Sam. 13-31 and 2 Sam. 1). p. 274 Studia Semitica Neerlandica
1986
96
Barbara Green, How Are the Mighty Fallen? A Dialogical Study of King Saul in
1 Samuel. Sheffield: JSOT Supplement Series 365, 2003 p. 303.
-52-
challenged to bring his gruesome bride price to get the next daughter, Michal.
And Michal’s relationship with David will end up being similar to that of her
father’s with David — loving turning to hate. Laban will succeed in siring a
dynasty, whereas Saul’s progeny will die out or be killed. Both Saul and
Laban have lost their children in the popularity contest; worst of all God also
97
loves their sons-in-law more than he loves them.
Keith Bodner suggests that the reason Saul
"shares many characteristics with Laban [and] …why these two
deceptive fathers in Genesis 31 and 1 Samuel 19 have intersecting
character zones is because Saul is presented here as a 'new Laban'. By
comparing Saul with Laban, the Deuteronomist is able to provide some
implicit appraisal of Saul's conduct configured on the Laban model,
then both of these fathers are having to respond to a son-in-law who is
under the promise of election, and in both cases, the father-in-law's
98
schemes are ultimately foiled."
But I would make a major argument in favor of Laban, unlike Saul, he wants
his son-in-law back in the fold and ALIVE, whereas Saul would be very
99
happy to have a dead son-in-law.
There is another hoten who is briefly mentioned and that is Samson’s
father-in-law the Timnite—who also tries to switch daughters, although not
successfully. He does not like Samson and tries to take away the daughter. In
her notes on Judges 14 and 15 Susan Niditch pointed out that the unlucky
Ashkelonites were killed by Samson and served as "booty for in-laws who
had won the riddle wager by forcing his wife into finding his secret and
betraying it." After he leaves the Philistines marry his wife off to one of their
own. When Samson tries to get her back he brings a gift. Niditch points to
the similarity in the interaction between the girl's father and Samson.
"[It] is similar to the way in which other biblical fathers-in-law play
fast and loose with the objects of the young men's interest, for example
Saul and Avid…and Laban and Jacob… In traditional cultures, the
exchange of a woman is a matter of power relations between men, a
contest for relative status. Fathers of brides-to-be are thus portrayed
imposing tests before the marriage is sanctioned, for example, Saul's
demand for one hundred Philistine foreskins…or refusing for one

97
See 1 Samuel 18.28
98
Keith Bodner, 1 Samuel: A Narrative Commentary, Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix
Press, 2008, p.208.
99
See Barbara Green, p. 304 "We might say Saul is thinking, 'be my dead son-in-
law-apparent'."
-53-
 reason or another to proceed with the original deal concerning the
match. Thus David is promised Merab, but she is given to another, and
he has to win the younger daughter Michal…Jacob is given the elder
Leah instead of the desired Rachel, and he has to pay seven more years
of labor for the younger girl whose he loves…Like Saul, the Timnite
father-in-law offers Samson the girl's younger sister as substitute. His
attempt to appease Samson treats his daughters as commodities: "Is
not her sister bitter than she? The alternate bride is not accepted good-
100
naturedly by the superhero. He prepares counter- vengeance."
The Different Groupings:
I have organized the comparisons as follows:
1. The First Pair: Yitro and the Levite's Father-in-Law;
2. The Second Grouping: Laban, Saul and the Timnite's father
3. and a third pair, Judah, a father-in-law of Tamar, his daughter-in-law
and Naomi, the Mother-in-law of Ruth, her daughter-in-law.
There are other intertextual relationships such as those between daughters:
1. Rachel/Michal terafim, cheat fathers; both have the word LOVE
attached to them: Jacob loves Rachel and Michal loves David—and
the f.il. will cause suffering because of this love
2. Concubine runs away to father; Tziporah goes back to father; Tamar
also goes back to her father, although she is still under control of her
f.i.l.
3. Rachel/Tziporah meet husbands at wells;
4. Tziporah uses flint, to protect husband hatan damim, and Michal
saves David from Saul by lying to him.

There are also intertextual relationships between the Sons-in-law:

1. Jacob and Moses and David are shepherds/ J & M for their fathers in
law.
2. Saul and David: just as Saul does NOT look out for his daughters'
interests and uses them as pawns, so too does David not look out for
his daughter Tamar's interest, carrying it even further, bringing the
rapist to the house; and later Jacob will not be such a great parent (to
Dinah or Joseph).

Another intertextual point of comparison is that of crossing borders:

It is interesting that both Naomi and Yitro cross borders with their
daughter/daughter-in-law to bring them back. In Yitro's case to return

100
Susan Niditch, Judges: A Commentary (Louisville: Westminster John Knox,
2008).
-54-
daughter to husband, in Naomi's case to find a husband? And so does the
concubine's husband, who crosses borders to get her and to take her back.
And since we have mentioned Dinah, the daughter, she has crossed the border
by "going out" and then has to be dragged back in by her loco parentis (her
brothers).
In this intertextual context we can also include the necessary crossing
of borders that Abraham's servant and Jacob had to do in order to find their
brides. Another intertextual point is the comparison of the hospitality offered
to the servant by Laban at the time when Rebecca's future was at stake. It is
quite similar in language to that of the concubine's father. If we look at the
delaying tactics of the concubine's father in the context of Laban's offering
hospitality, then it might be a comment on Laban's attempt to keep his sister
from leaving. I think it is fascinating that the only time both ‫ תֶּ בֶ ן‬and ‫ּמ ְספּוֹא‬
appear together is in Genesis 24:32 and Judges 19:19-21
‫בראשית פרק כד‬
ִּ ‫(לב) ַו ָּיב ֹא הָ אישׁ הַ בַּ יְ תָ ה וַיְ ַפתַ ח הַ גְ מַ לִּ ים וַיִּ תֵּ ן תֶּ בֶּ ן‬
‫ּומ ְסּפֹוא לַגְ מַ לִּ ים ּומַ יִּ ם לִּ ְרחֹ ץ ַרגְ ליו‬
:‫וְ ַרגְ לֵּי האֲ נ ִּשים אֲ שֶּ ר ִּאתֹו‬
‫שופטים פרק יט‬
‫ֲמֹורינּו וְ גַם לֶּחֶּ ם ויַיִּ ן יֶּש לִּ י וְ לַאֲ מתֶּ ָך וְ ַלנַעַ ר עִּ ם עֲבדֶּ יָך אֵּ ין‬ ֵּ ‫יט) וְ גַם תֶּ בֶ ן גַם מסְ פּוֹא יֵּש ַלח‬
‫סֹורָך עלי ַרק ב ְרחֹוב אַ ל תלַן‬ ְ ‫כ) ַוי ֹאמֶּ ר ה ִּאיש הַ זקֵּ ן שלֹום לְך ַרק כל מַ ְח‬:(‫מַ ְחסֹור כל דבר‬
::‫מֹורים וַיִּ ְרחֲצּו ַרגְ לֵּיהֶּ ם ַוי ֹאכְ לּו וַיִּ ְשתּו‬ ִּ ‫כא) וַיְ ִּביאֵּ הּו לְ בֵּ יתֹו ויבול וַיבל ַל ֲח‬
A final group is that of parents: where are they in all this? Who is
protecting their offspring's interest? We see that Dinah's brothers take over
Jacob's role. Rebecca and Isaac send Jacob off to fend for himself, whereas
Samson's mother and father are there for him. The concubine's father drops
out early and allows the Levite to take her away. Tzipporah has her father,
until he brings her back. Samson's wife has her father looking out for her, but
it ends tragically. This is more or less a dead end! So I will go back to the
one person who is a father-in-law, but who is NOT called a hoten, and whose
son-in-law is not called a hatan.

CONCLUSION
I have pointed to the anomaly of Laban not being described as a father-in-
law, hoten, or in relationship in any way to Jacob. Whose decision is this?
The Redactors? Does it matter? I would hazard a guess that this has to do
with Laban himself. His biggest tragedy in life was the loss of his beloved
sister Rebekah. He had tried to delay her leaving with Eliezer decades ago.
He had not succeeded. Now he recognizes that he is going to lose his
daughters. Ever since he heard that Yitzchak and Rebecca had twin sons, he
has known that both of them have first rights to his daughters. That was the
way of the world according to the midrash in Babba Batra 123a, Rebecca
-55-
has two sons, [and] Laban has two daughters; the elder [daughter should be
married] to the elder [son] and the younger [daughter should be married] to
the younger [son]). When Jacob came-- and to Laban it was a re-play of the
scene at the well—and fell for his daughter, just as Rebecca fell off her camel
when she saw Isaac—it was love at first sight. All Laban wanted to do was
postpone the inevitable.
First, the seven years, and then the trick of switching his daughters.
"After fourteen years, and earning no property of his own, Jacob must
negotiate an agreement to earn a portion of the flock. The medieval
commentator Rashi tells us that Laban cheated by removing healthy
animals from the flock with the intent of leaving only the sickly and
old animals. Other commentators report that Laban constantly toyed
with Jacob in their negotiations, changing his mind ten times before
finalizing any agreements. As with much of Genesis, this is a
foundational narrative for Jewish perspectives and values, with Jacob
seen as an ideal worker and Laban's behavior as an example to be
avoided. The law code the Shulchan Aruch cites this story in laying
out the obligations of employers to act fairly (Choshen Mishpat
101
337:20)."
After all of his chicaneries which did not work, Laban no longer had
any way of holding on to his daughters. He desperately wanted Jacob stay,
but apparently his daughters did not share the same feelings that he had for
them, and they conspired with Jacob to leave and go back to Jacob's home.
He ran after Jacob, but it didn't do any good—and then he realized that he
would have to back down and made the pact. According to this foundational
narrative, which is bolstered by Nuzi texts, if Laban would have succeeded
"Jacob would have become like the Nuzi herdsmen, who, through debt
and dependence on the livestock owner, affiliated with [Laban's]
family permanently. Because Jacob would not have been able to leave,
Laban would not have to change their relationship and complete the
102
marriage agreement."

101
Jeremy Burton,"Laban's Excuse: Labor Ethics and Community Standards,"
http://www.myjewishlearning.com/texts/Bible/Weekly_Torah_Portion/vayetze_soc
ialaction5762.shtml
102
"The re-payment of missing livestock was a fundamental aspect of the herding
system of the Old Babylonian period and at Nuzi. Moreover, restitution for stolen
livestock is specifically mentioned elsewhere in the biblical record (Exodus 22:12).
Martha A. Morrison, "The Jacob and Laban Narrative in Light of Near Eastern,"
The Biblical Archaeologist, 46: 3 (Summer, 1983):155-164, 161.
-56-
This is probably why the tradition relates to Laban as a villain, the one who
would have destroyed the Jewish people in the Passover haggadah: arami
oved avi (Deut 26:5):
“My father was a fugitive Aramean. He went down to Egypt with
meager numbers and sojourned there; but there he became a great and
very populous nation.
Rashi identifies the Arami with Laban: Laban asked to uproot it all
(‫)לבן בקש לעקור את הכל‬.
Ibn Ezra already questions this tradition and points out that if it was Laban,
it should have been written ‘destroy’ or ‘cause to lose’: ‫ מאביד או מאבד‬.
Clearly the tradition wishes to paint Laban negatively as a villain.
To me the question has always been why? I believe it is connected
to his great love of his sister Rebecca, who was lost to him. He tried to stall
her going back with Eliezer and had he succeeded, perhaps she would have
remained with him and there would have been no marriage between her and
Isaac and there would have been no Jacob.
The connection between all this is that Laban is never referred to as
hoten, because he was never able to face up to the relationship by marriage.
There was no formal marriage agreement. Not only that the prior relationship
is one of blood, not marriage. If we look closely at the text, we see that he
regards Jacob as his sister's son or his "brother", not his son in law!! He sees
him as his own flesh and blood and not a relationship by marriage. In
addition, if he would admit to the marriage relationship, it would mean he
had lost his daughters. Laban saw himself as the paterfamilias. He was never
willing to relinquish this status and transfer his ownership of his daughters
from his protective sphere as father to Jacob as husband, and allow Jacob to
103
establishment his own family unit. He was a good father, had his daughters'
interests in mind, hence his final words, but he was not a good father-in-law.
He never wanted to be one; he wanted to hold on to his daughters, the women
who replaced his loss of his beloved sister Rebecca. He tried, but ultimately
lost and he let go with dignity.

103
See Charles Mabee, "Jacob and Laban: The Structure of Judicial Proceedings
(Genesis XXXI 25-42)," Vetus Testamentum, 30:2 (Apr., 1980): 192-207.
-57-
-58-
CHAPTER FIVE: THE MISSED OPPORTUNITY FOR
INTERMARRIAGE AND CONVERSION IN GENESIS 34: AN
104
INTERTEXTUAL POLEMIC

Abstract: In this piece, I present an intertextual reading of the Dinah story,

focusing on how the story works as a polemic against marriage with non-
Israelites, even those willing to take on Israelite practices. I further explore
rabbinic counter-readings of the text that express the more positive notion of
incorporating converts to Judaism. (For more on the method of intertextual
reading, see the addendum to this article).
Introduction: Overview of the Story
Shechem, son of Hamor, sees Dinah, Jacob’s daughter, as she is visiting the
city. He takes her and, after having intercourse with her, falls in love with her
and wants to marry her. Her father and her brothers agree, on condition that
Shechem and all the townsmen of Shechem circumcise themselves. The
scene is complicated. Jacob's sons are "distressed and very angry, because
[Shechem] had committed an outrage in Israel ‫ כי נְבָ לָה עָשָ ה בְ י ְש ָראֵ ל‬by lying
105
with Jacob’s daughter—a thing not to be done." Then they speak "with
106
guile ‫ בְּ מ ְרמָ ה‬because he had defiled ‫ טמֵ א‬their sister Dinah." "Outrage in
Israel" and the "defiling of daughters" are very loaded terms. The rhetoric
adds fuel to the anger and leads the brothers to claim they cannot "give our
sister to a man who is uncircumcised, for that is a disgrace among us"
107
(Genesis 34: 7-14).
Mixed Messages from the Text
On one hand, the text appears to justify the rage against the defiler of their
sister. On the other hand, the term "with guile," leads the reader to wonder if
the text is hinting at something else. Although the people of Shechem accept
the conditions, Simeon and Levi "came upon the city unhindered" because
the Shechemites were "in pain" recovering from the operation, and "slew all
the males". The other sons of Jacob then "plundered ‫ וּיָבֹ ּזוּ‬the town, because
their sister had been defiled ‫ " ט ְמאוּ‬and took all their wealth, all their children,
104
"The Missed Opportunity for Intermarriage and Conversion in the Story of
Dinah," http://thetorah.com/missed-opportunity-in-the-story-of-dinah/ (December
2014)
105
‫ז) וּבְ נֵי ַיעֲקֹ ב בָּ אוּ מן הַ שָ דֶ ה כְ שָׁ ְמעָם וַּי ְתעַצְ בוּ הָ ֲאנָשׁים וַּיחַ ר לָהֶ ם ְמאֹ ד כי נְ בָ לָה ָעשָ ה בְ י ְש ָראֵ ל ל ְשׁכַב‬
...:‫אֶ ת בַּ ת ַיעֲקֹ ב וְ כֵן ל ֹא ֵיעָשֶ ה‬
106
:‫ג) ַו ַּיעֲנוּ בְ נֵי ַיעֲקֹ ב אֶ ת ְשׁכֶם וְ אֶ ת חֲמוֹר אָ ביו בְּ מ ְרמָ ה וַיְ דַ בֵּ רוּ ֲאשֶׁ ר טמֵ א אֵ ת דינָה אֲחֹ תָ ם‬
107
‫ֹאמרוּ ֲאלֵיהֶ ם ל ֹא נוּכַל ַלעֲשוֹת הַ דָ בָ ר הַ ּזֶה לָתֵ ת אֶ ת ֲא ֹחתֵ נוּ לְ אישׁ ֲאשֶׁ ר לוֹ ע ְָרלָה כי חֶ ְרפָּה הוא‬ ְ ‫יד) ַוּי‬
‫לָנוּ‬
-59-
and their wives; all that was in the houses, they took as captives and booty
108
‫( "שָׁ בוּ וַי ֹבזּו‬Genesis 34: 25-29). Once again, we have both the rhetoric of
defilement (‫ )טמאה‬and the action of plundering (‫ )ביזה‬-- a word with
repercussions that echo throughout the Bible. Finally, in response to this last
act of violence, Jacob says: "You have brought trouble on me, making me
109
odious among the inhabitants of the land" (Gen. 34.30) and the brothers'
reply with a rhetorical question: "Should our sister be treated like a whore?"
110
(Gen. 34.31).
Who has the last word?
The brothers' reply would seem to trump Jacob's response for they have the
last word in this text. And Genesis 34 neither explicitly criticizes the brothers
for their violent act of revenge nor Jacob for being a silent father. But another
text offers Jacob the last word, for on his deathbed in a passage understood
by most exegetes, both traditional and modern, to be a commentary on this
111
episode. He says:

108
‫(כה) וַיְ הי בַ ּיוֹם הַ ְשלישׁי בּהְ יוֹתָ ם כֹ אֲ בים וַּיקְ חוּ ְשׁנֵי ְבנֵי ַיעֲקֹ ב שׁ ְמעוֹן וְ לֵוי ֲאחֵ י דינָה אישׁ חַ ְרבּוֹ ַוּיָבֹ אוּ‬
‫(כח) אֶ ת‬:‫עַל הָ עיר בֶּ טַ ח ַוּיַהַ ְרגוּ כָל ָזכָר… (כז) בְּ נֵי ַיעֲקֹ ב בָּ אוּ עַל הַ ֲחלָלים ַוּיָבֹ ּזוּ הָ עיר ֲאשֶׁ ר ט ְמאוּ אֲחוֹתָ ם‬
‫(כט) וְ אֶ ת כָל חֵ ילָם וְ אֶ ת כָל טַ פָּם‬:‫צ ֹאנָם וְ אֶ ת בְּ קָ ָרם וְ אֶ ת חֲמֹ ֵריהֶ ם וְ אֵ ת אֲ שֶׁ ר בָּ עיר וְ אֶ ת ֲאשֶׁ ר בַּ שָ דֶ ה לָקָ חוּ‬
:‫וְ אֶ ת נְ שֵׁ יהֶ ם שָׁ בוּ ַוּיָבֹ ּזוּ וְ אֵ ת כָל אֲשֶׁ ר בַּ בָּ ית‬
109
‫ֲעכ ְַרתֶּ ם אֹ תי לְ הַ בְ אישֵׁ ני בְּ יֹ שֵׁ ב הָ אָ ֶרץ בַּ כְ ַנעֲני וּבַ פְּ רּזי‬
110
‫הַ כְ זוֹנָה ַיעֲשֶ ה אֶ ת אֲחוֹתֵ נוּ‬
111
Some scholars wonder if the curse directed to Simeon and Levi (Genesis 49:5-7)
is directly connected to the story. First of all, one text is in the form of a poem and
the other is a narrative text. Some consider Jacob’s blessings to be the oldest strata
in the Bible which reflect tribal sayings that can also be found in the poetry of
Judges 5 (composed in the 12th century BCE) and Deuteronomy 33 and Genesis 49
(composed later in the 11th century BCE). In fact, some scholars claim that Genesis
34 was introduced to provide a background for the older text of Genesis 49:5-7.
See Westermann, Genesis 37-50, pgs 221-22; D. N. Freedman, “Divine Names and
Titles in Early Hebrew Poetry,” in Pottery, Poetry, and Prophecy (Winona Lake,
IN., Eisenbrauns, 1980), 90 and F. M. Cross and D. N. Freedman, Studies in
Ancient Yahwistic Poetry. SBLDS 21 (Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1975), 6-7.
Finally, Walter Brueggemann, Genesis (Atlanta: John Knox press, 1982): 365,
asserts there is no evidence to connect Genesis 49 to the surrounding text 48:1-
50:14.
For one example of traditional commentary see the midrash aggadah for Genesis
49:7:
...:‫ לא רצה לקללם וקלל אפם‬.‫ז] ארור אפם כי עז‬: ‫מדרש אגדה (בובר) בראשית פרשת ויחי פרק מט‬
:‫ בשעה שהרגו שכם בן חמור‬.‫ד"א ארור אפם כי עז‬
-60-
 "Simon and Levi are a pair; Their weapons are tools of lawlessness....
When angry they slay men, and when pleased they maim oxen. Cursed
be their anger so fierce...I will divide them in Jacob, Scatter them in
112
Israel" (Gen. 49.5-7).
Thus it would seem that not only is Jacob cursing his sons for what they did
in Shechem, but for having "anger so fierce" that they do not know how to
control it, with the terrible consequences that resulted from this anger. It is
113
fitting that their punishment will be one of being scattered ‫ ואפיצם‬in Israel.
Looking ahead, Genesis 34 seems to align itself with the law in
Deuteronomy (22:28-29) that states that a man must marry the maiden he
114
rapes. Thus one could argue that Shechem is willing to obey the commonly
accepted legal norms and behaves according to these norms in his desire to
marry Dinah. The brothers, contrary to Deuteronomy, sin in interfering with
Shechem's obligation to marry Dinah as well as cutting off her only chance
115
of marriage.
Not a Story about Rape but a Polemic against Intermarriage

112
‫(ו) בְּ סֹ דָ ם אַ ל תָּ ב ֹא נַפְ שׁי בּקְ הָ לָם אַ ל תֵּ חַ ד כְ בֹ די כי בְ אַ ָפּם הָ ְרגוּ‬:‫שׁ ְמעוֹן וְ לֵוי אַ חים כְ לֵי חָ מָ ס ְמכֵרֹ תֵ יהֶ ם‬
:‫(ז) אָ רוּר אַ פָּם כי ָעז וְ עֶבְ ָרתָ ם כי קָ שָׁ תָ ה ֲאחַ לְ קֵ ם בְּ ַיעֲקֹ ב ַו ֲאפיצֵ ם בְּ י ְש ָראֵ ל‬:‫אישׁ וּב ְרצֹ נָם עקְ רוּ שׁוֹר‬
There have been suggestions that the prohibition of plowing an ox and an ass (‫)חמור‬
together is a veiled allusion to the threat of the intermarriage of Dinah and
Shechem, whose father's name is Hamor (ass); see Calum Carmichael, "Forbidden
Mixtures," Vetus Testamentum 32 (1982): 394-415.
113
:‫תהלים פרק סח ב) יָקוּם אֱֹלהים יָפוּצוּ אוֹיְ בָ יו וְ יָנוּסוּ ְמשַ נְ אָ יו מ ָפּנָיו‬
I find it ironic that the verb ‫ יפוצו‬is also associated with the dispersion of one's
enemies and hated people. See Psalms 68:2 "God will arise, His enemies will be
scattered, His foes shall flee before Him." Note the similarity of the phrase we sing
when we take out the Torah: ‫ וינסו משנאיך מפניך‬,‫קומה ה" ויפצו איביך‬. It is also the word
used by God in scattering the human beings in the tower of Babel ‫ויפץ ה" אתם‬
(Genesis 11:8)
114
"If a man comes upon a virgin who is not engaged and he seizes her and lies
with her, and they are discovered, the man who lay with her shall pay the girl's
father fifty <shekels of> silver, and she shall be his wife. Because he has violated
her, he can never have the right to divorce her."
‫(כט) וְ נָתַ ן‬:‫וּת ָפשָ ּה וְ שָׁ כַב עמָ ּה וְ נ ְמצָ אוּ‬ ְ ‫דברים פרק כב (כח) כי י ְמצָ א אישׁ ַנע ֲָר בְ תוּלָה ֲאשֶׁ ר ל ֹא אֹ ָרשָ ה‬
‫הָ אישׁ הַ שֹ כֵב עמָ ּה ַלאֲבי‬
:‫הַ ַנע ֲָר חֲמשים כָסֶ ף וְ לוֹ תהְ יֶה לְ אשָ ה תַּ חַ ת ֲאשֶׁ ר ענָּה ל ֹא יוּכַל שַׁ לְ חָ ּה כָל יָמָ יו‬
115
Calum Carmichael considers much of Deuteronomy to be an internal
commentary on the story of Dinah. Calum Carmichael, Women, Law, and the
Genesis Traditions (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press ,1979): 33-48
-61-
 116
Although the story uses (or appears to use) a case of rape (‫ )ויענה‬Shechem
117
“takes” Dinah (‫)לקח‬, the usual term for men taking wives. Moreover, when
Shechem offers to marry the girl, he is doing the right thing, and when all the
Shechemites offer to circumcise themselves, they are going above and
beyond. So why do the brothers react so vehemently to the marriage proposal
of Shechem? Why not merge the nations? The answer, I believe, is because
118
the story reflects a polemic against intermarriage.
Many biblical texts participate in this polemic; one such core text
appears in the Book of Deuteronomy, and deals specifically with Canaanites,
including Hivites, the tribe of Shechem:
1When the Lord your God brings you to the land that you are about to
enter and possess, and He dislodges many nations before you— the
Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and
Jebusites, seven nations much larger than you—2and the Lord your
God delivers them to you and you defeat them, you must doom them
to destruction: grant them no terms and give them no quarter. 3You
shall not intermarry [Hebrew ‫ ]תתחתן‬with them: do not give your
daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons
119
(Deuteronomy 7:1-3).

116
Tikva Frymer-Kensky and others have argued that what took place was not a
rape. See "Law and Philosophy: The Case of Sex in the Bible," Semeia 45 (1989):
100 n.9 On the other hand see Naomi Graetz, " Dinah the Daughter", in Athalya
Brenner (editor), A Feminist Companion to Genesis (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic
Press, 1993): 306-317
117
See the quote from Deuteronomy 22 above and Mishnah Kiddushin 1:1 "A
woman is purchased in three ways…through money, a bill/contract and through
intercourse."
...‫משנה מסכת קידושין פרק א משנה א האשה נקנית בשלש דרכים … נקנית בכסף בשטר ובביאה‬
118
There is ongoing debate of whether the narrative stories of Genesis precede the
legal literature of Deuteronomy. E.g. Carmichael's approach vs. that of Gershon
Hepner , in “The Separation Between Abram and Lot Reflects the Deuteronomic
Law Prohibiting Ammonites and Moabites,” ZAW 117 [2005]: 36–52)] See too,
Stephen. A. Geller "The Rape of Dinah," in his book Sacred Enigmas: Literary
Religion in the Hebrew Bible (London: Routledge, 1996): 141-156. [I thank the
editors of TABS for bringing Geller's book to my attention.]
119
‫ם־ר ֵ֣בּים׀ מ ָפּ ֶֶ֡ניך ַ ָֽהחתּ ֩י‬ ַ ‫ָשׁל גָֽ וֹי‬ ֵ֣ ַ ‫א־שׁמָ ה לְ ר ְשׁ ָ ֵ֑תּּה וְ נ‬
ָׁ֖ ָ ָ‫ֱֹלהיך אֶ ל־הָ ָ֕ ָא ֶרץ ֲאשֶׁ ר־אַ ָ ֥תּה ב‬ ֶ ֶ֔ ‫א) ִ֤כי יְ ָֽבי ֲאךָ֙ יְ קֹ וָ ֵ֣ק א‬
‫ (ב) וּנְ תָ ָָ֞נם יְ קֹ וָ ָ֧ק‬:ָ‫ֲצוּמים מ ֶ ָֽמך‬
ָׁ֖ ‫גוֹים ַר ֥בּים ַוע‬ ֶ֔ ‫בוּסי שׁבְ עָ ֵ֣ה‬ ֶ֔ ְ‫וְ הַ ג ְרג ָָ֨שׁ י וְ הָ ֱאמֹ ִ֜רי וְ הַ כְ ַנעֲנֵ֣י וְ הַ פְּ ר ּ֗זי וְ ַ ָֽהחוּיָ֙ וְ הַ י‬
ָ֙‫ (ג) וְ ֥ל ֹא ת ְתחַ ֵ ָׁ֖תּן ָבֵּ֑ם בּ ְתּך‬:‫יתם הַ ח ֵ ֲִ֤רם תַּ חֲריםָ֙ אֹ ֶ֔ ָתם ל ֹא־תכְ ֥רֹ ת ל ֶָהֶ֛ם בְּ ָׁ֖רית וְ ֥ל ֹא ְתחָ ֵ ָֽנם‬ ֵ֑ ָ ‫ֱֹלהֶ֛יך לְ פָנֶ ָׁ֖יך וְ הכ‬
ֶ ‫א‬
:‫ל ֹא־ת ֵ ֵ֣תּן לבְ נֶ֔ וֹ וּב ָׁ֖תּוֹ ל ֹא־ת ַ ֥קח לבְ ֶנָָֽֽך‬
-62-
 The books of Ezra and Nehemiah take this prohibition very seriously,
making it a central theme of their nationalist projects. To Ezra, who is of an
120
esteemed priestly descent (a cohen), intermarriage defiles, destroying the
121
holiness of the Jews. The holy seed cannot be wasted on outsiders.
Furthermore, in Ezra and Nehemiah, outsiders cannot become insiders
122
through conversion. This, I argue is the view of the brothers in the Dinah
story, who will not accept the people of Shechem, even once they are
circumcised. To them, a nevala (outrage) has been committed against Israel

120
‫עזרא פרק ז (א) וְ אַ חַ ר הַ ְדבָ רים הָ אֵ לֶה בְּ מַ לְ כוּת אַ ְרתַּ חְ שַׁ ְס ְתּא מֶ לְֶך פּ ָָרס ֶעז ְָרא בֶּ ן ְש ָריָה בֶּ ן ֲעז ְַריָה בֶּ ן‬
‫(ד) בֶּ ן ז ְַרחְ יָה בֶ ן עֻּזי בֶּ ן‬:‫(ג) בֶּ ן אֲמַ ְריָה בֶ ן ֲעז ְַריָה בֶּ ן ְמ ָריוֹת‬:‫(ב) בֶּ ן שַׁ לוּ ם בֶּ ן צָ דוֹק בֶּ ן אֲחיטוּב‬:‫חלְ קּיָה‬
‫(ו) הוּא ֶעז ְָרא ָעלָה מבָּ בֶ ל וְ הוּא סֹ פֵר‬:‫(ה) בֶּ ן אֲבישׁוּ ַע בֶּ ן פּינְ חָ ס בֶּ ן אֶ לְ ָעזָר בֶּ ן אַ הֲרֹ ן הַ כֹ הֵ ן הָ ר ֹאשׁ‬:‫בֻּקי‬
‫ פ‬:‫מָ היר בְּ ת ַוֹרת מֹ שֶׁ ה ֲאשֶׁ ר נָתַ ן יְ קֹ וָק ֱאֹלהֵ י י ְש ָראֵ ל וַּיתֶּ ן לוֹ הַ מֶ לְֶך כְ יַד יְ קֹ וָק ֱאֹלהָ יו ָעלָיו כֹ ל בַּ קָ שָׁ תוֹ‬
121
‫עזרא פרק ט (א) וּכְ כַלוֹת אֵ לֶה נגְ שׁוּ אֵ לַי הַ שָ רים לֵאמֹ ר ל ֹא נבְ ְדלוּ הָ עָם י ְש ָראֵ ל וְ הַ כֹ הֲנים וְ הַ לְ וּים‬
‫(ב) כי נ ְָשאוּ‬:‫מֵ עַמֵ י הָ ֲא ָרצוֹת כְ תוֹעֲבֹ תֵ יהֶ ם לַכְ ַנעֲני הַ חתּי הַ פְּ רּזי הַ יְ בוּסי הָ ַעמֹ ני הַ מֹ אָ בי הַ מצְ רי וְ הָ אֱמֹ רי‬
‫מבְּ נֹ תֵ יהֶ ם לָהֶ ם וְ לבְ נֵיהֶ ם וְ ה ְתע ְָרבוּ ז ֶַרע הַ קֹ דֶ שׁ בְּ עַמֵ י הָ א ֲָרצוֹת וְ יַד הַ שָ רים וְ הַ ְס ָגנים הָ יְ תָ ה בַּ מַ עַל הַ ּזֶה‬
‫ ס‬:‫ראשׁוֹנָה‬
Ezra 9 When this was over, the officers approached me, saying, “The people of
Israel and the priests and Levites have not separated themselves from the peoples
of the land whose abhorrent practices are like those of the Canaanites, the Hittites,
the Perizzites, the Jebusites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Egyptians, and the
Amorites. 2They have taken their daughters as wives for themselves and for their
sons, so that the holy seed has become intermingled with the peoples of the land;
and it is the officers and prefects who have taken the lead in this trespass.”
‫נחמיה פרק יג כג) גַם בַּ ּיָמים הָ הֵ ם ָראיתי אֶ ת הַ ּיְ הוּדים הֹ שׁיבוּ נָשׁים אשדודיות אַ ְשׁדֳּדּיוֹת עמוניות‬
)‫כה‬:‫כד) וּ בְ נֵיהֶ ם חֲצי ְמדַ בֵּ ר אַ ְשׁדוֹדית וְ אֵ ינָם מַ כירים לְ דַ בֵּ ר יְ הוּדית וְ כלְ שׁוֹן עַם ָועָם‬:‫ַעמֳּנּיוֹת מוֹ ֲאבּיוֹת‬
‫וָאָ ריב עמָ ם וָאֲ קַ לְ לֵם וָאַ כֶה מֵ הֶ ם אֲ נָשׁים וָאֶ ְמ ְרטֵ ם וָאַ ְשׁבּיעֵם בֵּ אֹלהים אם תּ ְתּנוּ בְ נֹ תֵ יכֶם לבְ נֵיהֶ ם וְ אם‬
‫ כו) הֲלוֹא עַל אֵ לֶה חָ טָ א ְשֹׁלמֹ ה מֶ לְֶך י ְש ָראֵ ל וּבַ גוֹים הָ ַרבּים ל ֹא הָ יָה מֶ לְֶך‬: ‫תּ ְשאוּ מבְּ נֹ תֵ יהֶ ם לבְ נֵיכֶם וְ ָלכֶם‬
:‫כָמֹ הוּ וְ אָ הוּב לֵאֹלהָ יו הָ יָה וַּי ְתּנֵהוּ אֱֹלהים מֶ לְֶך עַל כָל י ְש ָראֵ ל גַם אוֹתוֹ הֶ חֱטיאוּ הַ נָשׁים הַ נָכְ רּיוֹת‬
Nehemiah 13 23Also at that time, I saw that Jews had married Ashdodite,
Ammonite, and Moabite women; 24a good number of their children spoke the
language of Ashdod and the language of those various peoples, and did not know
how to speak Judean. 25I censured them, cursed them, flogged them, tore out their
hair, and adjured them by God, saying, “You shall not give your daughters in
marriage to their sons, or take any of their daughters for your sons or yourselves.
26It was just in such things that King Solomon of Israel sinned! Among the many
nations there was not a king like him, and so well loved was he by his God that
God made him king of all Israel, yet foreign wives caused even him to sin.
122
Shaye J. D. Cohen in The Beginnings of Jewishness: Boundaries, Varieties,
Uncertainties -- Hellenistic Culture and Society (University of California Press,
1999) argues that conversion only began in the post-biblical period.
-63-
(Gen 34: 7) when there is sexual intercourse between an Israelite and an
outsider.
Typically, Genesis 34 and 49, and Ezra-Nehemiah are not read in
dialogue with one another, since they show little common vocabulary to
suggest that one knew the other. Yet some modern literary scholars have
suggested a method of reading called intertextuality, where different texts are
read in relation to each other even if the author of the later text did not intend
to allude to an earlier text (see the addendum). With this in mind, I would
like to return to these texts, to see how they might be in dialogue with each
other.
If we read the Dinah story with Deuteronomy 7 and Ezra-Nehemiah,
it is possible that Genesis 34, in its absolute approach against exogamy, is
123
part of this polemic. But there is a problem with equating the world view
of Ezra/Nehemiah with Genesis 34. Ezra's concern is mainly for the men who
124
have married out and not the women . But here it is Dinah, a daughter/sister
who is marrying out.
A Positive View of Including Non-Israelites
The viewpoint expressed by Genesis 34, Deuteronomy, Ezra and Nehemiah
is not the only approach to strangers and their status in the Bible. Another
stance in the Bible regards outsiders such as Yitro, Tamar, Ruth, Yael, and
Rahab positively. According to this view, outsiders can be allies and
contribute to the Israelite endeavor. It may even be that these texts are arguing

123
I would add that Ezra/Nehemiah are reflecting the priestly tradition, of which
Levi would certainly partake. Claus Westermann’s Commentary (1961) on this
chapter considers the story of Dinah a midrash on Deut. 7: 2-3. He says the
redactor took the law and “built it into a patriarchal story that had come down to
him, and so adapted it into a narrative exemplifying the execution of a command of
the Torah.” For more about this see Benedikt Conczorowski, “All the Same as
Ezra: Conceptual Differences between the Texts of Intermarriage in Genesis,
Deuteronomy 7, and Ezra,” pp. 89–108. In his view, intermarriage is prohibited for
two main reasons: a diffuse moral and an explicit religious argument. A text such
as Gen 34 reflects the former, while Deut 7 is typical of the latter. Ezra 9–10 builds
on the religious nature of Deut 7 while merging it with the absolutism of Gen 34."
[the quotation is from a review by Steven J. Schweitzer, which appeared in Journal
of Hebrew Scriptures - Volume 12 (2012).
124
Nehemiah (13:25) writes that "You shall not give your daughters in marriage to
their sons" and also in Ezra 9:12 "Now then, do not give your daughters in
marriage to their sons or let their daughters marry your sons; do nothing for their
well-being or advantage, then you will be strong and enjoy the bounty of the land
and bequeath it to your children forever."
-64-
against the Deuteronomy, Ezra and Nehemiah and are overtly or covertly a
125
polemic against those who are overly concerned with the holy seed.
Biblical texts describe a number of the Israelite ancestor figures as
“intermarried”, like Judah with Bat-Shua, Joseph with Asenat and Moses
126
with Tzipporah, and there seems to be little controversy about this.
Traditionally, these famous intermarriages would be explained as “necessary
evils” from a time where there were limited options, but that certainly, as
Israel grows into a nation, the ideal is endogamy. However, there is another
reading of these traditions. Perhaps, the stories about intermarried ancestor
figures are really polemical in nature, and are actively advocating exogamy
as a legitimate practice, especially if one imagines the non-Israelite partner
127
adopting Israelite practices.

Rabbinic Attitudes to Genesis 34

Although the text of Genesis 34 may side with the more xenophobic tradition
of Ezra and Nehemiah, several midrashim paint Simeon and Levi's act in a
negative light. Below are three examples:
A. In a commentary related to Jacob’s curses, the midrash (Genesis
Rabbah "Vaychi" 98) interprets “in their fanaticism (apam) they killed a
man" to refer to people who were ready to convert. Also it interprets "they
castrated a bull (shor)" to mean they uprooted a line (shuron) of potential
128
converts. Thus, the midrash has Jacob chastise the brothers for destroying

125
In a diachronic view it is important to decide which texts come first
chronologically, however, I am approaching the texts synchronically and thus am
more interested in the internal commentary that is made in these texts.
126
Other examples are Judah/Tamar, Boaz/Ruth, Joshua/Rahab in midrash,
Abraham /Hagar and Keturah (who is Hagar in the midrash), Solomon and his
multiple wives (although the latter is criticized for this). Thus the myth of
endogamy: Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel/Leah breaks down in the next generation. Are
male converts more threatening than female converts?
127
As noted above (in Shaye Cohen's book), conversion is never explicit in the
Hebrew Bible. Ruth does not convert—she does not go through a ritual where she
transforms from Moabite to Israelite. This is clear from 1:22, right after her famous
declaration in 1:16-17, she is still called “Ruth the Moabite” and she defines herself
to Boaz in 2:10 "why are you so kind…when I am a foreigner" ( ‫) נכריה‬. Thus, it is
best to refer to Ruth 1:16-17 as a declaration of affiliation with the Jewish people,
rather than as a (formal) conversion.
128
‫בראשית רבה (וילנא) פרשת ויחי פרשה צח‬
-65-
a potential population of converts. I believe that their act was particularly
disturbing to the writers of the midrash because the brothers did not trust the
sincerity of those who wanted to convert.
B. Another commentary (Sechel Tov on Gen 34:8) relates to Hamor's
speech, in which he uses the word ‫ק ְשׁכֶם בְּ ני ח ְשקה נַפְ שֹו בְּ ב ְתּכֶם‬-‫ש‬-‫ ח‬when he
tries to convince Jacob to let his son Shechem marry Dinah. The author of
th
the midrash, Rabbi Menachem ben Shlomo (12 century Italy), notes that the
word denotes affection and acquisition, two things which are bound together
as one. He then claims that the term "your (plural) daughter" is not addressed
to Jacob and his sons, but to Jacob and Leah. In other words, Hamor is
attempting to convince Leah to agree to Dinah's marriage with his son. Thus
there is a suggestion that the match between their children would not have
been a bad idea and that there is a genuine desire to be part of the mishpacha
129
coming from Shechem.
C. In a harsh text, the Bavli (Sanhedrin 99b) decries those who would
keep out potential converts. The example used in this text is not that of
Simeon and Levi, but the patriarchs. The text states that because Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob did not accept Timna as a convert, she married the son of
130
Esau and her descendant was Amalek. In other words, they should not have
rejected her and because they did so, they created an everlasting enemy for
131
their descendants.

‫ זה‬,‫ כי באפם הרגו איש‬,‫ר"ה ורבי חנינא ורבי פנחס תלתיהון אמרי בן יצהר בן קהת בן לוי בן ישראל‬
‫ רבי חוניא ורבי ירמיה בשם רבי אחייא בר אבא‬,‫ עקרתון שורן של גרים‬,‫ עקרו שור‬,‫חמור אבי שכם‬
....‫דכתיב וברצונם עקרו שור בשביל לעשות רצון יצרכם עקרתם שורן של גרים‬
129
‫שכל טוב (בובר) בראשית פרשת וישלח פרק לד סימן ח‬
‫ ודומה לו חשק‬,‫ לשון חיבה‬.‫ שכם בני חשקה נפשו‬:‫ ע"י שלוחים‬.‫ לאמר‬:‫ פה אל פה‬.‫וידבר חמור אתם‬
‫ ולבי רחש להדביר מלת חשק על אופן חיבור‬,‫ אלו דברי רבותינו‬,)‫ה' לאהבה [אותם] (דברים י טו‬
‫ וכן חשקה‬,)‫ ודומה לו מחושקים כסף (שמות כז יז‬,‫ כגון שני דברים מתאחין בחיבור זה עם זה‬,‫וכיבוש‬
,‫ מלמד שפייס גם לאה‬.‫ בבתכם‬:‫ וכל דומיהן נדרשין כך‬,‫נפשי לשון איחוי וחיבור וכיבוש יצר הרע‬
‫ שהרי תמה‬.‫ לו לאשה‬:‫ נא לשון בקשה‬.‫ תנו נא אותה‬:‫ומפני דרך הכבוד לא הזכירה הכתוב אלא ברמז‬
:‫על מה שעשה‬
I would like to thank Rabbi Michael Graetz for bringing all these commentaries
bringing to my attention.
130
"Timna was a concubine of Eliphaz, Esau's son. She bore Amalek to Eliphaz"
(Genesis 36:12).
131
‫ תמנע‬- ?‫ מיהת אחות לוטן תמנע מאי היא‬,‫תלמוד בבלי מסכת סנהדרין דף צט עמוד ב דאתן עלה‬
,‫ בעיא לאיגיורי‬.‫ מלכותא בלא תאגא היא‬- ‫ וכל אלוף‬.‫ דכתיב אלוף לוטן אלוף תמנע‬,‫בת מלכים הואי‬
‫ מוטב תהא‬:‫ אמרה‬.‫ הלכה והיתה פילגש לאליפז בן עשו‬,‫באתה אצל אברהם יצחק ויעקב ולא קבלוה‬
- ‫ מאי טעמא‬.‫ דצערינהו לישראל‬,‫ נפק מינה עמלק‬.‫ ולא תהא גבירה לאומה אחרת‬,‫שפחה לאומה זו‬
.‫דלא איבעי להו לרחקה‬
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Conclusion
The rabbinic reading brings up a counter-factual possibility: What
could have happened if in the story the brothers had gone along with the
marriage proposal, if, for example, Jacob had been a stronger leader, who
could bring his sons to see things in a different light? Instead, the brothers
trick Jacob as well, and he is left holding his tongue until his deathbed, when
he finally lashes out at his sons and curses them for their folly. But imagine
a different story. Imagine a Torah that, instead of telling about battles and the
eventual conquest of the local inhabitants by the Israelites, told us about how
the Israelites and the Hivites made peace and lived side by side as neighbors,
with most of the locals joining Abraham's religion as converts. It could have
been a lasting, spiritual coup--one that could have served as a model for
132
succeeding generations including our own.
Addendum: A Note on Methodology: --What Is Intertextual Reading?
The methodology I have been using is that of intertextuality, a method that
has been used to good effect by the midrash. It is sometimes referred to as
inner biblical exegesis, interpretation, or allusion. Benjamin D. Sommer
points out the usefulness of an intertextual approach, since it does not have
to address the question of which text borrows from which, and what becomes

A propos, what is the purpose of [writing], And Lotan's sister was Timna? —
Timna was a royal princess, as it is written, alluf [duke] Lotan, alluf [duke] Timna;
and by ‘alluf’ an uncrowned ruler is meant. Desiring to become a proselyte, she
went to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but they did not accept her. So she went and
became a concubine to Eliphaz the son of Esau, saying, ‘I had rather be a servant to
this people than a mistress of another nation.’ From her Amalek was descended
who afflicted Israel. Why so? — Because they should not have repulsed her
132
Netanel Fisher, in "A Jewish State? Controversial Conversions and the
Dispute Over Israel’s Jewish Character," Contemporary Jewry (published online:
6 November 2013) points to the dispute between Rabbis Goren and Eliyashiv in his
attempt to outline the ideological and theological controversy over the issue of
conversion to Judaism in Israel that has remained on the agenda of the Israeli
public discourse since its founding. As of today's writing a liberal bill about
conversion has passed the Knesset in a first reading. It remains to be seen if it will
actually pass.
-67-
 133
important is the relevance of the reader who sees the parallels in the texts.
134
It is a synchronic approach to text, rather than a diachronic approach.
The concept is usually associated with the early 20th century Russian
literary critic, Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975), who was one of the first to
135
introduce the idea that texts are in dialogue with each other. It is important
for the reader to note the similarities between two or more texts before
hypothesizing an intertextual relationship. Often an intertextual reading can
136
create a new text by the interaction of both texts. In this piece, what I have

133
In Naomi Graetz, " Dinah the Daughter", I used the term "internal
commentary" which is what Michael Fishbane in Biblical Interpretation in
Ancient Israel (Oxford, 1985) called what is known today as intertextual
reading. See Russell L. Meek, "Intertextuality, Inner-Biblical Exegesis, and
Inner-Biblical Allusion: The Ethics of a Methodology", Biblical Studies on the
Web Vol. 85 (2014): 280-29. [http://www.bsw.org/biblica/vol-95-
2014/intertextuality-inner-biblical-exegesis-and-inner-biblical-allusion-the-
ethics-of-a-methodology/566/]. It is sometimes referred to as inner biblical
exegesis, interpretation, or allusion. See Benjamin D. Sommer's "Exegesis,
Allusion and Intertextuality in the Hebrew Bible: A Response to Lyle Eslinger
in Vetus Testamentum, Vol. 46, Fasc. 4 (Oct., 1996): 479-489.
134
For an excellent article on the differences see Zipora Talshir, "Synchronic and
Diachronic Approaches in the Study of the Hebrew Bible: Text Criticism within the
frame of Biblical Philology," Textus XXIII (2007): 1-32. She argues that
"intertextuality blurs the borders between works of distinctive provenance, works
whose diachronic interrelationship has long been established."(page 2) Her article
is available on her website at
https://www.academia.edu/3714447/Synchronic_and_Diachronic_approaches_in_t
he_Study_of_the_Hebrew_Bible
135
He based his theory on his understanding of Dostoevsky. "Life by its very
nature is dialogic. To live means to participate in dialogue: to ask questions, to
heed, to respond, to agree, and so forth. In this dialogue a person participates
wholly and throughout his whole life: with his eyes, lips, hands, soul, spirit, with
his whole body and deeds. He invests his entire self in discourse, and this discourse
enters into the dialogic fabric of human life, into the world symposium. Bakhtin,
Mikhail M. Problems of Dostoyesky’s Poetics, edited and translated by Caryl
Emerson. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1984): 293. The term was
popularized by Julia Kristeva in the 1960's.
136
Ellen Van Wolde. "Intertextuality: Ruth in Dialogue with Tamar," in Athalya
Brenner and Carole Fontaine, Editors. A Feminist Companion to Reading the Bible:
Approaches, Methods and Strategies (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997):
427-433.
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 137
beenn arguing is that Genesis 34 is in dialogue with other biblical texts,
and perhaps that by this interaction we can begin a new dialogue and create
a new textual reality.

137
In my own writings, I have used Genesis 34 intertextually with 2 Samuel 13 (the
story of Tamar's rape by her brother Amnon), Judges 19 (The Concubine of
Gibeah). I have also pointed out that the phrase ‫ דבר על לב‬appears in many other
texts (Genesis 51:21; Judges 19:3; 2 Samuel 19:8; Hosea 2:16 and other places) to
show that the person speaking has power over the addressee. See Naomi Graetz,
"The Concubine of Gibeah: The Case for Reading Intertextually," in In the Arms of
Biblical Women edited by John T. Greene and Mishael M. Caspi (Piscataway NJ:
Gorgias Press, 2013): 121-143.
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-70-
CHAPTER SIX: RABBINIC COMMENTARIES ON BIBLICAL
138
WOMEN: THE CASE OF DINAH

Rabbinic Attitudes Towards Biblical Women

Despite the fact that the biblical woman is visible mostly as a dependent in a
male-dominated society, many of the women in the Bible are dealt with
respectfully. It is possible to find textual evidence which argues both for and
against the idea that biblical women are equal in Jewish law.
There is a marked shift, however, in attitudes toward women during the
rabbinic period. What accounts for it? There are many possible answers:
1) One is that some rabbis were a product of their society's conditioning and
could not conceive of any alternatives for women.
2) Another possibility is that a pattern of restrictiveness against women
developed in Judaism after the return from the Babylonian exile where the
Jews had been threatened both physically and spiritually.
3) A third postulate is that the exclusion of women from public life in the
Talmudic period finds its analogue in Ancient Greek society or in Judaism's
opposition to the emergence of the universalistic Christianity which
proclaimed...there can be no male and female; for ye all are one... (Galatians
3:28).
4) No doubt one can even argue that Moslem society's uncompromising
rejection of an honored role for women influenced rabbinic thought.
It is beyond the scope of this paper to determine what exactly was
responsible for this shift in attitude. What must be kept in mind is the fact
that there was such a shift and that misogyny which expressed itself in
discriminatory practice was already a prevalent attitude by rabbinic times
with the resultant emphasis on religious collective concerns rather than
respect for the individual feminine personality.
Whenever they could many rabbis inserted negative comments about
biblical women. There are two examples of this in stories relating to the
creation of Eve in your handout. Another example of such gratuitous
comments can be found in the midrashim on Ecclesiastes. Both midrash #3
and #4 reflect the misogynist views of the author of the Book of Kohelet on

138
This is a paper I gave first at the First International Conference on Halakha and
the Jewish Woman, in Jerusalem, organized by Pnina Peli and Chana Safrai in
December, 1986. I then re-wrote it for the Third Interdisciplinary Congress on
Women in Dublin, 1987. It was never published and the original handout and 38
footnotes disappeared. I don’t have the original notes either, so hopefully, I’m not
plagiarizing too much.

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which they are based. In the story which explicates the text I find more bitter
than death the woman (Eccl 7: 26) the rabbis write that women literally kill
men by making unreasonable demands.
Perhaps the most famous and oft-quoted midrash about women in the
Bible is the passage on vayyiben which the rabbis repeat whenever
opportunity presents itself--as if once were not enough.
R. Joshua of Siknin said in R. Levi's name: WAYYIBEN is written,
signifying that He considered well (hithbonnen) from what part to
create her. Said He: ' I will not create her from [Adam's] head, lest she
be swelled-headed5; nor from the eye, lest she be a coquette6; nor from
the ear, lest she be an eavesdropper; nor from the mouth, lest she be a
gossip; nor from the heart, lest she be prone to jealousy; nor from the
hand, lest she be light-fingered7; nor from the foot, lest she be a
gadabout; but from the modest part of man, for even when he stands
naked, that part is covered.’ And as He created each limb He ordered
her, ‘Be a modest woman.’ Yet in spite of all this, But ye have set at
nought alI My counsel, and would none of My reproof (Prov. I, 25). I
did not create her from the head, yet she is swelled-headed, as it is
written, They walk with stretched-forth necks (Isa. Ill, 16); nor from
the eye, yet she is a coquette: And wanton eyes (ib.); nor from the ear,
yet she is an eavesdropper: Now Sarah listened in the tent door (Gen.
XVlII, 10); nor from the heart, yet she is prone to jealousy: Rachel
envied her sister (ib. XXX, 1); nor from the hand, yet she is light-
fingered: And Rachel stole the teraphim (ib. XXXl, 19); nor from the
foot, yet she is a gadabout: And Dinah went out, etc. (ib. XXXlV, 1).
[Genesis Rabbah 18:2].
The midrash makes the point that there is no part of her body from which
woman can be created, since every part of her leads to evil. Thus with her
ears she eavesdrops, with her heart she is envious, with her hands she steals
and with her foot, she gads about, as did Dinah.

The Dinah Story Helps Us Understand the Rabbinic Attitude Toward

Women
I have used the story of Dinah to illustrate the negative aspects of the rabbinic
attitude toward women. Some rabbis generalize from this particular story to
condemn all women who spend excessive time away from home.
There are not as many midrashim about Dinah as there are about Adam
and Eve, but those that exist tell an interesting story. Most of the midrashim
base themselves on Genesis 34:1-2 which state that Dinah, the daughter
whom Leah had borne to Jacob, went out to visit the daughters of the land.
Shechem, son of Hamor the Hivite, chief of the country, saw her, and took
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her and lay with her by force. The word va-yeaneha is problematic. In its
general sense innah means to inflict sorrow or pain (cf. Gen. 16.1). Its
narrower meaning is to force a woman to have intercourse or to rape, a
meaning which is attested to both in legal contexts and in narrative passages.
I believe it is possible to interpret innah as meaning rape from the context of
the narrative tale of Dinah, although some biblical scholars contend that this
is not so.
In Mesopotamian legal sources the proper place of a woman was in
home. In these sources rape of an unmarried woman was a mild offense
though the girl's parents could insist that the attacker/seducer marry her and
forfeit his future right of divorce. This is strikingly familiar to what is written
in the Book of Deuteronomy (Deut. 22:28-29).
Calum Carmichael, writing in Women, Law, and the Genesis Traditions
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1979), has an intriguing thesis that
many of the Deuteronomic laws are about women in the Book of Genesis.
He writes that the Deuteronomist concerned himself with upholding the
honor and dignity of those women who were treated in humiliating fashion
in Genesis. He considers the legal chapters of Deuteronomy to be an internal
commentary on the Book of Genesis.
In Women and Jewish Law (New York: Shocken Books, 1984), Rachel
Biale writes that “rape ...was a calculated attempt by a man to acquire a
woman as his wife, against her and her parents' wishes.” (243) She shows
that there is a conscious “trend of expanding the definition of rape in
Halakhic literature to protect women from the charge that they were willing
participants in a prohibited sexual act, that they 'brought it on themselves'....
[Thus] a woman does not need to be kicking and screaming from start to end
in order for us to rule that she has been raped.” (255)
If we follow this legalistic approach as we look at midrash aggadah we
can see that there are two ways of handling the topic of Dinah. There is the
approach of those rabbis who assumed she was guilty and consented and
those who assumed she protested and was innocent.
There is a clear distinction in the Book of Deuteronomy between a
woman who protests her rape and one who does not. If a woman is raped in
a town where one can prove if she cried out, she has to be judged according
to the criteria of her having cried out or not; whereas a woman who is raped
in the country cannot prove whether she cried out and thus is presumed
innocent. Those rabbis who see Dinah as going out to see the big city of
Shechem made comments about Dinah which condemn her. They imply that
Dinah brought it about by her own action: She went out... (Gen. 34.1) and
got what she deserved. Thus in one midrash, while her father and brothers
were engaged in the worthwhile practice of studying Torah, Dinah went out
-73-
gallivanting to see the daughters of the land and brought upon herself her
violation by Shechem the son of Hamor the Hivite.
Another kindlier midrash explains that she got raped to punish Jacob for
being too self-confident. And a third one demonstrates that Dinah was
punished because she was too much like her mother Leah.
Not all rabbis are like those cited above. The second group of rabbis--
who are not convinced it was her fault, because they see her as one who was
raped in the countryside--have second thoughts about Dinah's fate. These
rabbis have her resurfacing as the mother of Asnat or as Job's wife or as being
betrothed to her brother Simon. This last source describes how Dinah had to
be dragged out of Shechem's house because when a woman is intimate with
an uncircumcised person, she finds it hard to tear herself away.
One might think that some rabbis have strayed too far from the text in
order to account for Dinah's whereabouts and destiny after the rape. But it
serves to justify the brother's exaggerated reprisals to the inhabitants of
Shechem. It also compensates Dinah for having had all future chances of
marriage for her cut off after the rape has been avenged.
We can see that some of these midrashim serve to soothe the rabbis'
uneasy conscience about Dinah's fate--if she was innocent! Incidentally, if
she was already betrothed to Simon--and did not cry out--then her status was
that of an adulteress who deserved to be punished and not that of a wronged
virgin.
But what about Dinah herself? Is she just a pure object? Does no one
care about her pain? Not one of the midrashim we have looked at has taken
into account what Dinah the woman thought about her plight. Are post-
rabbinic sources more sympathetic to her? Do they view her as an individual?
It is difficult to find post-rabbinic sources which care about Dinah the person.
Modern Approaches to Dinah’s Story
There are, however, several modern re-workings of the Dinah story. First of
all, there is the fairly unknown poem “Parshat Dinah” [The Story of Dinah]
(1936) by Shaul Tchernichovsky (1875-1943), which is a thinly veiled
political reworking of the Dinah story. Although he manages to get inside the
skin of the victimized Dinah his ultimate purpose in writing the poem is to
glorify violent retaliation by Jews against their Arab persecutors.
Then there is Thomas Mann's famous historic novella, Joseph and his
Brothers completed by the mid 1930's in which he relates how the thirteen-
year-old Dinah was abducted by the spoilt and rickety Sichem who had first
wooed her honorably before carrying her off. He described how “Dinah was
an insignificant thing... [who took] ...whatever happened to her, provided it
was vigorous and unequivocal, as natural and right. And Sichem did her no
violence, quite the contrary....“ The quote from Mann is very similar to the
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following midrash: “AND DINAH THE DAUGHTER OF LEAH WENT
OUT. R. Berekiah said in R. Levi's name: This may be compared to one who
was holding a pound of meat in his hand, and as soon as he exposed it a bird
swooped down and snatched it away” (Gen. Rabbah 80.5).
The literary critic, Carl Van Doren wrote a poem in the 1950's about
Dinah in which he wanted to assume that Dinah was in love with Shechem,
too, once this thing--whatever it was, had happened. As a woman I found
offensive his conclusion that Dinah fell in love with her rapist. Apparently
he was unable to shake himself of the deep-rooted masculine notion that
women want to be taken by force.
More recently in the “The Thirteenth Tribe”, Marc Gellman put
together a pastiche of existing midrashim and created a new midrash which
ends on an optimistic note.
Because Dinah was not counted in this world...she will be counted in
the world to come, when the Messiah enters the land. In this world
which our forefathers knew, a woman could not inherit property from
her father unless he had no sons. In the world to come, which we are
beginning to glimpse with God's help, both sons and daughters will
inherit the legacy of Israel with common claim and common justice....
She is the symbol of mankind divided against womankind and
awaiting the reunification of the world that will only come in that day
for which we act and pray [Moment 7,9 (1982)].
This optimistic ending was foreshadowed in a Latin Apocryphal tale
about Dinah entitled “On the Wings of the Eagle” in which Dinah's suffering
ends when she is re-united with her daughter Asnat, the wife of Joseph. The
author of this tale saw God's hand in this miraculous reunification of mother
and daughter and praised him for this merciful act. Thus it would seem that
the story of Dinah has its uses. For Gellman she is a messianic symbol of
reunification, for Tchernichovsky a symbol of the avenging woman, nursing
her pain and for Mann the innocent lamb or victim.
In “Dinah: The Torah’s Forgotten Woman,” Jeffrey Salkin addresses
himself to the Dinah story by stating that modern Jewish feminists have
chosen to avoid this story and its implications. He writes that Dinah is, “the
symbol...of...the radical separation of women from the mainstream of Jewish
life; the silence of women; the women as sexual commodity” [Judaism 35
(1986): 284-89].
My Midrash
Two years ago I wrote a story about Dinah. I wanted to describe the feelings
of a person I knew very well who was neither able to control her environment
nor care for herself in it. This person had received a raw deal. She felt that

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she no longer belonged to what had previously been a secure and supportive
environment. Withdrawal and silence enabled her to sustain the shock.
Her silence was a stifled scream. She had become so traumatized that
139
she was unable to speak. In the story “The Rape” I depicted a Dinah who
tries to shrink into herself, who doesn't trust her environment. She has good
reason not to: Her life has been ruined by the rape. Her parents have betrayed
her; her brothers have killed the only person she could legally marry. She has
even been dispossessed of her own body. Yet, despite her despair, she
concludes her woeful tale with a rhetorical question. She asks, “Do I want to
be left alone to sit on the sidelines of life? Forever?”
I thought perhaps her story would inspire women who are sitting silently
and patiently on the sidelines of life waiting for external forces to liberate
them. Dinah's story demonstrates that liberation must come from within,
often after great suffering and struggle. Our past certainly influences us, but
we are neither governed by it nor permanently crippled by it. Our past is a
far more liberating environment than the pseudo-past created by male-
chauvinist mythographers who invoked a past that never was.
I have suggested that we address ourselves creatively to recapturing
those experiences which are unique to women--experiences which may have
been once recorded and are now lost. Had they been recorded we might have
uncovered a world in which women can be seen as struggling within a
dominantly male culture. The 'normative' texts we have examined reflect the
tensions within a patriarchal culture. What must be kept in mind is that
'normative' texts reflect the views of the historical winners...whose victories
were often achieved at the expense of women... This realization should help
us to protest against those who seek to invoke the supposed past in order to
imprison women of today.

139
Naomi Graetz “A Daughter in Israel is Raped,” in Naomi Mara Hyman (editor).
Biblical Women in the Midrash (Northvale NJ: Jason Aronson, 1997): 68-71. It
first appeared in Naomi Graetz, S/He Created Them: Feminist Retellings of Biblical
Stories (Professional Press, 1993).

-76-
 140
CHAPTER SEVEN: QUEEN VASHTI, GRACE IS DECEPTIVE

Sheker ha chen ve hevel ha yofi, zo Vashti. “Grace is deceptive, Beauty is

illusory,” this line from eshet hayil refers to Vashti

The Story
When King Ahasuerus141 has reigned for three years he holds a banquet in
his vast gardens for all the people of Shushan. The drinking is according to
the law; people are encouraged to drink as much as they can and the king
makes sure that nothing is spared for the comfort of his guests. Queen Vashti,
rumored to be the last descendant of King Nebuchadnezzar, prepares a
parallel feast for the women in the royal house that belonged to King
Ahasuerus. While the men are outside carousing, the women are inside
enjoying themselves. On the seventh day of this feast, when the king has
perhaps imbibed a bit too much, he commands his seven chamberlains to
bring his property, meaning his wife Vashti, before him, ordering her to wear
the royal turban which will show off her beauty to the people. This he felt
was fair, since her beauty was his to possess as well as the royal crown. And
she was indeed beautiful, like her name, which some say in Persian means
woman of great beauty. But his beautiful queen refused to obey his
commandment and this upset him. He did not confront her directly to ask
why she had denied his command. Instead, he asks the wise men and the
seven princes of Persia and Media, who sat next to him for their advice:
"What shall be done, according to law, to Queen Vashti for failing to obey
the command of King Ahasuerus?” (Esther 1:15). Memucan answers for
them all by saying, "Queen Vashti has committed an offense not only against
Your Majesty but also against all the officials and against all the peoples in
all the provinces of King Ahasuerus. For the queen’s behavior will make all
wives despise their husbands, as they reflect that King Ahasuerus himself
ordered Queen Vashti to be brought before him, but she would not come”
(Esther 1:16-17).

140
“Vashti,” in Penina Adelman (ed.) Praise her works: Conversations with
Biblical Women (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2005):173-180.
141
There is speculation that Ahasuerus was actually Xerxes, King of Persia (485–
465 B.C.E.)

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“If it pleases Your Majesty, let a royal edict be issued by you, and let it be
written into the laws of Persia and Media, that Vashti shall never enter the
presence of King Ahasuerus. And let Your Majesty bestow her royal estate
upon another who is more worthy than she. Then will the judgment executed
by Your Majesty resound throughout your realm…and all wives will treat
their husbands with respect, high and low alike" (Esther 1:19-20).
After his wrath is assuaged, Ahasuerus remembers Vashti briefly, but no
longer concerns himself with her, whether she is alive or dead. Instead he
listens to his servants who suggest “beautiful young virgins fair be sought
out for Your Majesty" (Esther 2:2).
Commentary
After reading the biblical story, it is clear that the beautiful heroine, the first
half of the pair that makes up the 22nd eishet chayil, is someone to emulate.
She is brave, defiant, strong, and self-determined. Vashti is a proud,
unbending woman, who refuses to obey the drunken husband who sees her
as his possession to command and perform for him at will. Rabbinic tradition
could have been supportive of Vashti for her stance of independence and
personal dignity.
However, the Rabbis have chosen, instead, to use her grace and beauty
as swords against her. “Grace is deceptive, Beauty is illusory,” refers to
Vashti. “It is for her fear of the Lord that a woman is to be praised,” this is
Esther. Clearly Midrash ha-gadol is setting up a binary opposition: whereas
Vashti’s grace and beauty are deceptive, Esther is praiseworthy and God-
fearing. In the midrash, Vashti is identified with sheker (deception).
The letter shin, the first letter of sheker, has three prongs. First, it can
be the devil’s pitchfork, a comb to brush her beautiful hair which emphasizes
her vanity. Second, like the letter shin which suggests teeth, Vashti can be
seen as someone with a bite, a strong voice of her own who has to be put
down. Third, shin can symbolize the crown of her royalty.
Most aggadot (stories and legends) are so negative about Vashti that
it is almost impossible to identify with her. The sages deviated from the literal
or contextual reading of the text when they turned Vashti into a witch-like
demonic being with no redeeming characteristics. They gave examples about
of how she stripped the daughters of Israel and made them work naked on
Shabbat, no less. They wrote that her husband sent for her on the seventh day
after she gave birth, in great joy, since he knew that she was no longer
unclean. Yet she was still bleeding and refused to appear before him naked.
No wonder she was punished in a similar manner, and sentenced to die on
Shabbat. The Rabbis said she refused to obey the king because Daniel was
present at the banquet and she hated him for his terrible prophecies about her
ancestor, Nebuchadnezzar. They claimed that she too loved debauchery and
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that she secluded the women, not because of her chastity, but so that they
could also “party” and she could control and blackmail them. Some say the
angel Gabriel punished her for her sins with leprosy or alternatively with
having a tail appended to her, which is the "real" reason why she was
embarrassed to obey the king's command, not because of any innate modesty.
Vashti’s potential for haughtiness was forestalled since she was reviled for
having animal characteristics.
Since women who appear in public are considered wanton, why did
our sages find it necessary to demonize Vashti who behaved modestly? Why
did they need to turn her into an “other” with whom no one would want to
identify? They mocked her and made her into an object of laughter and fear.
She became the shrew who had to be tamed and humiliated so that real men
could rule.
One reason could be that in the aggadah, Vashti was the great-
granddaughter of King Nebuchadnezzar and therefore witnessed the Persian
conquest of Babylon, ruled by her father, King Belshazzar (Esther Rabbah
3:8). When the city fell, the frightened young girl ran to his room and found
out her father had been killed. General Darius, the succeeding king, took pity
on the young Vashti and gave her hand in marriage to his son, Ahasuerus.
This is the source of her later unhappiness with him, because she felt that she
had married beneath herself. When Ahasuerus made his famous request of
her, Vashti insulted him by reminding him of his lowly status as servant to
her father by exclaiming: "You used to be the stable boy of my father's house,
and you were used to bringing naked harlots before you. Now that you have
ascended the throne you still have not changed your habits” (Esther Rabbah
3:14 on the verse in Esther 1:12). “But Queen Vashti refused. . .” So it seems
that the Rabbis are getting back at this last descendant of Nebuchadnezzar.
Just as Ahasuerus doesn’t give Vashti a chance to speak or explain, the
rabbinic tradition only allows us to see the nether side of Vashti.
Vashti Speaks
What hurts me most is that on Purim there are hardly any little girls who dress
up as me. True, there are now some women who wave flags in their
synagogues with bells on them, so that my voice is heard as a tinkle, but that
is considered a subversive act, not the norm.
Why this conspiracy of the Rabbis to shut my voice out? Didn’t they
know that I was a secret Jew—that when I didn’t appear before Ahasuerus,
it was because I believed in the one God and knew that my husband was not
my God? I had learned the lessons of modesty from Daniel when he was in
our prison. I went to mock and curse him and came out a convert. Didn’t they
understand that without me, there would have been no Esther in the palace
and that the Jewish people would have been doomed?
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 They should have thanked me. Instead they mocked me and turned me
into a monster. And where am I today? Locked out of the palace, under guard.
Everyone thinks I’m dead, but I’m not. I look in my mirror every day and see
another wrinkle, not laugh lines, nothing to laugh about yet. All around me
are eunuchs, no men to admire me. I have needs you know. I keep abreast of
what’s going on in the palace and approve of all that Esther does. I send her
letters! It's our secret, giving her advice on how to please my ex-husband—
who is a bit of a fool—who I thought I had under my control—until Haman
got a hold of him and put ideas in his head.
Who is going to have the last laugh I wonder? Will it be Esther and
me or the men? At first I was very jealous of the thought of his having another
wife in my stead, but then I realized how lucky I was to be relieved of him. I
never wanted children from him; his rank was too lowly. I come from royal
stock and he was only a soldier’s son. But when my father died, I had no
choice; he was my only source of protection. I trusted him for a long time
and followed his lead, until he went one step too far and commanded me to
appear before him after his extended drinking bout.
He thought I was his prized possession, like our pet leopard, Muni.
How dare he summon me and try to degrade me! All the princesses in the
world heard about what he wanted. They all knew. They had their eyes on
me, wondering how I was to respond. I had responsibility to them, not only
to myself. If I gave in to the king’s demands, there would be total disrespect
for women of the Persian kingdom. So I simply refused. I was a queen from
royal lineage with a position to uphold. There was no way I would allow
myself to be subjected to such an indignity.
I must admit that I miss the life that I used to have. There are limits
to the contemplative life of peace and quiet. I miss the intrigue of court and
am too dependent on Esther’s correspondence with me—but it is all I have,
so I make peace with it—at least I am not dead—that is what I want you all
to know—not what the Rabbis would like to have you think! They spread
rumors that Ahasuerus had me killed after I refused to come before him. They
said I deserved my fate because I would not allow Ahasuerus to give
permission for the building of the Temple, and that I used to say to him, “Do
you seek to build what my ancestors destroyed?” (Esther Rabbah 5: 2). What
nonsense! If you read the Bible carefully, it says that I “shall never enter the
presence of King Ahasuerus” (Esther 1:19) again. So all I lost was the
dubious privilege of entering the king’s presence (and we all know what that
means) and the title of Queen.
And there are some who still consider me to be the lawful queen. I
do have my following, you know. It consists mostly of women who don’t
want to be ruled by their husbands. Now that was an idiotic law, wasn’t it?
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What a farce to use all of Persian law and administration, and its primitive
postal service, to make every man be a master in his own house. What were
they thinking of--those idiots--that every woman was waiting for me to give
a signal to rebel against their husbands? Actually, that’s not such a bad idea,
when I look back. Too bad, I didn’t think of it then.
A Message for you from Vashti
Sheker ha chen ve-hevel ha-yofi (Grace is deceptive; Beauty is illusory).
When you get up in the morning, don’t look at the mirror right away to see if
you look gaunt and thinner than yesterday. Don’t get on the scales to see how
much weight you’ve lost at night. Take a lesson from me. What is hevel? It
is usually understood as vanity or lack of meaning. But it is really the mere
breath that separates us from the living and the non-living. Beauty is fleeting
and fragile— you may think that beauty gives you advantages over other
women and some power, but in the long run it is transient…. And when you
lose it, if it is all you have going for you, you will feel that only transient
beauty separates you from being an object of love and desire, to being
unloved and undesirable.
What has given me lasting happiness over the years is my discovery of
the one God. I had many discussions with Daniel when he was locked up in
our jails, and from him I learned what is real and what is not. Although I tried
to seduce him at first, he wasn’t interested; he said that beauty is vanity and
that I should look within myself to see who I really was and what I really
wanted from life.
There are two types of beauty. One is external, the other internal. All my
life I was known for my external beauty. Rabbi Berekiah went so far as to
describe me as a “raven that decks itself with its own feathers and with those
of others” (Esther Rabbah 3:9). He had a point; I did take advantage of my
external beauty. But it is vanity, since you cannot take it with you. If you find
some eternal value and seek it out and nurture it, then your beauty will be
passed down to generations. Do not allow the allure of jewelry, fashion,
makeovers, or perfect hair to influence you to develop only your external
beauty. Delve into yourself and find out who you are. And then, next Purim,
dress up as me, Queen Vashti. I had a following. I lost it and then was
demonized for my ideas.

Straight and proud I stood.

Not for me the Selections.
I had refused
I had objected
I would not subject myself,
Submit to gazing drunken eyes
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Boring into me.

The path I chose was different.

Not for me the party clothes
The giggling,
The dressing up
For others.

I am other
Anomaly
Threat to
Claims of supremacy.

I, Vashti, bent down.

Not for me Supplications.
I bared my head
For the first
And last time.

The party is over

For me.

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 142
CHAPTER EIGHT: MIRIAM AND ME

Preamble:
It is weird writing about Miriam, a biblical figure, while today, July 17 th
2006, rockets are landing in the northern part of Israel. One of the places I
hear mentioned on the radio is Tiberias and I remind myself that according
to the legend, the Rabbis actually located Miriam’s well in Tiberias, opposite
the middle gate of an ancient synagogue which lepers went to in order to be
cured (Deut. Rabbah 6.11). It serves as a starter to get me to continue writing
yet another piece, but this time about Miriam and me, for I have been writing
about Miriam for more than twenty years and have identified with her in
different ways, depending on who (and where) I am at the time. It is not
strange for me to think of her in connection with current events.
Who am I?
I am a feminist Conservative Jew living in Omer, a small, quiet, and upscale
community in the Southern part of Israel. It is a place where it is possible to
ignore disturbances going on in the rest of the country. It is here, not too far
from Abraham’s Well in Tel Sheva, I have been writing midrash since the
mid 1980’s, the direct outgrowth of my being the Torah reader in our
Conservative/Masorti synagogue, appropriately titled Magen Avraham
(shield of Abraham). I was, until my recent retirement at Ben Gurion
University, an English teacher with a serious hobby, writing about women in
the Bible and midrash. My favorite subject was and is Miriam, to whom I
return many times for inspiration since she has often served as my alter ego.
Miriam as my Alter Ego
When I was a young mother, juggling work with children, I envied her
singleness and childlessness and her ability to concentrate on herself and her
single-minded pursuit of a “career”. When my children were married with
children of their own, I wrote about her relationship with her mother and
sisters-in-law. During low points in my life, I identified with her bitterness at
having been overlooked by life’s events and God. Whenever there were calls
for papers about Miriam, I submitted either papers or midrashim. To my great
disappointment, the last midrash I wrote in English about Yocheved’s
daughter and daughters-in-law, in which I shared a mother’s concerns about
the path her daughter was taking, was not included in a special issue about
Miriam. My inspiration for Yocheved (Miriam's mother) was Kate Millet,

142
“Miriam and Me,” in Exodus and Deuteronomy: Text and Context, Athalya
Brenner and Gale A. Yee, editors (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2012): 157-168.

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whom I met at a conference in Georgia—and this lead me to write a free
flowing midrash about her relationship with her daughter Miriam and
daughters-in-law Elisheva and Tzipora. The Miriam in my tale is reckless,
accustomed to having her own way, “playing with fire…and no real sense of
woman’s place” (Graetz, 2001). When I got older, I began to envision her as
a redemptive figure, one who had children and who had made her peace with
God. That was when I wrote a midrash about her in Hebrew (Graetz, 2005).
The Name Miriam
Like so many Jewish girls of my generation, there were the cute and popular
girls with names like Barbara, Carol, Susan and those with Biblical names
like Judith, Miriam, Ruth, and Naomi. Being tall and a basketball player, I
envied the petite cheerleaders with Barbie-like names and felt that those of
us with the biblical names were less popular. My sister had a very peculiar
name, Menorah, and I always assumed that she was named that because my
father was in synagogue the week when the portion of the Torah read was
beha'alotcha (Numbers 8:1-12:16) and the haftarah [additional passage from
the Prophets or Writings] read for that week mentioned the seven branched
menorah (Zechariah 2:14-4:7 which is the identical haftarah for the Sabbath
of Chanukah). I did not know then how important haftarot (pl. of haftara)
were going to be in my future writings.
We used to joke that it’s a good thing he didn’t name her Hanukah.
Yet jokes aside, I always envied Menorah her special name. Only later on,
when I became pre-occupied with Miriam, did I realize that at the end of the
same Torah portion of beha'alotcha (Numbers 12) was where Miriam speaks
out against God’s chosen leader, Moses and that my sister should really have
been named Miriam and not Menorah. So here I am full circle, trying to figure
out why Miriam was important to me as a role model, rather than Naomi from
the Book of Ruth, who is after all the person I’m named after. But that’s easy
enough, for although she too was bitter [marah in Hebrew], Naomi was an
old woman, not someone with whom I could easily identify; at least not until
recently when at ages 63 and 65, I prepared for sabbaticals in the U.S. and
had to pack my bags and leave my three children and six grandchildren
behind.
Different Miriams
Of all the Miriams I have identified with, it is strange that the only Miriam I
don't identify with is the ecstatic Miriam who plays the tambourine, the one
that the cultic composer Debbie Friedman celebrated with all “the women
dancing with their timbrels, follow[ing] Miriam as she sang her song,
sing[ing] a song to the One whom we've exalted, Miriam and the women
danced and danced the whole night long.” When I discuss this with a friend,
she says that it is odd, because, although I am a terrible dancer, I sing
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beautifully, was the Torah chanter in our Conservative/Masorti congregation
in Omer, and was always a member of a choir. Not only that, but I know
Miriam’s Song (ascribed to Moses) in Exodus 15:1-21 almost by heart and
read it with great enthusiasm in the synagogue, twice a year [on Passover and
also when it is the weekly portion]. My memory is also helped that it is read
daily in the shaharit/morning service. But, ecstasy is not my thing and that
Miriam is less interesting to me than the other Miriams in the Bible and
Midrash. My Miriam is a big sister who challenges her father, who complains
about Moses, who is bitter, and left alone to suffer from leprosy as a
punishment from God. She is the one who may have felt abused by the Deity.
Before I began to write about Miriam, I wrote midrashim about the book
of Genesis. Most of my female characters were very bitter, so much so, that
my friend, the late bible scholar Tikva Frymer Kensky upon reading the early
drafts, commented that they were not really feminist; they were just kvetches
[Yiddish for complainers]. When I ran out of characters in Genesis I wrote
two midrashim, one a political midrash about Deborah which was an anti-
war editorial/ story which appeared first in the Jerusalem Post (Graetz,
2003b) under the name “Israel at Forty”, and another about Miriam, entitled
“Miriam: The Discredited Prophetess,” which was first published in an issue
on women in the Melton Journal (Graetz, 1988). In this midrash I created
Miriam the doctor, a healer, a proud, and independent woman who
complained about being left alone. This Miriam was professionally interested
in her own illness of leprosy. She was a bat-kohen, a daughter of a priestly
family and intimately acquainted with the diagnosis of disease. She was
never consulted publicly, but her private opinions were highly valued
because of her many years of experience.
This Miriam was beset by terrible doubts about the severity of her
punishment. She thought it unfair that she, and not her brother Aaron, was
being punished. For had not the two of them voiced complaints about Moses?
She bitterly criticized the fact that those who were diseased had to expiate
their sin by spending the entire period of quarantine alone—separated from
others similarly afflicted.” She asked, “What kind of God demands that one
endure this mental and physical pain in a state of loneliness!” She used her
organizational abilities so that people could help each other. In doing this
“she realized that she had re-interpreted the law of badad yeshev, ‘you shall
remain in complete isolation’ (Leviticus 13:46) and hoped she would not be
punished for usurping the power of interpretation from Moses” (Graetz,
1997).
In 1989 I had a chance to talk about that Miriam in a Reconstructionist
Synagogue in Montreal and then talked about her the following year in
connection with the evil tongue in London. I entitled my talk, “Is lashon ha'ra
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[slander, lit. evil tongue] a Woman's Weapon?" Subsequently I presented a
formal paper in July 1990, "Miriam: Guilty or Not Guilty?" at the Fourth
Interdisciplinary Congress on Women in New York City which was later
published as “Miriam: Guilty or Not Guilty?" in Judaism (Graetz, 1992),
which has been reprinted several times and with name changes. “Did Miriam
Talk too Much?” exemplifies clearly that in rabbinic midrash there is no
unanimity among the sages about biblical women and men. The same women
and men are depicted as good and bad, depending on the circumstances. I
demonstrate that there are certain criteria that are used to decide when a
particular biblical woman is to be portrayed positively and when the same
woman is to be portrayed negatively. At this juncture, I was also interested
in Miriam's strength and in workshops that I taught, linked her to the poet
and novelist Marge Piercy who wrote that a “A Strong woman is a woman
who loves strongly and weeps strongly and is strongly terrified and has strong
needs” (Piercy, 1982).
I suggested that Miriam the strong outspoken woman was punished with
leprosy because women in the biblical world were not supposed to be leaders
of men, and that women with initiative were reproved when they asserted
themselves with the only weapon they had, their power of language: a power
which could be used viciously and was, therefore, called lashon ha-ra,
literally, evil tongue.
Miriam in Rabbinic Midrash
The Perfect Role Model
I looked first at the many examples of the Miriam whom the Rabbis admire.
One instance is their explication of Numbers 12:14ff, where it is written
clearly that it was the people who did not journey until Miriam was returned
to them. The Rabbis, however, said it was the Lord who waited for her. Not
only that, but the “Holy One, blessed be He, said: ‘I am a priest, I shut her up
and I shall declare her clean’” (Deut. Rabba 6:9)! If God, portrayed as a
concerned doctor, intervened in Miriam’s case and personally treated her
illness, surely it followed that Miriam was someone to be reckoned with.
There were many midrashim which have to do with Miriam’s well,
which is said to have been one of the ten things created during the twilight
before the first Sabbath of the creation (BT Pesachim 54a). One of the few
songs of the Bible, an obscure fragment of an ancient poem, is read by many
Rabbis as referring to this well: “Spring up, O well—sing to it/The well
which the chieftains dug, / Which the nobles of the people started/With
maces, with their own staffs” (Num 21:17-19).
Since the verse, which comes after Miriam’s reported death (Num 20:1),
is followed by a statement that there was no water for the congregation
(20:2), the Rabbis write that Miriam’s gift to us after her death was her song,
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which could cause the waters of her well to flow. The proviso was that the
right person had to know how to address the well to get it to give water. Once
again, Miriam was a singer, a woman of spirit. One who in a poem I wrote
had her song stolen by a Moses who did not know how to sing, but only how
to hit and kill. This Moses slew the Egyptian, sent many of his people to their
deaths, and only knew how to hit the rock. He was not the right person to get
water; it was his sister's touch that was needed. As I mentioned in the
preamble, the Rabbis located her well in Tiberias, opposite the middle gate
of an ancient synagogue which lepers go to in order to be cured (Deut. Rabba
6:11).
Miriam is called a prophet in Exodus 15. Though the Bible does not
relate any examples of her prophecies, the Rabbis interpret the passage “And
his sister stood afar off” (Exod 2:4), to mean that she stood afar “to know
what would be the outcome of her prophecy,” because she had told her
parents that her “mother was destined to give birth to a son who will save
Israel.” That prophecy, they say, is the meaning of: “And Miriam the
prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel” (Deut. Rabba 6:14).
Another midrash about her concerns the virtuous midwives who saved
the Israelite babies from the wicked Pharaoh. The Rabbis decided that the
Hebrew midwives, Shifrah and Puah, were none other than Yocheved and
the very capable five-year-old Miriam. In this same midrash her father,
Amram, is shown as a coward who stopped having intercourse with his wife,
and even divorced her because of Pharaoh’s decree to kill the baby boys who
were born to the Israelites. In this story, Miriam pointed out to him that “your
decree is more severe than that of Pharaoh; for Pharaoh decreed only
concerning the male children, and you decree upon males and females alike.”
As a result, Amram took his wife back, and his example was followed by all
the Israelites (Lev. Rabba 17:3). In this midrash, Miriam is praised for
outsmarting her father, and for encouraging the people to be fruitful and
multiply so that they will survive.
I always had a problem with the first part of this midrash. There were
these two wonderful midwives, Shifrah and Puah, who saved the Jewish
people, so why take their identities away from them and conflate them with
Miriam and her mother? That leaves us with the names of two fewer women
for future generations with whom to identify. On the other hand we do get to
identify Miriam and her entire family as midwives, so there is loss and there
is gain. In a wonderful tale “The Tenth Plague” about midwives the
midrashist, Jill Hammer writes about Miriam’s mother and sister-in-law
Elisheva who tend to a woman giving birth during the terrible time of the ten
plagues (Hammer, 2001).

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 To the Rabbis, Miriam is a perfect role model, except for one thing; she
is not married and does not have any children. So, to fix that, the midrash
explains that the meaning of the passage, “And it came to pass, because the
midwives feared God, that He built them houses” (Exod 1:21), is that “they
were founders of a royal family.” They show that Miriam founded a royal
family, with David descending from her. The genealogy is a bit complex but,
essentially, Miriam marries Caleb, who begets Hur, who has Uri who begets
Bezalel, leading ultimately to King David (BT Sotah 12a and Exod. Rabba
1:17).
Many problems are solved by this marriage: Amram’s line is continued;
Caleb, the faithful spy, is rewarded; and Moses’ children (sons of a black
woman) are written out of Jewish history. But, most importantly, Miriam is
not an anomalous, unmarried, spinster anymore; rather, she is a happily
married mother and wife whose offspring brings fame and glory to her. Were
it not for the incident when Miriam asserts herself and attacks Moses (God’s
choice), Miriam would be one of the few women in the Bible about whom
the Rabbis have nothing bad to say (BT Berachot 19a).
Had that been the case, I probably would have lost interest in Miriam,
since what made her so fascinating to me were the many examples of
castigation concerning her punishment by leprosy.
The Bitter Miriam
If we return to the midrash where Miriam’s father, Amram, is portrayed as a
coward who stopped having intercourse with his wife, and divorced her after
Pharoah’s decree to kill all the baby boys born to the Israelites, we will be
reminded of the resourceful and assertive Miriam whom the rabbis loved. As
a result of Miriam’s advice, Amram took his wife back, and his example was
followed by all the Israelites (Exod. Rabba 1:13). In this midrash, Miriam
was praised for her assertiveness.
Yet, in a midrash which has the same theme, and starts by portraying
Miriam as a woman who herself cares about commandments and survival,
she is punished for the same act of assertiveness. In this midrash (Sifre Zuta
12:1), Zipporah complains to Miriam that, since her husband Moses was
chosen by God, he no longer sleeps with her. Miriam then consults with her
brother, Aaron, and it turns out that, although they too have received Divine
revelations, they—unlike Moses—did not separate themselves from their
mates. Furthermore, they claim that Moses abstains to show that he is better
than they are, and in Miriam’s view, Moses, rather than serving as a role
model for observing the commandment to have children, abstains from
conjugal joys out of pride.
Why did the Rabbis go along with Miriam in the case of Amram her
father, yet punish her here? The Rabbis themselves ask this question. The
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answer has to do with R. Judah b. Levi’s saying: “Anyone who is so arrogant
as to speak against one greater than himself causes the plagues to attack him.
And if you do not believe this, look to the pious Miriam as a warning to all
slanderers” (Deut. Rabba 6:9). In other words, one can stand for procreation
as long as one does not attack the leader for not procreating! The leader is
different! There are other criteria by which he is to be judged. Devorah
Steinmetz argues that the Rabbis excused Moses from the commandment of
“be fruitful and multiply”. They agreed that it was correct for him to dedicate
himself totally to God; and that to be an effective leader he had to separate
himself from the people (Steinmetz, 1988).
The Rabbis glorified Miriam when she asserted herself to defend the
values of nurturance and motherhood, but disparaged her when she stepped
out of line and spoke up to challenge Moses’ authority. While I was revising
this last piece which would be published and republished as "Miriam, Guilty
or Not Guilty" in various publications, I never stopped thinking or teaching
about her. I wrote a poem, which later became part of a triptych but this poem
still carried the theme of bitterness and in fact was entitled “Miriam the
Bitter” (Graetz, 2003a).

Miriam as a Redemptive Figure

I wrote my first (and only) midrash in Hebrew about Miriam which I
presented in April, 1999 to the Rabbinical Assembly [Conservative
organization of rabbis] in Baltimore, entitled The "Barrenness" of Miriam. I
wrote up the explanations about how I came to write it for the publication of
my book Unlocking the Garden (Graetz, 2005) and at the Fourteenth World
Congress of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem gave it as a presentation entitled
“Does God Love Barren Women?” This midrash came from a time when I
started thinking of a Miriam who was more settled down and content.
The idea for this midrash came in the mid-nineties when I was sitting in
our Conservative synagogue in Omer during the summer while a portion of
the week mentioning Miriam was read. Since in our synagogue, we only read
a triennial portion of the Torah (completing the Five Books of Moses in three
years), I only thought of this once every three years! It was clear to me that
one could extrapolate the barren and forsaken woman of the haftarah and say
that she was Miriam. Clear as this connection was to me, I was unable to find
any rabbinical texts which made this connection or even hinted at it. So after
searching over a period of five years, I grew impatient and had a click
moment. I was a midrash writer, wasn't I? I had written many midrashim, so
why not write my own! I decided to take the bold move of writing my own
midrash to prove that this is why the rabbis chose the haftarah and I wrote
the midrash, originally in Hebrew, in the traditional rabbinic, archaic form. I
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later translated it into English in order to reach a wider audience. I spent about
another five years perfecting this midrash, adding to it, and showing it to
experts in classical midrash.
It was not only because of my insecurity in writing in Hebrew and in the
traditional genre of rabbinic midrash that this rereading of Miriam was a
turning point for me. It was part of my "growing up." It was on the day my
mother died (May 27, 1999). That day I was sitting in the office of Avraham
Holtz, professor of Hebrew Literature at the Jewish Theological Seminary of
America, going over the text with him for ideas and help in polishing the
Hebrew. I had decided to publish it after the success of its presentation at the
Rabbinical Assembly convention. But it took me a few years until I could get
back to it—perhaps I associated it with my guilt in not being in Israel with
my mother when she died.
The part of the text that intrigued me was that when Miriam spoke
against Moses, God was incensed with Miriam. He withdrew his presence
from her. She was cursed and shut out of the camp. For a relatively short
moment God left her as the cloud withdrew from the tent and she was left
with the scales of leprosy. When she is allowed back in the camp, after she
is cured, God returns to her and she to Him. She is once more in favor. Was
my identification with her partially because of my on-off relationship with
my mother who had beaten me as a child? Was God my mother? Only
recently when I have been doing some soul searching, in writing this article,
has this thought occurred to me. With hindsight it is clear to me why at this
juncture in my life I looked for a "happy ending” and for closure.
In the biblical text, Miriam is unmarried and childless. A major problem
for the rabbis is that there is no closure for Miriam in the Bible. Giving her a
happy ending is the background of their midrash and for my new reading of
Miriam: Yes, God was angry at Miriam, but He takes her back. She
overcomes the previous shame she felt when God disgraced her in front of
the people, and the additional shame of her not being married. God will bring
about this great change: the same Being who created her, who forsook her
temporarily, has returned [teshuvah in Hebrew] bringing His vast love. In my
vision, the same God, who in anger hid His face from her in Numbers 12 is
now taking her back and redeeming her. Miriam, who is associated with
water, is united with the symbol of the people of Israel, when God promises
her (and Israel) that the waters of Noah (or any catastrophe for that matter)
will never destroy the earth again. God swears on this and creates a covenant
of friendship with the people/Miriam—by giving her/them the promise of
children, that is, a secure future. Thus in this new scenario, God’s loyalty
(hesed) to Miriam will no longer be in doubt. To prove this, He takes her
back with love and compassion (rahamim) which may also hint at the
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connection of opening of wombs (rehem). Procreation and the Davidic
dynasty thus assure Miriam’s/Israel’s happiness and continuity.
My purpose was to create the missing midrash, that is, the one I am
convinced exists. I am convinced that my midrash, based on biblical and
midrashic tales, does not detract from the themes of reconciliation or from
the allegory of marriage between God and his people. If anything it
strengthens these themes by adding an additional dimension, another level to
the allegory.
Essentializing Miriam
When I wrote all this up there was one last issue that had to be addressed. For
so many years, I had made it clear that the treatment of Miriam in rabbinic
text is unfair. She got so many slaps in the face from the rabbis (when they
associated her with gossip), not only from God. Was I guilty of reducing
Miriam to her biological function, of de-emphasizing her prophetic and
leadership abilities, of essentializing her by having Miriam ending up happily
ever after with children? Surely this is the great sin, which we feminists have
always been warned about!
Yet, as I grow older and less “bitter”, I recognize, without being
apologetic, that in the context of biblical times, to be unmarried and childless
means you have no status. By awarding Miriam a child (and the Messiah no
less) we are fulfilling her in the biblical context. She not only gains a child;
she is also the recipient of wisdom (hokhma). In solving the problem of the
essentialization of Miriam, I decided to come to terms with the needs of the
Jewish people and mine as a staunch Conservative Jewish woman. I am a
strong believer in a women's right to control her own body. If I or one of my
daughters every thought of having an abortion, I would be there for her.
As a feminist Jew in the twenty-first century who lives in Israel where
there is a "demographic problem," I find myself using Miriam as a model for
both leadership and continuity. It has been a truism to point to the
diminishing birth rate of highly educated modern Jewish women. Seeing the
importance of children and grandchildren to my own continuity, I think I can
safely argue that one can be pro-natal, while not necessarily accepting that
women be confined to their essentialist role. I stand in awe of the multiple
roles that my two daughters and daughter-in-law do while simultaneously
working, writing books, studying for the rabbinate, doing a doctorate, and
raising children.
For the twenty-five years that I have been writing midrash I have grown
together with Miriam—from being the sometimes angry bitter rebel to being
someone who is concerned with the future of the Jewish people. Being a
grandmother gives one perspective. Strange isn't it?
Conclusion:
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This is my Miriam. There are other women like her who were unappreciated
in their lifetimes, but linger in our memory. Most recently I read of yet
another Miriam, also a singer and inspiring leader, the great South African
singer and civil rights activist, Miriam Makeba. This Grammy Award
winning artist was often referred to as Mama Afrika. She had many passports,
and was an honorary citizen in many countries. After years of exile, Nelson
Mandela persuaded her to come back to South Africa in 1990 where she died
in 2008, mourned by multitudes. In contrast, our Miriam died, was mourned
only for seven days by the people, and buried in an unmarked grave.
Epilogue:
And so I find myself finishing this piece on August 16th 2006 two days after
the cease-fire between Israel and the Hizballah. I have just finished reading
the obituary about Uri Grossman, the son of David Grossman, the peace
activist and novelist and in the same newspaper is the headline: "Knesset
committee wants more married surrogates to carry babies for infertile
couples". Without reading the article I am reminded of an August 9th
headline in the Jerusalem Post (2006) by Yael Wolynetz, "Hundreds of
soldiers sign over rights to sperm if they die" in which hundreds of soldiers
nationwide have decided to sign biological wills, which determine the
ownership of their frozen sperm before they go to battle. It reminds me of
how important it is for Jews to have continuity. This is as essentialist as we
can get as a nation—it is not only women who are concerned with pro-
creating—in fact it is man's mitzvah. So I need not be apologetic about giving
Miriam children and using her as a beacon for hope and continuity.

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CHAPTER NINE: THE CONCUBINE OF GIBEAH: THE CASE FOR
143
READING INTERTEXTUALLY

WHAT IS INTERTEXTUAL READING?

The concept is usually associated with the early 20th century Russian literary
critic, Michael Baktin, who introduced the idea that texts are in dialogue with
each other. In France, in the late 60's Julie Kristeva followed this idea and
substituted the term intertextuality instead of dialogicity. The major
difference between the two, according to Ellen van Wolde is that "Bakhtin is
not only concerned with the relationship between texts but also with the
relationship between text and reality, while Kristeva restricts intertextuality
to the relationship between texts." van Wolde considers the concept of
intertextuality as introduced by Kristeva to be "useful in clarifying the fact
that a text is not only a self-contained structure but a differential one as well,
and it can be meaningful when its later conceptual vagueness and
universalism is limited." But van Wolde is more interested in demonstrating
that "Intertextuality in a limited sense is confined to demonstrable
144
relationships between texts."
Van Wolde supplies the reader with a procedure for intertextual research
145
in her well-known article "Ruth in Dialogue with Tamar" by suggesting
three stages of analysis.
I. The reader becomes aware of the similarities between two or more
texts and hypothesizes an intertextual relationship.
II. The reader lists the points of repetitions in the texts being
compared
1) stylistic and semantic: micro items like words, or macro units,
similarities of themes, i.e., and
2) narratorological features: similar characters, actions and
3) rhetorical and pragmatic features.
Van Wolde points out that "if sufficient repetition does not exist, then there
is no basis for arguing for intertextuality." (My emphasis 433)

143
"The Concubine of Gibeah: The Case for Reading Intertextually," In the
Arms of Biblical Women edited by John T. Greene and Mishael M. Caspi
(Piscataway NJ: Gorgias Press, 2013): 121-143.
144
Ellen Van Wolde. "Intertextuality: Ruth in Dialogue with Tamar," in Athalya
Brenner and Carole Fontaine, eds., A Feminist Companion to Reading the Bible:
Approaches, Methods and Strategies (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997):
427.
145
The following is paraphrased from this section on pp. 432-433.
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 III. Finally, she writes that "productive intertextual reading must be
concerned not only with the meaning of one text (T1) in its encounter with
another text (T2), but also with the new text created by the interaction of both
texts." (433)
I would take issue with her point that if there is not enough repetition
than there is no basis for arguing for intertextuality. I say this because if we
look at rabbinic midrash we will see that often the rabbis use biblical texts
and place them together in order to produce a new text and that often the
relationship between the texts is slight or almost non-existent. Daniel Boyarin
has written about this extensively in his book "Intertextuality and the Reading
of Midrash." He finds that intertextuality is how rabbis read biblical texts and
is characteristic of all midrashic texts. The way it works is that the text is
always in reference to an earlier text and it may be in dialogue with the
previous text and that there are conscious and unconscious rules which
produce the new texts. A reviewer of his book critiques his approach by
saying that midrash on text is much simpler: "verse 1 (in need of
interpretation); an interpretation of verse 1; verse 2 (clarifying the
146
interpretation)".
David Blumenthal writes that:
"the traditional Jewish world view is an approach to text that is both
logocentric and plurisignificant; it is univocal and multivocal at the
same time. Text, even sacred text, is the result of intertextuality—with
other preceding texts and contexts…Yet text always has
authority…that provides intellectual, spiritual, and social
coherence."147
Examples of Intertextual Readings
There are many examples of intertextual readings. In my early work I used
the term "internal commentary" which is what Michael Fishbane called what
is known today as intertextual reading. Fishbane juxtaposed the two texts
about The Five Daughters of Tzelophad in Numbers 27: 1-11 and 36: 1-12 to
148
show how they both commented on each other.
Recently I have argued that in Leviticus 10, the bible itself is already
engaging in internal commentary or intertextuality by juxtaposing the sudden

146
Herbert W. Basser. Boyarin's "Intertextuality and the Reading of Midrash," The
Jewish Quarterly Review New Series, 81:3/4 (January-April 1991): 427-434.
147
David R. Blumenthal, “Many Voices, One Voice,” Judaism 47:4 (Fall 1998):
465-47
148
Michael Fishbane, The Garments of Torah: Essays in Biblical Hermeneutics
(Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1989).
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death by consuming fire of Aaron's sons Nadav and Avihu (vs. 2) with the
following law:
"And the Lord spoke to Aaron, saying 'Drink no wine or other
intoxicant, you or your sons, when you enter the Tent of Meeting, that
you may not die. This is a law for all time throughout the ages" (vs. 8-
9).
The dialogue between these two texts suggests that Aaron's sons
committed a grave sin by being drunk on the job—rather than allow the
reader to ponder the inexplicability and unfairness of their death.
Another example of intertextuality is the weekly Haftarah that is
publicly read in synagogues which is almost always thematically linked to
the Parshah (Torah portion) that precedes it. Not only is there on-going
internal commentary on the text, but after a portion of the Pentateuch is read
in the synagogue every week, there is an additional reading of a portion from
the Prophets, called the Haftarah, which serves to elucidate and comment on
the weekly portion. The Haftarah for Leviticus 10 (the portion known as
Shemini) is the reading from 2 Samuel 6:1-7:17 which describes Uzzah,
being struck down on the spot for having grabbed the Ark in an attempt to
prevent it from falling. This text serves as a commentary on Leviticus 10:
they are both tragedies which take place around the holiness of the tabernacle
and the ark. Both texts deal with limnality, the dangers associated with the
ark's movement from one place to another, over ecstatic worship; joy eclipsed
with sudden death, caused perhaps by carelessness. Rabbinic literature
creates a new text (Tanhuma B'shallach 21) to bring these two disasters into
dialogue and to proclaim that it is not the smoky incense or the holy ark that
are objects of punishment and danger—but that Holy objects are "bivalent
entities, affecting human life by the manner in which they are approached
149
and used."
A third traditional approach can be that of reading entire books or
passages of the bible intertextually by reading the book of law in
Deuteronomy as a tikkun, a repair of some of the narrative tales of Genesis.
Moses Weinfeld looking at the tale about Dinah in Genesis 34 writes that the
author of Deuteronomy 22 is “concerned with rectifying the moral and
personal wrong committed against the maiden.”150

149
Michael Fishbane. "Haftarah for Sh'mini," Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary
(New York: The Rabbinical Assembly, 2001): 644.
150
Moshe Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1972): 284-285.
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 "If a man comes upon a virgin who is not engaged and he seizes her
and lies with her, and they are discovered, the man who lay with her
shall pay the girl’s father fifty <shekels of> silver, and she shall be his
wife. Because he has violated her, he can never have the right to
divorce her" (28-29).
Thus the seducer pays the father the money as a fine for violating
the virgin, not as compensation to the father. Shechem was willing to obey
the law of the land and behaved according to the norms in his willingness to
marry Dinah. The brothers, according to The Book of Deuteronomy,
interfered with his obligation to marry her and were wrong to cut off her only
chance of marriage. The law of Deuteronomy can thus be considered an
internal commentary on the story of Dinah.
Judges 19: The Concubine (Pilegesh) at Gibeah
In Judges 19, there are many biblical intertexts, perhaps the most obvious and
best known is that of Gen 19, the story of Lot's offer to hand over his
daughters to the angry men of Sodom to protect his guests, the angels from
being molested by the mob. Judges 19 is more than just an autonomous text
because it is in an intertextual relationship to so many others. According to
Kochin, "the story of the concubine in Gibeah is a crucial text for learning
151
how to read the Bible…."
There are many verbal echoes, such as "speak to her heart" (daber al
lev) which link this text to others such as Gen. 34 and Hosea 2, or the knife
(ma-achelet) used by Abraham in Gen. 22 or the outrage (nevala) referred to
in the rapes in Gen. 34 and 2 Sam. 13. There are also thematic issues, such
152
as hospitality, encouraging war, vengeance, and trafficking in women ,
which can be compared and contrasted and linked to this text. Not only is
Judges 19 a self-contained text but when it dialogues with other texts, it gains
new meaning as well as offering commentary on the intertexts. Although it
is beyond the purview of this talk to look at the many literary intertexts which
can relate to the dismemberment of the concubine of Gibeah such as
Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus, The Rape of the Sabine Women, found in

151
Michael S. Kochin, "Living with the Bible: Jean-Jacques Rousseau Reads Judges
19-21," Hebraic Political Studies 2: 3 (Summer 2007): 308.
152
For a fascinating reading, on the pilegesh as a trafficked woman, see Pamela
Tamarkin Reis,"The Levite's Concubine: New Light on a Dark Story,"
Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament, 20, 1 (2006): 125-146. She does this
by reading the keri of ‫( להשיבו ַלהֲשׁיבָ ּה‬vs 3) literally and thus sees the Levite as a
pimp who goes back to bring the wife, his property, whom HE whores back to him.
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 153
Livy and Plutarch they are the "reality" that Bahktin refers to and so they
are in the background as we look at the horror in our biblical text. Likewise,
I will not look at the general themes of sacrifice of daughters by fathers:
Dinah, Jeptha's daughter, the pilegesh, Michal, and Tamar which also serve
as echoes as we read of the dismemberment and the political use of the
concubine's body. Finally, because of time constraints I will not talk about
the use of rabbinic midrash to comment (or rather NOT comment) on Judges
19. In the Talmudic discussions of what texts are NOT appropriate for use as
154
haftarot, this text is singled out.
Yairah Amit among others has shown that there is clearly a polemic
aspect to this story. Situated as it is at the end of the book of Judges and
segueing to 1 Samuel with the ascension of Saul, it is clearly both a pro-
monarchial text and an anti-Saulian one. She and many others have noted
that the cutting of the concubine into 12 pieces echoes Saul's cutting of the
BULL into twelve as a call for the unity of the people. As such this is a crude
parody of that story and shows the inadequacy of such a kind of chaotic
leadership. I do not plan to focus on this either. She too notes the use of ma-
achelet as have many others to note that there are echoes of the akedah story
here, she writes that author's "use of the word ma-achelet, meaning the
consuming sword, for the knife" results in "the portrayal of Abraham as a
155
slaughterer." The knife he takes is also the type used for animal sacrifice.
156
Jeremiah Unterman has pointed to the differences between the two stories,

153
Robert Gnuse,"Abducted Wives: A Hellenistic Narrative in Judges 21?"
Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament 22, 2 (2007): 228-240.
154
For a discussion on whether to read this passage see Sefer Ha-Eshkol (Albek),
Hilchot Kriyat Hatorah, 65:1. As to the rabbinic tradition about the husband being
at fault and hinting at an abusive relationship see, B Gittin 6b and Yalkut Shimoni
on Judges
'‫ אשכחיה ר‬.‫ רבי יונתן אמר נימא מצא לה‬.‫ רבי אביתר אמר זבוב מצא לה‬,‫ ותזנה עליו פילגשו‬+‫יט‬+
‫ מאי‬,‫ אמר ליה מאי קא עביד קודשא בריך הוא? אמר ליה עסיק בפלגש בגבעה‬,‫אביתר לאליהו ז"ל‬
‫ א"ל ומי איכא ספיקא קמי שמיא?! א"ל אלו‬,‫ יונתן בני כך הוא אומר‬,‫קאמר אביתר בני כך הוא אומר‬
,‫ א"ר יהודה אמר רב זבוב בקערה‬,‫ נימא מצא והקפיד‬,‫ זבוב מצא ולא הקפיד‬- ‫ואלו דברי אלהים חיים‬
‫ זבוב אונסא‬,‫ איכא דאמרי אידי ואידי בקערה‬.‫ סכנתא‬- ‫ ונימא‬,‫ מאיסותא‬- ‫ זבוב‬,‫ונימא באותו מקום‬
‫ שכל המטיל אימה יתירה‬,‫ א"ר חסדא לעולם אל יטיל אדם אימה יתירה בתוך ביתו‬.‫נימא פשיעותא‬
‫ (ילקוט שמעוני‬:‫ וחלול שבת‬,‫ ושפיכות דמים‬,‫ סוף בא לידי שלש עבירות גלוי עריות‬- ‫בתוך ביתו‬
)‫שופטים רמז עד‬
155
Yaira Amit, Hidden Polemics in Biblical Narrative (Leiden: Brill, 2000): 69.
156
Jeremiah Unterman, "The Literary Influence of `The Binding of Isaac' (Genesis
22) on `The Outrage at Gibeah’ (Judges 19)," HAR 4 (1980): 161-166.
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as well as the similarities of language. The most obvious intertexts to me and
others are of course the inverted hospitality of the people of Sodom and those
of the Gibeans, and the attempted homosexual rapes in both scenes and the
offering of women instead of the men. Of course Gibeah the place associated
with Saul is a worse place than Sodom, because here the woman is actually
raped and possibly left for dead and there is no deus ex machina to save her.
Two less obvious intertexts are those of FII 13 and Genesis 34
(which themselves comment on each other) which have rapes of innocent
girls (Tamar by Amnon and Dinah by Shechem) and result in devastation and
destruction. I have pointed elsewhere (as others have) to the commonalties
157
in these three texts , but I want to focus on one phrase which unites these
three tales (the pilegesh, Dina and Tamar) with Hosea 2 and also comment
on other important texts which use an almost identical expression, namely
daber al lev, literally, speak on the heart, usually translated as speak to
someone tenderly.
Daber al lev
Susanne Scholz and others point out that the phrase daber al lev
occurs only ten times. She writes that it occurs when a “situation is wrong,
difficult, or danger is in the air” and points to most of the texts that I mention.
[See Genesis 34:3; 50:21; Judges 19:3; 1 Samuel 1:13; 2 Samuel 19:8; Isaiah
40:8; Hosea 2:16; Ruth 2:13; 2 Chronicles 30:22; 32:6]. She writes that
"Whenever the phrase appears, someone speaks to the “heart” of the
fearful character to resolve a frightening situation in a larger context
of fear, anxiety, sin, or offense, talk[ing] against a prevailing
(negative) opinion'”.
Thus she reads the Dinah story as Shechem’s attempt to change
Dinah’s negative opinion and to make her accept his interests and reads the
158
sentence as “He tried to soothe her.” She does not see any sensitivity or
tenderness there, only a rapist speaking.
FAVORABLE AND UNFAVORABLE APPROACHES TO THE
EXPRESSION
157
Naomi Graetz, "Dinah the Daughter", in Athalya Brenner (editor), A Feminist
Companion to Genesis (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993): 306-317.
158
Susanne Scholz, "What 'Really' Happened to Dinah, A Feminist Analysis of
Genesis 34," lectio difficilior 2/2001 (http://www.lectio.unibe.ch/01_2/s.htm) and
Susanne Scholz (“Through Whose Eyes? A ‘Right’ Reading of Genesis 34,” in
Genesis: The Feminist Companion to the Bible (Second Series) [ed. Athalya
Brenner; (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998)], p. 170. Her conclusions are
based on Georg Fischer, "Die Redewendung ‫ דבר על לב‬im AT-Ein Beitrag zum
Verständnis von Jes. 40.2", Biblica 65 (1984): 244-50.
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Favorable Readings
Scholars are divided as how to understand the expression daber al lev. Phyllis
Trible reads the texts of Hosea, Dinah and the Pilegesh as follows:
"He went after her, says the Hebrew, "to speak to her heart (lev), to
bring her back." The words, "to speak to the heart," connote
reassurance, comfort, loyalty, and love. In other passages where this
phrase describes the action of a man toward a woman, she may be
either the offended or the guilty party. For example, after raping Dinah,
the daughter of Leah and Jacob, Shechem found himself drawn to her;
"he loved the young woman and spoke to her heart" (Gen. 34:3). Yet
in the prophecy of Hosea, Yahweh, the faithful lover, promises to
restore his faithless bride Israel, to bring her into the wilderness and to
"speak to her heart" (Hos. 2:14[16]). Thus, the Levite's speaking to the
heart of his concubine indicates love for her without specifying guilt.
The narrative censures no one for the concubine's departure.
Moreover, it portrays the master sympathetically. Be the woman
159
innocent or guilty, he seeks reconciliation."
Geoffrey Miller sees this as a case of:
"The Levite [who] has been denied sexual gratification to which he is
rightfully entitled when his concubine runs away, but rather than
succumbing to his immediate impulses, he waits four months before
setting out in pursuit (Judges 19:2). He travels to Bethlehem, not with
the intention of forcibly reclaiming his concubine, even though he may
have had the right to do so, but rather with the intent to appeal to her
with reason and persuasion (Judges 19:3). The Levite's deliberation
and control is contrasted with the Gibeahites' frenzy, his use of reason
and persuasion is contrasted with the Gibeahites' use of force, and his
legitimate claim to the concubine is contrasted with the Gibeahites'
160
theft."
Tikva Frymer Kensky wrote, that:
"There is no major rupture in the social fabric here, just a minor
difficulty. He goes in a conciliatory mood to speak to her heart to bring
her back. Shechem spoke to Dinah's heart (Gen 34:3), God will speak
to Israel's (Hos. 2:16). The phrase describes the act of a superior who
reassures his alienated or anxious subordinate partner. The Levite
wants to restore his former situation, and his pilegesh doesn't seem to

159
Trible, p. 67.
160
Miller, Geoffrey P. "Verbal Feud in the Hebrew Bible: Judges 3:12-30 and 19-
21," Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 55, 2 (Apr., 1996): 111.
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 mind. She brings him to her father…. The Levite could have gone after
her in a righteous rage, for qin'ah, 'jealousy,' or righteous indignation,
is an appropriate response of the husband/master whose wife has
broken trust. Alternatively, the girl and her father could have met him
with hostility. But instead we have an amicable scene of good
161
fellowship. The story makes no mention of coercion."
Another person who picked up favorably on the Levite was Jean
Jacques Rousseau in his "Le Levite d'Ephraim," written in 1762. He created
a romantic persona for the Levite, one in which "the girl's heart was touched
162
by the return of her husband." In this he may be following Josephus who
portrays the Levite as "a loyal and kind husband who cannot bear the
degradation brought upon his wife…" The Levite is "portrayed as a loving
163
husband willing to meet his wife's demands." Josephus describes the
Levite as follows:
"Now he was very fond of his wife, and overcome with her beauty; but
he was unhappy in this, that he did not meet with the like return of
affection from her, for she was averse to him, which did more inflame
his passion for her, so that they quarreled one with another perpetually;
and at last the woman was so disgusted at these quarrels, that she left
her husband, and went to her parents in the fourth month. The husband
being very uneasy at this her departure, and that out of his fondness
for her, came to his father and mother-in-law, and made up their
quarrels, and was reconciled to her, and lived with them there four

161
Tikva Frymer-Kensky. Reading the Women of the Bible: A New Interpretation
of Their Stories. (New York: Schocken Books, 2002): 120.
162
Peggy Kamuf. "Author of a Crime," in Athalya Brenner, editor, A Feminist
Companion to Judges (1993): 204. See also Mieke Bal, "A Body of Writing:
Judges 19," in Athalya Brenner, editor, A Feminist Companion to Judges
(Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993): 208-30 and Michael S. Kochin,
"Living with the Bible: Jean-Jacques Rousseau Reads Judges 19-21," Hebraic
Political Studies 2: 3 (Summer 2007): 301–325.
163
Louis H. Feldman. "Josephus' Portrayal (Antiquities 5:136-174) of the
Benjaminite Affair of the Concubine and its Repercussions (Judges 19-21)," Jewish
Quarterly Review 90: 3-4 (January-April 2000): 271. Kochin also suggests
Josephus's influence on Rousseau in note 37 on page 317 "Rousseau may owe
something on this point to Josephus’ retelling of Judges 19–21, also somewhat
romanticized; see Flavius Josephus, Antiquities V, 137."
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 days, as being kindly treated by her parents." (Flavius Josephus,
164
Antiquities V, 137)
In her PhD dissertation, Frances Fite demonstrates "how positive
interpretations of Shechem are perpetuated in authoritative guides to biblical
interpretation." She looks at H-J Fabry’s discussion of the idiom ‫ עַל־לֵב דבֵּ ר‬in
the Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament. In reviewing his positive
explanation of ‫עַל־לֵב דבֵּ ר‬, she maintains that he
"interprets the idiom from the perspective of the speaker. This results
in an interpretation of ‫ עַל־לֵב דבֵּ ר‬as representative of a well-intentioned
165
speaker speaking with well-intentioned words to his addressee(s)."
She writes that
"Fabry begins his discussion of ‫ עַל־לֵב דבֵּ ר‬by referring to it as 'a
common idiom for wooing affection'…. According to Fabry, Shechem
'loves her and therefore speaks to her.' Fabry recommends comparing
Shechem’s speech to Dinah to 'the descriptions of how the Levite goes
after his concubine (Jgs.19:3) and Boaz woos Ruth (Ruth 2:13).' Then
Fabry asserts that 'David speaks to his troops (2 S. 19:8 [7]),' Hezekiah
to the Levites (2 Chron. 30:22) and to the commanders of Jerusalem
(2 Chron. 32:6) 'in this same seductive way.' According to Fabry, "In
the LXX, in the other places where ‫ ב על־ ֵל דבּר‬appears in the Hebrew
text, these are the means by which the speaker tries to persuade the
166
recipient(s) of his speech to accept his point of view."
She continues and states that
"Fabry’s emphasis on the idea that ‫ עַל־לֵב דבֵּ ר‬represents seductive
speech most likely arises from the fact that he regards Hos 2:16 as the
locus classicus of the idiom. Fabry describes this verse as the LORD’S
using “enticement . . . and seductive persuasion (dibber ‘al-lēb as the
mode of speech used by lovers) . . . to bring [Israel] back to the
wilderness, and there “speak to her heart,” restor[ing] the unbroken

164
(Online)) for Judges 19-21 http://www.biblestudytools.com/history/flavius-
josephus/antiquities-jews/book-5/chapter-2.html?p=4.
165
Frances H. Fite, Bearers of a Narrative of Listening in the Age of Testimony:
Determining Meaning for Genesis 34 (PhD Dissertation, Carol Newsome, Adviser)
(Atlanta: Emory College, 2009): 356.
166
Fite, footnote #92, p.222.
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 bond between Israel and Yahweh,” who are envisioned metaphorically
167
as unfaithful wife and faithful husband."
An Unfavorable Reading
On the other hand,
"as Fabry notes, at the heart of the heart is memory and the prior abusive
actions of the husband/LORD which she remembers all too well do not bode
well for his actually living up to his promise that their future together will be
168
characterized by compassion."
I have written elsewhere about Hosea and concur with Fite and Fabry's
169
reading of the term as being fraught with abuse.
Susan Niditch was among the first to point out the Levite’s
insensitivity to his pilegesh, the fact that he does not communicate to her by
speaking, that he does not take care of her. His behavior is “a microcosm of
170
larger community relationships in Israel.” Most recent feminist readings of
this text read the text as one in which the Levite could not care less about his
171
concubine. In short, there is no heart in the Levite nor in the community
when it comes to the pilegesh.
The big question is which text comments on which. Is there an
Urtext? And is an Urtext important at all. For instance, there is a clear
intertextual basis between Genesis 19 and Judges 19 and most commentators
(except for Susan Niditch) agree that the former influenced the latter. If we

167
Frances H. Fite, Bearers of a Narrative of Listening in the Age of Testimony:
Determining Meaning for Genesis 34 (PhD Dissertation, Carol Newsome, Adviser)
(Atlanta: Emory College, 2009): 35 7
168
Fite, p. 370, quoting Fabry (TDOT 7: 421)
169
See Naomi Graetz, "The Haftarah Tradition and the Metaphoric Battering of
Hosea's Wife," Conservative Judaism (Fall, 1992): 29-42 and "God is to Israel as
Husband is to Wife," in Athalya Brenner (editor), A Feminist Companion to the
Latter Prophets (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995): 126-145.
170
Susan Niditch, "The 'Sodomite' Theme in Judges 19-20: Family, Community
and Social Disintegration," The Catholic Biblical Quarterly 44 (1982): 371.
171
See Nehama Aschkenasy, "The Hapless Concubine," Woman at the Window:
Biblical Tales of Oppression and Escape (Detroit: Wayne State University Press,
1998): 62-78; Alice Bach, "Rereading the Body Politic: Women and Violence in
Judges 21," in Athalya Brenner, editor, Judges (1999): 143-59; Mieke Bal, Death
and Dissymmetry: The Politics of Coherence in the Book of Judges (Chicago: U. of
Chicago Press, 1988); Koala Jones-Warsaw, "Toward a Womanist Hermeneutic: A
Reading of Judges 19-21," In: A Feminist Companion to Judges, editor, Athalya
Brenner (1993): 172-186.
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lay the ten texts out, as I propose to do—can we say that each one hints at an
ominous atmosphere? Are there exceptions—and if so why? As we look at
the ten prominent places where the expression of daber al lev is found in the
Tanakh, it would be interesting to see whether the later texts supersede,
172
supplement, or exegete each other -- but that would mean going into dating,
something which I am not prepared to do here.
What I do hope to do after looking at these texts, is to show that
whenever the expression daber al lev, speak to her tenderly is used, we
cannot believe that this is true, because all the texts do not end well, i.e., they
foreshadow or forebode future violence or betrayal. It is an ominous term,
and the translation of speak tenderly does not take into account the vibrato
of the expression daber with all of its associations, which includes
subjugation and extermination (compare two 2 Kings 11: 1 and II Chron.
22:10 when Atalyah exterminates (‫ ) ְַתּדַ בֵּ ר‬the seed of the Judaic kingdom). I
would argue that either prior to, or following this expression, there is violence
associated with this term. If we were to speak cinematically, there would be
some horror music in the background whenever the term is used. Despite the
fact that comfort (nechama) or promises of conciliation (teshuva) are also
associated with this term we have to always look at all instances of daber al
lev with a hermeneutics of suspicion in the classical sense, i.e., that this
expression is dangerous for women and the people of Israel when portrayed
as a woman.
The very clear intertexts, as has been hinted at by Trible in a footnote
are: Judges 19:3, Genesis 34:2 and Hosea 2:16. Here the contexts are of an
abusive situation in both the background and foreground: the husband of the
wife who has run away, the rapist of Dina and the abusive God/husband of
the people Israel. Is Hosea, who definitely knows of the Judges 19 text--since
173
there are clear references to Gibeah in Hos 9:9 and 10:9 -- hinting that when
God tells him to "speak to her heart", aware of the Levite husband/master of
the concubine who also strayed and thus is unconsciously reminding the
reader that Hosea's God cannot be trusted? "As Fabry notes, at the heart of
172
The three words come from Ian Young's, review of Hanne Von Weissenberg,
Juha Pakkala, and Marko Marttila, eds., Changes in Scripture: Rewriting and
Interpreting Authoritative Traditions in the Second Temple Period, Review of
Biblical Literature [http://www.bookreviews.org] (2012):2.
173
"They have been as grievously corrupt as in the days of Gibeah; He will
remember their iniquity; He will punish their sins." (Hos. 9:9) and "You have
sinned more, O Israel, Than in the days of Gibeah. “There they stand [as] at
Gibeah! Shall they not be overtaken by a war upon scoundrels 10) As peoples
gather against them?" (Hos. 10:9-10a)
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the heart is memory and the prior abusive actions of the husband/LORD
which she remembers all too well do not bode well for his actually living up
to his promise that their future together will be characterized by
174
compassion." I too have written elsewhere about Hosea and concur with
175
the reading of the term as being fraught with abuse.
Does the idea of a comforting God to a people who have suffered
and will suffer expulsion in the future in Isaiah 40:2 raise the hackles of the
reader who associates the expression daber al lev with Dinah and the Levite?
It should! "Comfort, oh comfort My people, Says your God. Speak
tenderly to Jerusalem, and declare to her That her term of service is over,
that her iniquity is expiated; For she has received at the hand of the Lord
Double for all her sins." There are those who would say that unlike Hosea, in
Isaiah there is an apology and a promise made for a different non-abusive
176
future. And thus on the basis of that firm promise, God and Israel could
safely resume their shared destiny. That is probably the reason why Isaiah 40
was chosen by the rabbis to be the first of seven "comforting" haftarot after
the 9th of Av. Even the comfort offered is in relationship to the fact that the
people sinned and were indeed overly punished, i.e. received double for her
sins. Once again God, is the abusive master/husband of His people Israel or
Jerusalem—God is comforting and promising never to do it again, like he did
in Hosea. Israel is the weak woman; God is the angry one who almost
destroys her. Can the people trust this God, when he says Nahamu, Nahamu,
or his prophet who is told to speak tenderly to the people? All we have to do
is read the book of Lamentations to get a reality check.
I believe that the argumentation is even stronger if we add to this the
two other references to daber al lev in II Chronicles 30:22 and 32:6 which
take place during the same historical time frame. The running theme in this
passage is man's nothingness in relationship to God's eternity and his words,
speech. I believe that the argumentation is even stronger if we add to this the
two other references to daber al lev in II Chronicles 30:22 and 32:6.
The first reference is a peaceful lull when

174
Fite, p. 370, quoting Fabry (TDOT 7: 421)
175
See Naomi Graetz, "The Haftarah Tradition and the Metaphoric Battering of
Hosea's Wife," Conservative Judaism (Fall, 1992): 29-42 and "God is to Israel as
Husband is to Wife," in Athalya Brenner (editor), A Feminist Companion to the
Latter Prophets (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995): 126-145.
176
Fite, p. 375, referring to Michael Thompson, Isaiah 40-66 (London: Epworth
Press, 2001).
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 ""Hezekiah persuaded all the Levites" ‫ וַיְ דַ בֵּ ר יְ ִּחזְקִּ יהּו עַל לֵּב כל הַ לְ וִּ יִּ ם‬who
performed skillfully for the Lord to spend the seven days of the
[Passover] festival making offerings of well-being, and confessing to
the Lord God of their fathers."
The second reference is against the background of King Sennacherib of
Assyria invasion of Judah and encampment against its fortified towns with
the aim of taking them over. During this siege Hezekiah takes action and
fortifies the City of David, and made weapons.
"He appointed battle officers over the people; then, gathering them to
him in the square of the city gate, he rallied them" ‫ וַיְ דַ בֵּ ר עַ ל לְ בבם‬, 7“Be
strong and of good courage; do not be frightened or dismayed by the
king of Assyria or by the horde that is with him, for we have more with
us than he has with him."
And it seemed to work for "The people were encouraged by the speech
of King Hezekiah of Judah."
Fite interprets what he had to say in 2 Chr. 30:22 as encouraging—
177
that he is a good king, who cares about his people. It is true there is a
peaceful period, but later Hezekiah's salvation and additional 15 years of rule
did not end well and it was clear he did not really care about the people, for
his attitude was après moi le deluge! Thus I would argue that his speeches
using the term daber al lev are suspect and possibly in his own self-interest.
As to Joseph, should the brothers continue to suspect Joseph who
speaks "tenderly" to them in Genesis 50:21? Surely they have every right to
continue to suspect him of future reminders of their guilt, in keeping with his
payback to them and mental abuse of them in Egypt. If we look at the passage
in Genesis 50, we see that the brothers rightly worried about Joseph still
bearing a grudge against them and taking revenge for all the wrong that they
did to him in the past, now that their father was dead. They grovelingly
begged Joseph to forgive them and his emotional answer was
“Have no fear! Am I a substitute for God? 20Besides, although you
intended me harm, God intended it for good, so as to bring about the
present result—the survival of many people. 21And so do not fear. I
will provide for you and your children.” Thus he comforted them, and
spoke kindly to them.
Obviously, anyone who knows about sibling relationships would not
trust Joseph's so-called re-assuring words. And notice that the brothers do not
answer him; they simply listen passively and perhaps are in terror that they

177
Fite, p. 379 referring to James Barr, The Semantics of Biblical Language
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961).
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do not do anything which might tick him off against them in the future. Of
course it is in his interest to reassure them—after all he is going to ask a big
favor of them—to bury his bones in the land of Israel, but they don't know
that at the time and when he "comforts them" and "speaks kindly to them" he
holds all the cards.
As to the case of Hannah praying "in her heart" in 1 Samuel 1:13,
178
most commentators choose not to deal with this phrase intertextually. The
early commentators Radak (Kimchi (1160-1235), Metzudat David and
Metzudat Tzion (Althschuler, 1753) change the al libah to et libah or el libah
to make it more in keeping with the idea that she is positioning her heart to
prayer, or speaking to her heart (silently) so that Eli cannot hear her.
Although the text about Hannah praying "IN her heart" in 1 Samuel 1:13,
seems to be unrelated to the texts I have looked at, Yair Zachowitz writes in
his commentary on the phrase in the book of Ruth, that f we position this text
with Boaz's words to Ruth: "You are most kind, my lord, to comfort me and
to speak gently to your maidservant" ‫וְ כִּ י ִּדבַ ְרת עַ ל לֵּב ִּשפְ חתֶּ ָך‬, and then notice,
that Hannah too refers to herself as a shiphah, 5 verses after the phrase ‫וְ חַ נה‬
‫ ִּהיא ְמדַ בֶּ ֶּרת עַ ל לִּ בּה‬to describe Hannah's frame of mind. According to
Zachowitz, this shows her submissiveness or self-deprecation when she tells
Eli “You are most kind to your handmaid" ‫( ִּת ְמצא ִּשפְ ח ְתָך חֵּ ן ְב ֵּעינֶּיָך‬1 Sam.
179
1:18). However, if we juxtapose the phrase medaberet al libah with the
vow she makes to dedicate her unborn and yet to be conceived male child to
God, we should note that her silent speech is directed to an all-powerful God
and in the presence of the high priest Eli. Despite her agency, we have her
background fraught with the anguish and distress she felt at being barren, and
we have the foreshadowing of the possible abuse her unborn son will
experience at the hands of Eli's sons and the future conflict of Samuel and
Saul. Thus we have another context for understanding medaberet al libah as
a situation where a less powerful person/woman is in relationship to more
powerful people (God/Eli).

178
"In 1 Sam. 1:13 Hannah is described as “speaking to her [own] heart.” Since I
am concerned with the meaning of ‫ על־לב דבר‬only as it refers to the speech of one
person to another (or others), I do not address its presence in 1 Sam. 1:13 further."
Frances H. Fite, Bearers of a Narrative of Listening in the Age of Testimony:
Determining Meaning for Genesis 34 (PhD Dissertation, Carol Newsome,
Adviser), (Atlanta: Emory College, 2009), footnote 16, p. 359.
179
My paraphrase of Yair Zachovitz, Ruth: Mikrah le-Yisrael (Jerusalem: Magnes
Press, 1990): 77.
-108-
 Note that Zachowitz has put at least 7 of our texts into dialogue. Eli,
Boaz, God, Joseph, the Levite, Shechem and David/Joab are the adonim in
the texts who hold the power and the ability to provide nurture and
sustenance. This of course implies that they can take it away at will and hence
the recipients (Hannah, Ruth, the people of Israel and Joseph's brothers, the
concubine) have a good reason to show subservience to the master figure.
Zachowitz goes even further for he juxtaposes the combination of
the phrases "lenachem" and ledaber al lev with Joseph's words of comfort to
his brothers (Gen 50:21), and with Isaiah's in 40:1-2. Thus Zachowitz has
many of our texts into dialogue with each other. Eli, Boaz, God, Joseph, the
Levite, Shechem are the adonim in the texts who hold the power and the
ability to provide nurture and sustenance. This of course implies that they can
take it away at will and hence the recipients (Hannah, Ruth, the people of
Israel, Joseph's brothers, the concubine, Dinah) have a good reason to show
subservience to the master figure.
THE MISSING MENTION OF DABER AL LEV: 2 SAM. 13
The one text which screams out to be heard in all of this discussion of daber
al lev is the only one which does not include the phrase. Yet it can serve as a
commentary on so many of our texts. It is the one in which the victim speaks
up and says she will NOT be silent or conciliatory and accuses the perpetrator
of not having a heart. The irony is that, it is the talking and plotting that got
180
her into this situation. She is truly innocent , for unlike Dinah or the
pilegesh, she stays at home and it is her father and brothers who betray her.
She uses the vocabulary of the past, such as "such a thing should not be done
in Israel"; "do not do this outrage." (nebalah) reminding us again of Dinah
and the pilegesh. Tamar speaks, but Amnon does not listen. In words that
remind us of the rape of the pilegesh, Amnon grabs her, vayehezak bah and
rapes her. Unlike the aftermath of the rape of Dinah, where Shechem tries to
appease her and daber al lev, Amnon throws her out. Like the Master, after
finding his ravished pilegesh on the doorstep, Amnon gives her an order, "get
up, Go!" These words are eerily similar to the Master who says, "Get up and
let's go."
In Judges 19:30 we have a reminder of our phrase daber al lev, one
that is often overlooked: ,‫ ִּשימּו לכֶּם [לבבם] עלֶּיה עֻצוּ וְ דַ בֵּ רּו‬which is what
"everyone who saw it cried out, 'Never has such a thing happened or been
seen from the day the Israelites came out of the land of Egypt to this day! Put

180
But see Pamela Tamarkin Reis,"Cupidity and Stupidity: Woman’s Agency and
The 'Rape' of Tamar," JANES 25 (1997): 43-60. She argues that Tamar is not
innocent, just stupid and brought her rape upon herself.
-109-
your mind to this; take counsel and decide’” (19:30). which Trible translates
as "direct your heart to her" (p. 81) apparently relying on the variant simu
libchem (p.400 Kittel). According to Heidi Szpek "He asks Israel to
"consider it, take counsel and speak out". She reads the "expression 'consider
it' in Hebrew is literally "to place the heart” sim leb; however, in our verse
the idiom has been truncated simu-the word 'heart' leb has been omitted. The
Levite has most subtly omitted his heart, his compassion, his love for his
181
concubine."
But Absalom gives Tamar the opposite advice, don't do anything, be
quiet: "For the present, sister, keep quiet about it; he is your brother. Don’t
brood over the matter.” ‫ אַ ל תָּ שׁיתי אֶ ת לִּ בֵּ ְך לַדבר הַ ּזֶה‬Her brother Absalom said,
“Be quiet now, my sister. . . . Don’t take this thing [matter] to heart” (v. 20).
Absalom gambles that David will do nothing; so all he has to do is wait and
so "[e]ach man did nothing, just as he hoped they would, leaving Amnon
182
open to Absalom’s revenge." 21When King David heard about all this, he
was greatly upset. 22Absalom didn’t utter a word ‫ וְ ל ֹא ִּדבֶּ ר‬to Amnon, good or
bad, but Absalom hated Amnon because ‫ עַ ל ְדבַ ר‬he had violated his sister
Tamar. Thus the leit wort of daber al lev, now becomes inverted to al dvar,
183
a motif that has been with us throughout all these texts.
Whereas Absalom counsels inaction, the tribes, in contrast, take
action. The irony is that he and Amnon, the eater of the heart cakes, do not
take into account the heart break that Tamar feels and of course as Trible
points out that "long ago the [Levite] was supposed to speak to the heart of
the woman, though he did not. Now Israel must direct its heart toward her,
184
take counsel, and speak" ‫עֻצוּ וְ דַ בֵּ רוּ‬. And unlike Absalom, who waits for
vengeance, the people of Israel do respond with a mighty vengeance against
the Benjaminites. Dinah's brothers too in their cunning say we cannot do this
thing to give our sister to the uncircumcised Shechem and use the word davar

181
Heidi M. Szpek, "The Levite’s Concubine: The Story That Never Was," Women
in Judaism: A Multidisciplinary Journal (online) Vol. 5, No 1 (2007).
182
Trible, “Tamar,” p. 38 quoted by Fite, p.291
183
Jenny Smith, in her article “The Discourse Structure of the Rape of Tamar (2
Samuel 13:1-22),” Vox Evangelica 20 (1990): 41, ends her article with the
following notation:"The concealed nature of Absalom’s hatred is encoded by welo’
on the main event line followed by a break in the waw consecutive. The more
intense dibber is used rather than dabar to convey the idea that Absalom ‘said
nothing’ to Amnon. “She is referring to McCarter, P. Kyle. II Samuel, Translation
and Notes. The Anchor Bible 9. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1984, p. 315.
184
Trible, p. 82.
-110-
hazeh in their speech: ‫ל ֹא נוּכַל ַלעֲשוֹת הַ דָ בָ ר הַ ּזֶה לָתֵ ת אֶ ת אֲחֹ תֵ נוּ‬. And they take
immediate action after the men are newly circumcised, they do not wait to
take their vengeance and immediately slaughter the men of Shechem.
So now we are ready to look at my final proof text which comes
from 2 Samuel 19:8 in which Joab berates David:
"I am sure that if Absalom were alive today and the rest of us dead,
you would have preferred it. 8 Now arise, come out ‫ קוּם צֵ א‬and placate
your followers! (‫ )דַ בֵּ ר עַ ל לֵּב עֲבָ דֶ יך‬For I swear by the Lord that if you
do not come out, not a single man will remain with you overnight; and
that would be a greater disaster for you than any disaster that has
befallen you from your youth until now.”
As we know, Absalom had Amnon killed and Joab and his arms
bearers killed Absalom (2 Sam 18:14-15) and David grieved mightily and
185
excessively for his beloved son in public. The troops saved his kingdom
and David did not thank them—he was not functioning at all and the people
were also in despair and would probably overthrow him. Joab told the king
that he had to do something: to speak in a convincing way to his people, or
else things would go pretty badly for him and no one would stay with him
and this would be the worst evil that had ever come upon him from his youth
until now. David did go out, but he did not actually speak. In fact, the people
fled. Why did they flee? Did they have some reason to be nervous about
David's intentions and his fitness to be their ruler? Not only that, but whose
interests did Joab have when he told David to protect his crown? Surely,
David's trust in him was not great and of course we all know about the
fatherly advice he gave to Solomon on his deathbed: "4Then the Lord will
fulfill the promise ‫ ְדבָ רוֹ‬that He made concerning me ‫אֲ שֶׁ ר דבֶּ ר ָעלַי‬:" (1 Kings
2:3-6) providing that Solomon sees to it "that [Joab's] white hair does not go
down to Sheol in peace." I can only hint at the words asher deeber alai, but
would like to go back to Joab's original use of the expression daber al lev.
Would its use push any memory buttons for the people? To me, it is
fascinating that this phrase appears here, rather than in the 2 Sam 13 story of
Tamar and Amnon. Does the editor want us to note that the family feud
started out in 2 Sam 13 with David's silence with the full responsibility of the
tragedy on his head? Joab coerces him to speak, daber al lev, to the people
directly and by indirection through the Wise woman of Tekoa. Therefore, I
find it not to be coincidental that this phrase, which really belongs in 2 Sam
13, at the beginning—when Amnon speaks to Tamar, only ends up with

185
My son Absalom! O my son, my son Absalom! If only I had died instead of
you! O Absalom, my son, my son!” (2 Sam 19.1)
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David at the end of his haunted reign. For the editor deliberately chose NOT
to say, "when Tamar served the heart cakes to Amnon, he spoke to her
heart and said “Come lie with me, sister.”
CONCLUSION
Phyllis Trible ended her classic article by claiming that scripture was silent
about the story of the pilegesh:
"If the Levite failed to report the whole story to the tribes of Israel,
how much more has the canonical tradition failed to remember it….To
keep quiet is to sin, for the story orders its listeners to 'direct your heart
186
to her, take counsel, and speak' (19:30; 20:7)."
I believe that, in this brief case study, I have argued that the Tanakh was not
silent, and that in its intertextuality, especially with the expression daber al
lev, it is calling to our attention that the Bible does not just want TALK
(devarim or dibbur); that talk is suspicious and cannot be trusted, even if it
is tender and conciliatory—especially if the speaker is one who holds the
reins of power with its potential to subjugate and even exterminate.

186
Trible, p. 86.
-112-
CHAPTER TEN: IS KINYAN (PURCHASE) OF WOMAN IN THE
187
MARRIAGE DOCUMENT ONLY A METAPHOR?

The Marriage Document (The Ketuva Text)

On the ______day of the week, the _________day of the month
______ in the year five thousand seven hundred and ______ since the
creation of the world, the era according to which we reckon here in the
city of _________________ that ________ son of _________ said to
this virgin (betulta virgin is usual, or substitute woman, bride,
divorcee, widow, convert, or other, as appropriate)
_________daughter of _____. “Be my wife according to the practice
of Moses and Israel, and I will cherish, honor, support and maintain
you in accordance with the custom of Jewish husbands who cherish,
honor, support and maintain their wives faithfully. And I here present
you with the marriage gift (mohar) of virgins (betulechi), (two
hundred) silver zuzim, which belongs to you, according the law of
Moses and Israel; and I will also give you your food, clothing and
necessities, and live with you as husband and wife according to
universal custom.” [His level of obligation varies to some degree with
his income and her background; a rich man has to give his wife more
than a poor man has to give his wife. Likewise, her rights to sexual
encounters vary with his profession; an idle man has more
responsibility than a man who works away from home for lengthy
periods.] And Miss_____, this virgin (betulta) consented and became
his wife. The trousseau that she brought to him from her (father's)
house in silver, gold, valuables, clothing, furniture and bedclothes, all
this ________, the said bridegroom accepted in the sum of (one
hundred) silver pieces, and ______ the bridegroom, consented to
increase this amount from his own property with the sum of (one
hundred) silver pieces, making in all (two hundred) silver pieces. And
thus said __________, the bridegroom: “The responsibility of this
marriage contract (ketuvta), of this trousseau (nedunya), and of this
additional sum, I take upon myself and my heirs after me, so that they
shall be paid from the best part of my property and possession that I
have beneath the whole heaven, that which I now possess or may
hereafter acquire. All my property, real and personal, even the shirt
187
This article is based on a talk I gave at the SBL International Meeting in Estonia
(July, 2010) and it was thoroughly revised and appeared in an on-line publication
Lectio Difficilior 2/2011 (December 2011)
http://www.lectio.unibe.ch/11_2/graetz_naomi_2011.html
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 from my back, shall be mortgaged to secure the payment of this
marriage contract (shtar ketuvta), of the trousseau, and of the addition
made to it, during my lifetime and after my death, from the present day
and forever.” _______, the bridegroom, has taken upon himself the
responsibility of this marriage contract, of the trousseau and the
addition made to it, according to the restrictive usages of all marriage
contracts and the additions to them made for the daughters of Israel,
according to the institution of our sages of blessed memory. It is not to
be regarded as a mere forfeiture without consideration or as a mere
formula of a document. We have followed the legal formality of
symbolic delivery/ritual acquisition (kinyan) between ______the son
of _______, the bridegroom and _______ the daughter of _______ this
(virgin), and we have used a garment legally fit for the purpose, to
strengthen all that is stated above, and everything is valid and
188
confirmed. [The usual method is kinyan sudar, in which the groom
gives an object of some kind to the witnesses, and in so doing, accepts
189
upon himself the obligations he has specified.]
Male God-language is not innocuous: metaphors matter! In 1995
Rosalind Gill wrote: “We have known for a long time that language is not a
neutral, descriptive medium but is deeply implicated in the maintenance of
190
power relations.” Religious symbols are chosen carefully to communicate
its values to the society and help the community to understand itself and its
conception of the world. As Mary Daly pointed out long ago, when God is
perceived as a father or a husband ruling and controlling “his” people, then
the “nature of things” and the “divine plan”, and even the “order of the
191
universe”, will be understood to be male dominated as well. Metaphors are
not benign. Should we be eliminating those, which are malignant? An
example of a malignant metaphor is that of kinyan, purchase or acquisition
of the bride in the Jewish marriage contract, the ketuva.

188
http://www.modernketubah.com/ketubah_translation.php.
189
All of the commentary in brackets and small print is from
http://www.hasoferet.com/weddings/stamtext.shtml.
190
Rosalind Gill, “Relativism, Reflexivity and Politics: Interrogating Discourse
Analysis from a Feminist Perspective,” in Feminism and Discourse: Psychological
Perspectives, edited by Sue Wilkinson and Celia Kitzinger (London, Thousand
Oaks, New Delhi: SAGE Publications, 1995): 166.
191
Mary Daly, Beyond God the Father (Boston: Beacon Press, 1973): 13, as quoted
in Judith Plaskow in Standing Again at Sinai (San Francisco: Harper and Row,
1990): 126.
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 In the Bible there is no marriage ceremony as we understand it today.
A man simply “takes” (lakach) a woman. For instance, in Genesis 24:67
Isaac “took Rebecca and she became his wife”. Since the man’s family gives
a gift, referred to as mohar (Genesis 22:17 and 34:12) to the woman, it
appears that this is part of the process of getting a wife. The groom’s family
made another marital payment to that of the bride. The husband is also
referred to as ba'al (master or owner) which implies ownership and property.
The word kanah, “to purchase” or “to acquire”, was used in Ruth 4:10 when
Boaz married Ruth. Once a woman is married her husband has exclusive
rights to her sexuality. It is presumed that he “buys” her virginity and if the
husband claims that she is not a virgin anymore, there is a procedure to
determine if the accusation is true in Deuteronomy 22:13–21.
13
A man marries a woman and cohabits with her. Then he takes an
14
aversion to her and makes up charges against her and defames her,
saying, “I married this woman; but when I approached her, I found that
15
she was not a virgin.” In such a case, the girl’s father and mother
shall produce the evidence of the girl’s virginity before the elders of
16
the town at the gate. And the girl’s father shall say to the elders, “I
gave this man my daughter to wife, but he has taken an aversion to her;
17
so he has made up charges, saying, ‘I did not find your daughter a
virgin.’ But here is the evidence of my daughter’s virginity!” And they
18
shall spread out the cloth before the elders of the town. The elders
19
of that town shall then take the man and flog him, and they shall fine
him a hundred [shekels of] silver and give it to the girl’s father; for the
man has defamed a virgin in Israel. Moreover, she shall remain his
20
wife; he shall never have the right to divorce her. But if the charge
21
proves true, the girl was found not to have been a virgin, then the
girl shall be brought out to the entrance of her father’s house, and the
men of her town shall stone her to death; for she did a shameful thing
in Israel, committing fornication while under her father’s authority.
Thus you will sweep away evil from your midst.
Rabbinic texts built on these biblical texts in creating the model for today’s
marriage ceremony.
In this paper I hope to show that the problematic aspects of today’s
Jewish marriage ceremony, in which a husband acquires a bride, has its roots
in both biblical and midrashic sources and that the mindset that results is toxic
to Jewish women. The ketuva is the marriage contract and it states that the
woman is acquired (in Aramaic, nikneyt), with the root of the word being

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kanah, bought or purchased. In the Mishnah it is written that, “the woman is
acquired [nikneyt] ... by money, or by document or by sexual intercourse” (M
Kiddushin 1:1).
Many have argued that although the ketuva is evidence that the
woman is “acquired” in marriage, she still retains important rights. However,
according to Gail Labovitz, it is kinyan rather than the ketuva, which is
legally constitutive of marriage, for the woman does not receive her ketuva
until after she has been “acquired” in marriage. So although the woman is
protected by the ketuva, it does not change the ownership model of
192
marriage. She points out that because women are associated with the
property of the male householder, rabbis can use slaves to think and reason
about wives, women, marriage and divorce. Thus divorce in rabbinic
Judaism, and some strands of modern Judaism, is the process of undoing the
husband’s ownership. Rabbis can use the analogy of freeing a slave since
193
divorce is a unilateral act of the husband. Labovitz “persuasively disputes
earlier apologetic characterizations of rabbinic thought and legislation
194
[which claim to expand] the freedom and autonomy of women”. She
asserts in her book that the terminology of kiddushin does not change the
unilateral nature of the act in any way, and to prove this matter, she points to
the many rabbinic sources that explore the terminology of kiddushin through
an analogy to hekdesh, which is the dedication of property to God. Thus the
man has the right to sexual exclusivity, which she does not have – since all
these societies practiced polygamy, at least until around 1000 C.E.
He has control over the use of the property that she brings to the
marriage (even though she has the formal title and can expect to get the
property or its value back if they get divorced); he has control over her
earnings during the marriage; and finally he has the right to end the
195
relationship by divorcing her.
Tirza Meacham agrees with Labovitz and goes one step further:
“Rhetoric has been used to misrepresent the acquisition of women, by
referring to kiddushin as a holy act and connecting to it concepts of kedusha
192
Gail Labovitz, “Follow the Money: Bride Price, Dowry, and the Rabbinic
Ketubbah,” talk given at AJS December 17th, 2006.
193
Gail Labovitz, “A Woman is Acquired”: Slavery and Jewish Sexual Ethics,”
Shma, October 2008.
194
Leonard Gordon, “Marriage and Family,” review of Labovitz’s book, Marriage
and Metaphor. S’hma (June 2010): 16.
195
Gail Labovitz, Marriage and Metaphor: Constructions of Gender in Rabbinic
Literature (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2009).
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(holiness) and the stability of the Jewish family, community and halakhic
Judaism.” She writes that “the acquisition of human beings should never be
dignified by such concepts as ‘sanctification’ or ‘marriage’. Just as we would
not dignify the institution of slavery by making claims of benevolent mastery
and protection of the weak and disadvantaged, so too, we should avoid
creating euphemisms around an institution which holds thousands of women
196
worldwide as prisoners.”
In contrast, Judith Hauptman writes that: "The move away from
marriage as a purchase is borne out by the Mishnah's terminology. The term
kinyan (purchase) … is superseded in most instances by the term kiddushin
… the root of which is K-D-SH [‫ ]קדש‬meaning holy or set aside. Marriage is
an arrangement in which a man sets aside a woman to be his wife … [Thus]
197
marriage has now been infused with a sense of sanctification.” And this
state too, can only be dissolved by divorce. Hauptman argues that the ketuva
document gives women more personhood than in biblical literature. She
evaluates "the rabbinic system from a dynamic rather than a static
perspective" and while acknowledging that the rabbis upheld patriarchy in
Judaism, she argues that over the course of time they enacted legislation that
198
was “helpful to women”.
All that Hauptman has written may be true in the legal sense, but
Judith Wegner answers the question posed in her title: Are women in the
mishnaic system “chattel or person”? She writes that the Mishnah treats
women as chattel under some circumstances and under other circumstances
as full persons. For Wegner, the key is patriarchal control over female
reproductive functions.” In her discussion of mishnaic law expansion on
"Scripture's Taxonomy of Women", she argues that the Mishnah rules that
199
the "wife's sexuality [is] the husband's property." When the man does not
have a right to this function, the woman is an autonomous human being;
when he does have this right she is “sexual chattel” with a market value of
200 zuz if she is a virgin. The father owns the daughter’s sexuality and if she
is damaged goods, the shame is his, not hers [see Mishnah Ketubot 3:7].

196
Tirzah Meacham (leBeit Yoreh) “Legal-Religious Status of the Married
Woman,” http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/author/meacham-tirzah.
197
Judith Hauptman, Rereading the Rabbis: A Woman’s Voice (Boulder, CL:
Westview Press, 1998): 69.
198
Hauptman, p. 4-5.
199
Judith Romney Wegner, Chattel or Person? The Status of Women in the
Mishnah (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988): 14-15.
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Wegner also points to the woman’s lack of agency in the wedding ceremony,
for in the traditional format, the "man recites a formal declaration to which
the woman makes no reply"[Mishnah Kiddushin 2:3]. Of course the law does
200
require her consent!
I tend to agree that what actually takes place in the marriage
ceremony is the act of acquisition, or kinyan, which is legally similar to the
act of acquiring slaves or property with its implications for the inequality of
the woman. The bride agrees to the marriage by accepting the kiddushin
money, which is symbolized by the ring. She stands there quietly, unlike the
groom, who promises before witnesses to take care of the bride, gives her a
ring and breaks the glass. The husband is active, she is passive. This theme
is also picked up in the non-legal narrative material, namely the midrash.
It is time to take a look at the sources themselves. I have put them in
chronological order, starting with the Torah, then the Ketuvim, and finally
the Midrash.
Bible
The basic halakhic concept applying to marriage is kinyan [acquisition], an
act in which a person obtains rights of ownership, or use, in exchange for
monetary (or other) payment. This concept is central in the ketubah, the
marriage contract. These concepts are biblical in origin.
The idea of kinyan, goes all the way back to Eve, who, when she
gave birth to Cain, said, I created (made, gained) a man with the help of God
(‫ ;קָ ניתי אישׁ אֶ ת ה‬Genesis 4:1). Before this, when Adam “gave birth” to Eve, it
was said of her, from man, this thing was taken ‫( "כי מֵ אישׁ לֻקֳּ חָ ה ּז ֹאת‬Genesis
2:23). Thus the concept of purchase, ownership and the taking and
consideration of a woman as object (zot) (even though in this case it was the
man’s rib) are available for future use.
In Exodus 20:13 we are told: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s
house: you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female slave,
or his ox or his ass, or anything that is your neighbor’s.” In Exodus 21:22 it
is written: “When men fight, and one of them pushes a pregnant woman and
a miscarriage results, but no other damage ensues, the one shall be fined
according as the woman’s husband [ba’al ha-ishah] may exact from him, the
payment to be based on reckoning.” Thus the husband is not only owner of
his wife; he is also the owner of her pregnancy. In Exodus 21:28 the word for
husband, ba'al, implies ownership as well as lordship, in the case of the
owner of the ox who gores a person to death. A price of virginity is paid to
the father of the “bride” in both Genesis and in Exodus:

200
Wegner, p. 44.
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 “Then Shechem said to her father and brothers, “Do me this favor,
and I will pay whatever you tell me. Ask of me a bride-price ever so
high, as well as gifts, and I will pay what you tell me; only give me the
maiden for a wife” (Genesis 34:11-12).
“If a man seduces a virgin for whom the bride-price has not been
paid, and lies with her, he must make her his wife by payment of a
bride-price. If her father refuses to give her to him, he must still weigh
out silver in accordance with the bride-price for virgins” (Exodus
22:15-16).
The husband's right to perform sexual intercourse, is called liv'ol [to take
what is one's property] and the wife's status of "married woman" is referred
to as be'ulat ba'al [i.e., she belongs to the owner by virtue of his having her].
This is a continuation of the verbs lakach [to acquire] and ba'al [to possess]
used in Deuteronomy 24:1 to describe this act:
“A man takes a wife [yikach] and possesses her [be-alah]. She fails
to please him because he finds something obnoxious about her, and he
writes her a bill of divorcement, hands it to her, and sends her away
from his house.”
Thus when she marries, the father's property rights are transferred to the
husband. When she is divorced, the husband renounces his right to his
(sexual) use of the property and announces that she is “now permitted to any
man”. The use of ‫ בעל‬to denote husband of course raises linguistic concerns
because of its primary meanings of owner and master.
Hosea
Hosea is the first prophet to describe God's relationship to Israel in
metaphorical terms as a marriage. Such a marriage metaphor is not found in
the literature of any other ancient religion beside Israel's. Only the Hebrew
God alone was described as husband and lover and only the people of Israel
was described as a bride or wife. Hosea's protagonist is himself, the husband
who casts out his wife for being unfaithful to him and then takes her back –
with the understanding that “she” will behave. God, not Ba’al, is Israel's
husband and lover and He demands complete loyalty of his people. The
covenant between God and Israel made at Mount Sinai is a marriage; idolatry,
which breaks the covenant, is adultery. This metaphor is developed in Hosea
2 when the prophet/God rebukes his wife/people for acting unfaithfully.
4
Rebuke your mother, rebuke her – for she is not my wife and I
am not her husband – and let her put away her harlotry from her
face and her adultery from between her breasts.
He threatens to punish her if she continues to misbehave.

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 5
Else will I strip her naked and leave her as on the day she was
born: And I will make her like a wilderness, render her like desert
land, and let her die of thirst.
He reproves her for thinking that other men/gods can supply her needs better
than Him:
“I will go after my lovers, who supply my bread and my water, my
wool and my linen, my oil and my drink.”
But for this she will be punished severely:
8
Assuredly, I will hedge up her roads with thorns and raise walls
against her,
9
and she shall not find her paths. Pursue her lovers, as she will, she
shall not overtake them; and seek them as she may, she shall never find
them.
And then she will come to the full realization that she is better off with her
first husband/God.
“I will go and return to my first husband, for then I fared better than
10
now.” And she did not consider this: It was I who bestowed on her
the new grain and wine and oil; I who lavished silver on her and gold
– which they used for Baal.
Yet nothing she does can save her from the anger of God for the first betrayal:
13
And none shall save her from Me, and I will end all her rejoicing:
14
Her festivals, new moons, and Sabbaths – all her festive seasons. I
will lay waste her vines and her fig trees, which she thinks are a fee
she received from her lovers; I will turn them into brushwood, and
beasts of the field shall devour them.
Like a suspicious husband, God cannot tolerate unfaithfulness, even when
the people come back to Him:
15
Thus will I punish her for the days of the Baalim, on which she
brought them offerings; when, decked with earrings and jewels, she
would go after her lovers, forgetting Me – declares the Lord.
Yet, as in the cycle of violence, that is well known, God takes her back and
promises to be a good husband and provider:
16
Assuredly, I will speak coaxingly to her and lead her through the
17
wilderness and speak to her tenderly. I will give her her vineyards
from there, and the Valley of Achor as a plow land of hope. There she
shall respond as in the days of her youth, when she came up from the
land of Egypt.

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And once they have made up (or rather once he has decided to let her come
back) and he has given her gifts, he promises her a marriage on his terms.
One can argue that by using the marriage metaphor we are allowed a glimpse
at the compassionate side of God. Because of the intimate relationship, God
is more accessible to His people. Not only do we have descriptions of an
intimate relationship with God, but also, we have allusions to the idyllic,
pre-expulsion relationship of equality between God and humanity.
18
And in that day – declares the Lord – you will call [Me] Ishi, and no
19
more will you call Me Baali. For I will remove the names of the
Baalim from her mouth, and they shall nevermore be mentioned by
20
name. In that day, I will make a covenant for them with the beasts
of the field, the birds of the air, and the creeping things of the ground;
I will also banish bow, sword, and war from the land. Thus I will let
21
them lie down in safety. And I will espouse you forever: I will
espouse you with righteousness and justice, And with goodness and
22
mercy, and I will espouse you with faithfulness; then you shall be
devoted to the Lord.
However, unlike the relationship between Adam and Eve, the relationship
between God and Israel is one-sided. God would like the uncomplicated
pre-expulsion relationship, before the people “knew” [yada] about choice.
God promises the returning nation an intimate covenantal relationship with
Him despite the fact that knowledge [da’at] was the reason Adam and Eve
were punished (see Genesis 3). When God decides to espouse Israel forever
with faithfulness, the people will “know” [yada] only God. If Israel wants to
know more than just God, if "she" wants to take fruit from the tree again, the
implication is that she will again be expelled from the Garden of Eden,
stripped naked and left as on the day she was created – with nothing (Hosea
2:5). God is telling Israel/Gomer that she can either be intimate with Him
(her husband) or with other gods/lovers but not with both of them at the same
time. She can have knowledge of good and evil from Him or from others. If
she chooses others, He will destroy her. So despite the potential glimpse of a
compassionate God, His covenant is accessible to His people only on His
own terms. God's ownership is clear. The people/women who respond, who
are exhausted by the previous abuse and whose identity is negative (lo
ruhama and lo ammi) passively respond to God when he takes them back.
25
I will sow her in the land as My own; and take Lo-ruhamah back
in favor; and I will say to Lo-ammi, “You are My people”, and he will
respond, “[You are] my God”.
Song of Songs
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Many feminists consider the mutuality expressed in the Song of Songs
between the male and female lovers to be redemptive. Ilana Pardes contrasts
the patriarchal marital model in Hosea with the anti-patriarchal model of love
in the Song of Songs. She writes that the Song could have been made to
function as a counter-voice to the misogynist prophetic degradation of the
nation. It could offer an inspiring consolation in its emphasis on reciprocity.
For a change, the relationship of God and His bride relies on mutual courting,
mutual attraction, and mutual admiration, and thus there is more room for
201
hope that redemption is within reach.
Rachel Adler, in particular, has used the Song of Songs to
demonstrate that an egalitarian “mutuality” between two sexual partners is
possible, in contrast to many Biblical and Talmudic sources that portray
202
normative sexuality as one of male dominance over women.
In my previous work I pointed to the Song of Songs as an antidote to
the battering metaphors of Hosea 2 and wrote in a footnote, that it “is
probably the only completely non-sexist account of a relationship between a
203
man and a woman”.
Fokkelien Van Dijk Hemmes argued about the intertextuality
between the texts of Hosea 2 and the Song of Songs, and suggested that we
replace “the quotations back into the love songs from which they were
204
borrowed, [so that] the vision of the woman in this text is restored”.
The Orthodox feminist perspective is to co-opt the Song of Songs
and to look at “the aggadic sources that expound upon it [to] provide a
205
different perspective on the role of the bride at the chuppah”. The aggadah
does this by understanding the book as “an allegory for the loving
201
Ilana Pardes, Countertraditions in the Bible (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1992): 127.
202
Rachel Adler, Engendering Judaism: An Inclusive Theology and Ethics
(Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1998): 135.
203
Naomi Graetz, Silence is Deadly: Judaism Confronts Wifebeating (Northvale,
NJ: Jason Aronson, 1998): 42.
204
Fokkelien Van Dijk-Hemmes, “The Imagination of Power and the Power of
Imagination: An Intertextual Analysis of Two Biblical Love Songs: The Song of
Songs and Hosea 2,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 44 (1990): 86. See
also Gerson Cohen, “The Song of Songs and the Jewish Religious Mentality,”
Studies in the Variety of Rabbinic Cultures (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication
Society, 1991): 6.
205
Karen Miller Jackson, “Reshut Hakallah: The Symbolism of the Chuppah,”
Sh’ma.com (June 2010): 4.
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relationship between the nation of Israel and God, in which Israel is portrayed
as the bride and God the groom”. Karen Miller Jackson points to Chapter 4
and quotes the bride singing out to her husband: “Awake O north wind, and
come south; blow upon my garden, so that the smell of the spices may flow
out. Let my beloved come to his garden and eat from his choicest fruit”
[original italics]. Miller Jackson recognizes the problematic of the verse, and
quotes Rabbi Hanina who radically reinterprets this verse by saying that “the
Torah teaches you appropriate behavior, that the chatan should not enter the
206
chuppah until the kallah gives him permission to enter …”. She uses this
reading to show that since the “consent of the kallah must be granted before
the wedding ceremony in the chuppah begins”, the symbolism has been
changed and the tradition is “no longer about the transfer of the woman from
one man’s space to another’s, but is rather representative of the voice of the
kallah.” She thus concludes (as have many before her) that “the midrash and
Shir Hashirim … offer a view of marriage as a joint endeavor in which both
207
individuals participate and share responsibilities”.
We must however remember that, despite all of our well-meaning
interpretations, rabbinic interpretation appropriated the Song of Songs for its
own theological purposes when the sages co-opted the female beloved and
male lover images by identifying her as male Israel and the man as God. In
light of that I have recently been looking at the Song of Songs with less rosy
colored glasses. In Chapter 5 of the Song of Songs, just under the surface of
this mutuality lies the horror of the unprotected woman wandering the town
in search of her lover, who, when not in his protection, gets beaten up and
stripped by the guards of the town. Some of these sources are very
reminiscent of Hosea 2 which we have seen shows that the relationship
between God/Hosea/Husband and Israel/ Gomer/ Wife is fraught with danger
208
and potential abuse of women.
Here is a sampling of some problematic verses:
Song of Songs 3:1-4

206
Pesikta deRav Kahane, Chapter 1 as translated by Karen Miller Jackson.
207
Op. cit., p. 5.
208
See Naomi Graetz, “The Haftarah Tradition and the Metaphoric Battering
of Hosea's Wife,” Conservative Judaism (Fall, 1992): 29-42; “God is to Israel
as Husband is to Wife,” in Athalya Brenner (editor), A Feminist Companion to
the Latter Prophets (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995): 126-145; and
revised for Naomi Graetz, Unlocking the Garden: A Feminist Jewish Look at
the Bible, Midrash and God (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2004).
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 Upon my couch at night I sought the one I love – I sought, but found
him not. “I must rise and roam the town, through the streets and
through the squares; I must seek the one I love.” I sought but found
him not. I was found by the watchmen who patrol the town. “Have you
seen the one I love?” Scarcely had I passed them when I found the one
I love. I held him fast, I would not let him go till I brought him to my
mother’s house, to the chamber of her who conceived me.
Song of Songs 5:6-7
I opened the door for my beloved, but my beloved had turned and
gone. I was faint because of what he said. I sought, but found him not;
I called, but he did not answer. I was found by the watchmen who
patrol the town; they struck me, they bruised me. The guards of the
walls stripped me of my mantle.
Song of Songs 8:5-7
Who is she that comes up from the desert, Leaning upon her beloved?
Under the apple tree I roused you; It was there your mother conceived
you, there she who bore you conceived you. Let me be a seal upon
your heart, Like the seal upon your hand. For love is fierce as death,
Passion is mighty as Sheol; Its darts are darts of fire, a blazing flame.
Vast floods cannot quench love, nor rivers drown it. If a man offered
all his wealth of his house [‫ ]הוֹן בֵּ יתוֹ‬for love, He would be laughed to
209
scorn [‫]בּוֹז יָבוּזוּ‬.
So although there might be much that is promising in the Song of Songs,
there are also very problematic texts, especially if we take into account that
the rabbinic tradition relates to this book as a love story between God and
Israel. Some of the verses from the Song are shockingly similar to Hosea 2,
verses 5 & 8, where the woman is stripped naked and left to her own devices.
Her roads are hedged with thorns and walls are raised against her. Amazingly
there are still those modern rabbis who would argue that these acts of
prophetic desperation are “about love, not wife-battering. They are about
forgiveness, not punishment… [and about the] man who has the right to …
strip her, humiliate her, etc., but doesn’t, and, instead, seeks
210
reconciliation”.
Midrash

209
There are many more texts that make the same point which emphasize the
problematics of using the Song of Song as a solution for parity between the sexes. I
have highlighted those texts which have negative metaphors.
210
Benjamin Scolnic, “Bible Battering,” Conservative Judaism, XLV: 2 (1992): 48.
-124-
Legal literature merges with midrashic material in a talmudic text which
discusses Hosea's relationship to his wife and children (similar to the
relationship of God to Israel). Hosea complains to God that it is difficult for
him to separate himself from his wife and divorce her. God asks: why should
it be a problem since she’s a prostitute and his children are the fruit of
prostitution? How do you know whether they are yours or not? And, I, God
(in contrast to Hosea), know that the people of Israel are My children “...one
of four possessions [kinyanim] that I purchased in this world. The Torah is
one possession (purchase) ...heaven and earth is another...the temple is
another ... and Israel is another...” (B. Pesachim 87b).
It is interesting that the marriage ceremony is likened to kinyan. Also,
note the four categories of kinyan in this text. They are all instances of eternal
possession and mastery over someone or something else. These four cases
(Israel being the fourth) all are based on an inherent, not acquired
“ownership”. Despite all protestations that kinyan in marriage does not give
the husband possession of his wife, the metaphor suggests otherwise. Israel
(the wife) is God’s property to do with as He pleases.
In a midrash in which God is likened to a heroic figure with great
strength, we see an acceptance by the sages that Israel is God’s possession.
He hits another man and the man immediately dies from the blow. This hero
then goes into his house and hits his wife and she withstands the blow. Her
neighbors say to her, “all the great athletes have been killed from one of the
hero’s blows – but you are able to survive more than one blow.” She answers
them that “he hits them with all his might, out of anger, but to me, he gives
what I am able to take” (presumably out of love). In a continuation of this
same midrash, the rabbis ask why is it that the people of Israel can stand up
to God’s anger? The answer is, because God hits us and then returns
immediately and re-creates us. This is the comfort that Israel can take in their
211
unique relationship to God (Bereshit [Buber Version], Chapter 8:3).
The ancient rabbis also often try to depict an ideal world. In a
midrash on Psalms 73 we find the following: R. Samuel b. Nahmani said,
although in this world the man courts the woman, in the ideal or future world
the woman will court the man, and he uses as his proof text, a verse from
Jeremiah 31:21, “God has created something new on earth: A woman will
court (tesovev – future tense) a man”. Maiden Israel is expected to return, and
show more faith in God, because now there will be a new order. Clearly the
rabbis sensed some injustice in the world and used this passage to redress the
iniquity.

211
My paraphrase of the legend on Bereshit (Buber Version), Chapter 8:3.
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 But there are less promising midrashim, such as one which connects
the passage “For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, an impassioned God
`el qana” from Deuteronomy 4:24 with the passage “I will espouse you with
faithfulness” (Hosea 2:21). Here we have a different kind of relationship:
God as a jealous husband. In contrast to those who merit `olam habba’ – the
next world – are those who are consumed by a great fire. The rabbis ask:
“How do we know that God is jealous?” And the rabbis have no qualms
whatsoever in answering: “Just as a husband is jealous of his wife, so is the
212
God of Israel.”
Besides the passage in which Israel is referred to as one of God’s four
possessions there is another long passage in a midrash on the Song of Songs
which refers to the seventy names by which Israel, Jerusalem and God are
known. For each attribute there is an explanation. Thus Jerusalem is known
as Beulah (owned or taken by God), since there is no one to support her
except God – or Hevtzibah (God’s desired), because God wants her from all
the nations; or lo Azuvah not abandoned, because she will never be
abandoned. Among God’s attributes is kana (jealous) for he is a jealous,
vengeful and angry God (Nahum 1:2).
Linking the Midrashic texts to Legal Literature
There fore it should come as no surprise to us that biblical metaphors having
to do with male control, sanctity of family, women having to “take it” for the
future of the group, still find concrete expression in halakha [Jewish law].
For instance, the plight of “chained” wives (agunot) and women whose
husbands refuse to divorce them (mesuravot get) can be blamed on the issue
of kinyan (acquisition) in kiddushin.
We have seen differing views of those who believe that the act of
acquisition is symbolic, and just a formality and those who view the wife as
having been “acquired”, and “belonging” to her husband. The wording of the
Mishnah supports those who argue that the wife is her husband’s property:
“The woman is acquired in three ways …,” proves that the woman is
perceived as an object. We have seen that the Hebrew language, which uses
the term ba’al (master or owner), points to the husband’s ownership.
Possible Solutions
Liberal attempts to redress this inequality included the bride giving her
husband a ring with verses such as: “My beloved is mine, and I am his” (Song
of Songs 2:16), “Set me as a seal upon your heart” (Song of Songs 8:6), and
“I shall call you ishi my husband, no longer ba’ali master”, which is adapted
from Hosea 2:18. My problem with these three verses is that the first text

212
Midrash Tanhuma (Warsaw), Parashat saw 14.1 (Hebrew).
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from the Song equates love and marriage with possession; the second text
also from the Song seals or locks the partners into a marriage; and the third
text from Hosea by using Ishi (my man), instead of ba’ali, (my master) is
also in the possessive. Thus, in light of what I have been talking about up to
now, it means that using any text from the Song or Hosea 2 in a double ring
ceremony is very problematic!
Mary Joan Winn Leith would probably disagree for she argues that
“the rejected form of address, Ba’al, implies not only a different deity, but
also a different, more dominating relationship ... God's new title, 'husband'
[ishi], signals a new beginning, a new betrothal, and a (re)new(ed) covenant,
213
whose inauguration sounds strikingly like a (re)creation of the world.”
But there is a terrible assumption here in Leith’s argument. Israel
[the woman] has to suffer in order to be entitled to this new betrothal. “She”
has to be battered into submission in order to kiss and make up at the end.
“She” has to agree to be on the receiving end of her husband's jealousy. The
premise is that a woman has no other choice but to remain in such a marriage.
True, God is very generous to Israel. He promises to espouse her forever with
righteousness, justice, goodness, mercy and faithfulness. But despite the
potential for a new model of a relationship between God and Israel, it is not
a model of real reciprocity. It is based on suffering and the assumption that
214
Israel will submit to God's will.
Melanie Malka Landau points out that most thinkers do not “question
the appropriateness of kiddushin as the model of marriage for contemporary
215
Jews." . She points to “the non-reciprocal nature of kiddushin… [that has]
prompted many thinkers to, Orthodox and not, to conceptualize alternative
forms of sanctifying long-term commitments within heterosexual
216
relationships”. The practical reason for doing this, is to avoid the
problematics of Jewish divorce. Therefore, Eliezer Berkovits has suggested
a conditional marriage, which maintains the idea of kinyan, but retroactively

213
Mary Joan Winn Leith, “Verse and Reverse: The Transformation of the Woman,
Israel, in Hosea 1-3,” in Peggy L. Day (ed.), Gender and Difference in Ancient
Israel (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989): 101.
214
Leith, “Verse and Reverse”, p. 103.
215
Melanie Malka Landau, “Sanctifying Endings,” in S’hma (June 2010): 11-12.
216
Ibid. p. 11-12.
-127-
annuls a marriage if the husband refuses to give his wife a bill of divorce (a
217
get).
Another marriage alternative which has a Jewish wedding ceremony
without any trace of kinyan is the Orthodox rabbi Meir Simhah Ha-Cohen
Feldblum’s proposal that the groom uses the sentence “Harei at meyuhedet
li” (Behold, you are unique to me), which is not “according to the law of
Moses” but a “mode of marriage”, and is thus not kinyan, the purchase or
acquisition of the woman. This is called derekh kiddushin and does not
218
require divorce.
Another suggestion is the one of Rachel Adler’s, who uses the model
of a business partnership, based on the halakha in which each partner
contributes according to his or her means and in which their assets are divided
219
equally should the partnership be dissolved. Instead of the man giving the
woman a ring, which is a symbol of kinyan, both the man and the woman put
a valuable object into a joint purse. She calls this new commitment b’rit
220
ahuvim, or lover’s covenant.
Ayelet S. Cohen, a rabbi, who is committed to inclusiveness, finds
the idea of traditional Jewish weddings troubling, where “a man acquir[es] a
221
silent woman whose price is based on her sexual history." She points out
that “liberal Jews de-emphasize the halakhic ritual and use secular romantic
images and translations that gloss over the literal meaning of the text”. She
says these solutions may make us feel good, but they don’t address the
problem. She would like to “transform the Jewish wedding so that it is not a
222
celebration of male dominance and heterosexual triumphalism.” She used
a blessing for her own marriage which celebrates monogamy and healthy

217
Eliezer Berkovits, Tenai be’Nissuin uve’Get (in Hebrew). Jerusalem: Mossad
HaRav Kook, 1966.
218
This is mentioned in Landau's article. For full text, see Meir S. Feldblum, “The
problem of agunot and mamzerim — A suggested overall and general solution” (in
Hebrew) Dinei Israel 19, pp. 203-216.
219
BT Ketubbot 93a; Maimonides, Laws of Emissaries and Partnership 4:1–3,
10:5.
220
Rachel Adler, p. 170 and continues in Chapter 5, “B’rit Ahuvim: A Marriage
Between Subjects”.
221
Ayelet S. Cohen, “Birkat Eirusin: A Blessing for Holy Sexuality,” S’hma (June
2010): 14.
222
Ibid.
-128-
sexuality and emphasizes the virtues of righteousness, justice, loving-
223
kindness and compassion.
Jealousy and Possession
In English it is very easy to move from the idea of a possessive husband to a
jealous husband. The very word “possessive” is defined as “jealous”. In
Hebrew, one would think that it is easier, since the words even share a binary
root of “K” “N”. Having an associative mind, I searched the Bar Ilan Data
Base looking for several key words (‫ קנה קנין‬,‫ קנאה‬,‫ )נקמה‬and created a chart
224
on the next pages.

POSSESSION ‫ קנאה‬KNA PROPERTY ‫קנין‬

KNH
Genesis 26:12-16 ‫בראשית פרק‬ Genesis 4:1 ‫בראשית‬
Isaac sowed...[and] the ‫ יב‬:‫כו‬ Now the man ‫א‬:‫פרק ד‬
LORD blessed him, [and ... ‫ויזרע יצחק‬ knew his wife ‫והאדם ידע‬
[4
he grew wealthy] ...so )‫ (יג‬:’‫ויברכהו ה‬ Eve, and she ‫את חוה‬
that the Philistines ‫ויגדל האיש וילך‬ conceived ‫אשתו ותהר‬
15 ‫הלוך וגדל עד כי‬ and bore ‫ותלד את קין‬
envied him. And the
... )‫(יד‬:‫גדל מאד‬ Cain, saying, ‫ותאמר קניתי‬
Philistines stopped up
16 ‫ויקנאו אתו‬ “I have :’‫איש את ה‬
all the wells... And )‫ (טו‬:‫פלשתים‬ gained a male
Abimelech said to ... ‫וכל הבארת‬ child with the
Isaac, “Go away from ‫סתמום פלשתים‬ help of the
us, for you have :‫וימלאום עפר‬ LORD.”
become far too big for ‫(טז) ויאמר‬
us.” ‫אבימלך אל יצחק‬
‫לך מעמנו כי‬
:‫עצמת ממנו מאד‬
Exodus 20:5 ‫שמות פרק כ‬ Genesis ‫בראשית‬
You shall not bow ‫ד) לא תשתחוה‬ 14:19 ‫יט‬:‫פרק יד‬
down to them or serve ‫להם ולא תעבדם‬ [King ‫ויברכהו‬
them. For I the LORD ’‫כי אנכי ה‬ Melchizedek ‫ויאמר ברוך‬
your God am an ‫אלהיך אל קנא‬ of Salem] ‫אברם לאל‬

223
Ibid: this is adapted from a blessing by Tamara Ruth Cohen (the author’s sister)
and her partner Gwynn Kessler.
224
The handout appears in “Is Kinyan Only a Metaphor? Metaphor and Halakha:
The Metaphor of Kinyan,” in Brad Horowitz (ed.), Proceedings of the Rabbinical
Assembly, 98h Annual Convention Volume LX (New York: Rabbinical Assembly,
2000): 175-186.
-129-
impassioned God, ‫פקד עון אבת על‬ blessed him, ‫עליון קנה‬
visiting the guilt of the ‫בנים על שלשים‬ saying, :‫שמים וארץ‬
parents upon the ‫ועל רבעים‬ “Blessed be
children, upon the third :‫לשנאי‬ Abram of
and upon the fourth God Most
generations of those High, Creator
who reject Me of heaven and
earth.
Numbers 5: 14 ‫במדבר פרק ה‬ Exodus 15:16 ‫שמות פרק‬
but a fit of jealousy ‫יד) ועבר עליו‬ Terror and ‫טו‬
comes over him and he ‫רוח קנאה וקנא‬ dread ‫טז) תפל‬
is wrought up about the ‫את אשתו והוא‬ descend upon ‫עליהם‬
wife who has defiled ‫נטמאה או עבר‬ them; ‫אימתה ופחד‬
herself; or if a fit of ‫עליו רוח קנאה‬ Through the ‫בגדל זרועך‬
jealousy comes over ‫וקנא את אשתו‬ might of ‫ידמו כאבן‬
one and he is wrought :‫והיא לא נטמאה‬ Your arm ‫עד יעבר‬
up about his wife they are still ‫עמך ה’ עד‬
although she has not as stone— ‫יעבר עם זו‬
defiled herself Till Your :‫קנית‬
people cross
over, O
LORD, Till
Your people
cross whom
You have
ransomed.
Zechariah 1:14 ‫יד‬:‫זכריה פרק א‬ Deuteronomy ‫דברים פרק‬
Then the angel who ‫ויאמר אלי‬ 32:6 ‫לב‬
talked with me said to ‫המלאך הדבר בי‬ Do you thus ’‫(ו) ה לה‬
me: “Proclaim! Thus ‫קרא לאמר כה‬ requite the ‫תגמלו זאת‬
said the LORD of Hosts: ‫אמר ה’ צבאות‬ LORD, O ‫עם נבל ולא‬
I am very jealous for ‫קנאתי לירושלם‬ dull and ‫חכם הלוא‬
Jerusalem—for Zion ‫ולציון קנאה‬ witless ‫הוא אביך‬
:‫גדולה‬ people? Is not ‫קנך הוא‬
He the Father ‫עשך ויכננך‬
who created
you,
fashioned
you and made
you endure!

-130-
 Nahum 1:2-3 ‫ נחום פרק א‬Psalms ‫תהלים פרק‬
The Lord is a ‫ (ב) אל קנוא‬104:24 ‫קד‬
passionate, avenging ’‫ ונקם ה’ נקם ה‬How many ‫(כד) מה‬
God; The Lord is ‫ ובעל חמה נקם‬are the things ‫רבו מעשיך‬
vengeful and fierce in ‫ ה’ לצריו ונוטר‬You have ‫ה’ כלם‬
wrath. The Lord takes :‫ הוא לאיביו‬made, O ‫בחכמה‬
vengeance on His ‫ (ג) ה’ ארך אפים‬Lord; You ‫עשית מלאה‬
enemies, He rages ,‫ וגדול וגדל כח‬have made ‫הארץ‬
against His foes. 3The ... ‫ ונקה לא ינקה‬them all with :‫קנינך‬
Lord is slow to anger wisdom; the
and of great earth is full of
forbearance; But the Your
Lord does not remit all creations.
punishment.
From Cradle to Grave From Cradle Ruth 4:10-13 ‫י‬:‫רות פרק ד‬
nest to Grave I am also ‫וגם את רות‬
nursing ‫ קן‬acquiring ‫המאביה‬
cattle ‫ הנקה‬Ruth the ‫אשת מחלון‬
purchase(possession)  ‫מקנה‬ Moabite, the ‫קניתי לי‬
jealousy ‫ קנין‬wife of ‫לאשה‬
vengeance ‫ קנאה‬Mahlon, as ‫להקים שם‬
‫ נקמה‬my wife/ 13So ‫המת על‬
cleansing
‫ נקיון‬Boaz married ‫נחלתו ולא‬
lament
‫ קינה‬Ruth; she ‫יכרת שם‬
emendation
‫ תקנה‬became his ‫המת מעם‬
wife, and he ‫אחיו ומשער‬
cohabited ‫מקומו עדים‬
with her. The :‫אתם היום‬
LORD let her ‫יג) ויקח‬
conceive, and ‫בעז את רות‬
she bore a ‫ותהי לו‬
son. ‫לאשה ויבא‬
’‫אליה ויתן ה‬
‫לה הריון‬
:‫ותלד בן‬

This is not a scientific study – just free association, using biblical and
midrashic type texts. The message that I would like to take from this is that
kinyan is more than just a metaphor and we should be re-thinking its use in

-131-
the ketuba. For example, the metaphor connected with kinyan, goes all the
way back to Eve, who when she gave birth to Cain, said: “I created (made,
gained) a man with the help of God,‫ קָ ניתי אישׁ אֶ ת ה‬.” Before this, when Adam
“gave birth” to Eve, it was said of her, from man, this thing was taken ‫"כי‬
‫מֵ אישׁ לֻקֳּ חָ ה ּז ֹאת‬. Clearly the playing ground has potential to change for Eve
empowers herself by making herself a partner with God and not agreeing to
be a “thing” which is “taken”. On the other hand, by naming the first son
Cain, the root of which is the same as kinyan and jealousy, we gain insight
into how the first murder came about.
I do not have solutions; only observations. I can only state that at this
point in my life, I am not sure that that the traditional Jewish ceremony should
be encouraged and I am not sure that using texts from the Song of Songs or
Hosea as antidotes to the patriarchal texts solves anything.
In a paper given in Helsinki, a week after I gave mine in Tartu, James
A. Diamond wrote in the abstract of the paper he presented: “The Song of
Song’s concluding meditation on love, with its analogies of death, sheol,
reshef fire and jealousy convey the danger posed by love so passionate as to
225
surrender one’s individual personhood in uniting with the beloved.” It
would seem that I am not the only one to perceive the dangers of the Song of
Songs.
I started this paper with a look at the ketuva, the marriage contract, which
refers to the wife as a kinyan. I ended this paper by looking at the dangers of
jealousy (kinah), which shares the same root. Although there are those who
would guard a possession and treat it with care and love, there are those who
would argue that it is “mine” to do with as I please. Allowing the word of
kinyan to be in a marriage contract is a bad start to any relationship and has
the potential for abuse.
Melanie Landau argues in her forthcoming book that because
marriage implies male rights to women’s sexuality it can also allow a man to
force her to engage in intercourse with him, i.e. to rape his wife. Her
argument is that because of the potential connection between kinyan and rape
in marriage, kinyan is an inappropriate basis for marriage. She writes: “This
inappropriateness is pronounced if marriage is to function as the foundation
of the kind of mutual relationship that many heterosexual Jews may want to

225
“Bliss of Biblical Love”, paper presented at the ISOT in Helsinki, August, 2010.
This paper now appears as James A. Diamond, “Love’s Human Bondage: A
Biblical Warning”, in Azure (Spring 2011): 41-60.
-132-
 226
create in the twenty-first century and beyond.” Following James Diamond,
I too would argue that sometimes we have to be protected from the “dire
227
consequences of love”. We can learn from the seal on the lover's heart from
the Song of Songs 8:6, which is a binding, form of authority, such as that of
the marriage contract, that marriage should not be the obliteration of one's
identity, a merger of two persons into one. I have argued that the only way to
avoid this is to stop using the terminology of kinyan.

226
Third chapter entitled “Rebellious Women and Husband Owned sexuality” of
her forthcoming book.
227
Diamond, p. 50.

-133-
-134-
CHAPTER ELEVEN: THE SAMARITAN WOMAN FROM A
228
JEWISH PERSPECTIVE

Looking at the Book of John for the first time to get a sense of it creates a
problem for me because in the Fourth Gospel it appears that Jesus reveals
himself as a God. It is my impression that this is not always the case in the
other gospels. So the first thing I have to do is suppress this thought in my
first reading—since obviously I as a Jew do not believe that Jesus is a God,
son of God or a Messiah figure. There also seems to be an anti-Jewish bias
and the use of the word Jew in the pejorative. This also presents a problem
for me, even though intellectually I know that when the gospel of John speaks
of Jews in negative language, the context is the break between the synagogue
and those who believed in Jesus as the Messiah. It appears that John uses the
Jews as a symbol or metaphor for powers and authorities who oppose this
belief. But symbols and metaphors are not merely symbols and metaphors.
They have intrinsic power and tonight when we commemorate the Jews who
were killed in the holocaust, we should not underestimate the power of John's
language, and should remember how his language was appropriated on
occasion by Christian anti-Semites. Women should especially beware and be
aware of the dangers when one group speaks in judgment against another
group.
On the other hand, in this first reading, I find many familiar elements.
Although I know that there is no well connected to Jacob in the Bible, there
are many familiar well scenes which are similar (e.g. Gen 24:11; 29:2; Exod
2:15). Jacob is of course associated with the well when he lifted the stone
from the mouth of the well of Haran. Usually well scenes in the Bible are
sites of matrimonial match-making and clearly that is not Jesus' intention,
although he does manage to find out that the Samaritan woman has no
husband. But to prevent her from trying to capture him as a possible mate for
herself, he tells her she already has had or has five husbands. At any rate, it
is clear from the well scenes in the bible that the oriental laws of hospitality
demand that we slake the thirst of those who ask for water--in fact we do not
wait to be asked. We run and satisfy thirst of travelers immediately.

228
This was given as a talk for the Sisters of Zion in Jerusalem who were studying
John 4 in the month of April 1994. It has recently been edited and appears in a
shortened version as "The Samaritan Woman from a Jewish Perspective," Global
Perspectives on the New Testament, edited by Mark Roncace & Joseph Weaver
(Upper Saddle River NJ: Pearson Education, 2014 Inc.): 81-83

-135-
 While on the topic of water, the concept of "living water" is not new to
me. It is a frequent metaphor in the Bible. In Jeremiah 2:13, God is described
as a "fountain of living waters" and of course the Torah is described as living
water. I also identify with the Samaritans, who are outside society-- much as
are the Conservative Jews (of whom I am a member). I too am not recognized
by mainstream Judaism in Israel. Our rabbis are discriminated against. Then
too the problem of not eating food prepared by gentiles is one that I can
understand. These laws date back to Mishnaic times and there is the famous
saying of R. Eliezer b. Hyrcanus (early second century) who said "He that
eats the bread of the Samaritans is like one that eats the flesh of swine" (M
Sheviith 8:10). The laws of Kashrut continue to be a cornerstone of Judaism
today. Even among Jews there are those whose standards of Kashrut
observance are not as stringent as the Orthodox—and these Jews are thereby
excluded and discriminated against by those whose observance level is
higher.
There are items that are disturbing to me as a woman, and others which
I find exciting: a) Once again the woman is unnamed. Nicodemus in John 3
has a name but the foreign woman remains anonymous. This is familiar to
me from the Tanach (eshet Manoach, Noah's wife, Lot's wife etc.) b) The
whole idea of a religious man not speaking to a woman -- an attitude still
prevalent among the haredim--ultra-orthodox Jews, indicating a low opinion
of women is one such theme I will pick up. One of the reasons this is so, is
because the woman might be in a state of niddah--ritual impurity. In the case
of the Samaritans, who did not observe the rules of niddah, both men and
women and their vessels were all ritually impure. Jesus ignored this and other
such rules, when he spoke to her and was willing to drink from her vessel,
but this was correctly recognized as breaking with rabbinic tradition both by
the woman and by the disciples. Niddah is something I, and many modern
women, have problems with and Orthodox women to this day continue to
attend the mikvah in order to keep themselves ritually pure. c) On the other
hand I am excited by the idea of a woman influencing members of her society
to believe in God and be faithful to principles and being publicly
acknowledged for her contribution. There are not too many examples in the
Jewish tradition which parallel the level of insight, the power and influence
on society that the Samaritan woman seems to have had.
Thinking about what could be my contribution to the discussion tonight,
leads me to think of many Jewish themes which are relevant: First of all, in
Jewish tradition, there are many powerful women who talk back and hold
their own in male society: Bruriah, Deborah, Abigail and Miriam are four
who come to mind.

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 Miriam, is Moses’ sister. Although in the genealogy of the book of
Exodus, Moses is listed after Aaron in the birth order, Moses sister appears
to look out for his welfare when he is put into the Nile. So the rabbis invent
a story--a midrash to explain how she got there. They have her father divorce
his wife after Miriam and Aaron are already born, because of his fear of
bringing a baby boy into the world who might be killed by Pharaoh. In this
midrash, Miriam's father, Amram, is depicted as a coward who stopped
having intercourse with his wife. Miriam pointed out to her father that 'your
decree is more severe than that of Pharaoh; for Pharaoh decreed only
concerning the male children, and you decree upon males and females alike.'
As a result, Amram took his wife back, and his example was followed by all
the Israelites (Lev. Rabbah 17.3). In this midrash, Miriam is praised for
outsmarting her father, and for encouraging the people to be fruitful and
multiply so that they will survive. In this she seems similar to the Samaritan
woman who was responsible for bringing her people to believe in Jesus.
In the Talmud there is a woman who is depicted as being learned and
who apparently taught other men on an equal level. Bruriah is the daughter
of the martyr R. Hananyah b. Teradyon and the wife of R. Meir. She is often
considered to be one of the earliest martyrs for the feminist cause. One of the
tales about her concerns the dictum about not talking overmuch to women: It
appears in the Babylonian Talmud (B. Eruvin 53b). Rabbi Yosi the Galilean
was going along the road. He met Beruriah. He said to her, "By which road
shall we go to Lod?" She said to him, "Galilean fool! Did not the sages say,
'Do not talk too much with a woman; (see below Mishnah Avot 1:5)? You
should have said, 'By which to Lod?'" The story is ironic. R. Yosi rudely asks
for directions so that he will not be accused of unnecessary pleasantries that
might lead to seduction. She shows how to make the conversation briefer,
however in doing so, she prolongs their contact. So now he must converse
with a woman and be rebuked by her and be taught by her. However, the
ultimate joke is not on him, but on Beruriah, for she has to identify against
herself when she accepts the Jewish tradition to which she is committed in
which she is regarded as inferior. But in recognizing the irony, she is also
being subversive and the rabbis who recognize this have to do something
about this. They depict her as an ideal wife, mother and study partner to her
husband. On the other hand, she is alone, companionless and a sexual threat
who is ultimately reduced to her sexual function when she is seduced.
There are many tales about Beruriah that show her awareness of rabbinic
misogyny; that show she has considerable rabbinic knowledge and
understanding of methodology. She is both a master of her tradition and able
to mock it. A woman who was a scholar in Palestine in 200 C.E. was an
anomaly and thus the rabbis who told stories about Beruriah projected their
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own mixed feelings about her. She is learned, and as the paradigm case of a
daughter whose father taught her Torah, which according to R. Eliezer's
dictum results in licentiousness, she is a threat to male institutions. Her
comeuppance or downfall is being seduced into committing adultery, which
leads to her suicide.
If we contrast this with the Samaritan woman, we find an attempt to
lower her worth by implying that she too may be guilty of adultery (having
five husbands). But unlike Beruriah, she continues to influence the people
and does not come to a sad end (unless we wish to look at the end of John 4
as the males of the town usurping her power). The Samaritan woman is
ordinary and possibly illiterate--she has life experience, witness her
questions, her confidence and her marital history. Beruriah is educated. In
the end the Samaritan woman is almost on the plane of the apostles, whereas
Beruria dies a wanton. There seems to be an inverse connection between a
simple woman's attaining spiritual power and an educated woman's studying
Torah downfall. The legend of Beruriah is thus an ambivalent
acknowledgement and denial of women's autonomy and intellectual
achievement.
Flightiness of Women
The position of women in the rabbinic system is that women are the
intellectual and moral inferiors of men. In tractate Ketubot it is said that
women are flighty, easily seduced and because of their looseness, inherently
seductive. Women's hair, her movements, her voice, her clothing all entice.
Women in short are viewed as aliens, as outsiders who unfortunately present
a problem since they still inhabit the male culture. Even rescuing a man in
captivity takes precedence over saving a woman (Mishnah Horayot). The less
visible the woman the more praiseworthy. Don't speak too much with woman
As has been noted, the conversation between Jesus and the woman is a
scandalous conversation, a scandal noted by the woman. "How is it that you,
a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?" (4:9) She knows that a
Jewish man should not talk with a woman. The scandal is noted also by the
disciples when they arrive at the well (4:27). They are amazed that Jesus, a
Jewish rabbi (4:31) speaks in public with a woman. Their protests reflect
traditional cultural and social conventions and expectations as seen in some
of the midrashim. In Avot chapter 1, mishnah 5 it says: “Yossi b. Yochanan
says: Let thy house be opened wide, and let the poor be members of thy
household, and don't speak too much with women--even with your own wife,
and needless to say with they fellow's wife!” The sages derived the following
from this: the man who speaks too much with a woman, brings evil upon
himself, neglects the study of Torah and in the end will end up in Gehenna.
In The Fathers According to R. Nathan (chapter 7):
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 Another interpretation. TALK NOT OVERMUCH WITH
WOMEN: what is that? If a man came to the study house and
was not treated with honor, or if he fell out with his fellow, he
is not to go and tell his wife," Thus and so did I fall out with my
fellow; he said this to me and I said that to him." For (in so
doing) he disgraces himself, disgraces his wife, and disgraces
his fellow. And his wife who used to treat him with honor now
stands and scoffs at him. Then his fellow hears of it and cries:
"Woe unto me! Words between himself and me he went and told
his wife!" And thus such a person disgraces himself, disgraces
his wife, disgraces his fellow.
It is particularly noteworthy that R. Yossi b. Yohanan of Jerusalem was
a scholar of the Maccabean period, one of the earliest transmitters of our
tradition who bridged the time-span between the Torah and the Talmud.
Little of his teaching is extant, but interestingly enough his comment on
women was carefully preserved. We don't exactly know what R. Yosi meant,
since we have only the speculations in The Fathers According to Nathan to
go by. In version A we read a variety of explanations, among them that
overmuch conversation (overmuch is not defined) will cause a man harm as
he will neglect the study of Torah and ultimately inherit gehinnom;
presumably, this meant that he would go to hell. In version B we are taught
that a man's wife would probably repeat anything he tells her in the form of
street gossip and create controversy. In both instances, it is taken for granted
that women are inferior to men, firstly in terms of being unworthy of
conversation, for apparently it is assumed that conversation with a man will
not lead to neglect of Torah and on to hell; and secondly, that a woman is
incapable of keeping confidences.
Rashi (R. Solomon b. Isaac of Troyes, 11th century) in commenting on
this passage wrote that the problem of conversation with women is
compounded by the fact that women are frivolous. He cites another
commentary which he attributed to Spanish sources, that the Mishnah refers
to a menstrual wife, and that a man should not engage in conversation with
her lest he be led to sin, presumably by touching her, or worse, having sexual
relations.
R. Yonah of Gerona, a 13th century Spanish scholar, was even more
explicit. He made it clear that a man's interest in a woman is primarily
affected by the sexual facet of life. In a comment on the Mishnah, he wrote
that a person should not engage in conversation with a woman, lest he have
'sinful thoughts.' He went even further and said that a man should not indulge
in conversation with his menstrual wife, nor with the wife of another, lest 'his
impulse greatly overpower him,' and certainly not with a gentile woman
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because 'his impulse will be to lust for her.' Both Rashi and R. Yona seem to
want to change 'wife' to when the 'wife is a menstruant'. It is possible that
they felt that rabbis who avoid overmuch talk with their own wives might
lead to more and more withdrawal from wives in general. This was a real
concern to the rabbis since marriage is one of the linchpins (with good deeds
and tzedakah) that keep Judaism going. This might be seen in contrast with
the growing movement among Christianity of medieval times when there
were attacks on traditional marriage and celibacy was a virtue for both men
and women.
Having studied the N.T. text and the Jewish texts and other
commentaries, I would like to conclude with a far out suggestion. The
Samaritan woman engages in a good deed when she brings water to Jesus. In
that she is like Abraham who runs to feed the angels when they come to visit
him. In Genesis 18 the angels come in the heat of the day. The Lord appeared
to him by the terebinths of Mamre; he was sitting at the entrance of the tent
as the day grew hot. Looking up, he saw three men standing near him. As
soon as he saw them, he ran from the entrance of the tent to greet them, and
bowing to the ground, he said, 'My Lord, if it please you, do not go on past
your servant. Let a little water be brought; bathe your feet and recline under
the tree. And let me fetch a morsel of bread that you may refresh yourselves;
then go on—seeing that you have come your servant's way." They replied,
'Do as you have said.' Abraham hastened into the tent to Sarah, and said,
'Quick, three measures of choice flour! Knead and make cakes!' Then
Abraham ran to the herd, took a calf, tender and choice, and gave it to a
servant-boy, who hastened to prepare it. He took curds of milk and the calf
that had been prepared, and set these before them; and he waited on them
under the tree as they ate. (Gen. 18:1-8) A little water, a morsel of bread, he
says to them. But he hurries into the tent and says to his wife, "Quick now,
three measures of choice flour! Knead and make cakes!" Not another word.
Then he runs to see that it is prepared, and the attending servant also hurried.
Swiftness is of the essence.
When it comes to entertaining strangers, the command to Sarah is brief.
Perhaps what Yose b. Yohanan has in mind is that like the model host,
Abraham, let all who come be welcome; as for the poor entertain them
properly, and with the lady of the house, let thy speech be brief and to the
point. Quick prepare the food. That is what the home should be like. With
this interpretation, the dictum not to speak overmuch with women is made
less severe.
How can we apply this new interpretation to the Samaritan Woman?
Clearly the writer of the text is aware of Abraham's hospitality and the whole
tradition of oriental laws of hospitality which demand that we slake the thirst
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(of those who ask for water). In fact, as with Abraham, we do not wait to be
asked; we run and satisfy the thirst of travelers. Those who perform the
commandment of hospitality are blessed and godly and able to converse with
the Gods. Both Abraham and the woman are involved in creating new kinds
of societies where acts of loving-kindness will be encouraged--where all will
be welcome. Jesus’ policy is of open doors, welcoming all--including
women.
It would seem that there might be a contradiction in home hospitality and
in scholarly endeavors. Scholarship is an individual activity which might
warrant neglect of the home. That the rabbis were aware of the dangers of
individual pursuit of scholarship is made clear in the following quote from
the Talmud: This quotation also serves as a direct link to John 4:34-38 which
is Jesus’ answer to his disciples who wonder about the source of his food--
and perhaps suspect him of some sort of forbidden relationship with the
Samaritan woman. The greatest of Torah study is that it leads to action.
R. Yohanan said in the name of R. Simeon b. Yohai: What is the
meaning of the verse (Isa. 32:20) "Happy shall you be who sow by all
waters, who send out cattle and asses to pasture"? [This:] Whoever
engages in study of Torah and acts of loving-kindness is worthy of the
inheritance of two tribes...For sowing is a reference to naught but
charity (tzedakah)--here equated with 'acts of loving-kindness': note
the Hosea verse now to be quoted in full--"as it is said (Hosea 10:12),
"Sow charity (ztedakah) for yourselves; [reap in accordance with
loving-kindness (hesed)].' And water ֱ is a reference to naught but
Torah, as it is said [Isa.55:1', "Ho, all who are thirsty, come for water."
(B.T. Bava Qamma 17a)
In this quotation we have a link between the Torah, the living waters,
sowing, reaping and charitas. As Jesus put it in explaining to his disciples:
"Doing the will of Him who sent me and bringing His work to completion--
that is my food."

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CHAPTER TWELVE: THE OTHER AS PARTNER—A FEMINIST
229
JEWISH PERSPECTIVE

MOMENTO MORI: DIANA PRINCESS OF WALES:

Before I begin, I would like to share a personal moment. During these last
two weeks, while working on my paper, I have been reflecting on the other.
During this time, I have been reading the book By the River Piedra I Sat
Down and Wept, by Paulo Coelho (Harper Collins: New York, 1996--
translated by Alan R Clarke). The same friend who suggested that I read this
book sent me the Newsweek article on the Mary controversy over whether
she should be a "Co-Redeemer." By reading both the book and the article—
I was involving myself in interfaith dialogue and wondering how all this was
going to fit into my paper. Then there is the aspect of the “other” in me: I
have always felt myself to be other. Growing up as a Jew in New York's
Spanish Harlem, going to parochial school when all the children on the block
were going to public school and being a child of working class immigrants,
in a school where the other children came from rich homes, made me feel
other.
As an adult I am also other: In Israel I am a Conservative Jew, a
feminist who lives in the Negev, in the periphery of the country; I have been
writing a book about a topic people prefer to avoid. So while working at odd
hours to get this paper done, I was up when Diana's death was announced to
the world. Work stopped and I watched into the late early hours until her
death was established. I saw all the programs, flicking between channels: the
BBC, CNN, SKY News.
I took this death personally for it touched many buttons in me. First
of all, I had been doing all this reading on the other. I never knew Diana, but
all of a sudden, I saw Diana as the consummate outsider and caregiver to the
downtrodden. I connected the Diana worship to the Mary Controversy. For
the secular public, Diana is a mediator of all Graces and Advocate for the
People. This is the title being suggested for Mary: Co-Redemptrix, Mediatrix
of All Graces and Advocate for the People of God.
Before her death, Diana was very much "the other" to me—her life
style was alien to mine: she was thin, rich, British. Now I saw her as an
other—but one with whom I could identify, with human frailty, who reached
out to "others" and established a partnership—a holy alliance, if you will--

229
This paper was given at the WOMEN'S SEMINAR OF ICCJ of the
International Colloquium in Rome (7-11 September 1997) as part of the
International Council of Christians and Jews
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with many groups to do good. The salvation of others ultimately gave
meaning to her life. That is one of the reasons why people the world over are
so upset and touched by her untimely death and see her as a martyr, a saint
of sorts. Today is her funeral. It is Shabbat—and Jews neither mourn nor
bury their dead on Shabbat—but one can remember—Yizkor—. May her
memory be a blessing, --‫ יהי זכרה ברוך‬.
HOW DO WE DEFINE THE OTHER?
According to Susanna Heschel,
"feminism's central insight contends that...our most basic
understandings of human nature are drawn primarily from men's
experiences. A patriarchal outlook begins by making men's
experiences normative, equating the human with the male. Not only
are women excluded from the process of shaping the outlook, but
women's experiences are projected as something external, 'other' to
that norm. As Virginia Woolf [in a Room of One's Own, 1929] long
ago pointed out, the vast literature that attempts to define 'woman's
nature' clearly reveals the assumption that women lie outside the
general definitions of humanity and constitute a separate category in
need of explication....Simone de Beauvoir writes, 'Thus humanity is
male and man defines woman not in herself but as relative to him; she
is not regarded as an autonomous being....She is defined and
differentiated with reference to man and not he with reference to her;
she is the incidental, the inessential as opposed to the essential. He is
230
the Subject; he is the Absolute—she is the Other.'"
In Judaism, woman as other is expressed by the purity laws; women's
placement behind curtains; denial of positions of leadership in the liturgy and
even in theological constructs.
IMPORTANCE OF TOPIC
Everybody has an other: even our ego, has an alter-ego—the other side of
ourselves—one that can be in conflict with ourselves. There is also the
ineffable, that which cannot be understood, or comprehended. We see both
these others, the alter-ego and the ineffable in Paul Coelho's fable.
In Paul Coelho's fable, there is a young woman in search of who she
is and of love. Her other is the one that gives order to life. The one that opts
for economic and social security.
The Woman describes the other:
230
Susanna Heschel, On Being a Jewish Feminist: A Reader. Schocken Books, New
York, 1983, xxi-xxii. The quote from De Beauvoir, The Second Sex, New York:
Knopf, 1953 (first published 1949): 16.

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 "The Other is the one who taught me what I should be like, but not
what I am. The Other believes that it is our obligation to spend our
entire life thinking about how to get our hands on as much money as
possible so that we will not die of hunger when we are old. So we think
so much about money and our plans for acquiring it that we discover
we are alive only when our days on earth are practically done. And
then it's too late."
The ideal is to be "a person who is enchanted by the mystery
of life. Who is open to miracles, who experiences joy and enthusiasm
for what they do." "The Other, afraid of disappointment," keeps this
person "from taking action." (56-57)
What the heroine of this book seems to be describing is a state of
"holy insecurity" as described by Mary Boys. In her quest and in her
encounter and battle with the other, she has what Boys descries as a
"disequilibrium dialogue". "Once one enters wholeheartedly into the
231
dialogical process, a strange if wonderful new world opens up."
The heroine of the book fights the Other in her and wins the battle and
opens her heart to understanding the Divine and the performance of the
miracles of healing and comfort. During her encounter, she discovers that she
has "courage to enter the process, courage to redefine [herself] in response to
new insights, courage to 'side' at times with another tradition, courage to find
232
[herself] sometimes marginalized..."
During her quest she meets a padre who gives her a lesson in how
miracles work. (146-147) He tells her the story of a scientist who studies
monkeys and taught one to wash bananas in the river before eating them.
Somehow all the monkeys on the island began to imitate the first one and
then the monkeys on the other islands learned to do the same without having
any contact with the island where the experiment was conducted. The padre
explains that the meaning of this is that "the world itself has a soul, and at a
certain moment, that soul acts on everyone and everything at the same time"
(147).
But sometimes the soul needs help. During one of the climactic scenes
of the book, the woman and the object of her love are sitting in a restaurant.

231
Mary Boys, "The 'Other' as Partner," paper presented at the Women's Seminar,
ICCJ, Rome, Italy, September 6, 1997, p. 8. See Sandra Lubarsky, "Dialogue: Holy
Insecurity," in Religious Education 91:4 (1996):545.
232
Lubarsky, p. 543 (Mary Boys, "The 'Other' as Partner," paper presented at the
Women's Seminar, ICCJ, Rome, Italy, September 6, 1997, p. 14.)

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There is a glass of wine on the table. The woman placed her glass of wine at
the edge of the table. The man warned that it would fall.
"Exactly. I want you to tip it over the edge."
"Break the glass?"
Yes, break the glass. A simple gesture, but one that brings up fears
we can't really understand. What' wrong with breaking an inexpensive glass,
when everyone has done so unintentionally at some time in their life?
"Break the glass?" he repeated. "Why?"
"Well, I could give you lots of reasons," [she] answered. "But
actually, just to break it."
.... Break the glass, [she] thought to herself, because it's a symbolic
gesture.... I have broken things within myself that were much more important
than a glass...Resolve your own internal battle, and break the glass.
Our parents taught us to be careful with glasses and with our bodies.
They taught us that the passions of childhood are impossible, that people
cannot perform miracles...
Break the glass, please—and free us from all these damned rules,
from needing to find an explanation for everything, from doing what others
approve of.
This scene is fraught with symbolism, especially to me as a Jewish
woman, since breaking a glass is what the husband does under the huppah,
the bridal canopy, as part of the wedding ceremony. It is done to remember
the destruction of the Temple. One must always remember our sad history
even during our happiest moments, for they are what make us who we are.
God also has his source of the "other": us, that is, humanity and the
potential of other rival gods.
1. In the 10 commandments, God declares that there shall be no other
gods (acherim) besides him (al panai) [literally "in my face"]. God is a
jealous god and very protective of his turf.
2. God wishes to be in control: and he is very much like a protective
father of the "others" in his life, his children, his wife—the people of Israel.
Since they are others to him, his possessions, he is sometimes abusive to him.
Although the ideal is partnership, we don't always see it in the God of the
Bible. Occasionally the feminine side of God is revealed, but that doesn't
necessarily result in an understanding of human frailty.
WHAT CHARACTERIZES AN "OTHER"?
The stranger or that which is strange to us. We tend to view the world as them
and us. We create a dichotomy. It doesn't have to be bad. We see an example
of this in an interesting midrash on the book of Psalms. The proof text has to
do with Zipporah, who according to Numbers 12 was the Cushite woman
who was married to Moses. The midrash ponders about the Cushites, who
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are strange in actions and looks (since their color is different). It says that
they can't all be bad, since King Saul and Zipporah are descendants of Cush.
Moreover, the prophets refer to all of us as Cushites in the verse from Amos:
"for Israel is like the son of the Cushites to me" (Amos 15). Just as the Cushite
is different in his skin, so is Israel different from all the nations. So we get an
interesting lesson here in transcending particularism—moving from Israel
seeing the Cushite as other and then to seeing the Cushite in themselves. In
order to transcend, you have to identify.
As women we can be alienated from other women who are strangers
to us: separation between young and old, well and disabled, white and black,
middle-class and poor, Jewish and Christian, Protestant and Catholic; lesbian
and heterosexual; first and third world; married and unmarried; mothers and
barren women (by choice or otherwise) --or in the words of Adrienne Rich
233
"a separation from ourselves."
Another aspect of the other is that which is uncontrollable: hence the
fear of those who "steal" knowledge such as Beruriah and the fear of the
mysterious threatening power of Lilith. This mythical female demon
possesses a power threatening to men, that of total independence from the
system.
According to Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza in Bread Not Stone
"feminists cannot afford to be anti-intellectual, since 'knowledge is power.'
... [That is why] women's systemic exclusion from scholarship and
234
intellectual influence is an important aspect of our powerlessness."
Orthodox women in Israel are beginning to sense the new power that comes
with knowledge. But strong learned women are being regarded as outsiders,
as threats—witness the case of Professor Alice Shalvi, Leah Shakdiel and the
Women of the Wall. When they get into the public eye, they are labeled by
the Orthodox establishment as Reform.
There are also the threatening aspects within ourselves such as our
own sexuality, which make us seem other to ourselves. According to Julia
Kristeva: "The foreigner is within us. And when we flee from or struggle
against the foreigner, we are fighting our unconscious—that 'improper' facet
235
of our impossible 'own and proper.'"

233
Adrienne Rich, "Disloyal to Civilization," On Lies, Secrets, and Silence (New
York: Norton, 1979): 307.
234
Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, Bread Not Stone, Beacon Press, Boston, 1984, p.
xviii.
235
Julia Kristeva, Strangers to Ourselves (New York: Columbia University Press,
1991): 191 (thanks to Mary Boys for her footnote)
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 The greatest source of other, and the most obvious one, is he who
threatens our physical safety, security, or autonomy.
EXAMPLES OF THE OTHER FROM TANAKH, MIDRASH,
TALMUD:
The "Acher" (other): Elisha ben Abuya:
Our Rabbis taught: Four men entered the ‘Garden’, namely, Ben
‘Azzai and Ben Zoma, Acher and R. Akiba. .... Ben ‘Azzai cast a look
and died. Of him Scripture says: Precious in the sight of the Lord is
the death of His saints. Ben Zoma looked and became demented. Of
him Scripture says: Hast thou found honey? Eat so much as is
sufficient for thee, lest thou be filled therewith, and vomit it. Acher
mutilated the shoots. R. Akiba departed unhurt (b. Hagiga 14b).
Following this is a long discussion of who Acher is; what did he do that was
so bad and the dangerous influence he had for future generations—so much
so, that he is remembered as acher and not by his name. I chose to look briefly
at this text, because of the name "acher" which means the other. The other is
a danger to tradition; he is adventurous; he crosses boundaries; he breaks
rules:
Our Rabbis taught: Once Acher was riding on a horse on the
Sabbath, and R. Meir was walking behind him to learn Torah at his
mouth. Said [Acher] to him: Meir, turn back, for I have already
measured by the paces of my horse that thus far extends the Sabbath
limit. He replied: Thou, too, go back! [Acher] answered: Have I not
already told thee that I have already heard from behind the Veil:
‘Return ye backsliding children’ — except Acher. (b. Hagiga 15a)
The final verdict of the rabbis is to write this renegade who has
crossed the boundaries of knowledge out of the tradition:
When Acher died, they said: Let him not be judged, nor let
him enter the world to come. Let him not be judged, because he
engaged in the study of the Torah; nor let him enter the world to come,
because he sinned. R. Meir said: It were better that he should be judged
and that he should enter the world to come.
Acher's daughter [once] came before Rabbi and said to him: O
master, support me! He asked her: ‘Whose daughter art thou?’ She
replied: I am Acher's daughter. Said he: Are any of his children left in
the world? Behold it is written: He shall have neither son nor son's son
among his people, nor any remaining in his dwellings. She answered:
Remember his Torah and not his deeds. Forthwith, a fire came down
and enveloped Rabbi's bench. [Thereupon] Rabbi wept and said: If it
be so on account of those who dishonor her, how much more so on
account of those who honor her! (b. Hagiga 15b).
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 There is a lot of ambivalence among the rabbis. Can one wipe out a
man's memory and his line, just because he was a seeker of knowledge? His
story is kept in the tradition as a warning—but with the name "acher"
attached to his file—the equivalent today of a top secret file, that can only be
accessed by those with "need to know" or high security clearance.
There are a lot of other "others" in the Jewish tradition with whom
the tradition is not willing to form a partnership, whom I will just mention in
passing:
The Uncircumcised: (non-Jews): In b. Nedarim 32a, according to the
tradition, the uncircumcised is looked down upon. The commandment of
circumcision has more value than any other mitzvah. The source of this has
to do with a discussion of Tzipora who personally circumcised her two
sons—and thus saved their lives.
Other examples include "The widow, the almana...was like the ger
236
in that she existed in a situation with no supporting kinship ties." The
single, un-attached woman still is stigmatized in some societies. Others are
the Witch and the Menstruant.
There are 5 Examples of Women as Others whom I will look at in no
particular order: Beruria, Lilith, Eve, Miriam, Hagar and Ruth.
BERURIA, who lived in the second century CE in Palestine, gained fame as
the only woman in Talmudic literature whose views on halakhic matters were
reckoned with by the rabbis of her time. In the Talmud she apparently taught
other men on an equal level. She was the daughter of the famous martyr
Hanina b. Teradyon and the wife of R. Meir (disciple of the Acher). She is
often considered to be one of the earliest martyrs for the feminist cause. She
is an example of a woman who is forced in the end to identify against herself:
to see important parts of herself as "other."
We see this in one of the tales about her. It concerns the dictum about
not talking overmuch to women: It appears in the Babylonian Talmud (eruvin
53b).
Rabbi Yosi the Galilean was going along the road. He met Beruriah. He
said to her, "By which road shall we go to Lod?" She said to him,
"Galilean fool! Did not the sages say, 'Do not talk too much with a
woman; (see below Mishnah AVOT 1:5)? You should have said, 'By
which to Lod?'"

236
Paula S. Hiebert, "'Whence Shall Help Come to Me?': The Biblical Widow," in
Gender and Difference in Ancient Israel, Peggy L. Day (ed.) (Minneapolis: Fortress
Press, 1989): 130.
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 The story is ironic. R. Yosi rudely asks for directions so that he will not
be accused of unnecessary pleasantries that might lead to seduction. She
shows how to make the conversation briefer, however in doing so, she
prolongs their contact. So now he must converse with a woman and be
rebuked by her and be taught by her. However, the ultimate joke is not on
him, but on Beruriah, for she has to identify against herself when she accepts
the Jewish tradition to which she is committed in which she is regarded as
inferior. But in recognizing the irony, she is also being subversive and the
rabbis who recognize this have to do something about this. They depict her
as an ideal wife, mother and study partner to her husband:
Her partnerhood is elevated in the famous midrash, when she finds
her children dead on a Shabbat and has to break the news to her husband R.
Meir:
"When two of their sons died on Sabbath, Beruriah did not inform
Meir of their children's death upon his return from the academy in
order not to grieve him on the Sabbath! Only after the havdalah prayer
did she broach the matter, saying "Some time ago a certain man came
and left something in my trust, now he has called for it. Shall I return
it to him or not?" Naturally Meir replied in the affirmative, whereupon
Beruriah showed him their dead children. When Meir began to weep,
she asked: "Did you not tell me that we must give back what is given
on trust? "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away." (midrash on
proverbs 31:1)
On the other hand, she is alone, companionless and a sexual threat
who is ultimately reduced to her sexual function when she is seduced. There
are many tales about Beruriah that show her awareness of rabbinic misogyny;
that show she has considerable rabbinic knowledge and understanding of
methodology. She is both a master of her tradition and able to mock it. A
woman who was a scholar in Palestine in 200 C.E. was an anomaly and thus
the rabbis who told stories about Beruriah projected their own mixed feelings
about her. She is learned, and as the paradigm case of a daughter whose father
taught her Torah, which according to R. Eliezer's dictum results in
licentiousness, she is a threat to male institutions. Her comeuppance or
downfall is being seduced into committing adultery and according to some
sources her sister is placed in a brothel (avodah zara 18b). Beruriah herself
has her virtue tested (and fails the test and is seduced) and her shame leads
to her suicide.

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 The legend of Beruriah is thus an ambivalent acknowledgment and
denial of women's autonomy and intellectual achievement: feminist attitudes
237
result in a bad end.
This is because the position of women in the rabbinic system is that
women are the intellectual and moral inferiors of men. In Tractate Ketubot it
is said that women are flighty, easily seduced and because of their looseness,
inherently seductive. Women's hair, her movements, her voice, her clothing
all entice. Women in short are viewed as aliens, as outsiders who
unfortunately present a problem since they still inhabit the male culture. Even
rescuing a man in captivity takes precedence over saving a woman (Mishnah
Horayot). The less visible the woman the more praiseworthy. So partnership
is at the expense of realizing oneself, of being visible, of being learned.
LILITH AND EVE:
The role models for what happens to Beruriah is of course the reaction of
God and Adam to Lilith and Eve.
LILITH
In the Alphabet of Ben Sira 23a-b, the story of Lilith is revealed: After God
created the first human being, he said that it is not good for Adam to be alone,
so he created a woman, also from the earth and called her Lilith. They
immediately began to quarrel: she said she would not lie below him and he
said he will not lie below her. She responded that "we are both equal because
we both come from the earth." Neither listened to the other and when Lilith
realized what was happening she flew off into the air. Adam complained to
god: The woman you gave me has fled from me." God sent angels after her,
but she did not want to return. Her punishment was that she would have to
accept that 100 of her children would die every day.
Lilith was depicted by Jewish tradition as a demon. The independent
aspect of her that we can sense in Ben Sira was overshadowed in subsequent
legends. Lilith has become a model for Jewish women and in fact the first
feminist journal is called Lilith. Aviva Cantor wrote about "The Lilith
238
Question" in the first issue of Lilith Magazine (Fall, 1976). Some of the
points she raises in this article is that Lilith perceived herself as an equal to
Adam and that she immediately recognized and resisted tyranny. For the sake
of independence, she gave up the security of Eden. She is powerful. This
power is understood by tradition to be vengefulness. Cantor sees the story of
her revolt as a clue to our history—but one which has been preserved by

237
Anne Goldfeld, "Women as Sources of Torah in the Rabbinic Tradition," in The
Jewish Woman. Elizabeth Koltun, editor (New York: Schocken, 1976): 257-270.
238
This article is reprinted in Heschel's On Being a Jewish Feminist, pp. 40-50.
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tradition with male bias to demonize independent women, to make them
other. She cites Elizabeth Janeway's Man's World, Woman's Place:
"Every positive role has a negative flip side, a 'shadow role.' The
Shrew, she writes is the shadow role of the public pleasing woman; the
bitch, of the private living woman; the witch, of the all-giving mother.
Negative roles support the patriarchal order just as positive ones do....
Lilith is...the flip side of Eve. Eve is the enabler..., Lilith, the disabler;
239
Eve, the 'mother of all life,' Lilith, a destroyer of life."
Lilith, unlike Eve was not willing to live in a partnership relationship,
before or after Eden.
EVE
Hava is both the "first woman" and the first woman to be spoken to directly
by God (Adonai Elohim). After she has eaten from the forbidden fruit, God
asks her "What have you done?" And she answers, "the serpent (nachash)
duped me, and I ate." God's response to this declaration is to first punish the
serpent. Then God says to the woman: "I will make most severe your pangs
in childbearing; In pain shall you bear children. Yet your urge shall be for
your husband, and he shall rule over you." (Gen. 3:13-16) After this God tells
Adam that he will be punished as well for doing as his wife said, i.e. for
eating from the tree which He commanded him not to eat from. This is
followed by Adam naming his wife Hava; God making clothing for Adam
and his wife, God banishing both of them from the garden of Eden, Adam
knowing his wife Hava and her bearing the first two children Cain and Abel
with God's help.
Much has been written about this first woman. I just want to point out
some facts that are often overlooked. In chapter two, it is the man alone (not
generic man, but Adam specifically) who is commanded not to eat from the
tree of knowledge. It is God who creates a fitting helper for Adam, yet
"forgets" to tell her not to eat from the tree. She does "know" that it is
forbidden. This is clear from her words to the serpent, but it does not say who
told her. One can argue that the serpent opens her eyes to the potential in the
tree and that the women's action of initiative is interpreted by God as an act
of rebellion that has to be punished. But is she actually punished? Had she
not done what she did, the world would have been a boring place for God.
Yet something had to be done--otherwise mankind would dominate the
world.

239
Cantor, p. 45.
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 Why did she have to be put down so quickly? What was behind God's
over-reaction to Hava's initiative? The threat to God as stated in the Bible, is
that once Adam (generic mankind) "has become like one of us, knowing good
and bad, what if he should stretch out his hand and take also from the tree of
life and eat, and live forever!" So God banishes him (!!) from the Garden of
Eden, to till the soil from which he was taken. (Gen. 3:22-23) Yet if one reads
this text between the lines, Hava gains the power of life. It is Adam who will
return to the dust he came from and will die, not Hava. She (and all women
with her) is rewarded with the ultimate gift of perpetuating life, of bearing
children.
One can say that the first partnership, that of Mankind and god has
failed—because those who don't follow the rules, who are unequal, are
punished. Yet the reward is that children are born out of the partnership.
Without them, the world would be a sterile place—there is hope for the next
generation.
MIRIAM
In contrast to the matriarchs, the memory of Miriam lingers on. She is
referred to as a prophet. There are four prophetesses known to us by name:
Miriam and Deborah, who were bards, whose prophecy was in the form of
poetry. Huldah (2 Kings 22:14-20; 2 Chron. 34:22-28) and Noadiah (Neh.
6:14) who lived in the period of literary prophets. Micah includes her as part
of the triumvirate (Moses, Aaron and Miriam); there are hints of her
240
authoring the Song of the Sea and her being connected with the well of
water that nourished the people of Israel in the desert. She is and probably
was a natural partner in the wilderness. She saved her brother, outsmarting
the Egyptians. Yet once formal religion is in place, she is kept out. We see
this in the strange story in the Book of Numbers, when God speaks directly
to Miriam, -- in anger. This speech functions as a silencing of Miriam by
God—hinting that God will be partners only with Moses and not with a trio
of siblings.
1) When they were in Hazeroth, Miriam and Aaron spoke against
Moses because of the Cushite woman he had married: ... 2) They said,
'Has the Lord spoken only through Moses? Has He not spoken through
us as well?' The Lord heard it.... 4) Suddenly the Lord called to Moses,
Aaron, and Miriam, 'Come out, you three, to the Tent of Meeting.' So
the three of them went out. 5) The Lord ...called out, 'Aaron and
Miriam!' ...And He said, 'Hear these My words: ...With [Moses] I

240
S.D. Goitein, "Women as Creators of Biblical Genres," Prooftexts, 8 (1988). p.
7.
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 speak mouth to mouth, plainly and not in riddles, and he beholds the
likeness of the Lord. How then did you not shrink from speaking
against My servant Moses!' 9) Still incensed with them, the Lord
departed. 10) As the cloud withdrew from the Tent, there was Miriam
stricken with snow-white scales! When Aaron turned toward Miriam,
he saw that she was stricken with scales [leprosy]. 11) And Aaron said
to Moses, 'O my lord, account not to us the sin which we committed
in our folly. 12) Let her [Miriam] not be as one dead, who emerges
from his mother's womb with half his flesh eaten away.' 13) So Moses
cried out to the Lord, saying, 'O God, pray heal her!' 14) But the Lord
said to Moses, 'If her father spat in her face, would she not bear her
shame for seven days? Let her be shut out of camp for seven days, and
then let her be readmitted.' 15) So Miriam was shut out of camp seven
days; and the people did not march on until Miriam was readmitted.
16) After that the people set out from Hazeroth and encamped in the
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wilderness of Paran (Numbers 12).
If God is likened to a father figure in this episode, then the "spit in her
face" is of divine origin and leaves its mark in the form of leprosy. So one
could say that God speaks to her face as well, but in furious anger at her
rebellion.
Miriam is recalled in Deuteronomy where it is stated: 'Remember what
the Lord your God did to Miriam on the way as you came forth out of Egypt'
(Deut. 24.9). What did he do? He spat in her face and marked her with
leprosy. She is 'a marked woman, a warning for generations to come', a
woman so important 'that detractors tabooed her to death, seeking to bury her
242
forever in disgrace'
Yet she is also a woman whom the Rabbis chose to see as a positive role
model: an advocate of the biblical command to mankind to 'be fruitful and
multiply,' specifically, in criticizing Moses for not having sexual relations
with his wife, and in encouraging the Israelite males to marry while in Egypt
despite Pharaoh's decrees against Jewish male babies.
Miriam, is Moses sister. Although in the genealogy of the book of
Exodus, Moses is listed after Aaron in the birth order, Moses sister appears
to look out for his welfare when he is put into the Nile. So the rabbis invent
a story--a midrash to explain how she got there. They have her father divorce
his wife after Miriam and Aaron are already born, because of his fear of

241
Tanakh: A New Translation of the Holy Scriptures (Philadelphia: Jewish
Publication Society, 1985).
242
Trible, 1989, p. 23
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bringing a baby boy into the world who might be killed by Pharaoh. In this
midrash, Miriam's father, Amram, is depicted as a coward who stopped
having intercourse with his wife. Miriam pointed out to her father that 'your
decree is more severe than that of Pharaoh; for Pharaoh decreed only
concerning the male children, and you decree upon males and females alike.'
As a result, Amram took his wife back, and his example was followed by all
the Israelites (Lev. Rabbah 17.3). In this midrash, Miriam is praised for
outsmarting her father, and for encouraging the people to be fruitful and
multiply so that they will survive.
Thus even though the Bible implies that God did not consider Miriam
to be a partner, the rabbis clearly disagreed and built a case for her. By doing
so, the built a model to show that when a powerful woman is a partner, the
people are saved and redeemed.
HAGAR
Hagar is the example par excellence of an "other". Her name ha-ger may
even be a pun: the alien. She is a triple-fold alien: from her country, in her
243
status and in her sex. She is an Egyptian living in Canaan; she is "single,
244
poor and bonded". She is a powerless object whose status is contingent on
that of her mistress, Sarah, the wife of Abraham. Hagar the bondmaid
(shipchah) and/or slave, (amah) qualifies as an abused (second) wife. She is
"one of the first females in scripture to experience use, abuse, and
245
rejection."
Yet the angel of the Lord speaks to her. The first occasion is when she
is pregnant with Abram's seed and her mistress Sarai was lowered in her
esteem. And Sarai said to Abram, "The wrong done me is your fault! I myself
put my maid in your bosom; now that she sees that she is pregnant, I am
lowered in her esteem. The Lord decide between you and me!" Abram said
to Sarai, "your maid is in your hands. Deal with her as you think right." And
Sarai treated her harshly, and she ran away from her. An angel of the Lord
found her by a spring of water...and said, "Hagar, slave of Sarai, where have
you come from, and where are you going?" And she said, "I am running away
from my mistress Sarai." And the angel of the Lord said to her, "Go back to
your mistress, and submit to her harsh treatment." And the angel of the Lord
said to her, "I will greatly increase your offspring...."(Gen. 16.1-10).

243
Bruce Rosenstock, "Inner-Biblical Exegesis in the Book of the Covenant,
Conservative Judaism, Spring 1992, p. 45 points out that the name Hagar may be a
pun on gerr(alien).
244
Trible, p. 10.
245
Phyllis Trible, Text of Terror, Fortress Press, Phil, 1984:9.
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 So in this partnership between God and the "Other", the other is told to
bide her time—take the punishment, because you will be rewarded with
children.
Phyllis Trible sees the victimization of Hagar as a prefigurement of
Israel's enslavement in Egypt. Hagar, unlike Israel,
"experiences exodus without liberation, revelation without salvation,
wilderness without covenant, wanderings without land, promise
without fulfillment, and unmerited exile without return. This Egyptian
slave woman is stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted for the
transgressions of Israel."
Following Trible's insights one step further, I would argue that Hagar
the suffering slave woman serves as the prototype for the metaphor of Israel
as the suffering, mistreated wife of God.
Ruth
Ruth according to the tradition is the mother of the Messiah, the ancestress
of David, the anointed one, the king chosen by God. Instead of having an
illustrious lineage, there is a lot of dysfunction going on in the ancestral
tree—nothing to write home about. David's ancestress is a Moabite, a product
of incest (Lot's daughters—Ammon and Moab); The Moabites were sworn
enemies of Israel—since they refused to give aid to the Israelites during their
trek through the wilderness. For this lack of chesed (kindness), it was decreed
that Moabites could not marry Israelites (Deut 23:4-5).
On Boaz's side, his ancestors came from the quasi-incestuous union
of Tamar and Judah, her father-in-law (from Perez's line came Boaz (Gen
38)). Ruth and Boaz end up marrying under suspicious circumstances—she
goes to him in the middle of the night and he "spread his skirt" over her and
redeemed her according to the laws of levirate marriage. From this union
came Obed, father of Jesse, father of David. So, to create David, you have
three quasi-incestuous matings (Lot and his daughters, Tamar & Judah, and
Ruth and Boaz). But it's all for a preordained good.
Not only that, but it was three active women who brought this about on
their own initiative and at great personal sacrifice. Susan Reimer Torn
suggests that these women defied taboos for a higher end. She reads Ruth:
as one who carried within her a divine spark planted much earlier in
the sullied womb of Lot's daughter. Her personal virtue was powerful
enough to free the divine spark from a hard shell of evil. The lesson
learnt is thus that "the impulse to good can find a spring-board in

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 darkness, that virtue can be highlighted by its opposites, or that inner
246
schisms are far from deplorable."
I'm always looking for role models for my children: are these women
good ones? Are these the relationships with which to do tikkun olam (fixing
up the world): the ideal of partnership? I'm not sure.
I chose to end my 5 examples of others with Ruth, because on the
surface you have a mixing of two cultures here with an ostensible "happy
end". The motif running through the book is that of kindness (hesed). Ruth
and Naomi (the Moabite and Israelite) bond for a purpose. Although there is
no great love in this story, there is an act of kindness (hesed) on the part of
Ruth toward Naomi—she leaves her country (where you go, I go) in an
unbelievable declaration, putting herself at the mercy of the older woman
(her mother-in-law, or rather the mother of her dead husband), following her
to a new country—she is a female Abraham (leave your country and go up
to the new country I will show you). She marries a rich old man—a father
figure, in fact, Boaz and bears a son, Ovad, who is going to be one of the
progenitors of King David.
I say ostensible happy end, because she is used by Naomi, who
usurps her grandson, to the point of nursing him, at least metaphorically. Can
there be a partnership relationship that is totally idealistic? Here the issue is
practical: keeping the family line going—but whose family line? It is not
Ruth's, it is Naomi's. When it is one of pragmatics, does one person always
have to be selfless? These are questions I ask—I don't have answers. There
is an excellent collection of essays "Reading Ruth" edited by Judith Kates
and Gail Reimer (1994) and you can form your own opinion of Ruth.
WHO IS OTHER? GOD OR ISRAEL? THE MARRIAGE
METAPHOR
In the Prophets, God's relationship with the people of Israel is often described
in sexual terms. God is a male. Israel is a female. God has the power to
withhold his seed from the barren woman. Often, Israel is described as a wife
and God as her husband or lover. Israel is also described as a whore or
adulterer or a widow and God as either suffering from the deceit or as the one
who punishes the woman. This can be seen clearly in such prophets such as
Hosea, Nahum, Jeremiah and Ezekiel and in the Book of Lamentations.
What are the advantages of using a metaphor of marriage to describe the
relationship between God and His people? Are there disadvantages? Is this
the role of partnership we are seeking? We will look first at Chapter two of
Hosea to try and answer these questions.

246
Susan Reimer Torn, "Ruth Reconsidered" in Reading Ruth, p. 345.
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 Hosea is the first prophet to describe God's relationship to Israel in
metaphorical terms as a marriage. Such a marriage metaphor is not found in
the literature of any other ancient religion beside Israel's. "The Hebrew God
alone was spoken of as the lover and husband of His people, and only the
247
house of Israel spoke of itself as the bride of the Almighty." Hosea's
protagonist is himself, the husband who casts out his wife for being unfaithful
to him and then takes her back--with the understanding that 'she' will behave
herself. God is Israel's husband and lover.... Since a wife's loyalty to her
husband must be absolute and unwavering, it is a powerful analogy to the
complete loyalty that God demands of the Israelites. The covenant between
God and Israel made at Mount Sinai is a marriage. Idolatry, which breaks the
248
covenant, is adultery.
There is a midrash which depicts the relationship between God and His
people in a poignant manner.
After [Hosea's wife] had borne him several children, God suddenly
put the question to him: 'Why followest thou not the example of thy
teacher Moses, who denied himself the joys of family life after his
call to prophecy?' Hosea replied: 'I can neither send my wife away
nor divorce her, for she has borne me children.' 'If, now,' said God to
him, 'thou who hast a wife of whose honesty thou art so uncertain
that thou canst not even be sure that her children are thine, and yet
thou canst not separate from her, how, then, can I separate Myself
from Israel, from My children, the children of My elect, Abraham,
249
Isaac, and Jacob!'
God is here seen as all-forgiving, and the husband who cannot separate
himself from his wife is the model after which Hosea is expected to pattern
himself. Yet, is this really the case?
If this depicts the real state of Hosea/God's and Gomer/Israel's
relationship, we have here a very troubled marriage. Furthermore, the
marriage metaphor is being pushed to dangerous limits. "[God's] legitimate

247
Gershon Cohen, in "The Song of Songs and the Jewish Religious Mentality,"
Studies in the Variety of Rabbinic Cultures (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication
Society, 1991): 6.
248
Harold Fisch, 'Hosea: A Poetics of Violence', Poetry with a Purpose
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), p.141; Fisch calls our attention to
A.J. Heschel, The Prophets (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1962): 27.
249
b. Pesahim 87a-87b as related by Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews
(Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1968), vol. 4, pp. 260-61.
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punishment of Israel for breach of covenant is figuratively described as
threats of violence against the wife.'250
In my view, love, punishment and subservience are not compatible
concepts. Israel has to suffer in order to be entitled to this new betrothal. It is
a theme that re-occurs. Zion (who is depicted as a woman) has to be battered
into submission in order to kiss and make up at the end. She has to agree to
be on the receiving end of her husband's jealousy. She has to wait patiently
for seed to be impregnated. The premise is that a woman has no other choice
but to remain in such a marriage. True, God is very generous to Israel. He
promises to espouse her forever with righteousness, justice, goodness, mercy
and faithfulness. But despite the potential for a new model of a relationship
between God and Israel, it is not a model of real reciprocity. It is based on
suffering and the assumption that Israel will submit to God's will while
waiting for his seed and a bright future.
IV. CONCLUSION: RELEVANCE TO INTERFAITH CONFERENCE
A. What are some New Models of relationships between God and the people?
Tikva Frymer-Kensky has some suggestions:
"1) The simplest is to confine the image to woman- Israel and male God,
so that all of Israel is subsumed under the "beloved" image---but this
brings us right back to the problem of the essentially male God.
2) Another step would be to encourage women to merge with the Torah and
the Shabbat and explore what it means to become one with Torah or Shabbat.
The possibilities for mystical merging are exciting, but there is a serious
drawback. Such a metaphor of men merging with God and women with
Shekhinah/ Torah/Shabbat may not only reinforce masculine divinity, but it
may also provide sacral justification for considering females secondary in all
relations:
3) The third way to retain this erotic imagery is to specifically include women
in the invitation to become lovers of Torah, of Sabbath, of Zion, not by
"translating" themselves into men, but by keeping their identity as women
and being encouraged to feel passionate devotion to the woman-imaged
251
Shabbat/Torah/Zion."
In my own work on midrash, I try to recreate a world in which women
have a place. I find this a legitimate and necessary enterprise. It is a way of
contributing new insights and/or perspectives to our Bible. Midrash
flourishes today largely thanks to feminism. Modern feminist midrash

250Gail Yee, "Hosea," In Carol A. Newsome and Sharon H. Ringe (eds.), The
Women's Bible Commentary (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster, 1992): 199.
251
Tikva Frymer Kensky. "On Feminine God-Talk" (e-mail communication)
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attempts to redress the misogynist tendencies of traditional mainstream
midrash. It addresses the bible with a hermeneutics of suspicion, or in
Huebner's words' "an alienated theology, a theology done as if we were aliens
and strangers to our own stories and traditions, seeing them instead through
252
the eyes of the stranger, who will be affected by them."
The consequences of a patriarchal world view for us are clear.
Conventional attitudes toward women are still being transmitted to us as part
of our heritage and too often we respond unquestioningly to these views as if
they were absolute truths. Women should not have to identify against
ourselves. As part of our theology of protest against previous and present
abuse, we must be revisers and revisionists. With new vision we bring new
perspectives to the old text and in doing so, we contribute to the on-going
work of revelation and continue the conversations with God begun by our
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fore-mothers.
In order to have a happy end to this talk, I would like to return to Hosea
and show that there is a positive redemptive midrash which can serve as a
role model for partnership. It is to be found in a midrash on a verse from
Parashat Ekeb (Deut. 7:12), and it looks promising as a basis for
reinterpretation. This midrash also fulfills the criteria described in Mary Boys
paper of ideal partnership. It is an illustration of what she calls "responsible
particularism" in which we "develop and act with deep regard for other
254
religious traditions while being faithful to our own." .This midrash
connects the covenant between God and Abraham with the marriage of a king
and a noble lady who brings two valuable gems into the house. In this
partnership type of relationship, she brings gems and he also brings gems.
When she loses the gems, he takes away his. When she finds them, he restores
his and decrees that,
a crown should be made of both sets of gems and that it should be
placed on the head of the noble lady....God, too, set up two gems
corresponding to them, namely, loving kindness and mercy....Israel
lost hers....God thereupon took away His....And after Israel has

252
Dwayne Huebner, "Educational Foundations for Dialogue," Religious
Education, 91/4 (1996): 585. (The quotation appears in Mary Boys, "The 'Other' as
Partner," paper presented at the Women's Seminar, ICCJ, Rome, Italy, September
6, 1997, p. 12.)
253
Naomi Graetz, "Why I Write Midrash,” S/He Created Them: Feminist
Retellings of Biblical Stories (Professional Press, 1993): pp. 1-4.
254
Mary Boys, "The 'Other' as Partner," paper presented at the Women's Seminar,
ICCJ, Rome, Italy, September 6, 1997, p. 5.
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 restored hers and God has given back His, God will say, "Let both
pairs be made into a crown and be placed on the head of Israel," as it
is said, "And I will betroth thee unto Me, yea, I will betroth thee unto
Me in righteousness and in justice, and in loving kindness, and in
compassion. And I will betroth thee unto Me in faithfulness; and thou
255
shalt know the Lord" (Hos. 2:21).
The greater context of this midrash is that of Deuteronomy. In this book Israel
is constantly being berated and threatened by God. If Israel behaves as God
demands, Israel will be treated well. If Israel strays from the narrow path,
Israel will be punished. However, the rabbis have made a tremendous
conceptual leap forward by allowing us to imply from the relationship that
God has with Abraham a potential relationship a man might have with his
wife.
This midrash puts the emphasis on a complementary type of man-wife
relationship, where each one's contribution leads to a more complete whole.
This approach is at once non-hierarchical and non submissive, and yet retains
the different roles in the marriage without having the fact imply inequality or
submissiveness. What is unusual in this midrash is that both parties bring
qualities to the marriage which are all essential for the marriage to work.
Only by being faithful to themselves, by keeping the qualities they brought
to the marriage, can they reconstruct and maintain the relationship. If one
side loses their qualities, it effects the other side. There is no absolute power
which forces the other side to accept it, but both sides need to keep up what
256
they bring in order for each of them and their marriage to be healthy.

255
Deuteronomy Rabbah (Ekeb) 3:7, in The Midrash, eds., Freedman and Simon,
pp. 75-76.
256
Michael Graetz, "Parashat Ekev 5757," Thoughts for Shabbat, R. Hammer,
Editor Masorti Movement of Israel.
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CHAPTER THIRTEEN: RUTH AND NAOMI: A COUNTER
MIDRASH

“In the days when the judges ruled…” (Ruth 1:1)

They come in here like they own the place. Naomi keeps bragging about her
new grandson as if he’s the new messiah. She drags Ruth out, commands her
to bring her the baby and then pretends to nurse him. Disgusting, at her age
to bare those old brown breasts.
Before they came, I had my eye on Boaz. I thought that he was ripe
for a new relationship. Ever since his second wife died, I knew he was ready
for the taking. He didn’t know it, but I did. But now it’s over—and just
because of those two women. Actually, Ruth is okay—it’s just that she has
no personality of her own. Naomi keeps telling of her loyalty to her—as if
that is a big deal. Taking orders, following her. She claims she loves her. But
I watch her carefully and she seems so colorless, so dog like.
It is clear that Boaz was entrapped. He and Naomi met, made a
deal—she sent Ruth to him one night. Naomi was his kin and who knows
what past they had in common. She must have offered him a package deal—
a new wife and access to the land that once was hers. And now I’ve lost him
to a woman, who’s a foreigner—she’s not even of our faith.
Naomi keeps teaching her our ways, our language. I see them out
there everyday in the fields with the baby. Poor Ruth has no life of her own.
She is still at the beck and command of Naomi. Marriage to Boaz didn’t free
her from Naomi’s control. But she doesn’t seem to mind. She follows Naomi
around like a lap dog. They say she converted to our religion, that she became
a ger, when she chose to follow Naomi back to Bethlehem from her own
homeland.
But I saw her the first day she arrived. She stood out from the rest of
us sheaves like a stalk of unbowed wheat. She was tall and willowy and had
light hair. She was light on her feet; she had an air of mystery to her. It was
only later that I realized that it was a bluff and she had no personality of her
own. When she said to Naomi, “your people are my people” that was because
she really had nothing of her own.
It was Naomi who was ruthless and cunning. She wanted her land
back and she wanted that baby and she wanted respectability. She was tired
of being just a retired old lady. Like Sarah, Abraham’s wife, she was
rejuvenated after that baby was born. She treated Ruth like a servant. If it had
been up to her she would have kicked her foreign daughter in-law out, just
like Sarah kicked out her foreigner, her ger, Hagar. But she had no excuse.

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Ruth was never uppity—Ruth was always compliant. She did what she was
told. She followed Naomi’s directions and my Boaz was ensnared.
Ruth’s story:
She’s taken my baby. She acts as if Obed is hers. I guess he is in a sense. I
would never have gotten this far with Boaz if not for her push. Why did I
follow her back? I miss my best friend, Orpah so much. I wish she had come
with me and then I wouldn’t be so lonely. All I am is a milk machine—and I
have to do it in secret, so Naomi can pretend she is nursing Obed. I wonder
if they understand the irony of his name. I am the slave, the wet-nurse who
works behind the scenes while she gets the glory. The last words I ever said
of consequence were those in which I committed myself to follow her, to
have her people be my people. But she’s used me. She brags about me; she
says her daughter-in-law is better than seven sons. But she never refers to me
by name. I will never forgive her for that long period of silence when I
followed her—always ten steps behind—on that long trip from Moab.
To them I am always Ruth the Moabite. My identity to them is that of a
convert and I have never been fully accepted. She’s right, I’m better to HER
than seven sons. And what sons—those sickly men, Orpah and I married,
Mahlon and Chilion, even their names implied disease. They were used up
after ten years and they weren’t potent enough to give us sons. Orpah was
smarter than me and went back. But I decided to take my chances, try my
luck in a new place. You would think in a society such as this, I would be
honored for having a son—but that honor has been taken away from me by
Naomi. Boaz is of no use either. He’s either in his fields or with his men. He
thinks of me as a daughter that he has to protect. He can’t believe his luck
that at his age, a woman took interest in him and that he finally became father
to a male child. But he gets no satisfaction from Obed either, since our child
is always with Naomi. And she’s not even his biological grandmother. But
that doesn’t stop her from taking over. Maybe when she dies, I’ll get a chance
to be a mother to my own child. But I don’t see a way out, for she seems to
be getting younger every day. Even the women neighbors have noticed. They
say that God had a hand in not withholding a redeemer from her and that her
grandson will renew her life and sustain her in her old age. They say that it
is because he is born of me, her daughter-in-law, who loves her and is better
to her than seven sons. Yet the local feeling is that “A son is born to Naomi”
not to me!
Narrator’s voice:
Hearing Ruth talk almost makes me feel sorry for her. But the fact remains
that there is nothing left for me here. I will try my hand with some of the men
who are going up north to the Dan district. I will get my family to arrange a

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marriage for me with one of them and then I will move on. I don’t think I can
stand seeing Boaz becoming a laughing stock at his age.
Naomi’s story:
When we arrived in Bethlehem, the whole city buzzed with excitement over
us. The women said, “Can this be Naomi?” “Do not call me Naomi,” I
replied. “Call me Mara, for my lot has been very bitter. I went away with full
breasts, and now they are empty. How can you call me Naomi, when the
LORD has not dealt pleasantly with me at all; when so much misfortune has
befallen me!”
That’s how I returned from the country of Moab; I returned with my
daughter-in-law Ruth the Moabite. We arrived in Bethlehem at the beginning
of the barley harvest. It was the end of the long silence between us. Now she
was mine, ready to do what I needed to restore my place in society, to ensure
that my name would be perpetuated.
My lot was indeed desperate: a sick husband, sick sons, no grandchildren,
only two daughters-in-law. One of them turned her back on me. The other
clung to me, even though I tried to discourage her. She made this long speech:
“Do not urge me to leave you, to turn back and not follow you. For wherever
you go, I will go; wherever you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my
people and your God my God. Where you die, I will die, and there I will be
buried.”
When I saw how determined she was to go with me, I stopped trying to
convince her, and in fact, I stopped speaking to her until we got back to
Bethlehem. Every time she tried to engage me in conversation, I turned my
back on her. I didn’t want her to get the upper hand, to think she was in power,
to think that she was taking pity on me. By giving her the silent treatment, I
knew she would have no way of knowing what I was thinking, what I was
planning.
When we arrived and Ruth offered to go to the fields and glean some
grain, that’s when I spoke my first words to her, “Yes, daughter, go,” I
replied; and off she went. What a piece of luck that the first field she came to
was the piece of land belonging to Boaz, who was of Elimelech’s family. He
knew she was related to me—the gossips had been at him already and so he
was kind to her, because of our relationship. After the harvest was over, I
convinced Ruth to go and seduce him. My plan was simple, I told her:
“Daughter, I must seek a home for you, where you may be happy. Go to our
kinsman Boaz, who will be winnowing barley on the threshing floor tonight.
Go down to the threshing floor and hide until he has finished eating and
drinking. When he lies down, go over and uncover his feet and lie down. He
will tell you what you are to do.”

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 Ruth went down to the threshing floor and did just as I had instructed
her. When she came home she told me how she went over stealthily and
uncovered his feet and lay down and what took place. When he asked who
she was, she replied, “I am your handmaid Ruth. Spread your robe over your
handmaid, for you are a redeeming kinsman.”
He was impressed by her loyalty to me and flattered that she preferred
an old man to a younger man. He reassured her that he would do what she
asked. He told her to stay for the night. But he would have to check out that
the person who was a closer kin to her, who had more rights as a redeemer
than he, did not want to redeem her. He promised: “If he does not want to act
as redeemer for you, I will do so myself, as the LORD lives! Lie down until
morning.”
Ruth did not really understand how complicated were our laws of
redeeming the land. She did not understand the risk she was taking by
spending the night. She might have ruined it for us, had our other close
relative wanted the land enough to take her as well. But fortunately he only
wanted the land, not Ruth. So Boaz married Ruth; she became his wife, and
he officially cohabited with her. Only Ruth, Boaz and I knew what really
took place the night before. I held it over her head for many years. I needed
to keep the upper hand. I needed it so that I could have a new son, to replace
my dead sons and my dead husband.
Narrator’s story:
Boaz was first to die. Naomi lived on for a long time. Ruth faded away into
history. We all know what happened to the descendants of her grandson. But
what became of me? I too played a small part in the future of our people’s
history, but not in Bethlehem. My scope was on the battlefield. Not the usual
place for a woman, but then you may have noticed that I am a very critical
person. My judgment of Ruth and Naomi’s characters are not in the history
books. I found that I had a talent to see through men and women. I understood
their motivation. Now that I was respectably married, I set up a stand under
a tree and judged—and this time I was rewarded for my judgmental
personality. In case you are wondering who I am, look in the book of Judges
for MY story. I am Deborah the Judge, a.k.a. Boaz’s first flame, now known
as eshet Lapidot.
Afterword:
A midrash in Ruth Rabba 1:1 is as follows: “And it was in the days of the
judging of the Judges.” And who were they? Rav says: They were Barak and
Devora. R. Yehoshua ben Levi says: They were Shamgar and Ehud.
R. Huna says: They were Devora, Barak, and Yael. Shefot [would have
implied] one, Shoftim [would have implied] two, ha-Shoftim [implies] three.”

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CHAPTER FOURTEEN: NEBALAH--THE "OUTRAGE" OF
257
WOMEN TREATED AS MEAT

This paper will examine both biblical and rabbinic literature which treats
women as meat, focusing mostly on two biblical "outrages" or nevalot which
have cosmic consequences. Women are often thought of as either food, or in
relationship to food. This might be related to the fact that a woman's body is
traditionally conceived of as “deficient, as an imperfect male, and even as
258
subhuman”. Food is often thought of as being offered by women as a form
of hospitality. Yet the first woman, Eve, who offered food was also seen as a
temptress and her offering was suspect. There are many biblical women who
are agents of food preparation (Sarah, Rebecca, Abigail etc.) yet they are also
objectified into food, especially when they are associated as being offered by
259
their men as a form of sexual hospitality.
Tamar in 2 Sam 13 is both agent, maker of food, and victim (objectified
as food) for she is invited to make medicinal food (biryah) for her brother,
who rapes her, treats her as meat and then throws her out while she cries out
about the outrage being done. The unnamed concubine-wife [pilegesh] of
Judges 19 shows agency when she leaves her Levite master-husband and
returns to her father's home, yet to the background of men eating and drinking
merrily, she is given up to the townsmen, raped and left like a carcass for
dead. Her husband sacrifices her body, using a ma-achelet, (which reminds
us of the akedah story) cuts her up into 12 animal-like parts, to be distributed
as a message to the tribes. Both stories illustrate the concept of women as
food and sacrifice.
Jacques Derrida, in discussing Lot's and the Levite's (the concubine's
master) hospitality, points out that they preside "over an appalling injustice
toward women. …[and] the sacrifice of women’s bodies". He points out that,
"the more conditional the hospitality and the more the host would secure the

257
This paper has not been published, but was presented in the Women in the
Biblical World Section at the SBL meeting in Chicago, November, 2012. If the
reader wishes, I will send the power point that accompanied this paper.
258
April D DeConick, Holy Misogyny: Why the Sex and Gender Conflicts in the
Early Church Still Matter. New York: Continuum, 2011: x. Quote from a book
review by Alicia D. Myers RBL 08/2012
259
Thalia Gur-Klein, "Sexual Hospitality in the Hebrew Bible?" lectio difficilior
2/2003 http://www.lectio.unibe.ch
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borders of what he takes to be his sovereign territory, the more these bodies
260
will be cut to pieces."
Michael Kochin writes of
"[t]he Levite [who]brings (the body of) his concubine to his dwelling
in the hills of Ephraim and performs what can only be called an
unlimbing, as a priest does of an animal sacrifice. For this imitation of
sacrifice and sacerdotal distribution of meat, the Levite uses the special
knife called a ma’achelet, the knife last seen, as it were, in the binding
of Isaac (Genesis 22:9). Le barbare, as Rousseau fittingly calls him,
distributes the twelve portions of limb as messages to all of Israel
(2:1215, 7:359). But what does this message mean, and how are we to
read it? …. But to what do the recipients react: the crime of the thugs
261
of Gibeah, or “the barbarian’s” unlimbing?
Kolchin quotes Tanya Horeck who writes that “One might say that in the
Levite the writing with the raped woman’s body is called upon as a necessary
remedy to a critical situation, while it is itself the critical situation to which a
262
remedy is sought.” And Shoshana Felman, wrote, “This is a case, if there
263
ever is one, of the scandal of the speaking body.”
Susan Niditch writes that "[t]he dead woman's divided body is a radical
symbolization of Israel’s ‘body politics," the divisions in Israel.” It is
paradoxical that “[h]is symbolic action asks that they act as members of one
264
community to set wrong aright.” The irony is that in order to act as united
members they must dis-member the pilegesh’s body. The necessary cutting
of a body in order to have a covenant is reminiscent of the paradox of the
expression, lichrot brit, literally to cut a covenant, or in the case of
circumcision to actually cut off something. In her book about woman's body
in Hosea 1-3, Alice Keefe disagrees with Niditch and writes that she "errs in

260
Rosalyn Diprose,"Women’s Bodies Giving Time for Hospitality," Hypatia 24, 2
(Spring, 2009): 142-163.
261
Michael S. Kochin, "Living with the Bible: Jean-Jacques Rousseau Reads
Judges 19-21," Hebraic Political Studies 2: 3 (Summer 2007): 320.
262
Tanya Horeck, Public Rape: Representing Violation in Fiction and Film
(London: Routledge, 2004): 53.
263
The reference is to Shoshana Felman, The Scandal of the Speaking Body: Don
Juan with J.L. Austin, or Seduction in Two Languages, trans. Catherine Porter, 2nd
ed. (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2003).
264
Susan Niditch, “The ‘Sodomite’ Theme in Judges 19-20: Family, Community,
and Social Disintegration,” CBQ 44 (1982): 365-78. (here 371).
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concluding that this last episode in Judges is about 'community, cooperation
and unity among Israelites' (1982:373)." Instead she says that the story of the
conflict which leads to
"nothing but slaughter and rape, hardly provides an exemplary model
of community cohesion…. Rather, when a reader focuses on the
semiotics of the female body, he or she will more likely conclude that
this story is not about solidarity, but disintegration. The dismembered
body of the concubine stands contiguous with the civil war, a metonym
for a bloody and divided Israel. The point of the war narrative emerges
as it is refracted through the image of the woman's tortured and broken
body…. The sexual violation of women provides a powerful and
graphic representation of the real meaning of internecine war as the
dissolution of all forms of community coherence and order." Thus she
connects the Judges 19-21 stories with those of Genesis 34 and 2
Samuel 13. "In all three rape narratives, sexual violence is not just a
cause of nebalah in the community; it is the primary symbol of its
265
meaning."
Gail Labovitz discusses food and eating metaphors in rabbinic
discourse of sexuality and gender relations. There is a well-known Talmudic
tale about an unhappy wife who is compared to a piece of meat or fish; to
something which can be kneaded, shaped, and knocked around at will by her
husband (B. Nedarim 20a-b). In her classic book The Sexual Politics of Meat,
Carol J. Adams writes about how women, are "objectified... prepared,
266
reshaped, and acculturated to be made consumable in a patriarchal world".
And if we truly want to bring the horror of the Judges 19 story of
st
dismemberment into the 21 century we can look at the Texas Chain Saw
Massacres. What interests me is the idea that women's bodies are meat,
whether dead or alive. I think if we look at the word nebalah, one of the many
link words which are appear in Judges 19, 2 Samuel 13 and Genesis 34 we
can see some connections.
The word, nebalah has both the meaning of carcass and outrage and
perhaps even confusion. I have taken advantage of the different 2 letter root
system (rather than 3) with the bet lamed (b-l) combinations to make a
connection between the themes. I searched through the tanach using the bar
ilan response data base and also checking in Strong's using nun lamed bet nvl

265
Alice A. Keefe, Woman's Body and the Social Body in Hosea 1-2 (Gender,
Culture, Theory 10; JSOT Sup 338; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press,
2002):175-176.
266
Carol J. Adams, The Sexual Politics of Meat, (Continuum, 1990): 38.
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or nbl as my root. Although I came up with words dependent on the roots of
both bll and yvl. Obviously, I am interchanging them here using the 2 letter
rather than the customary 3 letter root. Simply put: the word naval, depending
on its context can mean many things. The question is what connects them and
more important, how can they explain why women are often configured as
meat!! The sacrificed body, we have seen is necessary for a covenant, and if
the covenant is breached it is a nebalah. Also the one who performs the
sacrifice becomes impure (tameh) and has to cleanse himself, even though he
is engaged in a sacred task. And the body itself which starts out as a neutral
living being, ends up as a nebalah—a corpse, an unclean object. We are
talking about a liminal state, where we go from one boundary to another –
life/death, purity/impurity, covenant/sinning.
Anthony Phillips in his article on Nebalah, writes that "it is clear that
nebalah indicates action which is to be utterly deplored." He notes its
"connection with outrageous sexual offenses", but adds that "its use is
considerably wider." He says that the noun nebalah is of course related to the
267
verb nabal…" Even though the lexicons, Brown-Driver-Briggs (1907) and
Kohler- Baumgartner (1958), distinguish the naval (the fool or outcaste) with
the root word having the meaning, "jar," and "harp," both nevel, I think it is
legitimate to include them since both the musical instrument, the nevel, the
lyre, is created from the guts of an animal to make beautiful music, and the
skin/leather from the animal to makes the nevel yayin, the flask contains the
wine which makes man happy or sad depending on its use. Kohler-
Baumgartner (1958) Caspari (1928) argue that the meaning of nabal wither
and folly share the same semantic fields.
Robert Bennett writes that “[t]he meaning of the noun in the epic
sources is clearly that of a most serious abuse, such as the rape of Dinah (Gen
34:7). This is supported in the league traditions preserved in Josh 7:15
(Achan incident) and Judg 19:23; 20:6,10 (Gibeah offense)" and even
(relying on Noth (1930) and Von Rad (1961) suggests that the "term
'sacrilege' is quite appropriate, and the recurring phrase 'the sacrilege done
(in Israel)' may, in fact, be an old amphictyonic formula.” In a footnote he
points to the fact that "The noun nevala occurs in nine out of its thirteen
occurrences in the formula (asah nevala beyisrael) found in Gen 34:7; Deut
22:21; Josh 7:15; Judg 19:23, 24; 20:6, 10; 2 Sam 13:12; and Jer 29:23."
Bennett's brief

267
Anthony Phillips, "Nebalah: A Term for Serious Disorderly and Unruly
Conduct," Vetus Testamentum 25, Fasc. 2 (April, 1975): 237-242.
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 “overview of the uses of nabal, nebalah in the Old Testament literary
strata indicates that this group of words has a history dating back into
the tribal league period, where its most pervasive connotation is that
of a sacral infraction which threatens the unity and well-being of
the entire community. In its early use it has strong associations with
sexual abuses which undermined the family and tribal structures. This
meaning seems to be broadened in the transition to monarchy under
David. Indeed, the tradition associates him in a punning account on
Nabal as the symbol of inhospitality, itself an infraction of the social-
religious obligations of the society and age and specific harvest
festival."
He also writes that
"the literary evidence also indicates that David and the early traditions
of the monarchy came to use the adjective nabil as a descriptive term
for the perpetrators of serious social-sacral crimes, paralleling a similar
transition from earlier to later (so-called "writing prophets") prophecy,
which comes to be extended from an individual to a larger group or
268
the entire nation."
Lyn Bechtel connects Dinah and Tamar's rapes with Amnon who
becomes one of the nebalim of Israel. "Fools are those who are ignorant or
269
insensitive to societal ideals." She ties the idea of nebalah, which she calls
a foolish thing, with pollution tumah and writes that "Dinah has been tainted
with 'outside stuff'. Shechem is an uncircumcised, impure outsider. This
outside pollution….is considered 'a foolish thing' that is not done because it
270
violates the ideals and customs of the tribal group…."
Caroline Blyth writes that
"The use of the abstract noun ‫( נבלה‬nebalah) highlights the fact that the
brothers regarded Shechem’s sexual violation as a crime, which adversely
affected neither Dinah alone nor even themselves as individuals, but the
entire community to which they belonged. For, the term nebalah is never
used with reference to the wrongful behaviour of one individual against
another; (emphasis mine). rather, it connotes a dangerously disruptive act,
which struck at the heart of Israelite community stability, violated its socio-

268
Robert A. Bennett "Wisdom Motifs in Psalm 14 = 53: nābāl and 'ēṣāh, "
BASOR Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, No. 220, Memorial
Issue: Essays in Honor of George Ernest Wright (Dec., 1975): 15-21
269
Lyn Bechtel, "What if Dinah is Not Raped? (Genesis 34)" JSOT 62 (1994): 27.
270
Bechtel, 32.
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ethical codes and value systems, and was therefore capable of bringing chaos
271
and unruliness to the established bonds of social relationships.
She too points to the fact in a footnote that
[T]he overall semantic range of ‫ נבלה‬appears to convey more than just
simple-minded foolishness, … Rather, it conveys a very serious and
sinful breach of proper conduct, which is never treated lightly; such an
act can incur divine wrath and judgement (Isa. 9.16; Job 42.8), while
the perpetrator may often face capital punishment (Deut. 22.21;
Josh.7.15; Jdg. 20.8ff; Jer. 29.20-23). Within the biblical texts, ‫ נבלה‬is
used to denote illicit sexual behaviour (Deut. 22.21; Jdg. 19.23-24;
20.6, 10; Jer. 29.23; 2 Sam. 13.12), speaking falsely in YHWH’s name
(Isa. 9.16; 32.6; Jer. 29.23; Job 42.8), the unethical treatment of others
(1 Sam. 25.25; Isa. 32.6) and ungodly acts which disobey a divine
272
command (Josh. 7.15).
Blyth refers to Keefe's (p. 82) comments that
"within the worldview of biblical Israel, any behaviour, which was
evaluated as a nebalah was understood to be ‘inherently generative of
disorder, chaos, and the disintegration of shalom within a community’.
This semantic definition of the term nebalah is further emphasised by
the fact that on seven [Gen. 34.7; Deut. 22.21; Josh. 7.15; Jdg. 20.6,
10; 2 Sam. 13.12; Jer. 29.23.] out of its thirteen occurrences, including
Gen. 34.7, the event to which it refers is specifically said to have
occurred ‘in Israel’, as though this setting in which the offence
occurred was of especial significance, perhaps adding to its heinous
and objectionable nature. To commit such a deed ‘in Israel’ was to act
against Israel, because by doing so, the perpetrator was understood to
be bringing ‘evil’ into the midst of the people (e.g. Deut. 22.21; Jdg.
20.13), thereby threatening their social and ethical value systems,
which held together the order and right relations understood to be
essential for community survival.[129] Moreover, …the formula ‘to
commit a nebalah in Israel’ is used, in slightly varied forms, to
evaluate the rape of a woman, not only in Gen. 34.7, but also in Jdg.
20.6, 10 and 2 Sam. 13.12. In Jdg. 20.6, the Levite describes to the
assembled tribes of Israel both the threat against his life by the
Benjaminite mob and their gang rape of his concubine as a nebalah.

271
Caroline Blyth, Terrible Silence, Eternal Silence: A Consideration of Dinah’s
Voicelessness in the Text and Interpretive Traditions of Genesis 34 (Doctor of
Philosophy, The University of Edinburgh, 2008).
272
Blyth, footnote 125.
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 Blythe points out in the footnote that
“[i]n Jdg. 19.23-24, the term ‫( נבלה‬without the added formula ‘in
Israel’) is also twice utilised by the elderly host at Gibeah to describe
the threatened gang rape of his Levite guest. Again, this suggests that
a nebalah could be used to describe a serious infraction, which
seriously subverted the social boundaries and ethical codes governing
the sexual dynamics permitted within the community. …[b]y
threatening to rape the Levite, the Benjaminites were effectively
treating him as a submissive sexual object, rather than a sexual subject,
thereby essentially ‘feminising’ him and subverting gender role
definitions held as sacrosanct within the community (Stone, Sex,
273
Honour, and Power, 75-79; see Chapter 2, n.159).]”
According to Blythe,
"it would appear that the utilisation of nebalah to describe an act of
sexual violence strongly suggests that, within the biblical traditions,
rape was not perceived primarily as a crime that had a deleterious and
damaging effect upon the female victim. Rather, it was evaluated as an
event, which caused terrible and lasting effects upon her family or
community, subverting the principles of accepted social and sexual
relations, and threatening the very foundations of community stability
274
[p.139].
According to Marjorie Boyle, "The root ‫( נבל‬nbl) denoted the
phenomenon of death, for a human corpse before burial or for an animal that
was ritually unclean." The verb also denotes the withering of plants, or
wilting in persons (such as Moses). She writes that referring to the person
who commits deplorable acts with the epithet "fool", ‫ נבל‬is euphemistic, since
it is associated with serious sin. "The fool committed extremely disorderly
and unruly acts, that endangered or destroyed social relationships, whether
tribal, familial, marital, commercial, or religious." She brings as examples
Gen 34:7, 2 Sam 13, Judg 19,20 and Josh 7. She states that "Because of its
275
gravity the word was rare…" Alice Bach writes: that the "violated woman,
perhaps by this time a corpse, nebelah, surely a disgrace, a nabalah, has never

273
Blyth, footnote 132.
274
Blyth, starting from p. 110.
275
Marjorie O’Rourke Boyle, "The Law of the Heart: The Death of a Fool (1
Samuel 25)," Journal of Biblical Literature 120, 3 (Fall 2001): 401–427, here p.
415.
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 276
returned inside, to the place of safety…" In the footnote, she writes that
"the noun nebalah…is used in conjunction with all the biblical rape
narratives;" citing Judg 19.24; 20.6 and Gen. 34.7. She points to Keefe, 1993,
p. 82. Robert Murray discusses a possible common semantic origin for the
nbl words which are usually translated as fool and impious and those which
277
are translated as languish, wither and corpse. He also makes an interesting
connection between the nebalah in Joshua 7 and the nablut in Hosea 2 and
the place name Valley of Akor which appears in both texts as well. Claudia
Camp has written that "sexual misconduct both induces and represents social
disorder" and that in these narratives "the woman's transgressed upon sexual
278
body is a sign that represents disrupted boundaries. She fully develops the
nebalah connection between Joshua 7 and Genesis 34 and also notes the verb
Akar, which appears at Genesis 34:30 that is uttered by Jacob: “You have
brought trouble on me, making me odious ‫ ֲעכ ְַרתֶּ ם אֹ תי לְ הַ בְ אישֵׁ ני‬among the
inhabitants of the land. She points to the deceit in both narratives.
I decided to put together Murray's association of Hosea 2 and Joshua
7 with Camp's of Joshua 7 and Genesis 34 and created an additional dialogue.
Although they do not discuss the nevayla, it is clear that in all three texts
there will be punishment for acting like a naval. In Genesis 34, the
Shechemites who have committed the nevala beyisroel are going to be killed
and wiped out, in Joshua 7, Achan and his entire family and clan are going
to be burned AND stoned, and as Camp suggests in a footnote, this may
remind us of the virgin bride who is stoned. Camp is so right when she relates
a personal communication by David Gunn to her which is that the "shared
phrasing may say something about some commonly understood semantic
force of 'nebalah in Israel'. It may say considerably more, however, about the
279
extent to which these three narratives were read intertextually." In Hosea
2, Gomer, the unfaithful people of Israel will be punished by God (certainly
in the future) if not now. The triple use of akartem in all three texts is
interesting and I think that the expression ‫ ֲעכ ְַרתֶּ ם אֹ תי לְ הַ בְ אישֵׁ ני‬expresses it
well, the nevala committed is so heinous that there is a smell—like one of a
276
Alice Bach, Religion, Politics, Media in the Broadband Era, p. 131
277
Robert Murray, The Cosmic Covenant: Biblical Themes of Justice, Peace and
the Integrity of Creation. London, Sheed and Ward, 1992. p. 47
278
Claudia V. Camp, Wise, Strange and Holy: The Strange Woman and the.
Making of the Bible. JSOTSup 320. Gender, Culture, Theory 9 JSOT Supplement
Series 320. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 20r00. Starting with p. 302
279
Camp in footnote 26, is referring to Genesis 34, II Sam 13, and Judges 19-20.

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corpse rotting associated with the infraction and nothing is going to make it
better. It has been noted by Blyth that the word naval and nevala are not used
lightly. The only place it appears regularly is of course Leviticus, which
deals with corpses that make the priest impure. It is interesting that Camp in
a footnote writes that "Nebalah in Israel evokes, then, the semantic field of
strangeness" and refers back to Bechtel saying "Genesis 34 makes the not
unexpected liaison of strange sex with foreign people, while adding the
decontextualized cultic code word, 'defile'. Camp implies that the use of
tameh refers to priestly interests and ends the section by writing "The priests
once again leave their mark on the complex ideology of foreign and female.”
CONCLUSION
It would complicate issues too much if I would look at the priestly literature.
I think that except for the P texts, the choice of the word nevala is deliberate.
Based on my understanding of all of these texts, I would say that the use of
the word naval is that of someone who has crossed from state to another. The
virgin bride, in Deuteronomy 22:21 who has been involved in illicit sex will
be written off and stoned, because she violated a social norm and cannot be
redeemed. She committed a nevala in Israel! A naval is someone who should
be written off, who is so evil, so off the right path, that there is no turning
back. So when Tamar tells Amnon, don't be like the navals, she is telling him
that if he kicks her out there will be no turning back for him, he will be
crossed off from the living and what will wait for him out there is disgrace,
punishment and death. When the old man tells the b'nai belial don't do this
nevala, it has the same sense, that they will be crossing the line if they take
the man and do to him what they want—and when the reaction of the people
is that a nevala was done in Israel, its meaning is that a line has been crossed,
there is no going back and there will have to be retribution. So I feel that this
is the connection between the two major uses of the word, the nevala,
outrage, the naval, the doer of outrageous deeds and the neveyla, the corpse
which is impure and which has also crossed the border from life to death. So
how does this fit in with women as meat, as objects, as something to be cut
up, divided, and distributed as booty! Clearly the body of a woman is a sort
of boundary—one can treat it as belonging to someone with a soul and see it
as a totality, or one can break it up into its parts and with the male gaze focus
on the breasts or crotch or eyes or lips, legs, or whatever turns him on. Once
the wandering eye has crossed the border, there is no return and the living
woman turns into a dead one, a nevala. We can see how this works in both
the Jezebel and Concubine story. In both, the woman gets dehumanized and
the men sit down to eat while the men outside perform the nevala action on
the concubine and rape her and Jehu's henchmen chop up Jezebel turn her not
only into a nevala (dead meat) but to domen, something which will feed/
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fertilize the earth. The carcass (nivlat) of Jezebel shall be like dung on the
ground, in the field of Jezreel, so that none will be able to say: ‘This was
Jezebel.’” Jezebel, who more than anyone symbolized the woman who had
crossed the border into evil and of no return, who was the living embodiment
of navlut, turned into a nevela, a carcass and then was totally obliterated. The
irony is that this action then turns her into food for the plants etc.

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CHAPTER FIFTEEN: THE SURVIVOR AS WITNESS IN THE
BIBLE AND MIDRASH: FROM CREATION TO EXILE

When God is unhappy with his creations He exiles them or destroys their
world. But there is always someone left behind as a surviving witness,
starting with Cain. Noah survives to create a new world after the flood,
Abraham survives Nimrod's fire in the midrash, Lot's daughters survive the
destruction of Sodom in the cave and bring forth the next generation. Dinah,
the only survivor of Shechem has a baby Asenat, who, according to the
midrash, marries Joseph. Despite there being no surviving Egyptian
witnesses (Exodus 14:28), Pharaoh, according to the midrash, does survive
the Crossing of the Sea (Exodus Rabbah, The Mekhilta De Rabbi Yishmael
and Pirkei De Rabbi Eliezar and Otzar Hamidrashim, Midrash vaYosha).
Presumably the artists who depicted the biblical scenes in the Sarajevo and
Mainz Haggadot were influenced by some biblical texts and of course the
midrash.
The ultimate survivor who bears witness is Serach, daughter of Asher
who in midrashic sources (BT Sotah, Genesis Rabbah, Ecclesiastes Rabbah,
Pirkei deRabbi Eliezer, Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, Masekhta Vayehi
Beshalah, Petihtah) lives on from the time of Joseph's death, reincarnates
herself as the wise woman in 2 Sam 20, and is still around in rabbinic times
(Pesikta de-Rav Kahana), perhaps never dying, having entered the Garden of
Eden alive (Otzar Hamidrashim).
I have decided to combine two different characters from the Bible: one
a despotic ruler and the other, a daughter and granddaughter. Of the former,
Pharaoh it is said that "he knew not Joseph" and of the latter, Seraḥ, a life
overlapped with Jacob, Joseph and Moses. What the two characters have in
common is that the midrash gives them both eternal life, and that is why I
decided to look at both of them together, to see if the depiction of Seraḥ and
Pharaoh have something in common.
I have chosen to focus on Serach and Pharaoh because both were
alive at the same time as the exodus from Egypt (although Serach is older
than P). Both of them knew and interacted with Moses. Once Pharaoh let the
Israelites go, they had to find Joseph's bones and Serach showed them the
place in Nile. After Pharaoh chased Israel, his soldiers all drowned except for
him. What they both have in common is extreme longevity and the purpose
of their survival which is to bear witness.
I'll start with Pharaoh. The first midrash comes from an eleventh
century source Midrash VaYosha. In it are the details in which Pharaoh has
a change of heart and believes in God. Gabriel who is not really buying this,
tries to drown him. After re-appearing, like Jonah, he shows up as King of
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Nineveh, who also has a change of heart and does teshuva, repentance, and
then lives on at the entrance of Gehenna, serving as witness to God's presence
in the world. Thus, despite the clear evidence of the biblical text that there
are no surviving Egyptian witnesses (Exodus 14:28), Pharaoh, according to
many versions of the midrash, does survive the Crossing of the Sea.
Presumably the artists who depicted such biblical scenes in the Haggadot and
illustrated Bibles were influenced by these texts.
th
In an anonymous 18 century Persian depiction of Pharaoh and His
Army Drowning in the Red Sea, two figures stand out among the Egyptians
drowning in the sea. According to the Koran, the angel Gabriel was sent to
Pharaoh in order to deliver in writing his divinely decreed fate. In the center
is the angel with wings who holds out a written decree to Pharaoh. Pharaoh
knows that his time is up and he cries out to God, acknowledging the power
of God, "I have sinned, there is no God but Allah and Moses is his
messenger." On the left Moses and Aaron stand with the Israelites.
Commentators on the Koran 10:90-92 disagree over the outcome: Some say
that Pharaoh was saved because of his repentance; others claim that his
repentance, under duress, was not deemed acceptable and therefore he also
drowned.
It is not clear in the Mainz Haggadah (1726, Copied by Moses ben
Nathan Oppenheim Mainz, Manuscript on vellum) whether Pharaoh survives
or not. He is waving a flag. Another illustration featuring the Egyptians and
Pharaoh appears in the Sarajevo Haggadah (an illuminated manuscript from
Spain, c. 1350). On this page there are two pictures relating to the splitting
of the Red Sea. The one that interests us is that of the Children of Israel still
crossing the sea along several different paths, while the Egyptians have
already drowned… except for a crowned Pharaoh, standing upright in the
waters on the far left side. It appears that here, too, Pharaoh was saved.
According to Bezalel Narkiss, the rescued Pharaoh also appears in the
Second Nurnberg Haggadah and the Yahuda Haggadah. In both, the crowned
head of Pharaoh and his clasped hands are seen protruding above the waters,
upon which float body parts of humans and horses. Another source we have,
not from a haggadah this time, is from The Ashburnham Pentateuch also
known as the Tours Pentateuch which is a late 6th- or early 7th-century Latin
280
illuminated manuscript of the Pentateuch. Narkiss suggests that the
mounted soldier on a piece of dry land to the left can be identified as the

280
The miniatures were used as the source of a later cycle of wall-paintings at the
church of St Julian in Tours. The manuscript ended up being and sold to the 4th
Earl of Ashburnham in 1847. In 1888, it came back to France.
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 281
rescued pharaoh. Another representation appears in the Tripartite Mahzor
(c. 1320). It appears in an initial word panel to the piyyut Vayosha, read on
the seventh day of Passover. Here the Israelites cross on top while the
Egyptians drown on the bottom as they enter the water. The mounted Pharaoh
(to the left) is seen escaping on the other side. In this Mahzor, Pharaoh is
sitting on his horse, having passed thru the water safely. He lifts his hands
toward heavens to praise God.
Finally, we come back full circle to the angel Gabriel who in a late
th
16 century Turkish miniature is trying to stuff Pharaoh's mouth with mud
282
from the sea. Did he or did he not succeed in drowning Pharaoh?
According to Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer and Midrash VaYosha Pharaoh survived
his being brought down to the depths of the sea and tortured for fifty days by
283
Gabriel. Muslim commentators are still debating the issue!
Seraḥ
We now leave Pharaoh sitting at the gates of Hell, possibly still alive and
look at Seraḥ, daughter of Asher, the ultimate survivor to bear witness who
in midrashic sources lives on from the time of Joseph's death and reincarnates
herself as the wise woman in 2 Sam 20. The midrash and the visual art depicts
her from all stages of her life and for some she still lives on today. Unlike
Pharaoh about whom we know a lot from the Bible, there may be some of
you who have never noticed Seraḥ before, with good reason. She appears in
the genealogical lists of Genesis, Numbers and I Chronicles, spelled with a
Shin. In most of the midrash, she is spelled with a Samech, perhaps because
of the spelling of Seraḥ in Exodus 26. The traditions of Seraḥ’s extreme
longevity apparently have their basis in the fact that she is mentioned both in
the count of those who went to Egypt and in the list of those who entered
Israel. Her singular name may also have contributed to these traditions, since
281
Bezalel Narkiss, “Pharaoh is Dead and Living at the Gates of Hell,” Journal of
Jewish Art 10 (1984): 6-13.
282
In Muslim theology God's grace is extended to the infidel and despot Pharaoh
who embodies blasphemous pretensions to divinity. Muslim commentators on the
Qur'&n recount that the angel Gabriel was anxious to shut Pharaoh's mouth before
God's compassion could overtake him. Another tradition has the angel Gabriel
actually glut Pharaoh's mouth with mud from the sea floor to prevent him from
completing his confession, as in our miniature. 21 L. Ormsby, "The Faith of
Pharaoh: A Disputed Question in Islamic Theology" (unpublished paper).
((<<Thean gel Gabriel gluts Pharaoh's mouth at the Exodus from Egypt)>(detail)
(Dresden, Sachsische Landesbibliothek MS E 445, fol. 29v), Filnima, Istanbul (?),
late 16th century.
283
See Hebrew article at end of this section.
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the meaning of the expression (Ex. 26:12): “Seraḥ ha-odef” is “something
left over” (“the overlapping excess”).
Jacob Milgrom notes in his commentary on Numbers 26:46, that Seraḥ's
presence as one of the only females in the genealogical lists "remains a
mystery." The rabbis try to solve this mystery. According to them, if Seraḥ
was mentioned by name in the census list of those who made the Exodus, she
must have still been alive at that time. Because the sages have to explain why
Seraḥ appears in both the Genesis and Numbers list they give her a life and
in the process also explain some of the passages that are difficult to
understand. For example, to explain how Jacob believed the brothers that
Joseph was alive, the Midrash Hagadol fleshed out an existing persona,
namely Jacob's granddaughter, Seraḥ, who played the harp and had a good
voice. And for convincing Jacob that Joseph was still alive, he blessed her
with eternal life.
There is still some debate as to whether she lives forever, but before
we make any decisions about this, it is interesting that she resurfaces again
at the Nile, where Seraḥ has secret knowledge handed down to her from
generations, going back to Abraham and is able to tell Moses exactly where
Joseph is buried, so that he too can resurface and the people of Israel can now
go on their Journey out of Egypt. Did she meet Pharaoh at the Reed Sea?
Surely she was present there? We will never know! But we do not hear about
her for many years until she shows up as the wise woman of Abel Beit
Maacha and prevents a war by cutting off and throwing Sheba Ben Bichri's
head down over the wall, thus saving the town from Joab's wrath as seen in
th
the woodcut by the 17 century German engraver Johann Christoph Weigel
depicting the events of 2 Samuel 20. In the top of the picture, the woman is
throwing Sheba's head down to Joab. In the foreground lies Amasa, whose
death is described in the first half of the chapter.
The modern artists who depict Seraḥ follow her throughout these
stages of her life—including one which depicts her Mask. This mask was
made for a “Pageant of Biblical Mothers” workshop by Ketzirah. She felt
that
"Her mask took on greater meaning, after some correspondence on her
blog where the following interpretation of her mask was tweaked out:
Serach bat Asher used "indirect means" much like the court jester to
achieve her aims. The so-called fool, who is usually an outsider, is the
284
one who can speak truth."

284
http://www.peelapom.com/spirituality/the_fool/
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 There are pictures which give us a rough chronology of Seraḥ's life,
both biblical and midrashic. One depicts Seraḥ's life as a musician. The first
one is from a children's book; a second is a poster with a violin advertising
an Orthodox rabbi's podcasts about Seraḥ and Salvation; the third, an
advertisement for a rosh hodesh group celebrating tu b'shvat with Seraḥ's key
(to heaven???). And why a key? For she is trusted (just like her Uncle Joseph
who held all the keys to Potiphar's house (Gen 39: 4). For Potiphar put him
in charge (Va-yafkidehu al beito). We will see that the verb pakad gets
transmitted throughout the Serach traditions.
Elizabeth Young, in a fascinating article associates pakod pakadti
with conception and birth and points to God taking note of (pakad) of Sarah
(Gen 21:1). Her proof text is from Luke 2: 36-37. Young hints that the widow
285
Anna who was between 84 –105 years is a Serach like figure. She writes
that the birth of Isaac was the starting date for the counting of the days in
captivity in Egypt, to the start of the exodus. Using the midrashim about
pakod yifkod (see Pirkei deRabbi Eliezer 48). Young writes that
"Seraḥ bat Asher (daughter of Asher) is the keeper and interpreter of
the secret code pakod pakadti. In the Lukan infancy narrative Anna
(another daughter of Asher) announces the secret of redemption to
another generation who seeks redemption. Anna, herself described
as an old woman like the ancient Seraḥ, now becomes the voice
286
that interprets pakod pakadti for those that await redemption."
Far out as all this might seem, let us not forget that Anna (or Hannah in
hebrew) is the haftarah (the additional reading) for the Sarah/Hagar story on
Rosh Hashanah and it is possible that the writer had this association in mind
with this Hannah who turned to God: Penu-el!
Much of the contemporary literature on Seraḥ focuses either on her
very old age or her immortality. The tradition of Seraḥ’s immortality is
reflected in a narrative set in the time of the Rabbis, in which Seraḥ appears
in order to resolve a disagreement in the academy (bet-midrash). In this
midrashic vignette, Seraḥ is an extremely old woman who can testify, in the
first person, to the miracle of the parting of the Reed Sea. In her wisdom, she
is capable of comprehending, and participating in, the aggadic discussion
conducted in the bet-midrash. Her statement is preferred to that of R.
Johanan, since she has first-hand knowledge of the facts.

285
J. K. Elliott, "Anna's Age (Luke 2:36-37)”, Novum Testamentum, Vol. 30, Fasc.
2 (Apr., 1988): 100-102
286
www.etz-hayim.com Elizabeth Young, © 2008 Etz Hayim—“Tree of Life”
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 The late Janet Shafner incorporates both her own old age in this self-
portrait and Seraḥ's immortality in "May you Live Forever: The Assumption
of Seraḥ". According to a personal communication with her husband
The painting of Serach bat Asher was done a short time before Janet
was diagnosed with lung cancer that had spread, and for which they
had no cure. She seems to have had a premonition of what was coming.
I do not remember her saying anything about the large figure being a
self-portrait. But for most of her figure paintings she had no model and
therefore used herself. The figure in the upper right would be Serach
being taken alive to heaven, like Elijah. The wings on the figure are
copied from the Leonardo Da Vinci wings that he drew. She viewed
the series of drawings that she did over a period of 7 years as a
commentary on the aging human body, not bad or good, but in the
nature of living long. She died at the age of 79. My take on the painting
is that the large figure is facing death, while the figure flying away is
more youthful and full of energy, and facing the new life.
Did Seraḥ die or is she still alive? Many sources report that she
entered Paradise alive, and thus transcended mortality (see Otzar
Hamidrashim 35 on p. 4). In the Zohar on Shelach Lecha, she is till teaching
Torah to women. In medieval Jewish mysticism, Seraḥ has a place of honor
in Gan Eden.
The Seraḥ traditions were transmitted mostly to people of Sephardic
descent, in particular in Persia. There are two places associated with Seraḥ:
one in Isfahan and the other in Tunisia. The Persian Jews of the city of Isfahan
believed that Seraḥ bat Asher actually lived among them until she died in a
great fire in their synagogue in the twelfth century C.E. This synagogue and
its successors were subsequently known as the Synagogue of Seraḥ Bat
Asher. In the Jewish cemetery of Isfahan, there was to be found, at least until
the end of the nineteenth century, a tombstone marking the final resting place
of "Seraḥ the daughter of Asher the son of our Patriarch Jacob" who died in
the year equivalent to 1133 C.E. The site you see is a Jewish cemetery
referred to as “Seraḥ Bat Asher” where it is believed Seraḥ is buried. Jews
have often visited the site through the centuries and prayed for redemption
and help.
But is she buried in Persia? Or is she like Elijah, Enoch and others
wandering around the world, teaching women to praise God? There are
legends which go both ways: In one, she lived in the ninth century in the city
of Isfahan. One day, while she was alone inside the synagogue, a fiery chariot
descended from heaven and surrounded the synagogue with flames. Then the
chariot ascended and the flames disappeared. There were many witnesses of
this event. Afterward they rushed to the synagogue and saw with amazement
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that there was no damage to the synagogue at all. But when they went inside,
Seraḥ was gone. For she had ascended into Paradise alive and was spared the
taste of death. And that synagogue, which became known as the synagogue
287
of Seraḥ bat Asher, is still standing to this day. It is clear that pilgrimages
were made to the site, which is today under Moslem control.
She is around in modern times as well in art, music, and drama. She
is a liminal figure, one betwixt and between life and death and thus there are
those who invoke her name during the Havdalah service and against the evil
eye, or for a safe journey --‫ ספר רפואה וחיים‬.
Besides the pilgrimage site in Isfahan, associated with mass prayer
and wailings, Seraḥ appeared in songs passed on by mother to daughter on
the island of Djerba near Tunisia. These women remembered their
grandmothers singing the song to them. Its content is related to Seraḥ's
entering heaven alive because of Jacob's promise to her. In the song, Seraḥ is
described as revealing the secret to Jacob of Joseph's still being alive via the
vehicle of music and song. These descriptions somehow connect the miracles
associated with "Algriba".
There is a place in Israel where there is a site, or rather a marker,
dedicated to Seraḥ. Women have draped the trees surrounding this site with
colorful cloths, a universal custom associated with holy sites, such as trees
next to wells, springs, and water. Those who drape these trees hope for
healing and cures for all sorts of ailments. They become wishing trees. In our
288
site, there have been spottings of women praying for husbands! On the
marker is written: hinting to Seraḥ's father, ASHER:

CONCLUSION
I have chosen to focus on Seraḥ and Pharaoh because both were alive
at the same time as the exodus from Egypt (although Seraḥ is much older
287
Taken verbatim from Gabriel’s Palace: Jewish Mystical Tales. Selected and
retold by Howard Schwartz (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993): 47-50.
288
personal communication, Michael Graetz,
http://onegshabbat.blogspot.co.il/2013/06/blog-post_9.html]

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than Pharaoh). Pharaoh knew not Joseph; Seraḥ knew everyone. Both
interacted with Moses. Once Pharaoh let the Israelites go, they had to find
Joseph's bones and Seraḥ showed Moses the place in the Nile where Joseph's
casket had been placed. After Pharaoh chased after Israel, his soldiers all
drowned except for him. Seraḥ lived on to be in Heaven; while Pharaoh who
had a change of heart, lived on to be in the Gates of Hell. If you compare him
with Seraḥ from a gender perspective, one could say that the rabbis have
feminized Pharaoh from the unyielding king who would not change his mind
(ask for directions) to one who beseeched God for mercy and another chance.
The rabbis had Seraḥ acting in a way associated with women, indirection. To
get her goals she used womanly stratagems (music, secrets, wisdom).
What both Seraḥ and Pharaoh have in common is extreme longevity
and the purpose of their survival, which is to bear witness. Besides place,
time, and bosies of water, why do these two survive? What purpose do the
story tellers have in keeping them alive? What is the purpose of the witness?
Does their survival change them—do they gain insight?
Pharaoh does—he is a baal teshuva, a born again witness. I believe
that the rabbis had a subversive message in retelling his story: God was
wrong to harden his heart. Everyone can change. Even evil people, so they
had him believe in God, and like Jonah who also sunk to the depths, changed
his heart and went on preaching to the people (once he was no longer the
King of Nineveh) at the gates of Hell.
What about Seraḥ? She shows up in many guises. It is not clear
whether she undergoes transformation. But it is clear that for the sages and
those who continued to worship her, she serves as a witness, perhaps
exemplifying the people of Israel who in Zechariah 3:2 appear as "a brand
plucked from the fire" and in Jeremiah 31:2 as "the people escaped from the
sword". Seraḥ, an example of a constant survivor, is a figure that holds out
hope to the dispersed Jewish nation. Even though God has exiled the people
of Israel, God will ultimately redeem these survivors.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: "AND HE SAW THAT THERE WAS NO MAN
ABOUT" (Exodus 2:12)

In chapter 2 in the book of Exodus, a difficult text depicts Moses' first

independent action as a grown up: "He turned this way and that, and,
seeing no one about (eyn ish), he struck down the Egyptian and hid him
in the sand" (Ex. 2:12).
:‫(יב) וַיִּ פֶּ ן כֹ ה וכֹ ה ַוי ְַרא כִּ י אֵּ ין ִּאיש ַויְַך אֶּ ת הַ ִּמ ְצ ִּרי וַיִּ ְט ְמנֵּהּו בַ חֹול‬
The Hebrew ‫ אין איש‬is problematic. ‫ איש‬is usually understood to mean a
"person", but it literally means "man". According to Judy Klitsner,
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 "The term 'ish' serves as a leitwort, a central, recurring term that
provides the key to understanding the passage….This word recurs a
further eight times in this one chapter, with constantly varying
referents. The passage ends with Moshe sitting with an 'ish,' in this
case his father-in-law to be, Yitro, thus providing a ring composition
to the entire section. Moshe's father makes only one appearance in the
chapter's introduction and then plays no further role….His mother, on
the other hand,… manages to raise her own son….Moshe had the
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opportunity to learn a great deal from the….women in his life."
Klitsner makes the point that because of the absence of a father figure,
Moses, goes out in search of a role model, "an 'ish,' which might be
viewed as the Hebrew equivalent of the Yiddish term 'mensch.' In order
to grow successfully into a man himself, Moshe looks at his world for
direction." She cites Rabbi Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin on the verse "he
saw that there was no man" who writes:
He searched for idea as to how to complain about the Egyptian who
had gratuitously stricken the Hebrew, "but he saw that there was no
man before whom to report this inequity, as all around him were
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traitors and haters of the Israelites. [haEmek Davar]
If no one saw Moses, how did the Hebrews and Pharaoh learn of the
matter? Then there is the issue of morality. Moses is supposed to be a role
model, is that how God's chosen is supposed to resolve problems, by killing
another human being? Klitsner suggests that he had no choice. In comparing
him to Abraham, she writes that Moses "at a critical moral juncture in his
life", with "his own humanity…called into question…found himself taking
the life of one to preserve the life of another. Here, as with Abraham before
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him, the onerous act of slaying is forced upon Moshe." [italics mine]
Is this a typical male solution? I.e., going to war, instead of problem
solving and compromise? Could Moses have sat the Egyptian down, spoken
to him and said, "You know, what you are doing isn't right. Can’t you find a
better way to have an insubordinate slave do his work?" Caroline Peyser
suggests that "It is possible that Moshe's sense of compassion…was learned

289
Judy Klitsner, "From the Earth's Hollow Space to the Stars," Torah of the
Mothers, edited by Ora Wiskind Elper and Susan Handelman (Jerusalem: Urim
Publications, 2000): 279.
290
Klitsner, p. 280
291
Klitsner, p. 282
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 292
from his adoptive mother." However, he seems to have forgotten the
lessons of the mothers when he went out. Had this not been the case, history
might have changed for the better. We will see a midrash that makes this
point exactly and even another midrash which suggests that there is a
women's way to avert war and with this I suggest that had Moses followed
an alternative course of action, perhaps he would have deserved to go into
the Promised Land, instead of being banished from it. In this paper, I am
going to show that Moses, as a man, who left the company of nurturing
women, went out ‫ויצא‬, just as Dinah in Genesis 34 went out ‫ותצא‬, leaving a
nurturing family for adventure and both found trouble outside.
INTERNAL CRITICISM
I suggest that there is criticism implicit in the text. The act of killing is not
condoned by the writer of the text. The first criticism comes from in
describing Moses as one who acts furtively: "he turned this way and that and,
seeing no one about, he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand."
Clearly, the author implies that Moses himself does not think he is doing the
right thing. The second criticism comes from one of the two Hebrews who
were fighting the next day: "Who made you chief and ruler over us? Do you
mean to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?" Moses reaction was fear. The
news was out. Did he realize he had done something wrong, or was it fear of
being caught. The text implies the latter. Third, the law of the land makes it
clear that Moses did the wrong thing: "When Pharaoh learned of the matter,
he sought to kill Moses." So Moses runs away. There is no soul-searching,
no apology for his action. He seems to have gotten away scot-free and,
moreover, God never directly rebukes him for this action. But there is a fourth
criticism in the text and that will be the point of this paper: Moses leaves the
nurturing environment of women, he goes out to the world of man; there are
no women in this world, only men, they are either slaves or taskmasters and
what does he see in this world of men, a man, an Egyptian, beating another
man, an Israelite, a man who is a taskmaster, beating another man who is a
slave. There are no women to mediate—and Moses, having left the world of
women, the Egyptian Harem, so to speak, does not have a woman’s voice to
guide him, in fact, he has chosen to leave these voices behind as part of his
desire to grow up and be a man. So he acts like a man, and chooses violence
over mediation. He only comes to himself when, the next day, he goes out a

292
Caroline Peyser, "The Book of Exodus: The Search for Identity," Torah of the
Mothers, edited by Ora Wiskind Elper and Susan Handelman (Jerusalem: Urim
Publications, 2000): 389.

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second time, and is reminded by the two men, this time Israelites, fighting
among themselves, that he has chosen the wrong action.
:‫(יג) ַוּיֵצֵ א בַּ ּיוֹם הַ שֵ ני וְ הנֵה ְשׁנֵי אֲנ ִּשים עבְ רים נצים ַוּי ֹאמֶ ר ל ָָרשָׁ ע לָמָ ה תַ כֶה ֵרעֶך‬
‫(יד) ַוּי ֹאמֶ ר מי שָ ְמך לְ ִּאיש שַ ר וְ שֹ פֵּ ט ָעלֵינוּ הַ לְ הָ ְרגֵני אַ תָּ ה אֹ מֵ ר ַכאֲשֶׁ ר הָ ַרגְ תָּ אֶ ת הַ מצְ רי וַּי ָירא‬
:‫מֹ שֶׁ ה ַוּי ֹאמַ ר אָ כֵן נוֹדַ ע הַ דָ בָ ר‬
‫(טו) וַּי ְשׁמַ ע פּ ְַרעֹ ה אֶ ת הַ דָ בָ ר הַ ּזֶה וַיְבַ קֵ שׁ ַלהֲרֹ ג אֶ ת מֹ שֶׁ ה וַּיבְ ַרח מֹשֶׁ ה מפְּ נֵי פ ְַרעֹ ה ַוּיֵשֶׁ ב בְּ אֶ ֶרץ‬
:‫מדְ יָן ַוּיֵשֶׁ ב עַל הַ בְּ אֵ ר‬
He flees to the sanctuary of Midian, back to the protection of women,
the seven daughters of the Midianite Priest, Reuel (or as he is referred to in
chapter 3, Yitro). There he will marry Ztiporah, who will continue to protect
him, until he sends her back home, after the strange bloody episode of the
bridegroom of blood in chapter 4.
VALORIZATION OF MOSES’S ACT
Now we come to some sources which valorize Moses' for his first
independent act: In a recent commentary, Jacob Beasley writes about Moses
as a man of justice, citing the commentary of Moses Sofer, the famed leader
of Hungarian Jewry at the beginning of the 19th century:
Even at first glance, Moshe is a man who cannot tolerate injustice. On
the first day he goes out to his brethren, he witnesses an Egyptian
committing an evil deed and kills him. Although the Egyptians ruled
over the Jews, Moshe, who possessed a proud love of truth, could not
stand the sight of oppression. On the second day as well, he proved
himself in the realm of injustice even when his own brethren were
involved. Finally, he acted even to stop local Midianite shepherds from
mistreating Yitro's daughters. Although Moshe at the time was a
wandering stranger fleeing for his life, he still rose to save them. He
asked for no recompense, going on his way until he was summoned to
eat with Yitro's family. Moshe loved truth and uprightness above all
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else.
The modern bible critic, Joshua Berman weighed in on the merits of
violence. He asks, must violence always be negative? Berman proposes
that the violence God commands his people to carry out in Deuteronomy
plays a positive role in constructing group identity, instilling loyalty to the
294
nation and to God." Another example of this is Nathaniel Helfgot, who
teaches at Drisha (a modern Orthodox college) who writes:

293
Commentary of the Chatam Sofer. Yaakov Beasley, "Moshe – A Man of Justice
or A Family Man,"http://vbm-torah.org/archive/intparsha69/13-69shemot.htm
294
In an opening essay to an edited volume Encountering Violence in the Bible. In
“Why Must Israel Be Warriors? The Constructive Role of Warfare in
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 "This passage highlights the sensitivity of Moses to the plight of his
brethren and his willingness to personally step into the fray and take
action. Moreover, on the literary level it foreshadows the fact that through
his efforts, the Egyptians will be "smitten" (the phrases makkeh and va-
yakh clearly echo the subsequent chapters in which the Egyptians
experience the makkot) and the Jewish people as a whole will be saved
295
from their oppressors."
To back up this statement, Helfot, cites the following midrash from
Exodus Rabbah:
Once an Egyptian taskmaster went to the house of one of the Israelite
guards (guards who were the overseers of the slaves themselves) and
he was attracted to the wife of the Israelite who was beautiful, without
blemish...Later the Egyptian returned and came upon this woman...
Once the taskmaster realized that the Israelite man knew what had
occurred, he put the Israelite back into slave labor and began to beat
him till the point of death, and Moses gazed upon him; and through the
holy spirit he saw what the taskmaster had done in the house and what
he was about to do to the Israelite in the field. Moses said: "This person
is certainly liable for the death penalty as it states 'And one who slays
another man shall die' (Lev. 24:21)." Moreover, he came upon the wife
of Datan (the Israelite) and for this he is liable for death as it states:
"The adulterer and adulteress shall surely die," and this is what it
states: "and he looked to and fro;" he saw what the Egyptian had done
to him in the house and what he did to him in the field. "And he saw
that there was no man" - for he (the Egyptian) was liable for death...
the Rabbis say he saw that there were no righteous offspring that
would emerge from this man till the end of all time. Once Moses saw
this he turned to the angels and asked: "Is this person liable for death?"
They responded to him: "Yes". This is the intent of what is written:
"and he saw that there was no man;" there was no one (in the
heavenly court) who would find any merit on his behalf (no one
could offer any defense for him).
"And he smote the Egyptian;" With what did he kill him? Rav Evyatar
says he struck him with a fist... the Rabbis say he pronounced the name
of God upon him and killed him as it says: "Do you intend to kill me

Deuteronomy,” Markus Zehnder and Hallvard Hagelia, eds., Sheffield: Sheffield

Phoenix, 2013. This is from the review by Paul Middleton RBL ©2015.
295
Ten Da'at, A Journal of Jewish Education, Vol. XI, Sivan, 5758 - Spring
1998 http://www.daat.ac.il/daat/english/ten-daat/helfgot-1.htm].
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 (halehargeni atah omer) as you slew the Egyptian?" (Ex. 2:14)
(Shemot Rabbah 1:28-9)
Rashi uses this midrash to justify the act by saying that Moses did not
foresee that any of the Egyptians descendants would convert to Judaism, so
296
he had a right to kill him (Rashi on verse 12).

‫א׳) רש"י שמות פרק ב‬

.‫ ולפי פשוטו כמשמעו‬.‫ ראה מה עשה לו בבית ומה עשה לו בשדה‬- ‫(יב) ויפן כה וכה‬
:‫ עתיד לצאת ממנו שיתגייר‬- ‫וירא כי אין איש‬
Thus the medieval sources continue to praise Moses. Maimonides explains
the significance of Moshe's actions as follows:
Prophecy begins when a man is divinely guided in the performance of
a major good deed, such as delivering a large group of people from
attack, saving a highly important person, or influencing many people
towards righteousness. When an individual is inspired in this way and
finds within himself the impetus to act, we say that he has been
"cloaked in" or "invested with" the Divine Spirit – ru'ach ha-kodesh.
Be aware that such inspiration never departed from Moshe once he
reached adulthood. Through it, he was aroused to kill the Egyptian and
to deter the wrongdoing in the quarrel of the two Jews. So strong was
it in him that even after he fled to Midian, frightened stranger though
he was, he could not bear the sight of injustice, neither could he desist
from removing it, as it is written, "Moshe rose to their aid (2:17)."
(Guide to the Perplexed II:45)
I find that according to this view Moses is among those who use God's name
to justify taking another man's life.
It is interesting that Yeshayahu Leibowitz notes that Moses’ “soul
was that of a son of the daughter of the king”. Despite this sensitivity that he

296
Rashi is referring to this ingenious midrash which uses the prooftext of AND
HE SAW AN EGYPTIAN SMITING A HEBREW. No doubt the midrash is
influenced by the use of "‫ " ַוּי ְַרא‬three times! ‫ַוי ְַרא בְּ סבְ ֹלתָ ם ַוי ְַרא אישׁ מצְ רי מַ כֶה אישׁ עבְ רי‬
:‫ (יב) וַּיפֶן כֹ ה וָכֹ ה ַוי ְַרא כי אֵ ין אישׁ ַוּיְַך אֶ ת הַ מצְ רי וַּי ְט ְמנֵהוּ בַּ חוֹל‬:‫…מֵ אֶ חָ יו‬
But to me, what is most fascinating, that in all three instances of " ‫ " ַוּי ְַרא‬Moses does
not look up! I have written elsewhere about the use of vaya'ar vehineh —a
consruction that is accompanied by a looking upward for god's help and getting
ultimate salvation (cf. the ram from the akedah vayaar vehineh ayil or david who
looks up etc.); here, it is vayaar ki—and it is a causative construction which leads
him to the act.

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has, which leads him to protect the 7 daughters of Yitro, Leibowitz depicts
Moses’ action as sensitivity to the suffering of his people and justifies his act:
“[H]e decided that the proper course of action is to intervene, to attack
the attacker and to kill him. These events are testimony to his
sensitivity to the suffering of people and to the quality of his
leadership; from here we learn that he is qualified to be the faithful
shepherd of his people.” "Come and note Moses' humility; even
though he was fleeing like a commoner, and he saw the daughters of
Yitro in distress, and he was not too proud to stand up and draw for
them, but his soul was that of a son of the daughter of the king".
This is to say that the awareness of his coming from the palace of the
great Pharaoh did not prevent Moses our Teacher from standing by
those unfortunate women who were robbed by the shepherds of Midian
and acting on their behalf in their distress. From his first steps in
approaching his brothers, upon seeing an Egyptian beating a Hebrew,
he decided that the proper course of action is to intervene, to attack the
attacker and to kill him. These events are testimony to his sensitivity
to the suffering of people and to the quality of his leadership; from
here we learn that he is qualified to be the faithful shepherd of his
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people.

To end this section, I would like to point out that two very popular
commentaries praise Moses’s action. The first is the Orthodox Hertz
Commentary and the second is that of the Conservative Etz Hayim
298
Commentary. Hertz on verse 12 “he smote” writes:
Moses resembles ‘the great patriots of the past and the present, who
have taken the sword to deliver their people from the hands of tyrants.
His act may be condemned as hasty. In its immediate results it was
fruitless, as is every intemperate attempt to right a wrong by violence.
However, it allied Moses definitely with his kinsmen’ (Kent).
On verse 14 “surely the thing is known,” he writes:
The first action of Moses shows him swept away by fierce indignation
against the oppressor; the second, anxious to restore harmony among
the oppressed. In both these acts, Moses is seen burning with patriotic

297
(Y. Leibowitz: Sheva Shanim shel Sihot al Parshiyot haShavua, pp. 195-196
Y. Leibowitz: Seven Years of Discussions on the Weekly Parasha, pp. 195-196
298
J. H. Hertz, The Pentateuch and Haftorahs, London: Soncino Press, 1938, 2nd
Edition, 1969): 211.
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 ardour. His nature, however, requires to be freed from impetuous
passion. In the desert whither he is now fleeing, his spirit will be
purified and deepened, and he will return as the destined Liberator of
his brethren.
299
Etz Hayim writes on “The Character of Moses (vv. 11-15):
The Bible is concerned with Moses' character and commitments,
which are illustrated by three incidents that display his moral passion
and his inability to tolerate injustice: 2:11-12, 13, and 16-17. These
qualities mark him as being worthy to lead the struggle for the
300
liberation of the Israelites.”
On verse 11, “when Moses had grown up,” the Commentary reads:
An ancient rabbi taught: The phrase "he grew up" occurs twice (vv.
10-11), once referring to physical maturity, the second time to a sense
of responsibility, going out to join his kinsmen and take responsibility
for righting the wrongs of society. It is not uncommon for a leader of
an oppressed people to come from a privileged background: One
thinks of Theodore Herzl, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King
Jr. Such a person may be psychologically freer to act, and will be taken
more seriously both by his followers and by his opponents.
‘Witnessing an injustice and degradation of another, Moses feels the
blow dealt to the other as though it were directed against himself.
Breaking through the selflessness of his own ego, he discovers his
neighbor. It is this discovery that, in the last resort, brings about the
Exodus. The estrangement between men has disappeared. Before, all
men were strangers, bearing not even the slightest resemblance to
himself. Now, all men are neighbors. (Andre Neher).
Finally, on verse 14, “Moses was frightened” the commentary reads:
“Suffering and persecution can bring forth nobility of spirit in some
victims, and meanness of spirit in others. Moses shows his maturity as
a leader by devoting his efforts to helping his people even though they
are less than perfect.
The commentaries which valorize Moses and the midrashim which justify
the killing of the Egyptian presents the modern post holocaust reader with a
moral dilemma. It is a similar dilemma to that which confronts us on Purim,
when we say "remember Amalek" and destroy him totally. Is it possible to
write off the future generation in advance, saying that because of genetic

299
Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary (New York: The Rabbinical Assembly,
2001): 323-324.
300
p. 323
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reasons we should kill the father to insure that the future tainted progeny is
not born?
THE MIDRASHIC CRITIQUE OF MOSES' ACT
Earlier I looked at the internal critique of the Bible. I now move on to the
midrashic critique of Moses' act. This problematic description of Moses as
murderer is reflected in the following midrash. Although most of the
midrashim valorize Moses, there are several midrashim in which God (via
the midrash) rebukes Moses: In Midrash Petirat Moshe, it says:
When toward the end of his life Moses tried to stave off death, God
said to him: 'Did I tell you to slay the Egyptian?' Moses answered: 'You
slew all the first-born in Egypt.' Then God silenced him by saying:
'Can you liken yourself to Me? I cause death, but I also revive the
301
dead.'
Clearly it is this murderous act according to the sages that kept Moses from
entering the promised land.
363 ‫אוצר המדרשים (אייזנשטיין) משה עמוד‬
‫ ואני‬,‫א"ל הקב"ה כלום אמרתי לך שתהרוג את המצרי? א"ל ואתה הרגת כל בכורי מצרים‬
?‫אמות בשביל מצרי אחד? א"ל הקב"ה ואתה דומה אלי ממית ומחיה‬
The Midrash comments that this is acceptable for the Almighty but not for a
human being. In a passage with echoes of the Moses story, Isaiah says, “The
Lord looked, and it was evil in His eyes that there was no justice. He saw
there was no man and was astonished that no-one intervened, so His own
arm brought salvation” (Isa. 59:15-16).
‫ישעיהו פרק נט‬
:‫( יד) וְ הֻסַ ג אָ חוֹר מ ְשׁפָּט וּצְ דָ קָ ה מֵ ָרחוֹק תַּ ֲע ֹמד כי כ ְָשׁלָה בָ ְרחוֹב אֱמֶ ת וּנְ כֹ חָ ה ל ֹא תוּכַל לָבוֹא‬
:‫(טו) ו ְַתּהי הָ ֱאמֶ ת נֶעְ דֶ ֶרת וְ סָ ר מֵ ָרע מ ְשׁתּוֹלֵל ַוי ְַרא יְ קֹ וק ַוי ֵַּרע ְבעֵּ יניו כִּ י אֵּ ין ִּמ ְשּפט‬
‫(טז) ַוי ְַרא כִּ י אֵּ ין ִּאיש וַיִּ ְשתֹומֵּ ם כִּ י אֵּ ין מַ פְ גִּ יעַ וַתֹושַ ע לֹו ְז ֹרעֹו וְ ִּצ ְדקתֹו ִּהיא ְסמכ ְתהּו‬
No one can understand why Moses had to kill the Egyptian and furthermore
where did he learn how to kill. Was it a survival instinct? Does the act of his
being hidden in the basket (va-tizpenehu) parallel his hiding (va-yitmenehu)
the Egyptian in the sand? Did he not realize that he had sinned until the two
fighting Hebrews pointed it out to him? Was Moses's true nature violent? So
far we have seen that in general tradition gives Moses a pass and sees him as
one who displays moral passion and is unable to tolerate injustice. It is
interesting that Ibn Ezra says that if he had grown up normally around men

301
“Petirat Mosheh Rabbenu,” Bet ha-Midrash, Vol. I A. Jellinek, editor (Jerusalem:
Bamberger and Wahrmann, 1938): 119.

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and boys his age, perhaps he would have seen a different way of solving the
problem.
‫א׳) אבן עזרא שמות (הפירוש הארוך) פרק ב פסוק ג‬
‫אולי סבב השם זה שיגדל משה בבית המלכות להיות נפשו על מדרגה העליונה בדרך הלימוד‬
‫ שהרג המצרי בעבור‬,‫ הלא תראה‬.‫ ולא תהיה שפלה ורגילה להיות בבית עבדים‬,‫והרגילות‬
‫ בעבור שהיו עושים חמס להשקות צאנן‬,‫ והושיע בנות מדין מהרועים‬.‫שהוא עשה חמס‬
‫ לא היו יראים‬,‫ כי אלו היה גדל בין אחיו ויכירוהו מנעוריו‬,‫ ועוד דבר אחר‬.‫מהמים שדלו‬
.‫ כי יחשבוהו כאחד מהם‬,‫ממנו‬
ABSENCE OF WOMEN
My paper argues that his action points to the fact that this is the one time in
his life that he does not have the moral compass of women and that a close
analysis of Exodus 1-2 shows a preponderance of supporting female presence
and activity and that this presence is strikingly absent when Moses "goes
out”. I argue that the phrase eyn ish means literally there was no MAN to
point out there were other ways to deal with injustice; ways that did not
involve murdering the perpetrator. He had left the company of women and
entered man’s world and in this crucial liminal time of his life, when he “went
out,” in his formative years that he did not have women's council, nurture, or
support and without women’s voices, he makes the wrong choice, that of
violence.
I think this is very clear if you see the context of women surrounding
him, except for these moments. But before moving on let us look at some of
the art depicting Moses’ violent act.
ARTISTIC INTERLUDE
302
In Arthur Szyk's vibrantly colored illustration in his Haggadah he focuses
on just Moses and the Egyptian taskmaster. The only hint to the beaten
Israelite is the whip still clenched in the Egyptian's hand. Moshe is centrally
placed, with his club raised against the taskmaster who, in turn, cowers on
the floor. The two figures are dressed similarly, and had it not been for the
headdress of each, one might not have been able to distinguish friend from
foe. In the background, two heads peep from behind a building and watch
303
Moshe's actions. The beaten Hebrew does not appear at all in Szyk's image;
according to his rendering, Moshe is not trying to stop the beating but rather
reacting after the fact. Szyk paints two people whose head coverings would
seem to classify them as Hebrews. Though one might have thought that it
would be an Egyptian, the midrash of exodus rabbah identifies the
302
Arthur Szyk (1894 –1951) was a Polish-Jewish artist who worked primarily as a
book illustrator. Arthur Szyk's Haggadah (1932-1938).
303
http://alhatorah.org/Moshe_Killing_the_Egyptian_in_Art
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talebearers as fellow Hebrews, Datan and Aviram, which would fit well with
his portrayal. In Szyk's Haggadah Moshe wields a club.
304
In contrast to Szyk, Julius Schnorr chooses to depict all three
characters of the story. The Egyptian stands in the middle, not just beating
but actually choking the Hebrew slave who kneels on the ground, struggling
for breath. The Hebrew figures prominently, and surprisingly, he is being
strangled and not merely whipped. Moshe balances the image, standing on
the other side of the taskmaster. As he unsheathes his sword, he glances
behind him, presumably checking for onlookers. Schnorr distinguishes
between the statuses of the characters through their clothing. The slave is
barely dressed, the taskmaster wears a tunic and hat but stands barefooted,
while Moshe is fully garbed and wearing sandals. In the top left background
one can see Israelite slaves at work, and a lone figure (unseen by Moshe)
305
peeking out from behind a building, observing the scene. Schnorr depicts
only one onlooker to Moshe's actions. His ethnicity is obscure and a case
could be made to identify him as either Israelite or Egyptian.
While Szyk chooses to dress Moshe in garb similar to the Egyptian
whom he is striking, Schnorr sets Moshe apart both from the Hebrew slaves
and from the taskmaster, adorning him with a full cloak and thus marking
him as one from a higher class. The different portrayals make one question
both how Moshe viewed himself and how he was perceived by others at this
stage of the narrative. Did Moshe identify himself as Egyptian or Jew? Were
his actions motivated by a feeling of brotherhood or just a strong sense of
justice? Did anyone else know he was Jewish or had he been fully integrated
into the royal family?
There are other depictions of the scene, notably in the Amsterdam
Haggadah, where the figure with the sword is The Wicked Son. But it is clear
that these are all men in these paintings. There are no women with one
notable exception.
“The Trials of Moses” is a fresco by the Italian Renaissance painter
Sandro Botticelli and his workshop, executed in 1481–1482 and located in
the Sistine Chapel, Rome. In the foreground, to the right, Moses is seen in
the act of slaying the Egyptian, whom he has thrown to the ground. He kneels,
brandishing a short sword in his right hand, as he holds the Egyptian down
by the throat, who, with a face distorted by agony, clutches helplessly at the

304
Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld (1794 - 1872) was a German painter and bible
illustrator, whose Picture Bible was published in Leipzig in 30 parts in 1852–60,
with an English edition following in 1861.
305
http://alhatorah.org/Moshe_Killing_the_Egyptian_in_Art
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air: behind them, the figures of a man and woman turn away in fear, near an
open loggia. … "Following this incident, in the distant landscape beyond the
loggia, Moses, with a club over his left shoulder, is seen fleeing into the land
306
of Midian." It is interesting that he puts a woman into the picture, perhaps
the mother of the child being beaten. To me this woman represents all those
other women’s voices he has left behind: the midwives, his sister, his mother,
Pharaoh’s daughter and her maidens.
"Rabbinic literature praises Pharaoh's daughter. According to the
Midrash, she did not follow in her father's evil ways, but converted to
Judaism and ceased worshipping idols. She is listed in the Midrash
among the sincere, pious female proselytes. Thus, Moses was educated
by a woman who believed in God. For saving him, showering him with
affection and thereby participating in the Exodus and the salvation of
Israel from Egypt, Pharaoh's daughter was greatly rewarded and
became part of the Jewish people, and she was privileged to have God
call her His daughter by giving her the Hebrew name Bitya (Daughter
of God). According to some midrashim, she lived to a miraculous age
307
and entered the Garden of Eden while still alive. "
After he runs away to Midian he has Zipporah and her sisters who take care
of him. It is interesting that the great art critic Ruskin thought that the
woman in the picture is Zipporah:
“The figure of Zipporah, on which Ruskin has chosen to lavish his
attentions, stands adjacent to an explicit and disturbing scene of
violence, as Moses raises his sword in slaughter, the Egyptian shrieks
308
in mortal fear, and his terrified son is shuffled off stage.”
All of these women are nurturers and know how to handle adversity; They
are capable of working together and are willing to conspire together in order
to help the human race survive. Perhaps that is the meaning of the strange
excurses of the hatan damim.
THE EMPHASIS ON THE “MAN” -- ISH
306
https://100swallows.wordpress.com/2014/12/27/botticelli-in-the-sistine-chapel/
[https://archive.org/stream/alessandrofilipe00horn/alessandrofilipe00horn_djvu.txt
307
Tamar Kadari, “Midreshei Bitya Bat Par'oh / Vayehi Beḥatzi Halaylah,”
Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women's Studies & Gender Issues 14.1 (2007) 233-
241
308
Jeremy Norman Melius, “Art History and the Invention of Botticelli,” (Phd
Dissertation University of California, Berkeley 2010): 101 available at
http://digitalassets.lib.berkeley.edu/etd/ucb/text/Melius_berkeley_0028E_10773.pd
f
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The word Ish appears 8 times in Exodus 1-2 (1:1; 2:1,11,12,14,19,20,21). In
2:11-14 it appears almost as a leit motif to be contrasted with Moses’s
previous experience being surrounded by women:
11Some time after that, when Moses had grown up, he went out to his
kinsfolk and witnessed their labors. He saw an Egyptian man beating
a Hebrew man, one of his kinsmen. 12He turned this way and that
and, seeing no one [MAN] about, he struck down the Egyptian and
hid him in the sand…. 14He retorted, “Who made you the man who
is chief and ruler over us? Do you mean to kill me as you killed the
Egyptian?” Moses was frightened, and thought: Then the matter is
known

I find it interesting that in the Ethics of the Fathers it states that when there
are no men around, act like a man:
‫משנה מסכת אבות פרק ב משנה ה‬
‫הוא היה אומר אין בור ירא חטא ולא עם הארץ חסיד ולא הביישן למד ולא הקפדן מלמד ולא‬
:‫כל המרבה בסחורה מחכים ובמקום שאין אנשים השתדל להיות איש‬
Perhaps this is the source of all our problems; too many people trying to
behave like men. It is ironic that Pharaoh only wanted to kill baby boys. He
specifically mentions that all the girls should live: ‫וְ כָל הַ בַּ ת ְתּחַ ּיוּן‬. Keep all the
girls alive. "Cassuto suggests an ironic literary foiling of Pharaoh's
murderous plot: [Girls] presumably pose no threat to the Egyptian nation.
Following the use of the term 'bat' in Pharaoh's decree…the word recurs a
further seven times in chapter 2, referring to a series of heroic women, all of
whom…disprove Pharaoh's theory about the challenge presented by women.
It is their moral might…which in the end defeats the Egyptian ruler.
Yocheved, Pharaoh's daughter, and Zipporah are specifically referred to as
'bat,' while other heroic women are introduced [as] the midwives and
309
…sister…"
If we contrast the leitwort of ISH vs. BAT there is the contrast of
man’s behavior (ISH) with that of the women of Shemot: Women here are
midwives, sister, mother, Pharaoh’s daughter, wife/Zipporah. All of them are
nurturers, LIFE GIVERS and know how to handle adversity; They also can
work together and are willing to overlook ethnic differences (even to conspire
together) in order to help the human race survive.
This might be in opposition to the male way of creating a nation,
where you have to tear the bond of seeing each other as humans; you have to
create hatred of the other in order to be loyal to one another. Every woman

309
Klitsner, footnote on p. 279
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in that story behaves correctly: only Moses, the male Egyptians and Pharaoh
behave with violence, threats, cowardice etc. (The exception is Yithro). I
think it is interesting that most of the people in this text are nameless. Perhaps
this adds a mythic dimension to the story, one that is meant to leave a
message, make a statement about human relationships in general. Now for
some questions!!
1. When Moses goes out, what is he looking for? What does he see?
What does he understand from this?
2. What is Yitro's function? Is it important that he is father to Seven
Daughters?
3. How can we characterize Moses? Why does he say he is not a man
of speech? How does a man function when he is "heavy of mouth
and heavy of tongue"? Does he compensate in other ways; does he
use his fists instead of using words?
4. What can we learn from the two haftarot? In particular, the passage
from Jeremiah, keeping in mind the concept of "moral injury" that
we get from Carol Gilligan.
A Feminist way of looking at it.
"By stating that women and men might have different moral
sensibilities and that gender differences thus might play a role in
human moral development, Gilligan did not only attack Piaget’s and
Kohlberg’s presumed gender neutral theories, but she also attacked
their alleged impartial, Kantian influenced ethics of justice, which has
forced women into moral immaturity, since women were seen as less
autonomous and less logically developed. This clinging to the
masculine idea of the moral ‘homo rationalis’ made Gilligan furious
and it is because of that, that she decided “to bring women’s voices
into psychological theory and to reframe the conversation between
women and men”. Carol Gilligan then soon proclaimed that women
indeed had different voices then men, and she named the theory of
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women’s moral sensibilities ‘care ethics’."
Using Gilligan to understand Moses, we can say that we do not
absolve him from guilt – he, in contrast to the women in his life, does not
behave correctly: the peshat makes it clear. Every woman in that story

310
[p. 2, Fundamentals of the Humanities – Evelien Geerts (3615170, Research
master
Gender and Ethnicity) The feminist turns in moral psychology: the reworking of
Carol
Gilligan’s ethics of care into a postmodern care ethics by Joan Tronto.]
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behaves correctly: they are life saving forces. Only he, the male Egyptians,
and Pharaoh behave with violence, threats, cowardice etc.
What are the effects of slavery on men? Does it bring the best out of
women, and the worst out of men? Then there is the issue of Nature vs.
Nurture! Moses’s nature is to act hastily and violently (perhaps that is why
God gives him a speech defect, to slow him down). His nurture, until he
leaves Pharoah’s house, is totally by women?
Finally, did God choose Moses because he was willing to act quickly
against injustice? On the other hand, he is punished when he gives into anger
over water/rock.
Last but not least, Pharaoh’s own daughter Batya adopts the baby
Moses. I conclude with a taltalizing question: Was she defying her father?
Did she really see differently? Or was it perhaps a nurture-over-nature
311
experiment?

311
http://limmud.org/publications/limmudononeleg/5770/shemot/Another voice by
Miriam Edelman

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CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: INTERTEXTUALITY BETWEEN
JUDGES 4-5 AND THE BOOK OF RUTH

There is both soft (weak) and hard (strong) intertextuality between the texts
of Judges 4-5 and the Book of Ruth whose stories both take place in the "time
of the judges". In both texts there are allusions to each other. One soft allusion
is the word balat which appears only twice in the bible, in Judges 4:21 and
Ruth 3:7. Yael approaches Sisera stealthily (balat) before striking a pin
through his head and Ruth went over stealthily (balat) to Boaz before lying
down next to him. Another soft allusion is the phrase that Barak utters, "If
you will go with me, I will go; if not, I will not go." To which Deborah
answers, "Very well, I will go with you" (Jud 4:8-9). This phrase alludes to
the famous words of Ruth to Naomi after the latter admonishes her to turn
back to her home: "for wherever you go, I will go" (Ruth 1:16). Close
readings of both texts reveal that there are many more examples of
intertextuality. This paper argues that two foreigners (Yael the Kenite and
Ruth the Moabite), who are blessed in the tradition (Jud 5:24 and Ruth 4: 11-
14), are agents for Israelite women (Deborah and Naomi) and serve as saviors
under threatening circumstances (external war and internal famine). In
analyzing how the two texts serve as internal commentary on each other, this
paper will examine both the similarities and differences in the actions and
situations of the four women who are involved in the two biblical tales.
The regular synagogue goer is aware that Judges 4-5 is the Haftarah on
Shabbat Shira when we celebrate the crossing of the Reed Sea. The choice of
a selection from prophetic readings is in some way related to the Torah
reading, although the relationship is not always obvious or simple.
Sometimes the prophetic reading carries the Pentateuchal narrative forward
in time, sometimes it highlights the ethical teaching of the Torah selection,
and sometimes it provides a counterpoint to the Torah reading…The
juxtapositions are provocative and meant to be so. These readings open
dialogue, rather than shutting it down. The Book of Ruth is read before the
Torah reading on the Shavuot holiday which is about the giving of the torah
on Mt. Sinai. This scroll, unlike the traditional Haftarah—which follow the
Torah reading and remain ancillary to it— the reading of Ruth precedes the
reading of Torah. It is as if to say the covenant of Sinai and the Torah of
Moses are framed by—are to be understood under the canopy of—Ruth and
312
her teaching.

312
Nehemia Polen, “Dark Ladies and Redemptive Compassion: Ruth and the
Messianic Lineage in Judaism,” in Scrolls of Love: Ruth and the Song of Songs
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 Then there is the obvious time frame since Ruth is sent in the time of the
Judges when there is the internal threat of famine and Judges 4-5 is set during
the period when there is an external military threat. It is clearly stated in Ruth
1:1 ‫ וַיְ הי בּימֵ י ְשׁפֹ ט הַ שֹ פְ טים‬and in Judges 4:4 that Deborah judges Israel in that
time ‫שֹׁ פְ טָ ה אֶ ת י ְש ָראֵ ל בָּ עֵת הַ היא‬: This almost forces us to look at the two stories
in tandem. Rabbinic literature makes a similar point in a midrash that situates
Ruth in the time period of Deborah.
“And it was in the days of the judging of the Judges.” And who were
they?
Rav says: They were Barak and Devora.
R. Yehoshua ben Levi says: They were Shamgar and Ehud.
R. Huna says: They were Devora, Barak, and Yael. Shefot [would have
implied] one, Shoftim [would have implied] two, ha-Shoftim [implies]
three. (Ruth Rabba 1:1)
It is interesting that the third opinion, that of R. Huna, suggests a
triumvirate of two women and a man. In Ruth, there is the same
configuration: Naomi, Ruth and Boaz. Both Yael the Kenite or associated by
marriage with the Kenites since it says in Judges 4:17 ‫ ָיעֵל אֵ שֶׁ ת חֶ בֶ ר הַ קֵ יני‬and
Ruth the Moabite is also a foreigner. Both of them to the rescue the situation
(one relieving famine and continuing lineage and the other annihilating the
enemy). Yael Ziegler points out that any comparisons made have to be in the
contrast. “Ruth approaches a sleeping Boaz to offer him marriage, to achieve
continuity, while Yael approaches a sleeping Sisera to murder him and cut
off his line. Boaz gives Ruth food as an act of chesed, to revive her, while
Yael gives Sisera milk to kill him. Thus although the stories intersect, “they
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are a distorted reflection of one another.” Both Naomi and Deborah seem
to have gravitas in their demeanor, Naomi by virtue of age and experience
and Deborah by position and authority. The men, are both somewhat
effeminate, in that they are the tools by which victory and ambition are
procured. The women maneuver them for their own personal and national
agendas. Naomi maneuvers Boaz into marrying Ruth, thus procuring for her
the land and lineage and Deborah maneuvers Barak into being the victorious
fighter by shaming him.

Peter S. Hawkins and Lesleigh Cushing Stahlberg, eds. (New York: Fordham
University Press, 2006): 59-60.
313
Yael Ziegler, Ruth: From Alienation to Monarchy (Jerusalem: Maggid Books,
2015). Most of my quotes from this book are from the on-line lectures she gave on
VBM. This one is from shiur #5.

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 Then we have the famous “where you go” passages. In Ruth 1:16
‫אֲשֶׁ ר תֵּ לְ כי אֵ לְֵך וּבַ אֲשֶׁ ר תָּ ליני אָ לין ַעמֵ ְך עַמי וֵאֹלהַ יְך ֱאֹלהָ י‬
and in Judges 4:8 Barak says to Deborah, “if you go with me, I’ll go with
you.”
‫ ַוּי ֹאמֶ ר אֵ לֶיהָ בָּ ָרק אם תֵּ לְ כי עמי וְ הָ לָכְ תּי וְ אם ל ֹא תֵ לְ כי עמי ל ֹא אֵ לְֵך‬:
To which Deborah grudgingly gives in in vs 9:
‫ַותּ ֹאמֶ ר הֹלְך אֵּ לְֵּך עִּ מְך אֶ פֶס כי ל ֹא תהְ יֶה תּפְ אַ ְר ְתּך עַ ל הַ דֶּ ֶּרְך אֲשֶׁ ר אַ תָּ ה הֹולְֵּך כִּ י ְביַד ִּאשה‬
:‫בוֹרה וַתֵּ לְֶך עם בָּ ָרק קֶ ְדשָׁ ה‬ ָ ‫יסרא וַתָּ קָ ם ְד‬ ְ ‫יִּ ְמכֹ ר יְ קֹ וק אֶּ ת ִּס‬
Naomi also grudgingly gave in to Ruth and like Barak they both set out on a
road trip (ba-derech). Going on the road is a dangerous thing and since they
are on their way to Beit lechem (where Rachel died on derech beit lechem)
the stakes are high.
Both Yael and Ruth exhibit women’s agency and the power of
cooperation. As Johanna Bos points out Ruth may be one of the first
characters in literature to show what an alliance between women can
314
accomplish. Yael is the literal agent of Deborah in her prophecy that there
will be victory by a woman's hand ‫ בְ יַד אשָ ה‬and thus Yael finishes Deborah’s
work. Ruth is agent of Naomi and we see this in the story of the two. This
story according to Amy Kalmanofsky is “the Bible’s most developed and
315
positively portrayed sisterhood” and this agency and the bond of sisterhood
results in a marriage and a child and in redemption. And thus it is fitting that
Ruth finishes Naomi’s work and illustrates the power of agency and
sisterhood as Kamanofsky points out: “Sisterhood in the book of Ruth
determines Israel’s destiny while elevating sisterhood as an ideal model for
human relationship and perhaps “the Bible’s best paradigm for the divine-
316
human relationship.
LINGUISTIC FEATURES
Ziegler pointed to several linguistic features which are shared in common by
Ruth and Judges 4-5. She notes the verb hum, the command, sura (turn
aside), followed by the immediate obedience to the command, va-yasar, the
adverb lat or ba-lat: stealthily, secretly, gently and the doubling of the verb
lekh: where you go, I will go, which I have laready discussed. There are other
linguistic common elements which I will discuss after reviewing what she
has noted.

314
Johanna Van Wijk-Bos, “Out of the Shadows: Genesis 38; Judges 4:17-22: Ruth
3,” Semeia 42 (1988) 37-67.
315
Amy Kalmanofsky, Dangerous Sisters of the Hebrew Bible (Minneapolis:
Fortress, 2014): 158.
316
Kalmanofsky, p. 183.
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 The first one is va-teihom in Ruth and va-yahom in Judges:
Ruth 1:19 Judges 4:15
the whole city buzzed with God threw Sisera and all his
excitement (was confused) chariots and army into a panic
:‫וַתֵּ הֹ ם כל העִּ יר ֲעלֵיהֶ ן ַותּ ֹאמַ ְרנָה ֲהז ֹאת ָנעֳּמי‬ ‫יסרא וְ אֶ ת כָל הָ ֶרכֶב וְ אֶ ת‬
ְ ‫וַיהם יְ קֹ וק אֶּ ת ִּס‬
‫כָל הַ מַ ֲחנֶה‬
The people in the town are totally confused, bewildered and excited by
Naomi’s return to Bethlehem, whereas Sisera and his army are put into a state
of confusion by God, leading them to panic.
The next one on Ziegler’s list is sura which appears in Ruth when Boaz
offers sanctuary to Ruth. He tells the redeemer (the go-el) who has arrived
by providence (ve-hineh) to turn aside and he does. In Judges, it is Yael who
tells Sisera to turn aside in order to give him hospitality. Bos writes that Yael
catches him unaware because she is a woman.
"Sisera has come down from his chariot but is surely not unarmed. He
remains a trained warrior, no match for an untrained man, let alone an
untrained woman. Sisera's fear is naturally not of Yael but of other
men: "If a man comes. . . ." That his life may not be safe with her is
317
probably farthest from his thoughts. "
Ruth 4:1 Judges 4: 18
Meanwhile, Boaz had gone to the Jael came out to greet Sisera and
gate and sat down there. And now said to him, “Come in, my lord,
‫ וְ ִּהנֵּה‬the redeemer whom Boaz had come in here, ‫סּורה אֲ דֹ נִּ י סּורה אֵּ לַי‬do
mentioned passed by. He called, not be afraid.” So he entered ‫וַיסַ ר‬
“Come over ‫ סּורה‬and sit down here, ‫ אֵּ לֶּיה‬her tent, and she covered him
So-and-so!” And he came over ‫ וַיסַ ר‬with a blanket.
and sat down. ‫שופטים פרק ד‬
‫רות פרק ד‬ ‫יסרא וַתּ ֹאמֶ ר‬
ְ ‫יח) וַתֵּ צֵּ א יעֵּ ל לִּ קְ ַראת ִּס‬
‫אֵ לָיו סּורה אֲ דֹנִּ י סּורה אֵּ לַי אַ ל ִּתירא וַיסַ ר א) וּ ֹבעַז ָעלָה הַ שַ עַר ַוּיֵשֶׁ ב שָׁ ם וְ ִּהנֵּה הַ גֹ אֵ ל‬
‫עֹ בֵ ר אֲשֶׁ ר דבֶּ ר בֹּ עַז ַוּי ֹאמֶ ר סּורה ְשבה ּפֹ ה‬ :‫אֵּ לֶּיה הָ אֹ ֱהלָה ו ְַתּכַסֵ הוּ בַּ ְשמיכָה‬
:‫פְּ ֹלני אַ לְ מֹ ני וַיסַ ר ַויֵּשֵּ ב‬
It is interesting that Cheryl Exum sees a different intertext with the Yael
passage. “Jael invites Sisera into her tent, much as the wanton woman of
Proverbs invites the young man to ‘turn aside’ to her (Prov. 9.16).” She
writes: “The absence of a suitable explanation for Jael’s behaviour and the
brutality of the deed leave the deliverer’s reputation somewhat tarnished.
Critics frequently disapprove of Jael’s blatant violation of hospitality,
deceiving Sisera by making him think that he is safe and then brutally

317
Bos, p. 56.
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murdering him, but one suspects that what most bothers Jael’s detractors is
the fact that a vulnerable man is a victim of ‘ignominious subjection to the
318
effective power of a woman’.
Next is the adverb balat about which Nehemia Polen has written. First,
he points to the intertextual connections with the story of Lot, Abraham’s
nephew. He writes that the inclusion of Ruth in Boaz’s family “repairs the
breach between Abraham and his nephew Lot” and the midnight encounter
with Boaz at the threshing floor is the “antithesis” to Lot's seduction by his
daughters." Furthermore, he looks at Ruth in the context of the Messiah.
Since Ruth is the ancestress of David, “only an imperfect messiah can redeem
319
an imperfect world.” Whereas Ruth approaches a sleeping Boaz to offer
him marriage, to achieve continuity, Yael approaches a sleeping Sisera to
murder him and cut off his line. Exum points out that “While he sleeps there,
she ‘comes to him’ (4.21). The expression ‘come to/unto her’ is often used
of a man having sexual intercourse with a woman. She penetrates his body
at a vulnerable point—the temple? the neck? the mouth? —with a phallic tent
peg. In a description rife with sexual innuendo, Sisera kneels over between
320
Jael’s legs, falls and lies there despoiled (5.27).”
Ruth 3:7 Judges 4:21
Then she went over stealthily and When he was fast asleep from
uncovered his feet and lay down. exhaustion, she approached him
‫ ו ּיאכַל ֹבּעַז ַוּי ְֵשׁ ְתּ וַּייטַ ב לבּוֹ ַו ָּיב ֹא ל ְשׁכַב‬stealthily and drove the pin through
‫ בּקְ צֵ ה הָ ע ֲֵרמָ ה וַתב ֹא בַ לט ו ְַתּגַל מַ ְרגְ ֹלתָ יו‬his temple till it went down to the
:‫ וַתּ ְשׁכָב‬ground. Thus he died.
‫וַתבֹוא אֵ לָיו בַ לאט וַתּ ְתקַ ע אֶ ת הַ ּיָתֵ ד בְּ ַרקָ תוֹ‬
:‫וַתּצְ נַח בָּ אָ ֶרץ וְ הוּא נ ְרדָ ם ַו ָּיעַף ַו ָּימֹת‬
So whereas Polen reads messianic issues into the word balat, connecting the
l-t with Lot (also l-t) by relying on kabbalistic interpretations, Exum focuses
on the sexual aspects of the seduction scene in Judges. Note that the word
balat is spelled differently in Ruth and Judges, which may be the reason not
that many people have picked up on this.
The next linguistic feature is both shachav and regel (lying down and
feet). In chapter three Naomi directs Ruth what to do and to act with trickery,

318
J. Cheryl Exum, “Shared Glory: Salomon de Bray’s Jael, Deborah and Barak,”
in Between the Text and the Canvas: The Bible and Art in Dialogue, edited by J.
Cheryl Exum and Ela Nutu (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2007): 27.
319
Polen, xxi and xvi.
320
Exum:
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with the motive of getting her land back. In Judges, Yael acts on her own
initiative, without a clear motive. In both scenes there is sexual innuendo.
Ruth 3:4, 7 Judges 5:27
4
When he lies down, note the place where Between her feet he
he lies down, and go over and uncover his sank, lay outstretched, At
feet and lie down. He will tell you what her feet he sank, lay still;
you are to do.” ….7Boaz ate and drank, and Where he sank, there he
in a cheerful mood went to lie down beside lay—destroyed.
the grain pile. Then she went over ‫(כז) בֵּ ין ַרגְ לֶּיה כ ַָרע ָנפַל שכב‬
stealthily and uncovered his feet and lay ‫בֵ ין ַרגְ לֶיהָ כ ַָרע ָנפָל בַּ אֲשֶׁ ר כ ַָרע‬
down. 8In the middle of the night, the man :‫שָׁ ם ָנפַל שָׁ דוּד‬
gave a start and pulled back—there was a
woman lying at his feet!
‫ד) ויהי ְבשכְ בֹו וְ יָדַ ע ְַתּ אֶ ת הַ מָ קוֹם אֲשֶׁ ר יִּ ְשכַב שָׁ ם‬
‫וּבָ את וְ גלית מַ ְרגְ ֹלתָ יו וְ שכ ְב ְת וְ הוּא יַגיד לְָך אֵ ת אֲשֶׁ ר‬
‫ז) ַוּי ֹאכַל ֹבּעַז ַוּי ְֵשׁ ְתּ וַּייטַ ב לבּוֹ ַו ָּיב ֹא לִּ ְשכַב‬....:‫תַּ עֲשין‬
)‫ ח‬:‫בּקְ צֵ ה הע ֲֵּרמה וַתָּ ב ֹא בַ לָט ו ְַתּגַל מַ ְרגְ ֹלתיו ַו ִּת ְשכב‬
‫וַיְ הי בַּ חֲצי הַ ַל ְילָה ַו ֶּיח ֱַרד הָ אישׁ וַּי ָלפֵת וְ הנֵה ִּאשה‬
‫שֹ כֶּבֶּ ת מַ ְרגְ ֹלתיו‬

It is not clear if Ruth and Boaz have sexual intercourse, and in Judges, the
description of Sisera’s death is replete with sexual imagery. Here his
“climax” is in his death, there he lay, “shadud”, robbed of his masculinity.
The description is almost Shakespearean in what it is hinting: that “dying” is
a euphemism for sex. Traditional texts assume that Boaz and Ruth are not
“intimate” with each other, but he is concerned with her reputation, so it is
irrelevant whether a woman “lying at his ‘feet’” is a hint of something more.
(Especially to me, since the word margelotav, sounds like the family
jewels/pearls.) Boaz lies down near the “grain pile”, which in Hebrew is
“aremah”, spelt like “arumah” naked. Is this an insider biblical joke, hinting
that all is not so innocent? (Remember the same word of nakedness in
Genesis 3:10-11 and the snake being ‫ ערום‬Gen 3:1).
Continuing with the next linguistic feature is that of the blanket, the
cover, the offering of protection. Here we do not have an exact wording, but
what we do have is a similar idea which in the total context of our comparing
and contrasting seems to demand some comment. Bos points out that that the
blanket ‫ ְש ִּמיכה‬which Yael uses is a hapex. She asks, what or whom does she
cover? She writes:
‫ ְש ִּמיכה‬has received a number of different readings and interpretations.
In spite of the lack of certainty, there is general agreement that a type

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 of covering is indicated, as also appears from the versions and
translations. There is also agreement that Sisera is the object and that
Yael covers him with something. This covering action is mentioned
twice, once in v. 18 and again in v. 19. What precisely she covers him
with is left to the imagination. Word-plays on "open" and
"close/cover" indicate the hidden intent of Yael. Most commentators
view Yael's covering of Sisera as creating a false sense of trust once
321
she has lured him into her tent.
She suggests that Yael is covering her intentions; i.e., that in fact she is
under-cover. As to Ruth, Boaz asks who she is. And she says she is his
handmaid (implying like Yael to Sisera) and thus he has nothing to fear
from her—she is not a threat.
Ruth 3:9 Judges 4:18-19
9
“Who are you?” he Jael came out to greet Sisera and said to
asked. And she replied, “I him, “Come in, my lord, come in here, do
am your handmaid Ruth. not be afraid.” So he entered her tent, and
Spread your robe over she covered him with a blanket…[she]
your handmaid, for you gave him some to drink; and she covered
are a redeeming him again.
kinsman.” ‫סוּרה ֲאדֹני‬ָ ‫יס ָרא ַותּ ֹאמֶ ר אֵ לָיו‬ ְ ‫יח) וַתֵּ צֵ א ָיעֵל לקְ ַראת ס‬
‫ט) ַוּי ֹאמֶ ר מי אָ ְתּ ַותּ ֹאמֶ ר אָ נֹכי‬ ‫סוּרה אֵ לַי אַ ל תּ ָירא ַוּיָסַ ר אֵ לֶיהָ הָ אֹ ֱהלָה ו ְַתכַסֵּ הּו‬
ָ
‫רוּת ֲאמָ תֶ ך ּופ ַר ְשת כְ נפֶּ ָך עַל‬ :‫בַ ְש ִּמיכה‬
:‫ֲאמָ ְתך כי גֹאֵ ל אָ תָּ ה‬ ‫(יט) ַוּי ֹאמֶ ר אֵ לֶיהָ הַ ְשׁקיני נָא ְמעַט מַ ים כי צָ מֵ אתי‬
:‫וַתּפְ תַּ ח אֶ ת נ ֹאוד הֶ חָ לָב וַתַּ ְשׁקֵ הוּ ו ְַתכַסֵּ הּו‬
Ruth suggests to Boaz to spread his robe (another garment) over her, to
protect her, because he is a redeemer. Here you have the image of a bird,
spreading his wing (kanaf) over her, which also has a sexual allusion. Bos
writes that “the word ‫ כנף‬recalls 2:12, where Boaz wished for Ruth
recompense from God under whose ‫ כנפים‬she had come to take refuge. On
322
the threshing floor Ruth uses the same image to call Boaz to his task.” I
would suggest that the ambiguity lends itself to an interpretation that taking
her up on her offer to “protect” her would ensure that redemption is also
brought about by a physical union.
WOMEN’S COMMUNITY AND BLESSINGS
In this last section we will look at some more intertextual allusions, which
are both soft, i.e., linguistic, but also make hard connections. They are
allusions which are connected with the nature of womanhood as perceived

321
Bos, p. 57.
322
Bos, p. 62.
-205-
by both authors. In general, I would argue that Ruth is more essentialist vis a
vis women’s nature, in that the happy end is that Ruth (and Naomi) get
married, have a baby and gain economic security. The white horse, or the
icing on the cake, is the Davidic dynasty. In Judges, the women are “off”.
One is a judge, a possible co-warrior, another is a calculating killer, and the
third is a mother who although concerned about her son, is proud of his being
a rapist. Yet, in Ruth there are two strong women who are willing to take
risks and in Judges the non-normative view of women is tempered by
Deborah, referring to herself as a mother and Yael as being more blessed than
anyone else and Sisera’s mom is mostly sympathetic in her role of putting
her son first, no matter what his misdeeds.
In Ruth 4 we have Naomi who is a foster mother, with a son, who is not
really hers, born to her. Similarly, in Judges 5 we have Deborah, who is
known as a mother, in Israel, which is not real either. There are no
descendants associated with Deborah and even though she is known as Eshet
Lapidot, it is not clear who her husband really is and if she even has a
husband. Naomi’s real sons are dead, left behind in Moab. Sisera, has a
mother, but soon he will be dead as well—although in this reading she
convinces herself he is alive. The only one who is a real mother with a living
child is Ruth, but she is not called a mother.
In fact, the chorus of women, the neighbors, point out to Naomi that
Ruth is better than seven sons, so biological motherhood does not seem to be
an issue. This chorus is the one to claim that a son is born to Naomi.
Presumably, they do not mean it literally. She herself had pointed out earlier
that her breasts had dried out and that she could not have children. Sisera’s
mother also has her sympathetic ladies who give her hope when she moans
about how late her son is in coming home. But the answer repels the modern
reader. He is busy fornicating with “a womb or two”. The irony is that it is
the women who refer to the other wombs as things to be spoiled. So any
sympathy we might have for the mother is lost. In contrast we have Naomi’s
neighbors who praise Ruth and point out the love between the two.
Ruth 4: 15-17 Judges 5: 7, 28
15
He will renew your life and Deliverance ceased, Ceased in Israel,
sustain your old age; for he is Till youf arose, O Deborah, Arose, O
born of your daughter-in-law, mother, in Israel!...
who loves you and is better 28Through the window she peered,
to you than seven Sisera’s mother moaned behind the
16 lattice: “Why is his chariot so long in
sons.” Naomi took the child
coming? Why so late the clatter of his
and held it to her bosom. She
wheels?” 29The wisest of her ladies
became its foster
-206-
 mother.17and the women
neighbors gave him a name,
saying, “A son is born to
Naomi!” …
‫טו) וְ היה לְך לְ מֵּ ִּשיב נֶּפֶּ ש ּולְ כַלְ כֵּל‬
‫אֶּ ת שֵּ יבתֵּ ְך כִּ י כַלתֵּ ְך אֲ שֶּ ר אֲ הֵּ בַ תֶּ ְך‬
‫יְ לדַ תּו אֲ שֶּ ר ִּהיא טֹובה לְך ִּמ ִּש ְבעה‬
‫ (טז) וַתּקַ ח ָנעֳּמי אֶ ת הַ ֶּילֶד‬:‫בנִּ ים‬
:‫ו ְַתּשׁתֵ הוּ בְ חֵ יקָ ּה ו ְַת ִּהי לֹו לְ אֹ מֶּ נֶּת‬
‫(יז) ו ִַּתקְ ֶּראנה לֹו הַ ְשכֵּנֹות שֵׁ ם‬
...‫לֵאמֹ ר יֻלַד בֵּ ן לְ נע ֳִּמי‬
give answer; She, too, replies to herself:
30“They must be dividing the spoil they
have found: A womb [C word] or two
for each man,
‫בוֹרה‬ָ ‫ז) חָ דְ לוּ פְ ָרזוֹן בְּ י ְש ָראֵ ל חָ דֵ לוּ עַד שַׁ קַ ְמתּי ְד‬
:‫שַׁ קַ ְמתּי אֵּ ם ְביִּ ְשראֵּ ל‬
‫יסרא בְּ ַעד‬ ְ ‫(כח) בְּ עַד הַ חַ לוֹן נ ְשׁקְ פָה ו ְַתיַבֵּ ב אֵּ ם ִּס‬
‫הָ אֶ ְשׁנָב מַ דוּ ַע בֹּשֵׁ שׁ רכְ בּוֹ לָבוֹא מַ דוּ ַע אֶ חֱרוּ ַפּעֲמֵ י‬
‫ (כט) חַ כְ מֹות שרֹותֶּ יה תַ ֲענֶּינה אַ ף‬:‫מַ ְרכְ בוֹתָ יו‬
‫ (ל) ֲהל ֹא י ְמצְ אוּ יְחַ לְ קוּ‬:‫היא תָּ שׁיב אֲמָ ֶריהָ לָּה‬
… ‫שָׁ לָל ַרחַ ם ַרחֲמתַ יִּ ם לְ ר ֹאשׁ גֶבֶ ר‬

Yael Unterman brings the following midrash to show how a veritable

babble of female voices surrounds the silent figure of Sisera.
‘Why is his chariot so long in coming?’ -- this was said by Sisera’s
mother. ‘Her wise ladies answered her’: His wife said, “Have they not
found booty? Have they not divided the prey...?’ The words of Sisera’s
mother were revealed to Deborah by the Divine Spirit, and thus she
said to her, ‘Do not expect Sisera your son -- from now on, thus let all
323
Thy enemies perish, O Lord.’."
Unterman also points out the cruel fate of Sisera’s mother who the text leaves
hanging in the air as to her son’s fate. She refers to the poem “immo” (his
mother) by Haim Gouri who connects her fate with that of Sarah’s, implying
that they both died of a broken heart after hearing about their sons. This of
course is not the tone of the midrash.
Exum wonders about Deborah’s claim to motherhood:
“Is Deborah’s description of herself as ‘a mother in Israel’ (5.7), a self-
congratulatory boast? As a mother in Israel, Deborah may be
responsible for her people’s welfare, but the question remains, what
does Deborah actually accomplish as a leader? Clearly she plays a
decisive role in delivering Israel from oppression; she is the one who
sets events in motion (4.6-7).”
On the other hand, she points out that:
Deborah is the good mother. She ‘arose as a mother in Israel’ (5.7) to
deliver her children from danger and make their lives secure. She is

323
Yalkut Shimoni, Beha’alotekha, 734 as cited by Yael Unterman, “The Voice in
The Shofar -- A Defense of Deborah,”
https://www.academia.edu/7091346/The_Voice_in_the_Shofar_-
_A_Defense_of_Deborah.
-207-
 the life-giving mother. Jael, on the other hand, is the death-dealing
mother. Even stronger than the sexual imagery in the account of Jael
and Sisera is the maternal imagery.
Strangely enough Exum considers the “real” mother to be Yael:
Jael behaves in a motherly fashion, offering Sisera security (‘turn aside
to me’) and assurance (‘have no fear’, 4.18). The picture the text paints
of her covering him and giving him milk to drink suggests a mother
putting her son to bed. She even watches over him while he sleeps to
protect him from harm (‘Stand at the opening of the tent, and if any
man comes and asks you, “Is there a man here?”, say “There is not”’,
324
4.20) .
We now move on the image of the eshet hayil, the eshet Lapidot and the
eshet hever hakeni. We have three women referred to as eshet. If we start
with Ruth and follow the idea that eshet, means “wife of” then the question
is who is Hayil? In Ruth 2:1 we see that “Naomi had a kinsman on her
husband’s side, a man of substance, ‫ ִּאיש גִּ בֹור חַ יִּ ל‬of the family of Elimelech,
whose name was Boaz.” So we have a match made in heaven between a “fine
woman” and a “man of substance”. On the other hand, by the time, Ruth is
committed to Boaz, in all but purchase price, she is known as eshet hayil:
hayil’s wife. Despite the fact, that I write this tongue in cheek, I do so for a
reason.

Ruth 3: 11 Judges 4: 4, 17, 5: 24

11
And now, daughter, 4Deborah, wife of Lappidoth, was a
have no fear. I will do prophetess; she led (judged) Israel at
in your behalf that time.
whatever you ask, for 17Sisera, meanwhile, had fled on foot to
all the elders of my the tent of Jael, wife of Heber the
town know what a Kenite;
fine woman you are. 24Most blessed of women be Jael, Wife
‫(יא) וְ עַתָּ ה בּתּי אַ ל תּ ְיראי‬ of Heber the Kenite, [a woman of the
‫ֹאמרי אֶ עֱשֶ ה לְָך‬ְ ‫כֹ ל אֲשֶׁ ר תּ‬ Kenite community] Most blessed of
‫כי יוֹדֵ ַע כָל שַׁ עַר עַמי כִּ י‬ women in tents
:‫אֵּ שֶּ ת חַ יִּ ל א ְת‬ ‫בוֹרה אשָ ה נְביאָ ה אֵּ שֶּ ת לַּפִּ ידֹות היא שֹׁ פְ טָ ה‬ ָ ‫(ד) ְוּד‬
:‫אֶ ת י ְש ָראֵ ל בָּ עֵת הַ היא‬
‫יס ָרא נָס בְּ ַרגְ לָיו אֶ ל אֹ הֶ ל יעֵּ ל אֵּ שֶּ ת חֶּ בֶּ ר‬
ְ ‫(יז) וְ ס‬
‫הַ קֵּ ינִּ י‬

324
Exum.
-208-
 ‫בֹרְך מנָשׁים ָיעֵל אֵּ שֶּ ת חֶּ בֶּ ר הַ קֵּ ינִּ י מנָשׁים‬ַ ‫כד) ְתּ‬
:‫בָּ אֹ הֶ ל ְתּבֹ ָרְך‬

I would like to call into question the fact that Deborah is the wife (eshet) of
Lappidoth. I am not alone, since the midrash also has her variously as a wick
maker, married to a wick-maker and even to Barak, since what they all have
in common is the fire. Unterman writes:
"Clearly the simplest reading of “eshet lapidot” is as “the wife of
Lapidot.” The Gemara, though, interprets the phrase in a different way:
she made wicks for the Temple -- she was “a woman of wicks,” so to
speak [B.T. Megillah 14a]. “Eshet lapidot” is the only indication in
the text that Deborah is married.
Gersonides (1288-1344), mentions that she was actually separated
from her husband. All this makes for an unusual biblical woman,
whose family life, if it exists at all, is very much on the periphery. In
light of this background, her choice of the words “em beyisrael” to
describe herself take on an extra significance and reveal much about
Deborah’s self-image."
The same is true of Yael, who is usually considered the wife of Heber the
Kenite, but it is also possible that she is a member (haver) of the Kenite
community. Once again these are not original observations, although my
suggestion about Ruth is. I bring this up here, because I believe this is an
example of soft intertextuality which usually is overlooked, but is important
in the context of this paper. Unterman expands this a bit when she writes:
Yael is “eshet Hever Hakeni” -- the wife of Hever the Kenite. She has
family, and therefore is clearly also a woman in the tent. In fact, that
is exactly where the bloody scene took place; Yael emerged briefly out
of her female territory in order to lure him back inside, where she
executed her deed. She is not like Deborah, who sits out in the open
under a palm tree, where she judges the people.
The final point of comparison concerns the blessings:

Ruth 4:14 Judges 5:24

14
And the women said to Naomi,
“Blessed be the LORD, who has
not withheld a redeemer from
you today! May his name be
perpetuated in Israel!
24Most blessed of women be
Jael, Wife of Heber the
Kenite, [a woman of the
Kenite community] Most
blessed of women in tents.
‫כד) ְתבֹ ַרְך ִּמנ ִּשים ָיעֵל אֵּ שֶּ ת חֶּ בֶּ ר‬
:‫הַ קֵּ ינִּ י מנָשׁים בָּ אֹ הֶ ל ְתבֹ רְך‬

-209-
 ‫(יד) ַות ֹאמַ ְרנה הַ נ ִּשים אֶ ל ָנעֳּמי ברּוְך יְ קֹ וק‬:
‫אֲ שֶּ ר ל ֹא ִּה ְש ִּבית לְך גֹ אֵּ ל הַ יֹום וְ יִּ ק ֵּרא ְשמֹו‬
:‫ְביִּ ְשראֵּ ל‬

Like Yael, Ruth is called "blessed." Boaz's assurance that he will do all
that Ruth says echoes Ruth's earlier words to Naomi (v. 5) and reverses
10
Naomi's words to Ruth (v. 4). He exclaimed, “Be blessed of the LORD,
daughter! Your latest deed of loyalty is greater than the first, in that you
have not turned to younger men, whether poor or rich. Unterman writes:
"When Deborah mentions Yael in her song, she exclaims, “Tevorakh
minashim Yael... minashim ba’ohel tevorakh” (5:24): Yael is to blessed
more than women in the tent. “Women in the tent” seems to serve here as
the ancient equivalent of the housewife, and Deborah seems to be praising
Yael, in her identification with her, as being a stronger, more daring figure
than the colorless housewife.”
Part of these women being blessed has to do with what they have
accomplished. Ruth by having a baby saves Israel in the long run by
bringing Oved into the world who is the father of Yishai, who is the father
of David (4:17). Yael saves Israel by being an assassin. And the final
words of the song reflect the major difference between both visions of
what is the role of women. Deborah and Yael are responsible for bring
quiet to the land for “forty years”, but the price is that all of God’s enemies
have to be destroyed. (Judges 5:31). So one saves Israel by giving birth
and the other ensures peace at the price of destroying others. Both are
necessary and therefore the two visions are complimentary.

Ruth 4: 17 Judges 5:31

17
and the women neighbors gave 31So may all Your enemies
him a name, saying, “A son is perish, O LORD! But may His
born to Naomi!” They named friends be as the sun rising in
him Obed; he was the father of might! And the land was
Jesse, father of David. tranquil forty years.
‫יז) וַתּקְ ֶראנָה לוֹ הַ ְשכֵנוֹת שֵׁ ם לֵאמֹר יֻלַד‬ ‫ֹאבדּו כל אֹויְ בֶּ יָך יְ ֹקוָק וְ אֹ הֲבָ יו‬
ְ ‫לא) כֵּן י‬
‫בֵּ ן לְ ָנעֳּמי וַתּקְ ֶראנָה ְשׁמוֹ עוֹבֵ ד הוּא אֲ ִּבי‬ ‫כְ צֵ את הַ שֶ מֶ שׁ בּגְ ב ָֻרתוֹ ו ִַּת ְשקֹט הא ֶּרץ‬
‫ פ‬:‫יִּ שַ י אֲ ִּבי דוִּ ד‬ :‫אַ ְרבעִּ ים שנה‬

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CHAPTER EIGHTTEEN: AARON'S "SILENCE" UPON HEARING
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OF HIS SONS' DEATH BY FIRE

The modern Orthodox Feminist writer, Blu Greenberg writes the following
about Abraham’s reaction to Sarah’s death.
Weeping and mourning are two very different reactions. Mourning or
eulogizing is a review of a person's life, and appraisal, an evaluation.
Weeping on the other hand is “a primeval, instinctive reaction to a
tragedy, especially one that strikes without warning. It is not a
deliberate performance; it bursts forth spontaneously. Weeping is a
release of unbearable tension when the whole world seems to be
crumbling . . . No one can understand the bleak loneliness and painful
nostalgia of a surviving mate. One’s whole world seems dislocated.”
I have always wondered whether Aaron was affected in any way by "bottling
up" his emotions, by not being able to voice his sorrow. If he does not weep,
or mourn, what does that do to him and his family. In my wondering, I
compare his non-reaction to the exceedingly emotional reaction of both
David and Jacob to their sons' deaths.
It is considered weakness for leaders to express emotion. Crying is a
sign of breaking down and therefore not acceptable. David's advisers criticize
his all too human sorrow on the death of his son Absalom (2 Samuel 19:2-
8):
He was shaken; he wept; he moaned: "My son Absalom! 0 my son,
my son Absalom! If only I had died instead of you! 0 Absalom, my
son, my son!" And because of his unseemly mourning, the victory that
day was turned into mourning for all the troops and the troops stole
into town in shame rather than with feelings of victory. And the king
covered his face and the king kept crying aloud, "0 my son Absalom!
0 Absalom, my son, my son!"
Is the use of the word KING twice rather than the more personal David,
an implicit criticism of the fact that the king is different than the person?
Yet it is David (not the king) who engages in a form of inverted
mourning when the newborn baby, fruit of the adulterous relationship he had
with Bathsheba, is struck ill (2 Samuel 12). He sits for seven days before the
death, pleading for seven days and spending the night on the ground, in
mourning, and rises after the death, to eat, presumably shave and shower and
then goes back to business.

325
This is an unpublished paper given at the SBL Annual Meeting in Atlanta, in
2005. It is in a raw state without footnotes.
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 15 Nathan went home, and the LORD afflicted the child that Uriah's
wife had borne to David, and it became critically ill. 16 David
entreated God for the boy; David fasted, and he went in and spent the
night lying on the ground. 17 The senior servants of his household tried
to induce him to get up from the ground; but he refused, nor would he
partake of food with them. …. . 21 His courtiers asked him, "Why have
you acted in this manner? While the child was alive, you fasted and
wept; but now that the child is dead, you rise and take food! " 22 He
replied, "While the child was still alive, I fasted and wept because I
thought: 'Who knows? The LORD may have pity on me, and the child
may live.' 23 But now that he is dead, why should I fast? Can I bring
him back again? I shall go to him, but he will never come back to me."
Like David, after the death of Absalom, Jacob is inconsolable and weeps and
mourns and rends his clothes and goes into deep mourning when he hears of
his beloved son Joseph's death (Gen. 37:34-35).
33 He recognized it, and said, "My son's tunic! A savage beast
devoured him! Joseph was torn by a beast!" 34 Jacob rent his clothes,
put sackcloth on his loins, and observed mourning for his son
many days. 35 All his sons and daughters sought to comfort him;
but he refused to be comforted, saying, "No, I will go down
mourning to my son in Sheol." Thus his father bewailed him.
There is some irony in the two descriptions. Although David’s grief is real,
two sons have died, Jacob refuses to be comforted for a son he believes is
dead, but who is not. There is something unseemly and exaggerated in
Jacob’s grief.
What can be said about David's and Jacob's excessive mourning of
their sons? Rabbinic literature seems to chide Jacob for his excessive
mourning. In the phrase vay-yemaeyn, his sons blame each other for the state
they are now all in. Judah especially is blamed and flees to Adullam. And if
truth be said, in Jacob’s own words, he never got over his image of himself
as a bereaved father, even when Joseph was restored to him, hence his words
to Pharoah, “Few and hard have been the years of my life.” (Gen 47: 9)
As to David, the bible itself rebukes him for not doing his work as king,
through the prophet Natan and later through his general Yoav.
Joab came to the king in his quarters and said, "Today you have
humiliated all your followers, who this day saved your life, and the
lives of your sons and daughters, and the lives of your wives and
concubines, 7by showing love for those who hate you and hate for
those who love you. For you have made clear today that the officers
and men mean nothing to you. I am sure that if Absalom were alive
today and the rest of us dead, you would have preferred it. 8 Now arise,
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 come out and placate your followers! For I swear by the LORD that
if you do not come out, not a single man will remain with you
overnight; and that would be a greater disaster for you than any disaster
that has befallen you from your youth until now."

I have brought you two instances in which two fathers, David and Jacob
openly and excessively express grief. But when Aaron hears that his two sons
Nadav and Avihu have died, in contrast to David and Jacob, Aaron is silent
(va-yidom Aharon) (Lev. 10:3).
Now Aaron’s sons Nadab and Abihu each took his fire pan, put fire in
it, and laid incense on it; and they offered before the LORD alien fire,
which He had not enjoined upon them. 2And fire came forth from
(‫ )מלפני‬the LORD and consumed them; thus they died at the instance
of (before) (‫ )לפני‬the LORD. 3Then Moses said to Aaron, “This is what
the LORD meant when He said: Through those near to Me I show
Myself holy, and gain glory before all the people.” And Aaron was
silent! 6And Moses said to Aaron and to his sons Eleazar and Ithamar,
“Do not bare your heads and do not rend your clothes, lest you die
and anger strike the whole community. But your kinsmen, all the house
of Israel, shall bewail the burning that the LORD has wrought. 7And
so do not go outside the entrance of the Tent of Meeting, lest you die,
for the LORD’s anointing oil is upon you.” And they did as Moses had
bidden.
As if this were not enough Moses cautions him not to show outward signs of
mourning and to carry on normal work, for not to do so, would lead to his
death.
If we take an intertextual look at these three tales of father’s losing
sons, we can see that Leviticus is pointing to the possible disintegration of
family and community if the people see the leader mourning,
There is a comparable instance in rabbinic literature; one which
concerns Beruriah and her husband R. Meir which appears in the Midrash on
Proverbs 31:10:
Beruriah was the learned and compassionate wife of Rabbi Meir.]
While Rabbi Meir was teaching on a Shabbat afternoon, both of his
sons died from the plague that was affecting their city. When Rabbi
Meir returned home, he asked his wife, “Where are our sons?” She
handed him the cup for havdalah and he said the blessing. Again he
asked, “Where are our sons?” She brought food for him, and he ate.
When he had finished eating, Beruriah said to her husband, “My
teacher, I have a question. A while ago, a man came and deposited
something precious in my keeping. Now he has come back to claim
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 what he left. Shall I return it to him or not?” Meir responded, “Is not
one who holds a deposit required to return it to its owner?” So she took
his hand and led him to where their two children lay. He began to
weep, crying “My sons, my sons.” She comforted him, “The Lord
gave, the Lord took. Y’hei sh’mei rabah mevorach, May the Name
of the Lord be blessed…”
It is almost as if Beruriah is trying to imitate Moses when she carries on and
doesn’t tell R. Meir about the death of her two sons until after Shabbat.
And another example is a midrash in Avot de-Rabbi Natan 14 relating to
Yohanan Ben Zakkai whose son dies. In this midrash, many rabbis come to
comfort R. Yohanan ben Zacai: One rabbi refers to Aaron who lost his two
sons and was comforted, for it says, vayidom Aharon. He understands
silence to be consolation. “So Aaron was comforted, and you are unable to
receive consolation.” R. Yohanan replied: “isn’t enough that I’m in distress!
Why add to my misery by adding Aaron’s sorrow?” Another rabbi entered
and referred to David’s mourning over his son and how he was consoled by
having a new son, Solomon born to him. And R. Yohanan’s reply was the
same, until R. Eliezer came in and genuinely consoled him.
Rabbi Elazar ben Arakh came in… and said to him: "Let me offer you
a parable. To what may this be compared? To a person to whom the
king entrusts a certain deposit. Each day this man weeps and moans,
saying: 'Woe is me! When will I safely be exempted from
[responsibility for] this deposit?!' You too, my master, had a son. He
studied Torah – Chumash, the Prophets, the Writings, Mishna,
Halakha, Aggada – and he departed from the world free of sin. You
should accept comfort for having returned your deposit whole. “
He said to him: "Elazar, my son, you have comforted me in the
manner that people offer comfort."
The Midrash records other "comforters" who invoke various examples of
people who were comforted for the deaths of loved ones. Rabbi Yochanan
ben Zakkai rejects all of these consolations. There is a concept call post
traumatic growth (PTG) which can be applied to the situation. Although
it seems impossible to maintain one’s sanity after losing a child, life can
go on and lead one to still count one’s blessings and see the greater
picture. This is what Elazar offers to R. Yochanan ben Zakkai.
It would seem that by carrying on as usual Aaron (and his two remaining
sons) are experiencing PTG. We see them seemingly following orders as the
story evolves in Leviticus 10:
12 Moses spoke to Aaron and to his remaining sons, Eleazar and
Ithamar: Take the meal offering that is left over from the LoRD's
offerings by fire and eat it unleavened beside the altar, for it is most
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 holy. 13 You shall eat it in the sacred precinct, inasmuch as it is your
due, and that of your children, from the LORD's offerings by fire; for
so I have been commanded. 14 But the breast of elevation offering
and the thigh of gift offering you, and your sons and daughters
with you, may eat in any clean place, for they have been assigned
as a due to you and your children from the Israelites' sacrifices of
well-being. 15Together with the fat of fire offering, they must present
the thigh of gift offering and the breast of elevation offering, which are
to be elevated as an elevation offering before the LoRD, and which are
to be your due and that of your children with you for all time-as the
LoRD has commanded.
16 Then Moses inquired about the goat of sin offering, and it had
already been burned! He was angry with Eleazar and Ithamar, Aaron's
remaining sons, and said, 17 "Why did you not eat the sin offering
in the sacred area? For it is most holy, and He has given it to you to
remove the guilt of the community and to make expiation for them
before the LoRD. 18 Since its blood was not brought inside the
sanctuary/ you should certainly have eaten it in the sanctuary, as I
commanded." 19 And Aaron spoke to Moses, "See, this day they
brought their sin offering and their burnt offering before the LoRD,
and such things have befallen me! Had I eaten sin offering today,
would the LORD have approved?" 20 And when Moses heard this, he
approved.
Clearly underlying this strange discourse between Moses and Aaron and
Moses and Aaron’s sons is tension. Perhaps business as usual is taking a toll
on Aaron and his sons who should be mourning, if they were normal people.
Is their deviation from the prescribed behavior a form of protest? And then
at the end, when Aaron indirectly refers to what has befallen him, Moses
approves. But what does he approve? And Aaron is asking would God have
approved? And to this there is no answer.
But if Aaron really complies, why is Moses Angry with him. Is
scripture suggesting that Aaron is not totally compliant? Yael Shemesh
writes:
“But even though Aaron and his sons are instructed to stifle their
mourning and to continue the ritual in the Sanctuary—business as
usual, as it were—they nevertheless find a way to express their grief
by abstaining from the ritual consumption of the gift offering. Aaron
allows it to burn to ashes, thereby turning it into a burnt offering. When
Moses scolds him for this, Aaron associates his action with the
calamity that has befallen him, without naming it explicitly: “Such
things have befallen me!” (Lev. 10:19). This expresses his intense
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 pain. Diane Sharon calls attention to the fact that this is a ritual meal;
consequently “in rejecting this meal, Aaron is also refusing to share a
meal with the God whose fire has consumed his sons.” According to
her, a sin offering as described in Leviticus 10, part of which is eaten
by the priests and part of which is reserved for the deity, can be viewed,
in a certain sense, as a meal shared by the priests and the deity. By
refusing to take part in this feast, Aaron is expressing, in the only
326
way left to him, his grief and rage over what has just happened.”
Sharon Rimon, writes:
“Aharon is expressing his feeling that it would not be favorable in
God's eyes to continue everything as usual. Admittedly, the sacrifices
are offered as commanded, and Aharon and his sons have refrained
from adopting any outward signs of mourning, but Aharon feels that
327
there is a limit: the sin offering cannot be eaten in this situation.”
Rashbam (commenting on verse 19) suggests a reason for Aharon not eating
the sin offering:
… In the midst of this [auspicious] greatness, this great tragedy has
come upon us. "[After] such things have befallen me" – how can I eat
the sin offering, one of the holy sacrifices prescribed for all
generations, on this day where our joy has become soured and mixed?
Aharon feels that he cannot eat the meat of the sacrifices in a state of
such sorrow. He continues to perform the service, and shows no outward
signs of mourning, but he cannot bring himself to perform an act that so
inherently expresses joy.
As Nechama Leibowitz explains:
If we read these verses as they were uttered, we find that they do not
constitute a halakhic debate… but rather a justification that is uttered
out of the feelings of his heart on that bitter day. Although Aharon
has accepted upon himself the special prohibition (of the customs
of mourning) and has accepted God's judgment, he is not
commanded nor is it expected of him that he be filled with joy. For
this reason, his heart tells him that he need not force himself to eat
the sin offering, for the offering is not some magical act but rather
a symbol of the pure thoughts of he who brings it and of he who
performs it. Therefore, his heart tells him that he need not force

326
Yael Shemesh, “Do not bare your heads and do not rend your clothes” (Leviticus
10:6): On Mourning and Refraining from Mourning in the Bible,” in Leviticus and
Numbers, A. Brenner and A.C.C. Lee (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013): 33-54.
327
Sharon Rimon, “In Response to Death,” http://etzion.org.il/en/response-death
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 himself to eat the sin offering – [an aspect of the Divine service]
which should be done with great joy.
We may take this idea a step further. Not only is Aharon not obligated to eat
the sin offering with joy, but we must ask as Aharon does whether it would
even be favorable in God's eyes for him to do so. Would God really want
Aharon to ignore completely the death of his two sons? There is some
significance to their deaths, and if Aharon would pay no attention to it,
ignoring the event and its message, and go on to eat the sacrifice with a joyful
heart, this would be a distortion that could not be favorable in God's eyes.
Clearly there are many commentators who have difficulties
accepting the traditional understanding that Aaron is silent in the face of the
tragic death of his first born sons.
There are two possible contrary meanings of Va yiddom: The
traditional interpretation is that Aaron was silent; and the non-traditional
interpretation is that he moaned and cried.
The traditional view is to find meaning in Aaron’s acceptance of
what has befallen him as you can see in this sampling of traditional rabbinic
views.
1) Following a midrash, Leviticus Rabbah 12:2. Rashi (1040-1105)
takes Aaron's silence as a sign of his great faith: Aaron does not
utter so much as a word of protest or complaint. On this interpretation,
Aaron was rewarded for his silence: In the very next passage, God
addresses him exclusively, without Moses playing any role (10:8-11).
2) R. Eliezer Lipman Lichtenstein (1848-1896) notes that the Torah
describes Aaron's response with the word va-yidom rather than va-
yishtok. Although the two terms appear to be synonymous[6] - both
convey that the person kept silent - R. Lichtenstein finds an important
difference in nuance between them: Whereas va-yishtok (the word not
used here) suggests "abstaining from speaking, weeping, groaning, or
any other outward manifestation, va-yidom "connotes inner peace
and calmness of spirit." The Torah describes Aaron with this latter
term, Lichtenstein argues, in order to emphasize that "his heart was at
peace and his spirit calm even internally; he did not question God's
ways, but accepted God's decree" (Shem Olam to Leviticus 10:3).
3) R. Isaac Abravanel (1437-1508) offers a dramatically different -
and a much more human - understanding of Aaron's silence. "Aaron's
heart turned to lifeless stone. He did not weep and mourn like a
bereaved father, nor did he accept Moses' attempts to console him,
for his soul had left him and he was speechless.”.

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 4) Rabbi Naftali Hertz Weisel (1725-1805) comments: "It seems to
me that this silence was not only the absence of weeping, but also a
matter of acceptance and quiet of the soul… as in 'Be silent for God
and wait patiently for him' (Tehillim 37:7) … Likewise, Aharon's
heart is quieted from his sorrow, and his soul cleaves to God…."
And finally a more modern version of this view is that of Arnold Eisen,
Chancellor of JTSA:
“When he heard the lesson drawn by Moses from the event of his
sons' deaths, "Aaron was silent." He got that right, I believe.
Theology fails at such points of contact with the ultimate. All sense
fails. Words fail. It's far better to fall back on notions such as the
"hiding of God's countenance" than to construct "Holocaust
theologies" that purport to explain why God carried out or
condoned or allowed or could not stop the horrors. With all due
respect to Fackenheim's powerful notion of a "614th
commandment"—not to grant Hitler posthumous victories by
abandoning Jewishness or Judaism—nor do I find the Holocaust a
reason for Jewish commitment in our day. It is rather an obstacle to
faith that believers must get past if they are to sustain belief in a God
of history, and that all thinking Jews must get past in order to retain
identification with their people. Events like the death of six million
Jews—or of one innocent child of any nation or faith—threaten to
block our path to a life of Torah. One does not reason one's way past
such things, I believe. Rather, one lives on in spite of them, with
the help of a sacred order like the one that Leviticus sets forth, the
help of a community that sustains us along with that sacred order,
and—incomprehensibly but amazingly—the help of God.”
[Arnold Eisen, JTSA Commentary on Parshat Shemini April 18, 2009]
These five commentators express the traditional understanding that
Aaron was silent and that this silence was a form of acceptance that enabled
Aaron to move on. In other words, to experience PTG.
Thus “the normal understanding, as noted, is that the root d.m.m
connotes silence. But this, too, can be understood in two totally different
ways. The dominant interpretation in Jewish tradition is that Aaron held his
peace and did not mourn, because he accepted the divine judgment and found
consolation in what Moses had said (Avot derabbi Natan A, 14 [ed.
Schechter, p. 30]; b Zevahim 115b; et passim). That is, the sense of d.m.m
here is like that in Jeremiah 47:6 “rest and be still (domi)!” Some, however,
hold that Aaron was rendered mute by shock, accompanied by a deep
depression. This reading is supported by Exodus 15:16: “Terror and dread
descend upon them; through the might of Your arm they are still as stone
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(yiddemu ka-aven).” A mute reaction to bereavement is well known in the
328
anthropological literature.”
Non-traditional: (Moaning and Crying)
But more recently commentators are coming to look at a different view of the
word Vayidom. Some are basing their views on rabbinic sources and others
on an article written by Baruch Levine in the 90's. Thus Matt Berkowitz
writing in 2009, bases his point of view on Nachmanides.
Ramban on Lev: 10
And the reason for “And Aaron was silent.” This means that he had cried
aloud, but then became silent. Or perhaps the meaning is as in the verse,
“Give yourself no respite, your eyes no rest (tidom)” (Lam. 2:18).
Nachmanides bases his interpretation on the passage from Lamentations:
"18Their heart cried out to the Lord. O wall of Fair Zion,
Shed tears like a torrent Day and night!
Give yourself no respite, Your eyes no rest. 19
19Arise, cry out in the night at the beginning of the watches,
Pour out your heart like water in the presence of the Lord!
Lift up your hands to Him for the life of your infants,
Who faint for hunger at every street corner."
‫רמב"ן ויקרא פרק י‬
)‫ או כטעם ואל תדום בת עינך (איכה ב יח‬.‫ ואז שתק‬,‫ שהיה בוכה בקול‬- ‫וטעם וידום אהרן‬
‫איכה פרק ב‬
‫(יח) צָ עַק לבָּ ם אֶ ל אֲדֹ נָי חוֹמַ ת בַּ ת צּיוֹן הוֹרידי ַכנַחַ ל ד ְמעָה יוֹמָ ם ולַיְ לה אַ ל ִּת ְתנִּ י פּוגַת לְך אַ ל‬
‫ ס‬:‫ִּתדֹ ם בַ ת עֵּינְֵּך‬
‫(יט) קוּמי רֹני <בליל> בַ לַיְ לָה לְ ר ֹאשׁ אַ ְשׁמֻרוֹת שׁפְ כי כַמַ ים לבֵּ ְך ֹנכַח פְּ נֵי אֲדֹ נָי ְשאי אֵ לָיו ַכפַּיְך‬
‫ ס‬:‫עַל ֶנפֶשׁ עוֹ ָללַיְך הָ עֲטוּפים בְּ ָרעָב בְּ ר ֹאשׁ כָל חוּצוֹת‬
This is how Berkowitz explains his change of mind in a recent
commentary writes:
” I, and many others, have always understood Aaron’s reaction as a
deep, impenetrable silence reflecting the most genuine and profound
reaction to tragedy. Ramban is far more nuanced in his reading.
Ramban suggests two compelling interpretations. In one, he reads
deeper into the text and suggests that Aaron, at first, cried aloud and
then fell silent. If we are to embrace Nahmanides’ reading, it
necessitates translating the relevant part of the verse as “And Aaron
became silent.” In which case, paralyzing silence is not the initial
reaction to losing both of his sons. He cries aloud, as one would expect,
and only after this expression of mourning does he become silent.

328
See Yael Shemesh article for much of the above.
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 Nahmanides bases a second reading on a verse from Lamentations.
There, the Hebrew dom (falling silent) is read in the context of tears
pouring forth from one’s eyes. And so, applying this understanding
leads to an image of Aaron’s tears ceasing altogether. Both tears and
verbal lament stop, and Aaron begins the process of healing.” What I
find most empowering about Ramban’s perspective, in contrast to
what is often understood as the peshat of the verse, is that Ramban
allows the reader to embrace the full spectrum of responses to personal
tragedy. Silence, crying, and wailing are all appropriate expressions of
deep loss. Recognizing this spectrum of human response makes us
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stronger as a family and as a nation.”
So far we have not looked at Bible commentators. Baruch Levine
330
supports Nahmandides reading of Vayidom in his article. Yael Shemesh
summarized Levine's article when she wrote:
"Unlike the dominant reading that Aaron was mute (whether in
acceptance of the divine judgment or because of his trauma), Levine
(1993) proposed understanding the verb d.m.m here in the sense d.m.m,
“to mourn, moan.” He cites the similar Akkadian root damāmu, which
has this meaning. He also proposes that we understand the Ugaritic
d.m.m as cognate with the Akkadian damāmu and parallel to the
Ugaritc root b.k.y ‘cry’ and cites texts from Ebla that also support a
connection between the root d.m.m and mourning. Thus Levine (1993:
89) proposes that “Aaron reacted in the customary manner; he moaned
or wailed and was about to initiate formal mourning and lamentation
for his two lost sons.” But his plan is interrupted when Moses
summons their cousins to bury the dead (v. 4) and explicitly forbids
Aaron and his sons to mourn, so as to not to profane the sacred
precincts: “And Moses said to Aaron and to his sons Eleazar and
Ithamar, ‘Do not bare your heads and do not rend your clothes’” (Lev.
331
10:6).
COUNTERVOICES
In rabbinical literature, Elisheba the daughter of Amminadab, is allowed to
mourn.

329
Matt Berkowitz, Commentary on Shemini, posted On March 18, 2014 / 5774 A
Taste of Torah to be found at http://www.jtsa.edu/silence-and-loss
330
“Silence, Sound, and the Phenomenology of Mourning in Biblical Israel,” Journal
of the Ancient Near Eastern Society 22 (1993): 89–106.
331
Shemesh, above.
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 Elisheba the daughter of Amminadab did not enjoy happiness in the
world. True, she witnessed five crowns attained by her relatives in one
day: her brother in law was a king, her brother was a prince, her
husband was High Priest, her two sons were both Deputy High Priest,
Phinehas her grandson was a Priest anointed for war. But where her
sons entered to offer incense and were burnt, her joy was changed to
mourning. Thus it is written, After the death of the two sons of Aaron
(Leviticus Rabbah 20:2).
Although the rabbis are sensitive to the absence of Elisheba, the way
they insert this text, emphasizes that her only importance up to now was in
relation to the other members of her family. But the rabbis realize that all of
this ascribed status is worth nothing when her sons are killed. This is in
contrast to Aaron whose life does not collapse when his sons die and who is
expected to go to work, business as usual without a mourning period. His
status, in contrast to Elisheba is achieved and as such means he cannot take
time out to mourn. Unlike Elisheba who is in a permanent state of trauma,
Aaron has moved on and experienced PTG.
Only in feminist rewritings of the story of Elisheva is mourning
allowed for all the characters and those who do not mourn are criticized.
There are those who build on the existing midrash about Elisheva to relate to
332
Aaron’s silence.
Naomi Graetz writes: Like so many stories in the bible, this is one about
family relationships. Elisheva gets her prominence from others, not herself.
There is no reference to daughters, only sons and grandsons in the midrashim
we have looked at. In a midrash that I wrote many years ago, I created a
daughter—and called her Bityah. I made her into a scribe; gave her a lover,
Moses; had her be critical of levitical customs and rules. Others have written
about Elisheva as well. Jill Hammer has emphasized her skill as a midwife
and makes her a heroine during the plague of darkness, when no other
midwife would dare go out and deliver a baby in Egypt.
Another midrash written by Penina Adelman, picks up on the passage
from Proverbs, oz ve-hadar levusha and asks, are her relatives, her garments
and her adornments? Does she bask in reflected glory, or does she have light
of her own? The last verse: vatishak, le-yom aharon, sheds light on this. She
knows that happiness can turn to tragedy, in a split second Day, does not
literally mean a day, it means a lifetime. Finally, Ellen Frankel describes
332
Naomi Graetz, S/He Created Them: Feminist Retellings of Biblical Stories, pp.
105-110; Jill Hammer, Sisters at Sinai, pp. 107-113; Penina Adelman, Praise Her
Works, pp. 134-139; and Ellen Frankel, The Five Books of Miriam, pp. 159-161

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Elisheva as a mother who describes how awful it was for her that she could
not mourn together with her husband and remaining children. Moses tried to
silence her, but she refused and put on sackcloth and mourned. She links the
story with that of Beruriah, whose two children were suddenly taken from
her. And she did not mourn until after Shabbat when she told R. Meir.
To Conclude: Shai Held asks the questions: Should leadership roles limit
public expressions of grief and sorrow?
But what of Moses' prohibiting Aaron and his sons from mourning
publicly? Why can't the family grieve as they choose? As priests,
Aaron and his sons are entrusted with the work of affirming and
preserving life. "By virtue of their consecration, the priests and their
vestments belong to the sacred sphere that was to be dissociated from
death and corpse contamination."
He may be right! If we think of the decision Joe Biden made thinking of his
family first rather than running for president, there seems to be something in
this way of thinking even today. We expect more of our leaders than we do
of ourselves. That may be unfair, but it is possible that a mourning, weeping
sitting leader cannot effectively do his or her job.
I end on a personal note. In a sermon I gave recently (April 2017) I spoke
about this difficult chapter in relationship to my father who died at age 74
from lung cancer. At his funeral, my mother insisted that I do not cry in front
of “all these people.” It was very important for her that we keep up a façade
of respectability. This is a painful memory for me and so it should be clear
why I prefer Ramban’s interpretation. Every year I am reminded of my
mother’s reaction to not crying in public when we read this chapter. I believe
that our (her) reactions to tragedy reveals a lot about who we are.
I pointed out that we usually read the portion of “shemini” during the
period of tragedy and transition from Yom Hashoah, to Yom Hazikaron to
Independence day. We often ask ourselves what is the “right” reaction to
unfair tragedy. We usually try to assign meaning to what has happened, or to
blame someone else or even the entire system (hospital, government,
education, etc.)
Fortunately, today, we have usually stopped blaming the victim (he
smoked, he was fat, he went like a sheep to the gas chambers, they didn’t see
the writing on the wall, she dressed provocatively etc.). We try to understand
what is totally incomprehsible as a way to keep ourselves sane. Botht the
truth of the matter is that bad happens to good people and good to bad people
and that is the way of the world. I believe it is wrong to say in the liturgy “al
het” –we have sinned--for things that are beyond our control. This approach
will not result in salvation, nor in safety from evil or disease. Of course, we
must look at both sides of the street before we cross the road and not overdo
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food, liquor etc. But we must remember that none of this gives us absolute
protection form the inevitable, the crazy person, disease, terrorism, and the
arbitrary whim(s) of God towards those who are close to him.

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-224-
CHAPTER NINETEEN: THE EFFECT OF THE CONQUERING OF
333
LAISH ON FUTURE GENERATIONS

ABSTRACT: Many episodes in the Book of Judges depict a state of

lawlessness. There is a downward spiral in the entire book culminating in the
civil war of Judges 19-21 in which only 600 men of the tribe of Benjamin
survive. This number correlates with the 600 military men from the tribe of
Dan who totally destroyed the peaceful town of Laish (in Judges 18) without
giving any advance warning to this non-Israelite settlement -- a clear
violation of the Deuteronomic law (Deut. 20:10-5) that states that in dealing
with cities that are "at a great distance from you" Israelites are to first make
an offer of peace. This act of violence is echoed in the sacking of Shechem
(Gen 34: 25-29), by the brothers, Simeon and Levi, when the newly
circumcised males in the city are resting securely (btḥ). Although neither text
overtly criticizes the perpetrators' actions, one can read into the texts that
there is disapproval of both the Danites' and the brothers' actions. By looking
at both texts intertextually, this paper draws a tentative conclusion that
underlying both texts is a negative attitude to the violent nature of conquest
which results in total destruction. I posit that Jacob's blessings/curses to his
sons Simon and Levi (Gen. 49:5-7) and Dan (Gen. 49: 16-18) serve as further
intertextual support to this view. Although many commentators feel that the
blessing of Dan refers to Samson (who is from the tribe of Dan), this paper
argues that Jacob's death-bed statements can refer equally to the conquest of
Laish by the tribe of Dan in Judges 18. If this is the case, perhaps we can
understand that Jacob is alluding to the non-acceptability of unprovoked
aggression and the corrosive effect of violence on future generations.
I came to this topic by chance. Exactly a year ago, I had just
submitted an article on Genesis 34 to Torah.com at the same time I was
teaching a class on Judges 17-18 in English. I had previously taught this text
in Hebrew and while teaching in English had an “aha” moment. When I
taught Judges 17-18 in Hebrew, I focused on the character of Michah who I
saw as a Laban figure, losing his terafim and saw some textual evidence to
connect the two figures.
Now what I saw was the razing of an innocent, pastoral town, Laish,
a point which the text takes pains to repeat twice about how trusting they
were "‫( "עם שוקט ובטח‬see 18:27). The word ‫ בטח‬is repeated 4 times in the text.
The fact that a Levite first blesses (‫ )לכו לשלום‬the Danite gangsters and then
joins them is interesting. But what grabbed my attention and was the ‘aha’

333
This paper was given at SBL Annual Meeting in Atlanta, November 22, 2015
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moment was of course the use of the word ‫ בטח‬in Genesis 34:25. The people
of Shechem were unsuspecting: ‫ ויבאו על העיר בטח‬is how I read it. I had never
really understood what the word ‫ בטח‬referred to. Was it Shimon and Levi
coming on the town confident that they wouldn’t be stopped (JPS has it
unmolested); or does the ‫ בטח‬refer to the city being caught off guard (as says
the Etz Hayim commentary). If we see these two texts commenting on each
other, I realized that there is both intra and inter textual criticism. Each text,
by its choice of language criticizes the perpetrators of a crime of killing
innocent people for the sake of a "cause". In one, it is an honor killing, in the
other, it is to settle the land. When I looked at both texts together, I saw an
anti-zealotry, pacifist message--criticizing the overkill.
Since I had noted the connection between the Shechem text in
Genesis 49 in the paper I had just submitted. I now looked to see what
rabbinic commentators had to say about Dan in Gen 49. I noted they connect
this text to Samson (who is one chapter before Judges 17-18), but not with
Dan in 17-18. I also checked to see what they had to say about Laish and they
also do not connect it with Gen 34. So I searched and found a couple of books
which connect the two episodes. Yet Yairah Amit claims that Judges 17-18
is against Beit El without mentioning the Beit El of Gen 35 (or the previous
text in 33). In her article, Amit writes that “The negative criticism is
conveyed to the reader only by indirect means, i.e., through the words and
deeds of the heroes, and not by direct statements by the narrator; and that this
negative criticism is presented as a matter of circumstance.” She adds, that
had circumstances been different “had there been a central government, one
could reasonably assume that the personalities involved would not have
334
degenerated to the level of the actions described.” I think this is an
interesting judgment call, one which takes away the agency from the people
of Dan, making an unwarranted assumption, i.e. that people only perform
evil deeds because of the situation and not because they themselves might be
evil or even misled by the propaganda around them.
I thought it was fascinating to see what is common about both curses
by Jacob to his sons (Simeon/Levi /Dan) in Gen 49. What fascinated me was
that the commentators apply the curses to Samson and not to Judges 18. Was
it a conscious censorship in that they did not see (to me) the obvious
connections? [An example of this censorship was putting the 'nun' in Moshe
so that it reads Menasheh at the end of Judges 18].

334
Yairah Amit, “Hidden Polemic in the Conquest of Dan, Judges XVII-XVIII,”
Vetus Testamentum 40 (1990): 8.
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 I had a fun day and almost connected the dots. I became more
convinced than ever that both the writers of Gen 34 and Judges 17-18 (and
I'm not sure which text is commenting on which) were incensed at killing
innocent people without provocation [and perhaps taking an anti-herem
position] and that it is possible that these are both anti-conquering texts as
well. I did not know if anyone had read these four texts together, but I set out
to do so and thus came to write this paper.
Many episodes in the Book of Judges depict a state of lawlessness.
There is a downward spiral in the entire book culminating in the civil war of
335
Judges 19-21 in which only 600 men of the tribe of Benjamin survive. This
number correlates with the 600 military men from the tribe of Dan who
totally destroyed the peaceful town of Laish (in Judges 18). They did not give
any advance warning to this non-Israelite settlement. In fact, they came upon
a clearly innocent and unsuspecting town. The innocence of this town is
repeated twice. Once in 18:7 and then again in 18:27. This was a clear
violation of the Deuteronomic law (Deut. 20:10-15) that states that in dealing
with cities that are "at a great distance from you" Israelites are to first make
an offer of peace.
Michael Walzer writes in reference to a comment Martin Buber
makes about "A people without a king plunders; a people without a king is
plundered" (1990, 80). But then Walzer writes that “in order to make this
argument, the author has to adopt a critical attitude toward the first
people (his own) and a sympathetic attitude toward the second (his
enemy)”. He argues that “The Deuteronomic writers are incapable of
336
either the criticism or the sympathy “
The whole thrust of my article is to disagree with Walzer and I
believe that the Dtr writer is both criticizing the Danites and sympathizing
with the Laitians.
Who were these Danites and why were they wandering? According
to the Jewish Study Bible “The Danites' wandering may reflect the inter-
tribal relations during the period of the judges, the difficult situation of the

335
Six hundred indicates a military unit. See 1 Sam. 30.9. The Jewish Study Bible,
2nd edition, editors Marc Zvi Brettler and Adele Berlin (Philadelphia: JPS, 2014):
548, note on 18:11.
336
Michael Walzer, “The Idea of Holy War in Ancient Israel,” The Journal of
Religious Ethics, Vol. 20, No. 2 (Fall, 1992): 215-228 {p. 227]. Walzer quote from
Martin.Buber, Kingship of God. (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press.
1990).
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 337
individual, and the status of the cultic sites.” In addition, everyone did
what they pleased in those days. This of course is the key to what happens
from here until the end of the book of Judges. It is interesting that the fate of
Dan is mentioned first in Joshua 19 and again in Judges 1: 34-35. In Joshua
19 there is no mention of the defenselessness of Laish. However, Joshua 19
makes the case that the seeds for the lawlessness depicted in Judges 18, is
because Dan did not succeed in settling in the portion allotted to them.
A suggestion has been made that Judges 18 is a sort of parody of the
holy war. McConville writes: “If there is a parody of the holy war in the
Danites' slaughter of the unsuspecting people of Laish, it may be that their
venal priesthood also parodies the true priesthood that once bore the ark
338
into the land. “
I don’t understand how he can view this as a parody; it is serious
stuff; it’s not even black humor. It is a horror story and so is the rape of the
women necessary for the continuation of the tribe of Benjamin at the end of
Judges. I see it as condemnation and I find that this act of violence is echoed
in the sacking of Shechem (Gen 34: 25-29), by the brothers, Simeon and
Levi, when the newly circumcised males in the city are resting securely (btḥ).
Perhaps the irony if you want to see some humoristic element stems
from Deuteronomy 20, which begins with the need to have a priest come
forward and give his blessing to the success of the venture. In contrast, in
Judges 18 you have a cowardly fake priest Micha giving his blessing and then
running back to his town.
I posit that Jacob's blessings/curses to his sons Simon and Levi (Gen.
49:5-7) and Dan (Gen. 49: 16-18) serve as further intertextual support to this
anti warfare view. Jacob's tribal sayings in Genesis 49: 1-27 are difficult
texts. They both condemn/curse and commend/bless. They are both reflective
of the past and a future time in which the tribes are settled in the land. One
of these sayings negatively describes the absorption of Simeon into the tribe
of Judah and the scattering of Levi (5-7) throughout the land of Israel. This
is usually understood as alluding to punishment for Simon and Levi’s
gratuitous acts of violence in the sacking of Shechem (Gen 34: 25-29).
As you can read in this fairly long quote Susan Niditch writes that
all is fair in war.
• Any degree of cruelty is acceptable in order to achieve victory in
battle. The Danite founding myth of Judges can be read to suggest

337
Study Bible, p. 548,
338
J. G. McConville, “Priesthood in Joshua to Kings,” Vetus Testamentum, Vol. 49,
Fasc. 1 (Jan., 1999): 73-87.
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 that it was good that the Laishians, targets of Danite conquest,
were a quiet, peaceful, and unsuspecting people, the better to
conquer their land and eliminate them (Jud 18:7, 10, 27). …
• Biblical writers criticize and condemn the destructive behavior to
which emotions of war, hatred, anger, vengeance lead. War may
be necessary in certain situations but it need not be excessive. The
composer of Genesis 49 goes even further: the young men’s
actions indicate an anger that is too strong, a fury or arrogance, an
overflow of anger (‘evr¯ah, lit. from the root ‘¯abar meaning
“cross/pass over”) which is too severe, difficult (Gen 49:7). They
have gone overboard and in this catalog of the ancestor heroes of
the tribes they are characterized as hotheads, not to be admired or
339
imitated.
Genesis 49 depicts Dan (16-18) as a governor who like a snake/ viper
bites the horse's heels of those in front of him—and is awaiting God's
deliverance. Some commentators suggest that this text alludes favorably to
Samson the Danite's acts of guerilla warfare. I argue that Jacob's death-bed
statements can refer equally to the conquest of Laish by the tribe of Dan in
Judges 18. If this is the case, perhaps we can understand that Jacob is alluding
to the non-acceptability of unprovoked aggression and the corrosive effect of
violence on future generations. Thus Jacob's last testament has political
ramifications for its depiction of the conquest and settlement of the land.
Although neither text overtly criticizes the perpetrators' actions, one can read
into the texts that there is implicit disapproval of both the Danites' and the
brothers' actions. By looking at both texts intertextually, I am tentatively
concluding that underlying both texts is a negative attitude to the violent
nature of conquest which results in total destruction. Both the imagery and
plot in the sackings of the towns of Shechem (Gen 34: 25-29) and Laish (Jud
18: 27-29) -- towns which have a right to feel secure (btḥ)--can be read
intertextually shedding light on and alluding to each other's destruction.
I further am arguing that Gen 49:5-7; 16-18 when viewed
intertextually with Gen. 34 and Jud. 18 make a critical statement against
unwarranted massacre of innocents. Perhaps this is Jacob's living will to his
three sons: in the future (to paraphrase Jud 17.6) every man should not do as
he pleases, even if he can.

339
Susan Niditch, Judges: A Commentary (Louisville: Westminster John Knox,
2008).

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 What is the nature of the perpetrators in both texts? The Danites self-
describe themselves as bitter desperate people, ‫ ֲאנָשׁים מָ ֵרי ֶנפֶשׁ‬,
DESPERADOS, with the implication that they have nothing to lose and that
they are basically hot tempered (NSRV) thugs warning Michah not to pursue
them. "Don't do any shouting at us, or some desperate men [meaning us]
might attack you, and you and your family would lose your lives.”
The brothers in Gen 34 are not much better; they act with guile in
order to lull the people of Shechem into complacency, to a feeling of safety
– What can make you feel more secure than having undergone circumcision
and fully expecting to be accepted into the family!!! However, as Niditch has
pointed out the young men’s actions indicate an anger that is too strong,
a fury or arrogance, an overflow of anger in Gen 49 they are characterized
as hotheads, not to be admired or imitated.
Athalya Brenner, in her book I Am--: Biblical Women Tell Their Own
Stories, has Dinah suggest that Dan and Dinah have a shared history; but that
Dan leaves Judah to go up North to settle.
Besides these fun allusions to Dan and Dinah, there are other
parallels. These include Jacob’s setting up an idol and altar which he calls “el
elohei yisrael" when he arrives in Shechem (Gen 33) and later in Genesis 35,
in the follow up story to the massacre of Shechem, when he goes and settles
in Beth El and builds another altar, to the God (el) who appeared to him
(‫ )הַ נ ְראֶ ה אֵ לֶיך‬when he fled from Esau. All the alien gods are gotten rid of
[perhaps the ones that Levi and Simeon stole from the ‫ בית‬and God placed
his terror on the people so that no one pursued them. This is similar to the
terror that the Danites place on Michah’s people, so that no one pursues them.
We also have a name change here, a reference to Luz and Beth El. This
almost parallels the description that no one came to the rescue of the people
of Laish, because it was distant from Sidon. The Danites rebuilt the town and
settled there and named the town Dan, after their ancestor Dan who was
Israel’s son. Originally, however, the name of the town was Laish. And then
there is the repetition of the Levi/Cohen connection. Note that the word Levi
is repeated in both texts.
There are other parallels: the land was ‫ רחבת ידים‬in both; Jacob was
silent and the priest was told to be silent; And of course the words ‫ בטח‬repeat
themselves. The false Levite tells the Danites that this is god’s will!
In contrast to the Levite, Ute Bauer writes that this conquest is not
God’s will; that Dan is off the proper derech.
He writes:
The further north a tribe of Judah finds itself, the worse the situation becomes.
That the route of the Danites passed through the entire Northern Kingdom
serves to discredit the north as a whole. The entire narrative of conquest and
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 idolatry is permeated with military terminology. The Danites send out
warriors as spies, and the Danites themselves are described as men who are
armed with weapons of war and who take everything they want by brute force.
They smite Laish with the edge of the sword and burn the city with fire.
Rather than living according to God’s commandments, they live exclusively
according to the theory of might makes right. That the only town ever named
after them is a military camp reveals the Danites for what they really were
“brutal desperadoes. The intended effect was one of contrast: In Judges 13:25
we read that Samson the judge was moved by the spirit of God in Mahaneh-
dan (“And the Spirit of the Lord began to stir him in Mahaneh-dan, between
Zorah and Eshtaol.”). That was precisely what did not happen for the Danites
in Mahaneh-dan. They went their own way entirely. A way that no longer
bore any resemblance whatsoever to that of Yahweh, the God of Israel. The
literary form of a place-name etiology is used as a guise for expressing
something completely different, namely to characterize the Danites as brutal
desperadoes following a path other than that which Yahweh, the God of
340
Israel, had commanded.
The Road Trip
The last item I would like to discuss concerns the word derech. We have
seen that the road trip of the Danites from South-west to North-east. We first
meet this word in Genesis 35 when Jacob rids his family of the alien gods
which may have been stolen by Levi and Shimon. He then refers to the God
who has been with me on “the path I have walked,” :‫וַיְ הי עמָ די בַ דֶּ ֶּרְך אֲשֶׁ ר הָ לָכְ תּי‬.
As a result of this action, a terror fell on the cities around and they did not
pursue the sons of Jacob, just like no one pursued the Danites both on their
road trip to Laish and after they conquered and destroyed it. And then we see
the Danites on the road, according to Genesis 49 swiping at the feet of those
threatening them and then being told that the road ahead of them is God’s
will. Giving the Danites the feeling they are free to act without restrictions.
Those who come from the road trip inflict terrible damage on those who live
at the end of the road away from everyone else.
The road is a place of imminent flight from danger and/or death.
Chance passers by can kill you (think Cain); your brothers can kidnap you
when you are out asking directions for them on the Road to Dothan. You can
be thought to be a prostitute if you are sitting at the crossroads. Violence is
often inflicted on a woman fleeing on a road. Dinah gets raped when she
leaves the safety of her home. Think of Rachel who dies in childbirth ‫בדרך‬
‫לבית לחם‬. Or the Concubine of Gibeah who is raped and then cut into pieces
while travelling. Leaving one’s territory is fraught with danger and also those

340
Uwe F. W. Bauer, “A Metaphorical Etiology in Judges 18:12,” The Journal of
Hebrew Scriptures, Volume 3: Article 5 (2001).
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who have the temerity to do so know they are in danger or else capable of
inflicting terrible things on others. Thus the meaning of a road trip is
ambivalent; it is fraught; rules are suspended; there are victims and
perpetrators.
Continuing from here I would like to make sure that you agree with
me that the Gen 49: text refers to the Laish incident and not to Samson as is
commonly thought. I have emphasized how Dan is like a serpent on the road,
biting at the horse’s heels (which means he has placed himself at the back of
the caravan). The emphasis is on his finally becoming a proper tribe, he shall
finally be LIKE the rest of the tribes; something which is not the case until
the tribe gets to Laish. So after a long and arduous road trip, he finally arrives
and awaits deliverance. Is this a mockery of what happens? Since he brings
a rent a priest and chooses to worship idols? I cannot answer that. But I think
this reading is as convincing as the traditional one that has Samson being the
figure alluded to, rather than the tribe of Dan in Judges 18.
I would like to connect this with the actual road trip that Jacob takes
where the word DERECH is also mentioned. He says after destroying the
idols: that he is Going to go up to Bethel and build an altar “to the God who
answered me on the day of my trouble and who has been with me on the path
I have walked.” After this they burn the alien Gods. In contrast, in Judges 18,
after stealing Micha’s idols, the Danites set out on their road trip, keeping the
back flank clear and protected with the intention of settling in Laish. They
get there and as I mentioned earlier as a sign of gratitude, set up an altar.
So to conclude: I would like to return to Michael Walzer whom I quoted
at the beginning of this paper and disagreed with. He wrote:
The author has to adopt a critical attitude toward the first people (his own)
and a sympathetic attitude toward the second (his enemy). The Deuteronomic
writers, for reasons contemporary communitarians should worry about, are
incapable of either the criticism or the sympathy.
I believe that the authors of many such texts allowed their horror to seep
in when describing difficult situations. By their choice of words, allusions,
by repetitions, and intertextual connections, they allow both contemporary
readers and future readers a chance to bring fresh eyes to these difficult texts.
The Deuteronomic writers were both capable of criticizing wrongdoers (even
when they were his own people) and of sympathizing with the victims, even
when they were the so-called enemy. And with that I remind you that the title
of my paper was The Effect of the Conquering of Laish on Future
Generations and as we say in Hebrew, ‫המבין יבין‬.

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CHAPTER TWENTY: METAPHORS CONNECTING JEREMIAH
341
AND JEZEBEL: THE CASE OF DUNG

INTRODUCTION:
To end up like dung (domen in Hebrew) represents the utter destruction,
annihilation, blotting out of existence, devastation, laying waste to and
flattening of nations, rulers and populations. Dung is an excreted substance,
cast out of the body, and is a metaphor representing revulsion, disgust, horror
and loathing. Since dung is associated with God’s will, it is a powerful
metaphor. The dung in the sources in this paper symbolizes God’s rejection
and condemnation of evil-doers. What can be worse than dogs devouring the
flesh of a former powerful queen, such as Jezebel, and her carcass turned into
a thing, excrement! This image reoccurs when Jeremiah writes that “the
people of Israel shall die gruesome deaths, not be lamented or buried; and
will be like dung on the surface of the ground with their corpses as fodder for
the birds of the sky and the beasts of the earth” (Jer. 16:4). And why? Because
their fathers followed other gods, deserting Him (vs.11-12). And finally in
Psalm 83:11 and Isaiah 25:10 the image of dung ends up as God’s revenge
on Israel’s enemy. The refrain throughout many chapters in Jeremiah is of
how God eviscerates people and kings, reducing them to dung, as retribution
for Israel’s sins.
342
Since Israel is very often referred to as a sinning woman, this paper
suggests that Jezebel/Israel’s queen/female monarch/Israel as sinning
woman/King Jehoiakim are all conflated in the dung imagery. Of course,
Jezebel is not mentioned, nor alluded to in the book of Jeremiah. Although
one could argue a connection, since according to Rabbinic tradition, Jeremiah
is the author, not only of his own prophecy, but of the Book of Kings as
343
well. By the time, Jeremiah is writing, both the Northern and Southern

341
This paper was given at The Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) in San
Antonio, November 2016. It has been extensively revised, for which I would
like to thank Deborah Greineman and the various anonymous readers. It has
been slightly revised in the 20th issue of Women in Judaism: A
Multidisciplinary Journal 14:1 (2017).
https://wjudaism.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/wjudaism/article/view/29469
342
See Naomi Graetz, "God is to Israel as Husband is to Wife," in Athalya Brenner
(editor), A Feminist Companion to the Latter Prophets, (Sheffield: Sheffield
Academic Press, 1995), pp. 126-145 and the bibliography within to see the many
references to Israel depicted as a sinning woman.
343
“Moses wrote his own book, and the portion of Balaam, and Job. Joshua wrote
his book and eight verses of the Pentateuch. Samuel wrote his book, and the Book
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Kingdoms are conflated as Israel (even though strictly speaking only Judah
is left). Yet one can argue that Jezebel (who, with her corrupt and Baal
worshipping husband Ahab, represent the Northern Kingdom) can still be
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turned into dung as a metonym for the sinning and soon to be exiled Israel.
This paper uses many tools. First of all, it reads the biblical text
against the grain of the usual historical-contextual diachronic reading. It is a
synchronic type of reading in which texts are read together, often reaching
across the historical divide. This type of intertextual reading is often referred
to as midrash. However, this paper argues that this type of reading is justified.
Thus it is possible to ask whether the sixth century B.C.E. Judean prophet
Jeremiah hates the ninth century Queen from the exiled Kingdom of Northern
Israel, Jezebel—even though she has been dead for many years before his
prophecies. If it is not Jezebel that he hates, is it what she represents, or is
there implicit misogyny in his choice of metaphors?
In addition to inner biblical allusions and rabbinic references to the
relationship of Jezebel and dung, this paper will look at how recent authors
and online sites use her as a symbol of modernity and rebellion. In doing so,
they have regenerated her from the dung that the biblical author left her in.
This paper also attempts to humanize Jezebel by highlighting positive aspects
of her life and the implications of her death. From the standpoint of the Bible,
Jezebel is absolutely evil, but reading intertextually and midrashically can
lead us to see that there is definitely more to her than meets the eye. In the
process of reading against the grain of what is called historical/contextual
reading (the so-called peshat) new meanings can come to the surface.

THE FOUR PASSAGES FROM JEREMIAH CONTAINING DUNG

There are four passages from Jeremiah which have the word domen or dung
in them.

of Judges, and Ruth. David wrote the Book of Psalms, including in it the work of
ten elders … Jeremiah wrote his book, and the Book of Kings…” (Bava Batra
14b-15b).
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“Female rulers, such as Jezebel of Israel, Athaliah of Judah, and Shamshi of
Arabia, who are attested in biblical and extra biblical texts, seem to represent
exceptions that highlight the more typical case of male dominance. Interestingly,
however, neither biblical nor extra biblical texts attach negative connotations
simply to the fact that these leaders are women.” Brad E. Kelle, “Wartime
Rhetoric: Prophetic Metaphorization of Cities as Female,” in Brad E. Kelle and
Frank Ritchel Ames (eds.), Writing and Reading War: Rhetoric, Gender, and
Ethics in Biblical and Modern Contexts. Society of Biblical Literature Symposium
Series 42 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2008), footnote 48 on p. 111.
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 1. The bones of the kings of Judah, of its officers, of the priests, of the
prophets, and of the inhabitants of Jerusalem shall be taken out of
their graves 2and exposed to the sun, the moon, and all the host of
heaven which they loved and served and followed, to which they
turned and bowed down. They shall not be gathered for reburial;
they shall become [like] dung upon the face of the earth (Jer.
8:2).
2. Speak thus—says the Lord: The carcasses of men shall lie like
dung upon the fields, Like sheaves behind the reaper, With none to
pick them up (Jer. 9:21).
3. They shall die gruesome deaths. They shall not be lamented or
buried; they shall be [like] dung on the surface of the ground.
They shall be consumed by the sword and by famine, and their
corpses shall be food for the birds of the sky and the beasts of the
earth (Jer. 16:4).
4. In that day, the earth shall be strewn with the slain of the Lord from
one end to the other. They shall not be mourned, or gathered and
buried; they shall become [like] dung upon the face of the earth
345
(Jer. 25:33).

METAPHOR THEORY CAN HELP US TO UNDERSTAND DUNG

The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing
346
in terms of another. Metaphor Theory helps us understand the four direct
references to dung in Jeremiah. Nicole Tilford writes that “metaphors are
more than just literary devices; they are insights into the ways human beings
347
develop and communicate abstract meaning.” She adds that these
“metaphors developed out of common concrete experiences and only

345
All translations into English, unless otherwise mentioned are from Tanakh: A
New Translation of the Holy Scriptures (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication
Society, 1985).
346
George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: University
of Chicago, 1980).
347
Nicole Tilford, “Sensing Wisdom: Corporeal Metaphors and the Pursuit of
Wisdom in Prov 1–9,” Abstract that appears on the site:
https://www.academia.edu/1727312/Sensing_Wisdom_Corporeal_Metaphors_and_
the_Pursuit_of_Wisdom_in_Prov_1_9
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gradually developed into the complex metaphors that one finds within
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biblical texts.”
Metaphors are used to creatively re-frame subject matter in ways that
help us think in new ways. Biblical metaphors in particular are created to
reflect the perspectives of their writers. The cognitive framework of many of
these writers is that there is a relationship between a human-like Israel and
an omnipotent God. These metaphors convey messages which imply human
responsibility for evil and thus justify God’s terrifying punishment for these
sinners. When visualizing one thing (e.g dung) as/like something else, the
reader enters into the world of metaphor. Israel and her kings sin, starting
from Jeroboam, continuing through Jehoiakim until the destruction. And
because this behavior persists, it explains why the kingdoms have to be
destroyed and turned into dung. When Jeremiah talks of sin in terms of
defilement and Israel’s inability to cleanse itself, the nation’s downfall is
inevitable. Jezebel (turned into dung), who is responsible for introducing the
Baal, is like Israel, the idol worshipper and they are both so mired in the muck
that they have to be scattered over the face of the earth. The metaphor of dung
emphasizes God and his agents’ power to trample the sinner—who is totally
debased and effaced.
The metaphor helps us to understand how this is also the fate of the
nation, depicted often as female, with its land strewn with slain bodies, turned
into dung (Jer. 25:33). Jeremiah uses metaphors which refer to Israel/Judah
as a woman who will be flattened, like Jezebel, as punishment for
worshipping other gods/lovers (Jer. 22). Jeremiah conflates the sinning
temptress/ woman with the fate of Jehoiakim, the Israelites and the land.
JEZEBEL
The biblical reader knows Jezebel from 1 Kings. She is already notorious
before her famous demise in 2 Kings. Janet Gaines writes that
From the Deuteronomist’s viewpoint, Jezebel embodies everything
that must be eliminated from Israel so that the purity of the cult of
Yahweh will not be further contaminated…. Her father is Ethbaal of
Tyre, …. [who served as a priest of Astarte, the primary Phoenician
goddess. Jezebel, as the king’s daughter, may have served as a
priestess as she was growing up. In any case, she was certainly raised

348
Tilford, Sensing World, Sensing Wisdom: The Cognitive Foundation of
Biblical Metaphors. I thank the anonymous reader for bringing Tilford’s work to
my attention.
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 to honor the deities of her native land…. This is why she is vilified by
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the Deuteronomist; whose goal is to stamp out polytheism.

She has made an enemy of Elijah and possibly alienated the Israelites for her
initiative in getting the Vineyards of Naboth for her husband Ahab. She is a
foreigner, a Baal worshipper and a strong wife and partner to the King. Both
she and her husband were cursed by Elijah:
Then the word of the Lord came to Elijah the Tishbite: “Go down and
confront King Ahab of Israel who [resides] in Samaria. He is now in
Naboth’s vineyard; he has gone down there to take possession of it.
Say to him, ‘Thus said the Lord: Would you murder and take
possession? Thus said the Lord: In the very place where the dogs
lapped up Naboth’s blood, the dogs will lap up your blood too.’”
Ahab said to Elijah, “So you have found me, my enemy?” “Yes, I have
found you,” he replied. “Because you have committed yourself to
doing what is evil in the sight of the Lord, I will bring disaster upon
you. I will make a clean sweep of you, I will cut off from Israel every
male belonging to Ahab, bond and free… And the Lord has also
spoken concerning Jezebel: ‘The dogs shall devour Jezebel in the
field of Jezreel. All of Ahab’s line who die in the town shall be
devoured by dogs, and all who die in the open country shall be
devoured by the birds of the sky.’”
Indeed, there never was anyone like Ahab, who committed himself to
doing what was displeasing to the Lord, at the instigation of his wife
Jezebel. He acted most abominably… When Ahab heard these words,
he rent his clothes and put sackcloth on his body. He fasted and lay in
sackcloth and walked about subdued. Then the word of the Lord came
to Elijah the Tishbite: “Have you seen how Ahab has humbled himself
before Me? Because he has humbled himself before Me, I will not
bring the disaster in his lifetime; I will bring the disaster upon his
house in his son’s time” (1 Kings 21: 17-29).

It is important to note that Ahab ends up dying honorably on the

battlefield, whereas Jezebel lives on for a long while and only during the
lifetime of her son is she to be murdered. The curse is postponed for Ahab
because he repents. Presumably Jezebel is too evil to repent, especially
since the biblical text makes it clear that she was the instigator of it all.
349
Janet Howe Gaines, “How Bad Was Jezebel?” Biblical Archaeological Review
(her article “Jezebel” originally appeared in Bible Review, October 2000. The
article was first republished in Bible History Daily in 2010).
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Also Elijah’s curse is changed since dogs do not devour Jezebel in the
field of Jezreel. But these places will re-appear in the prophetic verses.
It is important to note in Jezebel’s favor that she was looking after
her husband’s interests. They just happened to conflict with the prophet’s
and God’s interests. But there is no hint of her acting improperly as a loyal
wife to Ahab—except for giving him, in hindsight and from the
Deuteronomist’s point of view, bad advice.

THE DEFERRED EXECUTION OF AHAB’S SONS AND QUEEN

JEZEBEL

When Joram saw Jehu, he asked, “Is all well, Jehu?” But Jehu
replied, “How can all be well as long as your mother Jezebel
carries on her countless harlotries and sorceries?” Thereupon
Joram turned his horses around and fled, crying out to Ahaziah,
“Treason, Ahaziah!” But Jehu drew his bow and hit Joram between
the shoulders, so that the arrow pierced his heart; and he collapsed in
his chariot. Jehu thereupon ordered his officer Bidkar, “Pick him up
and throw him into the field of Naboth the Jezreelite. Remember
how you and I were riding side by side behind his father Ahab,
when the Lord made this pronouncement about him: ‘ I swear, I
have taken note of the blood of Naboth and the blood of his sons
yesterday—declares the Lord. And I will requite you in this
plot—declares the Lord.’ So pick him up and throw him unto the
plot in accordance with the word of the Lord” (2 Kings 9: 22-26).
Jehu went on to Jezreel. When Jezebel heard of it, she painted her
eyes with kohl and dressed her hair, and she looked out of the window.
As Jehu entered the gate, she called out, “Is all well, Zimri, murderer
of your master?” He looked up toward the window and said, “Who is
on my side, who?” And two or three eunuchs leaned out toward him.
“Throw her down,” he said. They threw her down; and her blood
spattered on the wall and on the horses, and he [Jehu] trampled
her. Then he went inside and ate and drank. And he said, “Look to
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this cursed creature and bury her, for she is the daughter of a king.”

350
Translation of this is from Robert Alter, Ancient Israel, The Former Prophets:
Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings (New York-London: W. W. Norton, 2013) who
in his notes to this verse writes “The Hebrew uses merely the feminine
indicative ha’arurah hazot (‘this cursed one’) to express contempt.”
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 So they went to bury her; but all they found of her were the skull, the
feet, and the hands. They came back and reported to him; and he said,
“It is just as the Lord spoke through His servant Elijah the Tishbite:
The dogs shall devour the flesh of Jezebel in the field of Jezreel; and
the carcass of Jezebel shall be like dung on the ground, in the field
of Jezreel, so that none will be able to say: ‘This was Jezebel [zot
izevel]’” (2 Kings 9:30-37).

The irony as has been mentioned earlier is that Jezebel now is herself
embodying zevel, or dung.
As can be seen from the two texts, there is a long history here, dating
back to 1 Kings, to the days of Elijah. Jehu, is the avenging instrument of
God, whose function is to eradicate the remaining house of Ahab and to
erase all memory of Jezebel.
According to Steven McKenzie the story climaxes in vs. 35 with the
missing body. He writes that verses 36-37 are the “fulfillment notice for
the prediction against Jezebel in 1 Kgs 21:23” and “secondarily attached
to the story of Jezebel’s death” and “anticlimactic.” Furthermore “The
scatological image in v. 37 ‘like dung upon the surface of the ground’ is
Deuteronomistic,” and only occurs in the Deuteronomistic portions of
Jeremiah. He writes that
This verse accords both with the curse of non-burial leveled by Dtr
against the house of Ahab and with the account of Jezebel’s death in
vv. 33-35. ‘These animals crushed Jezebel’s corpse until it became
unidentifiable, thus fulfilling the prophecy’ (Rofe 1988a:84).

He makes an important point when he adds that the addition in 9:36b

forms a late, ‘anti-Jezebel’ retouching to these stories. The addition in

2 Kgs 9:36b is the strongest expression of this anti-Jezebel sentiment.
It gives a grotesque change of meaning to Dtr’s scatological image in
9:37. Because her corpse is eaten by dogs, what is left of Jezebel is not
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simply like dung on the ground but actually is dung. [italics in
original]

351
Steven McKenzie, “The Oracles Against the Dynasties in the Book of Kings,” in
Gary N. Knoppers, J. Gordon McConville (eds.), Reconsidering Israel and Judah:
Recent Studies on the Deuteronomistic History (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns,
2000), pp. 412-413.
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 McKenzie is neither interested in how the metaphor works in
Jeremiah, nor its danger. But one can build on his comment to show how the
metaphor has left the realm of threats, to the actual, because the metaphor is
now reality. It is dangerous to have a metaphor where God is likened to a
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wife beater bashing Israel. To say that a carcass of any queen, no matter
how evil, will be like dung, and completely annihilated, so that no one will
be able to worship her -- and keep in mind that this is the threat to the
Israelites as well via the prophet--will certainly be effective in keeping them
in line or at least, in terrifying them.
Mark O’ Brien writes about 2 Kings 9:36b:
In the territory of Jezreel the dogs shall eat the flesh of Jezebel. The
reversal of the order of the earlier occurrences of the saying and the
addition of “flesh” was done to link it more closely with the narrative
context (cf. vv 30-35). Both changes suggest a redactor carefully
integrating a traditional saying into the context. 2 Kgs 9:37 is a hapax
… and is probably a traditional saying. In Jeremiah we find the
saying “they shall become dung over the face of the ground” (Jer.
8:2; 9:21 [uncertain text]; 16:4; 25:33). As Hentschel points out
however (Elijaerzӓhlungen, 42, n. 131), one cannot argue that 2 Kgs
9:37 is dependent on these. It states “the corpse of Jezebel will be as
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dung on the face of the field” [both as and field are the original
italics; bold is mine].
It is fascinating that O’Brien considers Jeremiah 9:21, the one place in
Jeremiah where there is a clear metaphor, the only text, besides 2 Kgs 9:37
to say “ka-domen” “like dung” to be uncertain. This paper challenges his
suggestion that 2 Kgs 9:37, ka-domen should be changed. In fact, the opposite
seems to be true and perhaps the other Jeremiah verses should be amended
to read ka-domen, as I’ve indicated in the translations above. Whether or not
O’Brien and McKenzie do refer to similes, they both refer to actual dung that
has turned into terrifying reality. To use I.A. Richards original and technical
terms, Jezebel, the “tenor”, is no longer like or as dung but the “vehicle”

352
Naomi Graetz, Silence is Deadly: Judaism Confronts Wifebeating (Jason
Aronson, 1998); the article “God is to Israel as Husband is to Wife," is part of this
book.
353
Mark A. O'Brien, The Deuteronomistic History Hypothesis: A Reassessment
(Freiburg, Schweiz: Univ.-Verl.; Gottingen: Vandenhoeck u. Ruprecht, 1989), p.
201, footnote 90.
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 354
which expresses how she has become a new substance. Thus Jehu refers to
her as “zot” an accursed thing, and now she is worse than nothing. One can
argue that by saying “she will be as dung” rather than saying “she will be
dung” the metaphor can take life and be expanded to include something new
and potentially dangerous. She will be dung, closes the issue, whereas will
355
be as dung opens up the possibilities.
WHAT’S IN A NAME?
The horror begins already with the negative connotation implied by the name
of the queen. Moshe Garsiel writes that Jezebel’s name is understood
negatively. This condemnation is reflected in the spelling and vocalization of
her name. It would appear the name is a shortening of the name from Avi-
zevel or Ahi-zevel. The “zevel” part of the word is a mark of distinction with
the meaning of a head of state, as found in the Ugaritic and Phoenician texts.
Robert Alter writes that “The Masoretic texts polemically revocalize the
356
name of the Phoenician god Zebul as zebel, ‘dung.’”
However, in biblical texts, Izevel is just zevel, (or in modern Hebrew,
357
“trash”), that is, the fertilizer spread out over the fields. This usage is found

354
In I.A. Richards, The Philosophy of Rhetoric (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1936) Richards used the word tenor (Latin for 'connection') to refer to the person,
place, or thing being represented in a metaphor, while the metaphor's vehicle is
what is representing the tenor. "[V]ehicle and tenor in cooperation…give a
meaning of more varied powers than can be ascribed to either." The terms target
and source were introduced by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson in Metaphors We
Live By (above note 6). Although the more traditional terms tenor and vehicle are
roughly equivalent to target domain and source domain, respectively, the
traditional terms fail to emphasize the interaction between the two domains.”
355
I would like to thank the anonymous reviewer for her query, although I did not
include her pun about “making a mountain out of a mole hill, or rather a dung hill”
into the body of this article.
356
Robert Alter, Commentary on 1 Kings 16:31.
357
This is a somewhat tenuous reference, since the root zevel in the bible is most
prevalent in people’s names (cf. Izevel, Zevulun, Zevul). In the few cases where it
appears as an adjective, it is associated with God’s nobility and elevation in
Solomon’s temple (cf. “I have now built for You A stately House (beit zevul), A
place where You May dwell forever” (1 Kgs 8:13). For Psalm 49:15, Benjamin
Segal, in his A New Psalm: The Psalms as Literature (Jerusalem: Gefen Publishing
House, 2013), p. 223 contradicts JPS’s Tanakh translation of mee-z’vul lo. The JPS
translation is “The upright shall rule over them at daybreak, and their form shall
waste away in Sheol till its nobility be gone.” Segal translates vs. 15b as “until
sheol rots, its trash heap.” And he adds a footnote that the Hebrew of the last phrase
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in the language of the sages as well as in Akkadian and Ugaritic. This
pejorative midrashic meaning is demonstrated in the bible with the
aforementioned prophecy of Elijah, “The dogs shall devour Jezebel in the
field of Jezreel” (1 Kings 21:23) and referenced here as well, “the carcass of
Jezebel shall be like dung on the ground” (2 Kgs 9: 37). Scripture is being
midrashic/ metaphoric/intertextual when it connects the word, zevel with
domen, fertilizer or deshen that is used in the fields, in that it connects the
358
meaning of the name zevel with the fate of Izevel who bears the name.
Mordecai Cogan adds that “Targum translates zebel, ‘manure,’… thus
359
creating a pun on the name Jezebel.” Although both Garsiel and Cogan
have pointed out the connection/pun between domen and zevel, there is an
added dimension to dung. Dung can also be viewed as being neutral, non-
defiling and even positive when it takes on the nature of manure/fertilizer.
This positive aspect of dung will be dealt with towards the end of the paper.
WHY DUNG?
Deuteronomy 23 deals with the question whether dung defiles:
When you go out as a troop against your enemies, be on your guard
against anything untoward. If anyone among you has been rendered
unclean by a nocturnal emission, he must leave the camp, and he must
not reenter the camp. Toward evening he shall bathe in water, and at
sundown he may reenter the camp. Further, there shall be an area for
you outside the camp, where you may relieve yourself. With your gear
you shall have a spike, and when you have squatted you shall dig a
hole with it and cover up your excrement [Heb. tze-at-echa, literally
what comes out of you]. Since the Lord your God moves about in your
camp to protect you and to deliver your enemies to you, let your camp
be holy; let Him not find anything unseemly among you and turn away
from you (Deut. 23: 10-15).

Tikva Frymer-Kensky disagrees:

Despite the fact that food (entry into the body) was carefully regulated,
the excreta involved in the digestive process—saliva, urine, feces—
are not mentioned as polluting. Defecation is supposed to take place

is uncertain and that this is one of the several suggestions of Amos Hacham, The
Book of Psalms (2 vols.; Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1986,1987).
358
Midreshei Hashemot be-mahzor ha-sippurim al Eliyahu ve-Ahav
http://lib.cet.ac.il/pages/item.asp?item=8802. The above is my loose translation of
what Garsiel wrote.
359
Mordechai Cogan and Hayim Tadmor, II Kings: A New Translation. The Anchor
Bible (NY: Doubleday and Company, 1988), p.113.
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 outside the ideal camp (Deut. 23:13–15) but individuals excreting or
even touching feces are not considered defiled until evening, nor is
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it prescribed that they must bathe.

So, even though it is unseemly, you can still re-enter the camp afterwards;
and you don’t even have to wash your hands! The irony is that a corpse (ne-
vey-la) does defile, but once Jezebel has been turned into dung, the thing, or
substance she now is, no longer defiles. In fact, in ancient times dung
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sometimes was used as a cleansing agent!
What is the nature of dung? It is organic, it is compost, it is fertilizer.
According to BDB, domen, the noun is masculine for dung and is always in
362
this form and always of corpses, lying on ground as offal. The Hebrew
word, domen is like the Hebrew zevel or tzo-ah (what is evacuated from the
body) –the word denotes what happens when bodies are left unburied,
untended, to rot in an open field.
Manure is also fertilizer, thus it is part of the cycle of life. The
medieval Spanish exegete, Rabbenu Bahya ben Joseph ibn Paquda (c. 1060)
uses the root of this word to describe this process in his work Guide to the
Duties of the Heart:
There was a parable (mashal) of a man who planted trees, and dug up
their roots and cleared the soil from thorns and weeds, and watered
them when necessary and fertilized them (dimen), and afterwards
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hoped that God would allow him to benefit from their fruits.”

360
Tikva Frymer-Kensky, “Pollution, Purification, and Purgation in Biblical Israel,”
(1983) in Studies in Bible and Feminist Criticism (Philadelphia: JPS, 2006)
361
“Keeping Clean and Healthy with Cow Dung and Urine,”
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2010-03-healthy-cow-dung-urine.html. Recently,
the archaeologist Guy Stiebel unearthed dishes made from dung on Masada. See
https://www.timesofisrael.com/archaeologists-get-set-to-dig-at-masada-after-11-
year-hiatus/
362
“Domen,” entry 1828 in The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon
of the Old Testament, more commonly known as Brown–Driver–Briggs or BDB is
a standard reference for Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic, first published in 1906. It is
to be found on-line at http://biblehub.com/hebrew/1828.htm. It is organized by
alphabetical order of three letter roots. Dung is the standard translation of the word
domen as it appears in 2 Kings 9: 37; E.g., JPS, Tanakh.
363
Bahya ben Joseph ibn Paquda, Sefer Hovot Ha-levavot, Sha’ar 8 Heshbon
Hanefesh 3, part 21. This was first translated from the Arabic to Hebrew by R.
Yehuda Ibn Tabun (Naples, 1490) and has since been retranslated in modern times.
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 Recently, Katrina Spade has started a movement called “The Urban Death
Movement” to recompose bodies, to turn them into compost instead of being
embalmed, put into coffins or burn into ash and put into urns. According to
the group, it is the foundation for an environmentally sustainable death care
system. The group’s website states that: “Death is momentous, miraculous,
and mysterious. The cycles of nature help us grieve and heal. Our bodies are
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full of life-giving potential.” Thus, metaphorically, dung is like the
Israelites, trampled into nothing, but then recomposed, restored, risen again
by being fertilized with its own remains.
It should be noted, however, that the word deshen is the usual choice when
scripture relates to the positive aspects of fertilizer. Examples of this
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abound. One might argue that even in 2 Kgs. 9:37 there is a hint of this
“positive” association with dung. And for this interpretation one can look at
the midrash (see below) which gives Jezebel a positive after-life through her
clapping hands and dancing feet. And so if one wishes to hint at some sort of
redemption/regeneration/recomposition one can look to Jeremiah who after
turning Israel into dung, restores her as well in the future.
JEZREEL/YISRA-EL AND JEZEBEL/IZEVEL
Jeremiah uses the metaphor of dung, which alludes to Jezebel’s name, in
Hebrew Izevel, and which sounds like Jezreel, Yizra-el. This conflation
makes clear that these sinners deserve their fate for having betrayed the male
god. That is the reason why they are to be rejected/ejected as dung is from a
body. The ancients no doubt noticed the irony of Yizra-el, a God who will
plant seed, in connection with Izevel’s fate, turning into dung. For it is in the
fruitful Jezreel valley in Northern Israel that all of this takes place. It starts
with the original sin of the takeover of Naboth the Jezreelite’s fertile fields.
Jezreel, the name and the place, are associated with fertility. Jehu makes an
overt reference when he says: “Pick him up and throw him into the field of
Naboth the Jezreelite.” And there is even a sort of inclusio which has Jezreel

Although this is the author of the article’s translation, use has been made of the
English translation of this book which appears on-line at
http://dafyomireview.com/article.php?docid=391
364
http://www.urbandeathproject.org/ Rabbi Jeremy Kalmanofsky has written a
responsa for the Rabbinical Assembly of the Conservative Movement discussing
this as a halakhic possibility.
https://www.rabbinicalassembly.org/sites/default/files/public/halakhah/teshuvot/20
11-2020/alternative-burial.pdf
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See Jer. 31:13, Psalms 65:12, Job 36:16, Isaiah 30:23, Psalms 23:5.
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mentioned prominently at the beginning of the episode and the end. In 2 Kgs
9:30 it stays that “Jehu went on to Jezreel.” And at the end of the episode in
vs. 37 it concludes with “The dogs shall devour the flesh of Jezebel in the
field of Jezreel; and the carcass of Jezebel shall be like dung on the ground,
in the field of Jezreel, so that none will be able to say: ‘This was Jezebel.’”
Although there is no direct mention of Jezebel in Hosea, the double entendre,
of the association of Yehu, Izevel and Yizrael is clearer in Hosea:
Name him Jezreel; for, I will soon punish the House of Jehu for the
bloody deeds at Jezreel and put an end to the monarchy of the House
of Israel. In that day, I will break the bow of Israel in the Valley of
Jezreel (Hosea 1:4-5).
I argue that Izevel and Yizr-ael illustrate an example of sound play, or
paronomasia, which is a technique used by the biblical writer as a technique
in biblical allusion. It is one of the tools of inner-biblical exegesis.
In the process of adapting, annotating, developing, and emending
ideas and themes from earlier texts, as a way of reinterpreting those
texts, biblical authors frequently allude to those texts by the use of
paronomasia. This is a kind of tacit literary allusion because it is
implicit (does not note the act of referencing) and deliberate
(intentional on the part of the one referencing). The allusion is meant
to highlight how the later texts differ from the earlier and are a
development from it. Biblical allusion, then, is continuity within a
biblical tradition in which a text draws out incipient meanings from a
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source text in relation to newer (later) circumstances.

Thus one can certainly argue that the bloody deeds alluded to are the
killing of Jezebel and the bloody annihilation of Ahab’s entire family.
And the bow to be broken (and later to be restored) is that of Israel in
Jezreel. Thus when the remnants of Jezebel’s body are thrust and buried
in the fertile valley (along with her sons) they will eventually have an
after-life.
DUNG AND PLANT IMAGERY
Dung as a metaphor is part of the plant imagery used by the prophet to
condemn the nation: “Human carcasses shall fall Like dung upon the
fields, Like sheaves (alumot) behind the reaper, With none to pick them
up” (Jer. 9:21). The destruction is seen in the metaphor of ingathering

366
Thomas P. McCreesh, O.P. “Review of Jonathan G. Kline, Allusive Soundplay in
the Hebrew Bible (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2016),” in RBL 09/2017.
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which makes the point that there will be no one to gather the produce.
Job Jindo points out that the irony of the reaper who leaves the sheaves
in the field, which viewed metaphorically, refers to “God, who is
supposed to “gather in” the Israelites to protect them from the enemy,
[and who] instead allows the people to be ’reaped’ and left to die in the
367
‘field.’ There is an additional irony if one contrasts Jeremiah’s
abandoned sheaves with the beautiful “Song of Ascents” of Psalm 126
when God restores Zion’s fortunes. In the Psalm those “who sow in tears
shall reap with songs of joy…carrying his sheaves [alumot]” (Ps. 5-6).
However, in Joseph’s dream, where alumot (sheaves) are mentioned
four times, all of his brothers are present and they hate him even more
when he tells them: “ There we were binding sheaves in the field, when
suddenly my sheaf stood up and remained upright; then your sheaves
gathered around and bowed low to my sheaf” (Gen. 37:7). This is a
foreshadowing of what will happen to Joseph, the people of Israel and
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ultimately of the restoration. However, here in Jeremiah, it is not clear
if they are reaped first and forgotten lying on the earth, or passed by and
left standing. Either way, there is no one there for them.
In Jeremiah 16 the prophet is told:
The word of the Lord came to me: You are not to marry and not to
have sons and daughters in this place. For thus said the Lord
concerning any sons and daughters that may be born in this place, and
concerning the mothers who bear them, and concerning the fathers
who beget them in this land: They shall die gruesome deaths. They
shall not be lamented or buried; they shall be like dung on the surface
of the ground. They shall be consumed by the sword and by famine,
and their corpses shall be food for the birds of the sky and the beasts
of the earth (Jer. 16:1-4).

What is the rhetorical purpose of using such gruesome and traumatic

images? Amy Kalmanofsky writes that:
Disturbing images of exposed, mutilated, and dead bodies appear
throughout the prophetic books. The prophets describe dead bodies
strewn across the earth, piled into heaps, torn apart by birds and beasts,
and even cooked into a bloody stew, as well as naked bodies that are

367
Job Y. Jindo, Biblical Metaphor Reconsidered: A Cognitive Approach to Poetic
Prophecy in Jeremiah 1–24 (Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 2010), p. 205.
368
Thanks to the anonymous reader for alerting me to these additional sources
where sheaves are mentioned.
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 subject to scrutiny and shame (Hosea 2; Ezek. 16:22). These bodies
comprise a corporeal prophetic rhetoric that, as Yvonne M. Sherwood
observes, ‘refuses to pander to the eyes’ and ‘produces unbearable
visions and unseeable spectacles,’ which are part of a ‘highly
disturbing discourse, traumatized by diseased and dying bodies,
369
fraught with leaking wails against abjection.’

And this audience has in common traditions, perspectives, and beliefs.

What is gained by exposing the audience to such images? Is it traumatic,
or does the visualization help us to cope? This is an important question,
given how much discussion there is today about trauma “trigger” images
and the warning to our undergrads and even graduate students that “this
370
course may cause emotional distress!” And this despite the fact that
Jezebel is the so-called enemy.
Kathleen O’Connor often writes about how the “repetitive
retelling of catastrophe” helps trauma victims to assert control by
reducing the events to a “standard narrative.” By giving coherent
explanations of what has happened to them, they can “turn frightening
chaos into a contained and predictable event.”
Julia Claassens argues that by
speaking of the trauma and recovery of the people in terms of the
formulized account of breaking/building; uprooting/planting and
scattering/gathering that occurs throughout the book of Jeremiah, the
chaos of war and its effects is captured into a standardized narrative
that bestows some kind of order upon the chaotic events caused by the
371
Babylonian invasion.
369
Amy Kalmanofsky, “Israel’s Open Sore in the Book of Jeremiah” JBL, 135, no. 2
(2016), pp. 247–263. She quotes from Yvonne M. Sherwood, “Prophetic
Scatology: Prophecy and the Art of Sensation,” Semeia, 82 (1998), pp. 211–212,
215.
370
Kathleen Smith, “Warning: This course may cause emotional distress,” APA,
July/August 2014 (45:7), p. 58. http://www.apa.org/monitor/2014/07-08/course-
distress.aspx Thanks to the anonymous reader who pointed out, we can just
imagine Phyllis Trible giving a “trigger warning” to her students about how these
‘Texts of Terror’ may traumatize you for the rest of your life.
371
L. Juliana Claassens, “The Rhetorical Function of the Woman in Labor
Metaphor in Jeremiah 30-31: Trauma, Gender and Postcolonial Perspectives,”
Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 150 (November, 2014), p. 71. See L.
Juliana M. Claassens. Mourner Mother Midwife: Reimagining God’s Delivering
Presence in the Old Testament (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2012).
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Although it is not pleasant to constantly dwell on death and how our
bodies have the potential of turning into compost, it is a fact of life and
the Deuteronomist does not try to spare its audience.
THE REPRESENTATION OF JEZEBEL
Does Jezebel represent something other than herself? Does Jezebel represent
something other than herself? She appears in three related contexts, one, in
the Jehu Coup and conspiracy, second, in the framework of the curse first
delivered to Jeroboam via his wife and third in the context of the Elijah/Elisha
prophecy. This paper argues that she is much more than a hated Queen who
was formerly a pampered princess who introduced her husband, King Ahab,
to Baal worship. Sinning Jezebel is a metonym for “Sinning Female Israel”.
She conflates the tenor and vehicle, the “target” and “source domain” in that
she is both Jezebel and also anyone who goes on her way, unthinking,
assuming that life will go on as usual and that because she has been a sitting
queen for so long, her protected status and authority will continue. She cannot
countenance that all of this can be wiped away and that all of her jewels, her
status can be obliterated.
This paper has been arguing that the fate of Jezebel as dung also
alludes to Israel/Judah’s fate as dung. And for that reason it does not see a
final ending to Jezebel, just as there is no final destruction of Israel. The
remnants (skull, hands and feet) of Jezebel parallel the remnants of Israel that
(via the fertile Jezreel valley) will be reborn. Of course, this is not directly
stated, but the paper argues that this is alluded to by Jeremiah, who
traditionally is the author of Kings. In Jeremiah divine judgment is expressed
by God’s intention to destroy Israel, then later by having another nation be
God’s agent of destruction and finally having Israel’s oppressor being
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destroyed by God. Thus there is irony and mystery in divine judgment.
One can use Louis Stulman’s reflections on war in Jeremiah to
illustrate how Jezebel’s being turned metaphorically and actually into dung
is similar to Jeremiah’s use of dung. Like Jezebel, “Judah does not escape
unscathed.” They both “participate in a frightful narrative.” Both Jezebel’s

372
This is a paraphrase from McCressh’s review of Kline’s book on Allusive
Soundplay in the Hebrew Bible. He brings an excellent example of sound play from
Jeremiah: “Against the background of the repeating phrase in each text, a different
object of destruction is mentioned. In 17:27 the gates (šʻryh) of Jerusalem are
named, in 21:14 “its forest” (yʻrh), probably a reference to the palace. In the text of
judgment against Babylon, 50:32, it is “his cities” (ʻryw). The word repetition and
the allusive paronomasia of the shifting object of destruction both highlight the
ironic twist of judgment involved.”
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and “Judah’s sense of equilibrium, longstanding institutions, and belief
system suffer a massive assault. Its time-honored images and well-tested
workings crumble in plain view.” For Jezebel and Judah “it felt as if the world
were ending.” For both hope is forfeited, there is a “cosmic crumbling, the
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end of life as it had long been lived.” By connecting Jezebel’s fate of being
turned into dung with that of the fate of crumbling Judah, the metaphor
creates new connections. In this case the new connection will be the new life,
the recomposition that comes out the devastation. And the rebirth will
presumably come when Israel redeems herself by returning to God and stops
misbehaving. For when Israel has sinned in the past, she has been cursed.
THE ORIGIN OF THE CURSE
One can argue that the curse first appears in Deuteronomy:
The Lord will put you to rout before your enemies; you shall march
out against them by a single road, but flee from them by many roads;
and you shall become a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth. Your
carcasses shall become food for all the birds of the sky and all the
beasts of the earth, with none to frighten them off (Deut. 28: 25-26).

The context here is that of the blessings bestowed upon Israel when she
behaves herself and faithfully observes all the commandments (vs. 1-14)
and the list of curses which God will inflict on the nation if it does not
faithfully obey the commandments (vs. 15-68). This is at the core of the
retributive divine system of justice and requital throughout the
Deuteronomic history books. The allusion to this curse is quite clear in its
connection with Jeroboam in 1 Kings:
Therefore I will bring disaster upon the House of Jeroboam and will
cut off from Jeroboam every male, bond and free, in Israel. I will
sweep away the House of Jeroboam utterly, as dung [Heb. is galal] is
swept away. Anyone belonging to Jeroboam who dies in the town shall
be devoured by dogs; and anyone who dies in the open country shall
be eaten by the birds of the air; for the Lord has spoken (1 Kgs
14:10-11).

Although Jeroboam was originally elected by God to be King of Israel,

when he worshipped idols, he misbehaved and was cursed. In the future

373
Louis Stulman, “Reflections on Writing/Reading War and Hegemony in
Jeremiah and in Contemporary U.S. Foreign Policy,” in Christl M. Maier, Carolyn
J. Sharp (eds.), Prophecy and Power: Jeremiah in Feminist and Postcolonial
Perspective (London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2013), p. 63.
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history of the Books of Kings, the measure of evil will always be
Jeroboam. It is ironic that his wife is the one to deliver the curse.
At that time, Abijah, a son of Jeroboam, fell sick. Jeroboam said to
his wife, “Go and disguise yourself, so that you will not be
recognized as Jeroboam’s wife, and go to Shiloh. The prophet Ahijah
lives there, the one who predicted that I would be king over this
people. Take with you ten loaves, some wafers, and a jug of honey,
and go to him; he will tell you what will happen to the boy.”
Jeroboam’s wife did so; she left and went to Shiloh and came to
the house of Ahijah… Ahijah heard the sound of her feet as she
came through the door, and he said, “Come in, wife of Jeroboam.
Why are you disguised? I have a harsh message for you. Go tell
Jeroboam: Thus said the Lord, the God of Israel: I raised you up from
among the people and made you a ruler over My people Israel; I tore
away the kingdom from the House of David and gave it to you. But
you have not been like My servant David, who kept My
commandments and followed Me with all his heart, doing only what
was right in My sight. You have acted worse than all those who
preceded you; you have gone and made for yourself other gods and
molten images to vex Me; and Me you have cast behind your back (1
Kgs 1-9).
Is it a curious coincidence that both Jeroboam and Ahab have two faithful
wives? Jeroboam’s wife, who is not dignified with a name, follows both
her husband’s and the prophet’s orders and is the one who is the harbinger
of the curse which will be applied to Jezebel. Although the same curse
language is invoked, it is not the same prophecy. However, the language
is very similar. Jezebel too is totally committed to Ahab, she is a
supportive wife, looking out for his welfare, although the Deuteronomist
disagrees. Jezebel is not like Jeroboam’s wife, who passively crosses the
threshold of her house to deliver the curse, which results in the tragic
death of her son and then leaves the stage and is forgotten. As Carey
Walsh points out, Jezebel is a different case.

Jezebel was apportioned distinctive canonical memory. She was

foregrounded rather than forgotten in the archive, because her memory
was culturally useful. For the Deuteronomistic History, Jezebel’s
374
notoriety damns her, but it also memorializes her.

374
https://www.academia.edu/12676750/Why_Remember_Jezebel
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 As Ahab’s widow, Jezebel assertively engages in being the recipient
of the curse. She applies makeup with pride and self-respect, preparing
375
for the moment in a truly regal manner! She goes out to the window
376
(halon), which is a visible public space. She wants to be seen. She is in
control of the moment.
This according to Gaines is Jezebel’s finest hour as she calmly
prepares for Jehu’s arrival.
Jezebel is donning the female version of armor as she prepares to do
battle. She is a woman warrior, waging war in the only way a woman
can. Whatever fear she may have of Jehu is camouflaged by her war
paint…. When she dies, she wants to look her queenly best. She is in
control here, choosing the manner in which her attacker will last see
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and remember her….
It is not only her attacker that she is trying to impress. She is in control here
of her public image and Jezebel the woman seated or standing at the main
window of this palace of windows knows that the Deuteronomist’s audience
would recognize her painstaking preparations. Although some might
construe this as an attempted seduction of Jehu, I think those who do so, are
378
missing the point. She is not fighting for her life, she is fighting for her
future reputation and any attempt at seduction would be viewed as pathetic
and a sign of weakness. She is all strength here. Walsh makes it clear that the
beautifying was not for Jehu’s benefit. It was
375
See Saul M. Olyan, “Notes and Observations: 2 Kings 9:31. Jehu as Zimri,” The
Harvard Theological Review, 78, 1/2 (Jan. - Apr., 1985), pp. 203-207.
376
Ahab’s palace is “identified as a bit hilani, a kind of palace popular in the
northern Levant during the Iron Age… A bit hilani consisted of a building that sat
on a raised podium… A bit hilani must contain a window (or windows) for its
name to make sense… [Rupert] Chapman has another interpretation. He believes
that the bit hilani’s window referred to a “Window of Appearances” above the
palace’s entrance. From this window, kings and queens would show themselves to
the people standing below. This is akin to what the royal family still does from
Buckingham Palace’s balcony.” Megan Sauter, “The Palace of the Kings of
Israel—in the Bible and Archaeology: Samaria’s Iron Age Palace,” Biblical
Archaeology Review September/October 2017 issue.
377
Janet Howe Gaines, “How Bad Was Jezebel?” Biblical Archaeological Review
378
The anonymous reader suggested this as does much of the reception and rabbinic
literature. All you have to do is google Jezebel and temptress and the following
comes up: “5 Famous Temptresses of the Bible,” of whom one is Bathsheba and a
reference to the 1938 film Jezebel, starring Bette Davis as the destructive
temptress.
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 a demonstration of her power to leave on her terms….At her end,
Jezebel draws attention to the excessive use of force on the woman as
Other. She resists by exposing the system’s use of male dominance as
overkill. There is a fair amount of gender play in this account of her
death….The insecurity of male dominance is then reinforced when the
guards who manfully throw the Jezebel out the window are themselves
379
eunuchs, men without testosterone.
Yet, the Deuteronomist reduces her to dung. Whatever stateliness she
attempts, the toss out of the window and the trampling scenes are the pictures
that are meant to remain in the minds of the audience. In three famous
paintings, which are painstakingly true to the Biblical text, Jezebel is tossed
out of the window by eunuchs, trampled by horses and left outside, eaten by
380
dogs with only her hands, feet and head remaining.
Athalya Brenner writes how “Jezebel is made animalistic by the
text,” and how by reading emphatically, the readers become “animals by
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contagion”. Koosed writes:
Consumed by animals, Jezebel becomes an animal; her
dehumanization is complete. She is a foreign woman, a powerful
queen, and a worshiper of deities other than Yahweh. She is ethnically
and religiously different, transgresses proper gender roles, and is
therefore a danger. The death and destruction of Jezebel eradicates the
Other in order to protect and preserve the proper Israelite
382
community.

379
Carey Walsh, “Women on the Edge,” in Ehud Ben Zvi and Diana Vikander
Edelman editors. Imagining the Other and Constructing Israelite Identity in the
Early Second Temple Period (Bloomsbury: T&T Clark Series, 2015), p.137. The
article is available on https://www.academia.edu/13364931/Women_on_the_Edge
380
“The Death by Defenestration of Jezebel” (1866) by Gustave Dore, where she is
tossed out of the window by the eunuchs and 15th century Dutch painter Evert
Zoudenbalch who depicts the scene of bloody trampling by horses under Jehu’s
instigation. There is a third picture by Dore, “Jehu's Companions Finding the
Remains of Jezebel”.
381
Athalya Brenner-Idan, “On Scholarship and Related Animals: A Personal View
from and for the Here and Now,” JBL 135, no. 1 (2016), p.12. She writes this after
quoting from Jennifer Koosed’s “Death of Jezebel.” See footnote following this.
382
Jennifer Koosed, “Death of Jezebel,”
http://www.bibleodyssey.org/people/related-articles/
death-of-jezebel.aspx.
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 These portraits are meant to horrify us. They stay with us, because
this is how the tradition regards her. Her death is depicted with all of its gory
details, with her blood splattered on the walls. This gratuitous violence has
no precedent in other royal coups in the Bible. The prophet Hosea hints at
this when he writes that the house of Jehu is punished:
Name him Jezreel; for, I will soon punish the House of Jehu for the
bloody deeds at Jezreel and put an end to the monarchy of the House
of Israel. In that day, I will break the bow of Israel in the Valley of
Jezreel (Hosea 1:4-5).

There are those who would argue that it is not the worship of idolatry that
led to Jehu’s punishment, but his overkill, his bloody deeds against Jezebel
and what she represents, that lead to his punishment. According to Carolyn
J. Sharp:
A consensus among interpreters would have it that Hos 1 simply
condemns the “blood of Jezreel” as metonym for politically
motivated violence, understood with reference to the dynasty of Jehu
a century earlier. But consider where else we read “blood” and
“Jezreel” together: 1 Kgs 21. Jezebel’s plan to secure the vineyard of
Naboth the Jezreelite is the beginning of the bloodshed.…The blood
of Jezreel runs faster and deeper with the coup of Jehu, who murders
Joram, has Jezebel killed, has the seventy sons of Ahab butchered,
and executes “all of [Ahab’s] leaders, close friends and priests” in
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Jezreel (2 Kgs 10: 1-11).

Sharp asks if it means that God will repay for Jezreel’s blood. She points
out that the reference is to Ahab’s and Jezebel’s misuse of power and
that it ends in a bloodbath. According to her, desire, eating and
dismemberment appear in one source. It begins with Ahab’s desire for
someone else’s property, continues with an oracle of how Ahab and
Jezebel will be punished by having animals licking their blood and ends
with the prophecy being fulfilled. For after Jezebel is thrown to death
and Jehu goes in to eat, he finds that she is indeed “gorged on by the

383
Carolyn J. Sharp, “Hewn by the Prophet: An Analysis of Violence and Sexual
Transgression in Hosea with Reference to the Homiletical Aesthetic of Jeremiah
Wright,” in Chris Franke and Julia M. O’Brien (eds.), Aesthetics of Violence in the
Prophets. Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies 517 (New York: T & T
Clark, 2010), pp. 58-59.
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dogs” and thus “[i]llegitimate desire rends the body of Israel as a people,
384
leaving it dismembered in pools of blood.”
Jezebel is depicted as a villain who worshipped Baal, introduced her
husband to idolatry and like Eve, is responsible for Ahab’s sin of taking
over Nabot’s fertile land. This paper argues that the intention of the text
is to demonize Jezebel, starting with Elijah and his curse. There are
others in the Bible who behave as poorly, who are responsible for mass
murder and worse, yet she is signaled out. Is it because she is a woman?
It is hard to say. There are other women in the bible who look out for
their husband’s greater good who are not demonized, like Rebecca.
There is animus against her from the very beginning for she is
responsible for bringing Baal worship to Israel; she kills those who
worship God; she encourages her husband to behave immorally and has
to be punished. She is an existential threat to the established religion. In
1 Kings 18 there is a major spiritual battle between Elijah and the 450
prophets of Baal which resulted in their being seized and slaughtered in
the Wadi Kishon. Because of this victory, Elijah has to run for his life:
When Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done and how he had put
all the prophets to the sword, Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah,
saying, “Thus and more may the gods do if by this time tomorrow I
have not made you like one of them.” Frightened, he fled at once for
his life. He came to Beer-sheba, which is in Judah, and left his servant
there; he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness. He came to
a broom bush and sat down under it, and prayed that he might die.
“Enough!” he cried. “Now, O Lord, take my life, for I am no better
than my fathers” (1 Kgs 19: 1-4).

Had she actually succeeded in the contest between Baal and Elijah, it
would have been the end of monotheism. Elijah is desperate and in
despair. Fortunately for him, God is on his side. However, Jezebel has to
be literally stamped out; ground to dust/dung. As Amy Kalmanofsky
writes
The gods of order defeat the monster gods and dismember their bodies,
thereby turning the monstrous bodies into sites of inscription that
communicate a threefold message of the sovereignty of the patron god,

384
Sharp, see above note 32, p. 59.
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 the weakness of chaos, and the consequences inflicted on those who
385
rebel against the established order (112).

MIDRASHIC EXCURSUS
This paper has looked at the inter-textuality of the texts where dung is
mentioned, in particular in 2 Kings 9 and the four Jeremiah texts. Although
intertextuality is a two-way street (i.e. the texts inter-relate with each other
synchronically), this paper posits that Jeremiah, who often uses misogynist
metaphors, may have some experience in his history which makes him point
to Jezebel as being personally dangerous to him. There is a midrash which is
about Isaac having intercourse with Rebeca in broad daylight, something
which the sages frowned upon, and which results in Abimelech seeing them
and thus saving the day for Rebecca.
Jeremiah cursed the day of his birth and the day of his conception, as
it says, “Cursed be the day wherein I was born, etc.” (Jer. 20:4).
“Cursed be the day wherein I was born” refers to the day of birth;
while, the day wherein my mother bore me (ib.) refers to the day of
conception. Is it possible that Hilqiah [Jeremiah’s father], a righteous
man, would do such a thing? The fact is that since Jezebel was
massacring the prophets, he came, cohabited by day, and fled (Genesis
Rabbah 64:5).

According to Jacob Neusner, “Jeremiah was conceived by day, the danger

posed by Jezebel [who was massacring the prophets], explaining why his
386
father Hilqiah ignored the prohibition against sexual relations by day.” Of
course the mention of Jezebel in this connection is an anachronism, but
Midrash, which takes a synchronic approach to text, uses Jezebel as an
example of how life is always dangerous for prophets. This midrash directly
connects Jeremiah’s life history with his animus towards Jezebel. It’s
personal! Like Elijah, his father had to flee —it is part of the family lore. His
conception is associated with the cursed day when his father fled. This leads
him to demonize Jezebel, who is now responsible for all of his life’s tragedies
and encourages him to use the dung metaphor (associated with Jezebel) in
his own prophetic writings when writing about Israel’s tragedy.

385
This is from her review of Safwat Marzouk’s book, Egypt as a Monster in the
Book of Ezekiel (RBL 08/2016).
386
Jacob Neusner, Jeremiah in Talmud and Midrash: A Source Book (Lanham,
Md.: University Press of America, 2006), pp. 117-118.
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By using the midrash from Genesis Rabbah one can justify blending the
language of 2 Kings 9:37 with the language of Jeremiah 16. The original text
reads:

They shall die gruesome deaths. They shall not be lamented or buried;
they shall be like dung on the surface of the ground…and their corpses
shall be food for the birds of the sky and the beasts of the earth (Jer.
16: 4).

The slight emendation is as follows:

Jezebel shall die a gruesome death. She will not be lamented or buried;
She shall be like
Dung on the surface of the ground…and her corpse shall be food for the
birds of the sky and the
beasts of the earth.

The original text has been slightly emended by this author to make it appear
as if this was Jeremiah’s intent. It is a form of exegesis that just substituites
Jezebel’s name for Israel, and its justification (or prooftext) is the midrash
which associated Jeremiah’s conception with Jezebel’s punishment.
CORPSES AND DUNG
The dead body lives on: the corpse is food for the birds and beasts and is both
fertilizer and an agent of fertilization. A dead body in Hebrew is a ne-vey-la.
N-V-L is also the root of naval, a dastardly person who has crossed from one
state to another, who commits a nevala, an outrage. Like the naval, the ne-
vey-la, the corpse which is impure, is a body which has crossed the border
from life to death.
Often readers see the body of a woman as a sort of boundary. One
can treat her as belonging to someone with a soul or see her as a totality.
However, often her body is broken up, depicted in its parts, with the male
gaze focused on the breasts or crotch or eyes or lips, legs, or whatever else
turns it on. Once the wandering eye has crossed the border, there is no return
and the living woman turns into a dead one, a ne-vey-la.
387
Jezebel and the Concubine of Gibeah (Judges 19) are examples of
dismembered women who are dehumanized with men who are indoors,
387
In Judges 19: 23-24 the word nevala appears twice. The host of the Levite tells
the mob outside his house not to do this outrage (nevala) and presumably rape a
man; and then repeats it when he brings out his virgin daughter and the concubine
instead of the man. It is clear that the intent of the Book of Judges which ends with
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safely sitting down to eat, while the men outside perform the nevala action
on the women. Jehu's henchmen chop up Jezebel turn her not only into a ne-
vey-la (dead meat) but to domen, something which will feed/ fertilize the
earth. “The carcass (nivlat) of Jezebel shall be like dung on the ground, in the
field of Jezreel, so that none will be able to say: ‘This was Jezebel.’” Jezebel,
who more than anyone symbolized the woman who had crossed the border
into evil, who was irremediable, the living embodiment of navlut, was turned
into a ne-vey-la, a carcass and then was totally obliterated. Whereas the
Concubine’s end leads to anarchy and more rape -- and it is unclear what
exactly happens to the 12 parts of her body which are distributed to the tribes-
-Jezebel’s five body parts have a destination. They will be like dung; and
since they are buried in the fertile valley of Jezreel, they will lose their
original distinct forms (skull, 2 hands, 2 feet), but will have a future as
fertilizer.
Julia Kristeva’s words, slightly amended, express a similar point
more precisely:
The corpse… is cesspool, and death… this defilement, this shit are
what life withstands, hardly and with difficulty, on the part of death.
… Such wastes drop so that I might live, until, from loss to loss,
nothing remains [and the] entire body falls beyond the limit…. If dung
signifies the other side of the border, … [dung], the most sickening of
wastes, is a border that has encroached upon everything. It is no longer
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I who expel, ―I is expelled. The border has become an object.

So Jezebel is now a liminal figure whose reincarnation into dung can serve
as an ecological metaphor for she now has the potential to turn herself (or be
turned) into compost for plants etc. Keeping this in mind, it is possible to
view both dung and Jezebel from a different perspective.
CAN JEZEBEL BE VIEWED POSITIVELY?
The irony of this might be behind this sympathetic midrash about Jezebel:

this episode is to show that the nevala is the action of all the men and the Israelites
as well and presumably this is why they will need a king in the future to restore law
and order. See Naomi Graetz, "The Concubine of Gibeah: The Case for Reading
Intertextually," in In the Arms of Biblical Women edited by John T. Greene and
Mishael M. Caspi (Piscataway NJ: Gorgias Press, 2013), pp. 121-143. See too
unpublished paper on "Nebalah--The 'Outrage' of Women Treated as Meat" given
as a paper in Chicago, SBL 2012 (available from author).
388
Julia Kristeva, Approaching Abjection, Powers of Horror (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1982), p. 3.
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 Where do we learn about acts of kindness towards mourners?
From Jezebel, whose home was close to the marketplace and whenever
a funeral procession passed by, she would come forth from her house,
strike with her hands, lament with her mouth, and walk ten paces.
And when a bridegroom passed through the marketplace, she would
come out, clap her hands, call out with her mouth, and walk ten steps
after him. When Elijah of blessed memory, prophesied that “the dogs
shall devour Jezebel in the field of Jezreel,” the prophecy was only
partially fulfilled, for when her body is eaten by the dogs they leave
her feet and hands (kapei yadeha) because these limbs performed
389
acts of kindness (Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer 17).
This grotesque midrash refers to her presence at weddings and as a mourner
at funerals to show that “Jezebel had executed good deeds toward those in
390
joy and sorrow.” Of course, the intention of the midrash is not to praise
her, but it serves as both a homiletical midrash, to show that gemillut hasadim
(good deeds) towards both mourners and celebrants are so important, that
even evil people, like Jezebel are capable of engaging in them. And it also
engages in exegesis to explain why some parts of her remain. This midrash
sees some good in her and that possibly conjures up the famous lines in Eshet
Hayil (Proverbs 31): “She conspires (zammamah sadeh) to get a field and
takes it, she plants a vineyard by her own hands (kapeha).” Jezebel engaged
in “zimah” conspiracy with her own hands, to condemn Naboth to death so
that her husband Ahab could get his vineyard. Jezebel is undone by Jehu’s
conspiracy and all that remains of her are her conspiring hands and other
391
limbs. Whether there is an intertextual reference to Jezebel or not, at this
point in her life, she is undone by forces too great for her to withstand. Yet
there are some remains, her body parts serve as a remnant. If something is

389
Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer (Higger edition), Horev, Chapter 17. See
https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/jezebel-midrash-and-aggadah for parts of the
translation.
390
See Phyllis Trible, “Exegesis for Storytellers and Other Strangers,” Journal of
Biblical Literature, 114, 1 (Spring, 1995), p. 16 where she refers to this midrash by
quoting Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews Vol. 4. (Philadelphia: Jewish
Publication Society of America, 1962), pp. 188-89.
391
This comment is inspired by Eliav Grossman, “Wise Trader or Deceitful
Traitor? Eshet Hayil Reconsidered,” http://www.thelehrhaus.com/scholarship/wise-
trader-or-deceitful-traitor
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left, there is still life, something to tap into for future use. And it is a reminder
to the reader that good is possible even from egregious acts.
Kathleen O’Connor’s remarks about Jeremiah’s metaphor of a woman in
labor can illustrate another positive outcome from tragedy and weakness:
The survivors returning to Zion will form a procession of the forgotten,
the disabled, and the vulnerable. Although they are the lowest in the
society, they will be the beating heart of the restored community. The
blind and the lame are physically different, weak, deemed deficient in
the ancient world, stigmatized and perhaps despised. Pregnant women
are of low public stature and holders of little political power, but
together these people have the capacity to give birth to new life. The
vulnerable and broken themselves will become the promised bearers
392
of its future, a future of unimaginable reversals.
On the one hand, this woman is the weakest person, on the other hand, her
pregnancy in the context of the return is one of future hope.
Both the midrash and O’Connor refer to the idea that the dung to
which Israel/Judah/Jezebel/ has been reduced will be the source of its future,
a new beginning, in the form of fertilizer.
Like the weakest link, the laboring woman offers hope. Izevel, in the
form of zevul is restored to her proper place, ironically with Israel which has
also been scattered on the land. Their mutual suffering will be the clue to its
future. The pejorative association of her name will also be overlooked and its
393
more stately allusion will prevail.
From the perspective of the Israelites, domen appears again in a
positive form, albeit not from the perspective of Israel’s enemies. The root
domen resurfaces in Psalms and in the book of Isaiah this time as a metaphor
in the form of madmenah, a dunghill, where the dunghill this time is not
Israel, but Israel’s enemies and it is in the context of God’s looking out for
His people and making the enemy into a dung like substance:
Deal with them as You did with Midian, with Sisera, with Jabin, at the
brook Kishon — who were destroyed at En-dor, who became dung for
the field (Ps 83:10-11).

392
Kathleen O’Connor, Jeremiah Pain and Promise (Minneapolis Fortress Press,
2011), p. 125 [as quoted by L. Juliana Claasens, “The Rhetorical Function of the
Woman in Labor Metaphor in Jeremiah 30-31: Trauma, Gender and Postcolonial
Perspectives,” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 150 (November 2014), p.
69.
393
See note 16 above.
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 For the hand of the Lord shall descend upon this mount, and Moab
shall be trampled under Him, AS straw is threshed to bits at Madmenah
[the dunghill] (Isa. 25:10).

God has the last word; the enemies of Israel will end up in the dung
heap, because THEY are truly evil according to the perspective of the biblical
writer. And the reward, the future promise that comes out of the dung heaps
will be the resurrection of the people of Israel.
O’Connor suggests “that the book of Jeremiah’s wide-ranging
collection of poems, metaphors and stories seek to find language to name this
world undone by trauma. The book of Jeremiah is thus a quest for meaning,
394
an ongoing attempt to help the people of Judah survive as a people.” Louis
Stulman too, argues that as part of the rebuilding process, the prophet is
seeking to sculpt new theological formulations out of “the rubble of
395
devastation” that may assist the survival of the people. One can draw
conclusions from O’Connor and Stulman, who interpret Jeremiah to say that
destruction is necessary in order for there to be a future revival. Perhaps this
accords with Jeremiah’s original mission statement in chapter one, when he
writes:
See, I appoint you this day
Over nations and kingdoms:
To uproot and to pull down,
To destroy and to overthrow,
To build and to plant (Jer. 1:10).

In an agriculturist society like ancient Israel, the metaphor of dung would

be totally understood. Dung is a concrete metaphor which reinforces and
strengthens the idea of rebuilding out of the rubble of devastation.
This paper has attempted to show that Jezebel’s body via the
metaphor of dung, is a stand in for the remaining nation in the land via
Jeremiah’s use of the same metaphor. As was pointed out in the beginning
the people of Israel are referred to as a sinning woman and it was suggested

394
Kathleen O’Connor, Jeremiah 31 [as quoted by Claasens, p. 70].
395
Claasens on p. 70 quotes Louis Stulman, who argues that as part of the
rebuilding process, the prophet is seeking to sculpt new theological formulations
out of “the rubble of devastation” that may assist the survival of the people, Order
amid Chaos Jeremiah as Symbolic Tapestry (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press,
1998), p. 185.
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that Jezebel/Israel’s queen/ and Israel as sinning woman are metonyms
conflated in the dung imagery.
There is no way of knowing whether Jeremiah regards Jezebel as
an arch-villainess, since there is no mention of her in his prophecies. The
Deuteronomist certainly despises what she represents and has
metaphorically preached against her throughout the two books of Kings.
Both Israel and Jezebel will be turned into domen because of their sins.
However, in this form, they will have a role in the restoration of Israel, who
will come to her senses and abandon idolatry. Thus the fertilizer (domen) of
the past destruction, will provide sustenance for a national revival.
THE AFTERLIFE OF JEZEBEL IN MODERN TIMES
Jezebel has an afterlife as can be seen in the two sources below, neither of
which have any religious connection. One is a literary reference and the
other a contemporary on-line source.
396
In his ribald and possibly anti-Semitic “Song for the Clatter Bones,”
F.R. Higgins (1896-1941), a contemporary of Yeats wrote “a bitter and
whimsical equation … of Queen Jezebel with Ireland”:
God rest that Jewy woman, Queen Jezebel, the bitch [Yeats
substituted this for witch] Who peeled the clothes from her shoulder-
bones Down to her spent teats As she stretched out of the window
Among the geraniums, where She chaffed and laughed like one half
daft Titivating her painted hair—
King Jehu he drove to her, She tipped him a fancy beck; But he from
his knacky side-car spoke, "Who'll break that dewlapped neck?" And
so she was thrown from the window; Like Lucifer she fell Beneath
the feet of the horses and they beat The light out of Jezebel. That
corpse wasn't planted in clover; Ah, nothing of her was found Save
those grey bones that Hare-foot Mike Gave me for their lovely
sound; And as once her dancing body Made star-lit princes sweat,
So I'll just clack: though her ghost lacks a back There's music in
397
the old bones yet.
The poem is a grotesque depiction of the ending of Jezebel’s life. One can
almost imagine that Higgins was aware of the midrash from Pirkei de-
Rabbi Eliezer. As has been demonstrated throughout this paper, Jezebel’s
body via the metaphor of dung, is a stand in for Israel via Jeremiah’s use of

396
I thank the anonymous reviewer for pointing this out, since Jezebel is identified
as Phoenician in the Bible and therefore is not “Jewy”!
397
Alexander G. Gonzalez. Modern Irish Writers: A Bio-critical Sourcebook
(Westford CT: Greenwood Press, 1997), p. 113.
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the same metaphor. Higgin’s morbidly funny “Song for the Clatter Bones”
equates Queen Jezebel with Ireland. Jezebel is equated with the people and
with Israel. Both the poet and this paper relate to Jezebel’s tragic end in a
similar way. As Gaines writes in the introduction to her book about Jezebel
Through the Ages “’There’s music in the old bones yet.’ In listening to that
dissonant music, perhaps we can hear new chords and expand the
398
inharmonious melody that is Jezebel’s life.” The fact remains is that
Jezebel lives on in the “after-life”. The music in the old bones is that she
continues to interest us and part of it has to do both with her infamy and her
majesty in the face of death.
Jezebel.com’s existence is a fascinating enterprise. It is an online
magazine focused on celebrities, sex, feminism, and issues relating to
women's empowerment. It was launched as a blog in 2007 under the tagline
"Celebrity, Sex, Fashion for Women. Without Airbrushing." The Jezebel
manifesto states that the site
will attempt to take all the essentially meaningless but sweet stuff
directed our way and give it a little more meaning, while taking more
the serious stuff and making it more fun, or more personal, or at the
very least the subject of our highly sophisticated brand of sex joke.
Basically, we wanted to make the sort of women's magazine we'd
399
want to read.

There seems to be no reference to the biblical source on this on-line

blog. Needless to say there is critique of this blog and there are those
who oppose Jezebel.com on religious grounds. Charlie Osewalt’s
opposition is based on who Jezebel actually was, that is, a biblical
character. He calls Jezebel, “an ugly steward”:
Think about bad stewards in the Bible and it won’t be long before you
get to Jezebel. The wickedest of the wicked, the lowest of the low, the
persecutor of the prophets, Jezebel’s name has become synonymous
with evil deceit.
Today, over 5.6 million visitors visit Jezebel.com - a hugely popular
blog that aims its sights at "Celebrity, Fashion. Without Airbrushing".

398
Janet Howe Gaines, Music in the Old Bones: Jezebel Through the Ages
(Carbondale: University of Southern Illinois Press, 1999), p. xvii.
399
http://jezebel.com/262130/the-five-great-lies-of-womens-magazines (2007-11-
01).
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 So what happened to Jezebel? Are her crimes no longer severe enough
to shock? Has the protagonist in this cautionary tale finally become a
heroine of sorts? Is she really such a bad steward after all?
The truth is that Jezebel’s list of sins is quite long. She:
 Promoted idol worship. (1Kings 18:19)
 Practiced witchcraft (2Kings 9:22)
 Sought to exterminate prophets of God (1Kings 18:4-13)
 Designed idol worship that had sexual immorality at its core (1Kings
16:29-33)
Yet these are small fry compared to her gravest of sins. Writing in his
book ‘The Bloody Tenent of Persecution’, Roger Williams reminds us
of the time that Jezebel signed a death warrant of an innocent man so
that her husband could expand his property portfolio…..We still live
400
in her shadow today.

In contrast to the male critic cited above, the feminist Bible scholar
Athalya Brenner-Idan is ecstatic about this website and writes:
Though Jezebel has been dragged through history and text reception
as an icon of evil, she’s recently been commemorated on the Internet
as something else. The Jezebel.com blog/website/magazine, launched
in 2008, defines itself as a feminist blog that mixes a salad of news,
politics, fashion, sex, gossip, and many other topics that would appeal
to female readers. The site’s popularity and its huge readership may be
attributed to its combination of seriousness and lightness, gravitas and
fun, lowbrow and highbrow. I doubt whether many of its readers spare
a thought for its biblical eponym or even make the connection with
her. It gives me pleasure, however, that Jezebel the queen, princess,
mother has been so morphed into a commercial mast of sorts for
contemporary woman readers.

Jezebel (not the biblical Izevel) now has a life of her own. The non-
Hebrew speaking world see her mainly as a temptress, a sexually
provocative woman. They have chosen to use Jehu’s words of description
about her “When Joram saw Jehu, he asked, “Is all well, Jehu?” But Jehu
replied, “How can all be well as long as your mother Jezebel carries on
her countless harlotries (zenunei izevel) and sorceries?” (2 Kings 9:22)
Non-Hebrew speakers (and some rabbinic sources) have interpreted zenut
(harlotry) in its literal and narrow sense; perhaps using Jezebel’s painting
400
https://www.stewardship.org.uk/blog/blog/post/199-stewards-jezebel-an-ugly-
steward (29 August 2013)
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of her eyes before her execution as the proof text for this. But except for
Jehu’s hyperbolic political statement, Izevel was primarily a faithful wife
with her husband’s interests in mind, and the “harlotries” referred to here
are those of worshipping Baal, betraying monotheism and being
unfaithful to Israel’s God. It would have been difficult to write this paper
if one were to accept the Western world’s appropriation of Jezebel which
results in turning her into a sex object. Such readings of her have also
“thinged” her, objectified her, just as Jehu did by referring to her as a thing
(zot izevel) and turning her into dung (2 Kings 9:37).

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CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: “I LIFT MY EYES TO THE
MOUNTAINS”: AND BEHOLD!!!

Many biblical characters pray to and meet God and God’s emissaries in
elevated spaces. Often the formulaic expression of looking up (va-yisa einav)
and seeing (va-ya'ar) in combination with behold (ve-hinei) is part of this
experience. This paper starts with the premise that the physical lifting up of
one's eyes by an individual (or a group) is a search for assistance and comfort.
The phrase "I lift my eyes to the mountains, from where will my help come?"
(Ps 121:1) indicates that height or elevation augments the search for faith or
answers. There are many instances of the combination of “lifting up one’s
eyes,” “seeing,” and “beholding” scattered throughout the bible (e.g. Gen 18,
22, 24, 33, 37; 2 Sam 15,18; 2 Kgs 6; Ez 8; Zech 2; Dan 8; 1 Chr 21). The
more common expression is va-ya’ar ve-hinei (e.g. Gen 40:6). What is the
point of the redundancy of both lifting up eyes and seeing? Surely seeing
would be enough? The physicality of va-yisah is also interesting because
many times the word goes together with voice and crying: he and she raise
voice and cried (va-yisah kol va-yevch). This paper argues that “lifting eyes
and beholding” are the expressions of the interior thinking of mostly males.
The notable gap is the case of Rebecca (Gen 24:64), where hinei does not
appear (and instead she falls off her camel). The outcome of the formula is
not always the desired one, but there is both resolution and/or closure (e.g.
Gen 33:1 and 2 Sam 18:24). This paper will examine what this formula’s
place is in the individual texts and as part of an inter-related corpus of texts.
Using the methodology of intertextuality, it will be argued that this kind of
reading both shapes and produces new interpretations.
There are many instances where the ve-hinei is delayed or where
there is seeing, but not necessarily lifting of eyes. In each of these cases the
expression “ve-hinei” functions as a form of resolution. In some cases, the
seeing is implied, as in the fulfilment of the servant’s prayer with Rebecca
showing up with the jar on her shoulder (Gen. 24:15). Or the ve-hinei is
delayed as with the angel’s promise to Abraham of a son to Sarah (Gen
18:10).
Although I translate the expression “va-yisah” as lift, others translate
it as raise. But the idea of height is important. If one lifts (or raises) one’s
eyes, it is in the upward direction. But what about when the expression cannot
possibly represent height. For instance, when Rebecca sees Isaac from her
camel, is she looking upward? Also, when Pharaoh’s daughter sees Moses in
the river, is she looking up? Finally, how do we know that Abraham is
looking up when he sees the ram? Yonah Bar-Maoz makes this clear when

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he says there is no evidence that the expression as used in Deuteronomy 4:19
“should be applied literally. He writes:
…[T]he expression, “looking up he saw,” is a code for a special type of
vision. We should ascribe this significance only when the phrase cannot
be understood literally as looking up at something from a lower vantage
point. Therefore, one should not ascribe hidden meaning to the words,
“And when you look up to the sky and behold the sun and the moon and
the stars” (Deut. 4:19), or to similar expressions. In the Abraham story,
however, this expression cannot be interpreted literally, for there is
nothing to indicate that Abraham was standing at a low spot and the ram
401
higher up [emphasis mine].
Bar-Maoz suggests that there is a special relationship between the one who
sees and the object of his/her affection. And thus when Potiphar’s wife “looks
up” and sees Joseph, she is probably looking down (mistress to slave) and
yet has her eyes on him perhaps with lust, which is what Shalom Paul
402
suggests, following an Akkadian parallel.
It is also possible that this formula reflects the standard expressions
403
in Canaanite/Ugaritic epics which entered biblical literature in this
“fossilized” form, as a form of “high” language. Thus when God appears to
Abraham by the terebinths of Mamre; he was sitting at the entrance and He
lifted his eyes and saw and there were [ve-hinei] three men standing near him
(Gen 18: 1-3). In Danel it has similar expressions, that he was sitting near the
gate, and under a tree in the goren. And he too raises his eyes.
Most of the instances of this formula are in the Book of Genesis and
according to Robert Alter, in his commentary on Genesis, “[t]he formulaic
chain, he raised his eyes and saw, followed by the "presentative" look (rather
like voici in French), occurs frequently in these stories as a means of

401
Yona Bar-Maoz, “When Seeing is More than Sight,” Bar-Ilan University's
Parashat Hashavua Study Center, November 19, 2005
402
Yona Bar-Maoz, “When Seeing is More than Sight,” Bar-Ilan
University's Parashat Hashavua Study Center, November 19, 2005. Footnote
#9: “Professor Shalom Paul ascribes erotic significance to the expression
nesi’at einayim (casting one’s eyes) in the context of one gender to another,
in light of the corresponding expression in Akkadian. This is apparently
why it appears in the story of Potiphar’s wife without the verb to see. This
would also explain the JPS translation.”.
403
In the Ugaritic epic about Danel it says ‫בנשוא עיניו וארא‬, which is then used
formulaically in the bible.
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indicating a shift from the narrator's overview to the character's visual
404
perspective.”
Thus from Abraham’s visual perspective it he who SEES the ram
405
and has a “click moment.” It is not God tells him to sacrifice the ram
instead of Isaac (tachat b’no). The Hebrew hints at this magnificently by
using the word “achar”—in fact the cantillations, the Torah trope emphasize
406
it (ah-ch-ah-ah-ar). There is another way! “Vayisa Avraham et-einav,
407
vayar, v’hinei, ayil ACHAR ne-echaz bas’vach b’karnav” (Gen. 22:13).
Abraham makes a physical effort (vayisa) to raise his eyes; and then he SEES
(vayar) an alternative (achar). There is another way. There is an out; he can
truly see what is in front of him. Despite the hinted complication of the word
(bas’vach, also a maze), it suddenly seems very simple. The ram (ayil) is for
him. The “hinei” is representative of the two mentions of hineini (Here I am)
in the text when he was willing to slavishly follow God’s demand. Abraham
is truly here, now, in this new moment of truth, as is the ram, the substitute

404
Commentary on Genesis 24:63.
405
The expression “click moment” is usually associated with feminism. However,
it probably originated with photography—the moment that the photographer frames
the picture in her mind, using her eyes as the guide, which is the artistic moment of
truth—then s/he clicks the button and preserves this vision for the future. It has
been suggested to me that one can look at the three-day time frame of the journey
to Moriah as a period that Abraham put to use by reflecting, confronting his past,
and building up resilience. And so when he returns (v’nashuvah) to his lads, he is
on his way to finding alternative behaviors to his abuse. It is true that one can argue
that recovery is a process rather than a click moment, but I am not sure that
Abraham has completely recovered (nashuvah); for his previous behavior has
consequences for which he cannot totally make amends (t’shuvah). Furthermore,
the sparseness of the text and the leitmotif of “seeing” that repeats itself over and
over lend themselves to the click moment associated with both feminism and
photography.
406
I am fully aware that I am taking liberties with my interpretation of Achar; but
since the vocalization is the Masoretes’ choice, one could also punctuate it and
therefore pronounce it as acher. So I am doing it both ways!
407
The Torah: A Women’s Commentary, 103, translates this as: “Abraham lifted his
eyes: he now could see a ram [just] after it was caught by its horns in a thicket.”
The Etz Hayim Torah and Commentary, 120, translates this as: “When Abraham
looked up, his eye fell upon a ram, caught in the thicket by its horns.” In the
commentary it writes: “'a ram behind [him]' or a 'ram, later [caught].'” It points to
some manuscripts that say this is “'a single ram'” (ayil echad), which differs by
only one similar-looking letter."
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for his son. He says, “I can stop the cycle of violence.” Even though God has
demanded proof of his love, he does not have to burn his son as a sacrifice.
He has something else to offer, “ACHAR”; and this strange usage offers the
reader closure by taking us back to the beginning of the story, achar
hadevorim ha-eleh. It is something different, pointed to him by the Angel,
something new that can lead into a more promising future—when there will
408
be no more need to sacrifice.
Since I am presenting a paper on this expression in Genesis in
Boston, I will now leave Genesis and focus on the passages from later texts
starting with Exodus. The chart at the end includes the other Genesis
passages. I will start by looking at four sources which do not follow the
script, namely Exodus 2:
1) 5 The daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe in the Nile, while
her maidens walked along the Nile. She spied ‫ ַותֵּ ֶּרא‬the basket among
the reeds and sent her slave girl to fetch it. 6 When she opened it, she
saw ‫ ו ִַּת ְראֵּ הּו‬that it was a child, [ve-hinei] a boy crying. She took pity
on it and said, “This must be a Hebrew child.”
‫(ה) וַתֵּ ֶּרד בַּ ת פּ ְַרעֹ ה לִּ ְרחֹ ץ עַל הַ יְאֹ ר וְ ַנעֲרֹתֶ יהָ הֹ לְ כֹ ת ַעל יַד הַ יְ אֹ ר ַותֵּ ֶּרא אֶ ת הַ תֵּ בָ ה בְּ תוְֹך‬
:‫הַ סוּף ו ִַּת ְשלַח אֶ ת אֲמָ תָ ּה ו ִַּתקחֶּ ה‬
‫(ו) ַו ִּתפְ תַ ח ו ִַּת ְראֵּ הּו אֶּ ת הַ ֶּילֶּד ו ְִּהנֵּה ַנעַר בֹּ כֶה ַותַ ְחמֹ ל ָעלָיו ַותּ ֹאמֶ ר מּיַלְ דֵ י הָ עבְ רים זֶה‬
What is especially interesting here, besides the usual missing ve-hinei in the
translation, is that all of the verbs are attributed to Pharaoh’s daughter and
that there is no use of the verb va-tisa eineha,…ve-hinei; instead there is va-
tiftach va-tirehue…ve-hinei. Since one can open eyes, and not only the
basket, I also wondered whether, a point is being made that she looks down
and not up. Yet, since she is Pharaoh’s daughter with compassion, hemlah,
surely she deserves the usual formula.
2) Also in this chapter is another low point, concerning the beginning of
Moses’s career.
12
He turned this way and that and, seeing no one about, ‫ַוי ְַרא כִּ י אֵּ ין ִּאיש‬
he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand 1 3 When he went out
the next day, [ve-hinei] he found two Hebrews fighting; so he said to the
offender, “Why do you strike your fellow?”
Presumably it would be very inappropriate to have Moses look up for a
negative action, yet this life changing event does have the …va-ya’ar…ve-
hinei as part of the overall action.

408
The above paragraphs about Abraham appeared in my paper “Trauma and
Recovery” which is in this book.
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 3) Another place following this where the formula is incomplete is
Ex. 3:
Now Moses, tending the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest
of Midian, drove the flock into the wilderness, and came to Horeb,
the mountain of God. 2 An angel of the Lord appeared to him in a
blazing fire out of a bush. He gazed, ‫ ַוי ְַרא וְ ִּהנֵּה‬and there was a bush
all aflame, yet the bush was not consumed.
When we compare this text with the parallel one in Joshua 5:13 “Once, when
Joshua was near Jericho, he lifted up his eyes and saw [ve-hinei] ‫וַיִּ שא ֵּעיניו‬
‫ ַוי ְַרא וְ ִּהנֵּה‬a man was standing before him [le-negdo], drawn sword in hand.
Joshua went up to him and asked him, “Are you one of us or of our enemies?”
We find that the same idea is conveyed with the full formula, leading to the
question that the Joshua text which is considered to be an imitation of
Moses’s initiation, is either an elaboration on the original text, or the Exodus
text is a shortening of the Joshua text. The va’yaar and ve-hinei appears in
409
both, just not the va-yisah einav .
4) The final text where the formula is incomplete is in Exodus 34:
29
So Moses came down from Mount Sinai. And as Moses came down
from the mountain bearing the two tablets of the Pact, Moses was not
aware that the skin of his face was radiant, since he had spoken with
Him. 3 0 Aaron and all the Israelites saw ‫ַוּי ְַרא אַ הֲרֹ ן וְ כָל בְּ נֵי י ְש ָראֵ ל אֶ ת מֹ שֶׁ ה‬
‫ ו ְִּהנֵּה‬that the skin of Moses’ face was radiant; and they shrank from
coming near him.
It would be strange if Aaron and the people were to lift UP their eyes to
Moses when he is already DOWN from Sinai, yet the hinei remains in place.
It would seem that the redactor here recognized that using the formula, even
though this is a momentous occasion, would be out of place and that is proof
that lifting up eyes also implies direction.
We now can look at the one instance in Exodus where the full
expression exists: In Exodus 14:10 we have the Egyptians in full pursuit of
the Israelites. Then “ As Pharaoh drew near, the Israelites lifted up their eyes
[ve-hinei] ‫ וַיִּ ְשאּו ְבנֵּי יִּ ְשראֵּ ל אֶּ ת עֵּ ינֵּיהֶּ ם וְ ִּהנֵּה‬Egyptians
ַ were [or Egypt is]
advancing upon them and they were greatly frightened [ya-yiru] and the
Israelites shouted to the Lord.”
Here we can analyze how the formula works, for this was surely a
life-changing event! Egypt has caught up to the Israelites. Pharaoh gets close
(‫ ;)הקְ ריב‬the Israelites collectively lift up their eyes and behold (‫ )וְ הנֵה‬the
Egyptians are advancing on them; and they were very frightened and cry out

409
See below for further discussion on Joshua 5:13.
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to God. It would seem that the hinei is misplaced, because after the hinei
should come the rescue. Is this a case where geographically the Egyptians
have the upper hand? For they are camped near the sea. Are the Egyptians
above them, in a place where they can see them? And is it all Egypt, or just
Pharaoh--since the phrase is that “Pharaoh drew near”? Is God setting up
Pharaoh once again to be sacrificed (for it states clearly ‫וּפ ְַרעֹ ה הקְ ריב‬. Is he
about to sacrifice himself because of his hard-heartedness?
I think something else is going on. Although the hinei appears here,
there is a postponed hinei later in the text when God himself comes to the
rescue. The Israelites yell at Moses and say to him that he brought them to
die in the wilderness and that they would have been better off staying in
Egypt. Moses tells the people not to worry and that God will battle for you,
so just shut up and wait. But God is not happy with Moses, he tells him “Why
do you cry out to Me? Tell the Israelites to go forward. 1 6 And you lift up
your rod and hold out your arm over the sea and split it, so that the Israelites
may march into the sea on dry ground. 1 7 And I will [hineni] ‫) וַאֲ נִּ י ִּהנְ נִּ י ְמחַ ּזֵק‬
‫אֶ ת לֵב מצְ ַרים‬stiffen/strengthen the hearts of the Egyptians so that they go in
after them; and I will gain glory ‫ אכָבְ דָ ה‬through Pharaoh and all his warriors,
his chariots and his horsemen. 1 8 Let the Egyptians know that I am Lord,
when I gain glory ‫ בְּ הכָבְ די בְּ פ ְַרעֹ ה‬through Pharaoh, his chariots, and his
410
horsemen.” There is a lot of first person on the part of God, in contrast to
the defeated nation and Pharaoh.
In addition to all this, there is a play on words in the root of KBD, which
is the same root that God use to harden Pharaoh’s heart at the very beginning
in Exodus 7: 14.: “Pharaoh’s heart is stubborn ‫ ;כָבֵ ד לֵב פּ ְַרעֹ ה‬he refuses to let
411
the people go.‫ (יד) ַוּי ֹאמֶ ר יְ ֹקוָק אֶ ל מֹ שֶׁ ה כָבֵ ד לֵב פּ ְַרעֹ ה מֵ אֵ ן לְ שַׁ לַח הָ עָם‬:.

410
The use of hikriv together with ‫ אכָבְ דָ ה‬has an additional uncomfortable
association and that is with the sacrifice of Aaron’s sons in Leviticus 10. ‫בּקְ רֹ בַ י‬
,‫ וְ עַל פְּ נֵי כָל הָ עָם אֶ כָבֵ ד‬,‫אֶ קָ דֵ שׁ‬
411
We have come full circle; God’s glory has come about because of Pharaoh’s
stubborn heart, which is also possibly heavy (kaved) with a sense of self-
importance (kavod) because of who he is. And so his come-uppance and loss of his
411
slaves is his own fault. I think the point being made is that God is clearly the one
--- v’ani hineni!!! The one who is responsible, from beginning to end and the play
on words just makes it clear—Pharoah may have started it all, but I, God, am the
one who is finishing it. And that is also one of the descriptions of God in the daily
prayers between the Shema Yisrael, Hear O Israel, and, the silent prayer: —rishon,
ve-aharon. God is first and last, and this is associated in the prayer with the
redemption of the Israelites from the Egyptians
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 In Numbers, there is only one example of ‫ וַיִּ שא עֵּ יניו ַוי ְַרא‬and this time
without the hinei.
In Numbers 24 it is written: “Now Balaam, seeing ‫ וַי ְַרא‬that it pleased the
Lord to bless Israel, did not, as on previous occasions, go in search of omens,
but turned his face toward the wilderness. 2 As Balaam looked up and saw
Israel ‫ וַיִּ שא ִּבלְ עם אֶּ ת עֵּ יניו ַוי ְַרא‬encamped tribe by tribe, the spirit of God came
upon him. 3 Taking up his theme, ,‫ וַּישָ א ְמשָׁ לוֹ‬he said: Word of Balaam son of
Beor, Word of the man whose eye is true,” This actually makes sense, since
seeing Israel happily encamped would not necessarily please him, certainly
not King Balak. Also from a geographical point of view, it would seem that
Balaam is actually up on a high place, on the peak of Peor, which overlooks
the wilderness. So clearly, here the lifting up of eyes, is a spiritual encounter
and not related to height. It is the opposite of a clear geographical reference
in Deuteronomy 4: 19. “1 9 And when you look up ‫ וּפֶן תּשָ א ֵעינֶיך‬to the sky and
behold the sun and the moon and the stars, the whole heavenly host…What
is interesting in Numbers 24: 1-3 is the mini-inclusio with vs. 1 va-yaar; vs.
2 with the formula and vs. 3 with va-yisa. This is the reverse of the phrase
and I’m not sure what it is meant to point out, but it is interesting. According
to the midrash “The Sages long since noted the flawed vision of the wicked,
412
who think themselves clear-sighted”
I have already referred to Joshua 5:13 in which the formula is quite clear:
“1 3 Once, when Joshua was near Jericho, he lifted up his eyes and saw [ve-
hinei] a man was standing before him [le-negdo],
‫ וַיִּ שא עֵּ יניו ַוי ְַרא וְ ִּהנֵּה אישׁ ֹעמֵ ד לְ נֶגְ דוֹ‬drawn sword in hand”. Here we have a man
standing le-negdo, which could mean parallel and not above, so that this
would be a spiritual encounter and not a physical elevation. And this is the
context of a revelation, similar to that which we saw with Moses at the
burning bush in Ex. 3. Bar-Maoz writes that “The sudden appearance of a
captain of the Lord’s host is not something which commonly takes place in
reality, …The way Joshua responded to his appearance makes it clear to us
that seeing such a thing on the eve of battle with the enemy was most
suspicious…. So the expression, “looking up he saw,” is a code for a special
type of vision. We should ascribe this significance only when the phrase

‫ מצְ ַרים גְ אַ לְ תָּ נוּ יי‬:ַ‫ וּמבַּ לְ עָדֶ יך אֵ ין לָנוּ מֶ לְֶך גוֹאֵ ל וּמושׁיע‬.‫ אַ תָּ ה הוּא ראשׁוֹן וְ אַ תָּ ה הוּא אַ חֲרוֹן‬.‫אֱמֶ ת‬
. ָ‫ וְ יַם סוּף [להם] בָּ קַ עְ תּ‬. ָ‫כורך [י ְש ָראֵ ל] גָאָ לְ תּ‬ְ ְ‫ וּב‬. ָ‫כוריהֶ ם הָ ָרגְ תּ‬
ֵ ְ‫ כָל בּ‬.‫ וּמבֵּ ית עֲבָ דים פְּ דיתָ נוּ‬.‫אֱלהֵ ינוּ‬
:‫ אֶ חָ ד מֵ הֶ ם ל ֹא נוֹתָ ר‬.‫ וַיְ כַסוּ מַ ים צָ ֵריהֶ ם‬. ָ‫ וידידים הֶ עֱבַ ְרתּ‬. ָ‫וְ זֵדים טבַּ עְ תּ‬
412
Bar-Maoz gives the reference (Tanhuma va-Yeshev 6)
-271-
cannot be understood literally as looking up at something from a lower
413
vantage point.” [italics mine]
We now move on to a more problematic text, that of Judges 19. The part
that interests me concerns the concubine and her husband who turned off
from the road to spend the night in Gibeah. They sat down in the main square
and nobody [‫ ]וְ אֵ ין אישׁ‬took them in. And then [‫ ]וְ הנֵה אישׁ‬an old man came
from whatever he was doing in the fields. He is to be their “savior”. And this
is followed by ַ‫וַּישָ א ֵעינָיו ַוּי ְַרא אֶ ת הָ אישׁ הָ אֹ ֵרח‬. Yet it says that HE (the old man)
lifted his eyes up and saw the wayfarer in the town square. I wish that
someone would make an emendation to the word ‫הָ אֹ ֵרח‬, to read ha-me-areach
(by inserting a mem). Then we could read it that the husband lifted up his
eyes and saw the man, his host. And then the man asked where are you going
etc. What is interesting to me is that in vs 27 when her husband arose in the
morning, he opened the doors of the house and went out to continue his
journey and ve-hinei, there was the woman, his concubine. Thus we again
have an inclusio which starts with vs. 16, ve-hinei and ends with the tragedy
of the raped concubine half dead on the threshold of the host’s house.
This particular text, which I have written a lot about is very ironic. The
savior is not so, there really being nobody—just like there is nobody with
Moses, who looks around and then commits murder. The echoes of Judges
19 are in Genesis 19: 28 where Abraham, looks down on Sodom and
Gomorrah and saw ‫ ַוי ְַרא וְ ִּהנֵּה‬the smoke of the land rising. Thus the inclusio
which I have noticed is also the ending of the town.
There are 3 texts in 2 Samuel which seem to be playing around with the
motif of lifting eyes. They are all connected with the tragedy of Absalom and
his rebellion against David. The story starts with the rape of his sister Tamar
by his brother Amnon, who is the crown prince and ends with Absalom’s
death. Both 2 Sam 13:34 and 2 Sam 18:24 have the full formula and in effect
serve as an inclusio. In chapter 13 Jonadab (the mysterious attendant, who is
414
David’s nephew) reports that ONLY Amnon is dead and that Absalom has
not killed all the princes. And right after this report, “The watchman on duty
looked up and saw ‫ וַּישָ א הַ ַנעַר הַ צֹ פֶה אֶ ת ֵעינָיו ַוּי ְַרא וְ הנֵה‬a large crowd coming
from the road to his rear, from the side of the hill.” And at this point Jonadab
says to David, see it’s just like what I told you. The way the formula functions

413
Bar-Maoz.
414
One of these days, I would like to look into who exactly is Jonadab; to me he
has always seemed like an Iago figure. But his character is not really developed.
But he comes out on the right side, even though he seemed to have instigated the
rape of Tamar—or at least put the idea into Amnon’s head.
-272-
here is clear: the watchman lifts up his eyes and hinei, there are lots of people
coming including the princes—thus all is not lost. Here it is not a geographic
location, because the people are coming from a road behind him on the side
of the hill—so it is not necessarily a physical UP situation.
In 2 Sam 18 we again have a watchman; David is sitting between the
two gates and the watchman is on the roof and he lifts up his eyes and sees
‫ וַיִּ שא אֶּ ת עֵּ יניו ַוי ְַרא וְ ִּהנֵּה‬a man running alone. This time the news is not going
to be good and I believe we have an ironic use of the term. The verb to see
(‫ )ראה‬appears earlier in the text, when in 18:10 a man sees ‫ ַוי ְַרא ִּאיש אֶ חָ ד‬and
it is told to Joab, hinei I saw Absalom hanging in the tree ‫יתי אֶ ת אַ בְ שָׁ ֹלם‬ ִּ ‫הנֵה ר ִּא‬
:‫תָּ לוּי בָּ אֵ לָה‬. And Joab answers angrily to the man who tells him, throwing back
at him his own words “and you saw!!!!” ‫ וְ ִּה ֵּנה ר ִּאית‬. And if that’s the case,
why didn’t you kill him on the spot. I don’t think that it is a coincidence that
the author uses the hinei ra-ah, twice in this chapter, both in vss 10-11 and
then later in vs. 24. In these passages we also have allusions to Genesis 22 in
which Abraham twice raises his eyes: once without the hinei and then after
with. In vs. 4: Abraham lifts up his eyes (presumably in a geographical sense
to the distant hill that God shows him ‫בַּ ּיוֹם הַ ְשלישׁי וַּישָ א אַ בְ ָרהָ ם אֶ ת ֵעינָיו ַוּי ְַרא אֶ ת‬
‫הַ מָ קוֹם מֵ ָרחֹ ק‬: but in vs. 13 Abraham spiritually lifts up his eyes and sees [ve-
hinei] the ram, which he understands is the alternative sacrifice to Isaac:
415
‫וַּישָ א אַ בְ ָרהָ ם אֶ ת עֵינָיו ַוּי ְַרא וְ הנֵה‬
This hinei is clearly the answer to Abraham’s interior thinking that now he
doesn’t have to sacrifice his son. So in Abraham’s case we have a happy
ending, not so, for King David.
In an earlier passage in 2 Samuel 15: 30-32 we have an allusion to the
formula. David is going up Mt. Olives weeping, and prays to God that he
“frustrate Ahitophel’s counsel” and then when he reached the top, ve-hinei,
coming round the mountain in vs 32 is the answer to his prayers, namely
Hushai the Archite, his trusted friend: ‫וַיְ הי דָ וד בָּ א ַעד הָ ר ֹאשׁ אֲשֶׁ ר י ְשׁתַּ ֲחוֶה שָׁ ם‬
‫“ לֵאֹלהים וְ ִּהנֵּה לקְ ָראתוֹ‬Chushai's joining with David served as a heavenly sign
that his prayer had been accepted. And indeed, it becomes clear in the coming
chapters that sending Chushai as a spy in Avshalom's camp is what ultimately
416
decides the campaign in David's favor and saves his life.”
The last four cases are more apocalyptic in nature, since they concern
prophets. In 2 Kings 6:17 we have a partial formula in that God opens
Elisha’s servant’s eyes and [ve-hinei] he sees the hills around Elisha covered

415
There are many parallels to the Akedah and I saw this suggested for the first
time when I was teaching 2 Sam 18. (see Lecture 96 Amnon Bazak)
416
Lecture 90, Amnon Bazak
-273-
with horses and chariots. Here it is God who opens ‫ וַיִּ פְ קַ ח‬instead of lifting
‫ וישא‬eyes and it is certainly a case of geographical seeing. But we do have the
‫ ַוי ְַרא וְ ִּהנֵּה‬construction and it is possible that there is a spiritual component as
well since God is involved and Elisha is saved from the Arameans who are
struck with a blinding light as Elisha had prayed.
The last few cases of the formula appear in the prophets, Ezekiel,
Zechariah and Daniel. Ezekiel prophesizes and says: “4 And the Presence of
the God of Israel appeared there, like the vision that I had seen in the valley.
5
And He said to me, “O mortal, turn your eyes ‫ שא נא עֵּ ינֶּיָך‬northward.” I
turned my eyes northward, and there, ‫ ואֶּ שא עֵּ ינַי דֶ ֶרְך צָ פוֹנָה וְ ִּהנֵּה‬north of
the gate of the altar, was that infuriating image on the approach. (Eze 8:
5).” This source is missing va-erah.
Zechariah writes: I looked up, and I saw four horns. ‫ואֶּ שא אֶּ ת עֵּ ינַי‬
:‫( ואֵּ ֶּרא וְ ִּהנֵּה אַ ְרבַּ ע קְ ָרנוֹת‬Zech 2:1). This passage is complete, but there is not
necessarily a salvation in sight. In fact, the opposite might be true, since the
horns are those that tossed Judah, so that no man could raise his head. Yet
God also shows him smiths, who will “hew down the horns of the nations”
that raised a horn against Judah. So perhaps there is salvation in sight, if we
look past the horns to what will happen to them in the future.
In Daniel we have two interesting uses of the formula. The first is
startling, because it echoes Genesis 22. “3 I looked and saw a ram ‫ואֶּ שא‬
‫ עֵּ ינַי ואֶּ ְראֶּ ה וְ ִּהנֵּה אַ יִּ ל אֶּ חד‬standing between me and the river; he had two horns;
the horns were high, with one higher than the other, and the higher sprouting
last.” (Daniel 8:3). Of course, in Gen 22: 13 it says ayil achar and not ayil
echad!! : ‫וַיִּ שא אַ ְברהם אֶּ ת עֵּ יניו ַוי ְַרא וְ ִּהנֵּה אַ יִּ ל אַ חַ ר‬
I think it is far-fetched, although tempting to see this as a reference to the
Akedah. But Daniel also uses the formula again in chapter 10:5 “I looked and
saw a man dressed in linen”. ‫וָאֶ שָ א אֶ ת עֵינַי וָאֵ ֶרא וְ הנֵה‬
The final use of the formula is both apocalyptic and grounded since it
appears in the context of David’s penitence over having ordered the census
and accepting responsibility. It appears in 1 Chronicles 21. He looks up and
sees the angel of the Lord standing between heaven and earth with a drawn
sword: “1 6 David looked up and saw the angel of the Lord standing between
heaven and earth, with a drawn sword in his hand directed against Jerusalem”
(1 Chron 21:16).
‫טז) וַיִּ שא דוִּ יד אֶּ ת ֵּעיניו ַוי ְַרא אֶּ ת מַ לְ אַ ְך יְ קֹ וק עֹמֵ ד בֵּ ין הָ אָ ֶרץ וּבֵ ין הַ שָ מַ ים וְ חַ ְרבּוֹ ְשׁלוּפָה‬
‫בְּ יָדוֹ נְ טּויה עַל יְרוּשָׁ ָלם‬
So his looking up, results in a conversation with God and the resolution that
follows is that he accepts his guilt and pleads with God in vs. 17: let Your
hand fall upon me and my father’s house, and let not Your people be
plagued!”
-274-
 The passage is also reminiscent of the same vision that Joshua had
in Chapter 5:13. “Once, when Joshua was near Jericho, he lifted up his eyes
and saw [ve-hinei] a man was standing before him [le-negdo], drawn sword
in hand.”
‫שׁ ַע בּיריחוֹ וַיִּ שא עֵּ יניו ַוי ְַרא וְ ִּהנֵּה אישׁ ֹעמֵ ד לְ נֶגְ דוֹ וְ חַ ְרבּוֹ ְשׁלוּפָה בְּ יָדוֹ‬
ֻ ‫(יג) וַיְ הי בּהְ יוֹת יְ הוֹ‬
:‫ַו ֵּילְֶך יְ הוֹשֻׁ ַע אֵ לָיו ַוּי ֹאמֶ ר לוֹ ֲהלָנוּ אַ תָּ ה אם לְ צָ ֵרינוּ‬
So in concluding our study of the sources, we almost have a macro inclusio.
We started with Moses. tending the flock of his father-in-law Jethro. He sees
an angel appear to him in a blazing fire, which we noted was similar to Joshua
who saw a man standing opposite him. And we end with David who has a
similar vision to Joshua, except that like Moses, he sees an angel (‫)מַ לְ אַ ְך‬. Of
course, the ve-hinei is missing in this last source! Is this intentional on the
part of the redactor? Possibly. Whether it is or not, it is important to note that
the occurrence of this formula appears at crucial times in Israel’s history. And
in the conclusion of 1 Chronicles, the fact that the angel stands between
heaven and earth, with a sword drawn facing Jerusalem (‫ )נְ טוּיָה‬or directed
against Jerusalem reminds us of God’s power, since the verb netuyah also
resounds with the exodus story that God redeemed Israel with a zeroya
netuah.. “I will free you from the labors of the Egyptians and deliver you
from their bondage. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and through
extraordinary chastisements. (Ex 6:6)
‫וְ הצַ לְ תּי אֶ ְתכֶם מֵ ֲע ֹבדָ תָ ם וְ ָגאַ לְ תּי אֶ ְתכֶם בּזְרוֹ ַע נְטוּיָה וּב ְשׁפָטים גְ ֹדלים‬
To conclude, I think we have some amazing connections and obviously
further work is needed to connect all the intertextual dots.

Genesis 13 ‫בראשית פרק יג‬

10
Lot looked about him and saw how well
watered was the whole plain of the Jordan,
all of it—this was before the Lord had
destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah—all the
way to Zoar, …
14
And the Lord said to Abram, after Lot
had parted from him, “Raise your eyes
and look out from where you are, to the
north and south, to the east and west,
Genesis 18
The Lord appeared to him by the
terebinths of Mamre; he was sitting at the
entrance of the tent as the day grew hot.
2
He lifted his eyes and saw and there
-275-
‫(י) וַיִּ שא לֹוט אֶּ ת עֵּ יניו ַוי ְַרא אֶ ת ָכל ככַר‬
‫הַ ּי ְַרדֵ ן כי ֻכלָּה מַ ְשׁקֶ ה לפְ נֵי שַׁ חֵ ת יְ קֹ וָק אֶ ת‬
‫ְסדֹ ם וְ אֶ ת עֲמֹ ָרה כְ גַן יְ קֹ וָק כְ אֶ ֶרץ מצְ ַרים‬
....‫בֹּ ֲאכָה צֹ עַר‬
‫(יד) וַיקֹ וָק אָ מַ ר אֶ ל אַ בְ ָרם אַ ח ֲֵרי ה ָפּ ֶרד לוֹט‬
‫מֵ עמוֹ שא נא עֵּ ינֶּיָך ְוּראֵ ה מן הַ מָ קוֹם ֲאשֶׁ ר‬
‫ (טו) כי‬:‫אַ תָּ ה שָׁ ם צָ פֹ נָה ָונֶגְ בָּ ה וָקֵ ְדמָ ה ָויָמָ ה‬
‫אֶ ת כָל הָ אָ ֶרץ אֲשֶׁ ר אַ תָּ ה רֹ אֶ ה לְ ך אֶ ְתּ ֶננָה‬
:‫וּלְ ז ְַרעֲך עַד עוֹלָם‬
‫ראשית פרק יח‬
‫(ב) וַיִּ שא עֵּ יניו ַוי ְַרא וְ ִּהנֵּה ְשֹׁלשָׁ ה ֲאנָשׁים‬
‫נצָ בים ָעלָיו ַוּי ְַרא ַוּי ָָרץ לקְ ָראתָ ם מ ֶפּתַ ח הָ אֹ הֶ ל‬
‫ (י) ַוּי ֹאמֶ ר שׁוֹב אָ שׁוּב אֵ לֶיך‬...:‫וַּי ְשׁתַּ חוּ אָ ְרצָ ה‬
‫ָכ ֵעת חַ ּיָה וְ ִּהנֵּה בֵ ן לְ שָ ָרה א ְשׁתֶּ ך וְ שָ ָרה‬
:‫שֹׁ מַ ַעת ֶפּתַ ח הָ אֹ הֶ ל וְ הוּא אַ ח ֲָריו‬
were [ve-hinei] three men standing near
him.
Genesis 19
27
Next morning, Abraham hurried to the
place where he had stood before the
Lord, 2 8 and, looking down toward
Sodom and Gomorrah and all the land of
the Plain, he saw the smoke of the land
rising like the smoke of a kiln.
Genesis 22
4
On the third day Abraham looked up
and saw the place from afar.
13
When Abraham lifted his eyes he saw
[ve-hinei] a ram, caught in the thicket
by its horns. So Abraham went and took
the ram and offered it up as a burnt
offering in place of his son.
Genesis 24
15
He had scarcely finished speaking,
when [ve-hinei] Rebekah, who was
born to Bethuel, the son of Milcah the
wife of Abraham’s brother Nahor, came
out with her jar on her shoulder
Genesis 24
63
And Isaac went out walking in the
field toward evening and, lifting his eyes
he saw [ve-hinei] camels approaching.
64
Raising her eyes, Rebekah saw Isaac.
She alighted from the camel
….[according to the pattern, what word
is missing here?]
Genesis 26
8
When some time had passed,
Abimelech king of the Philistines,
looking out of the window, saw Isaac
fondling his wife Rebekah.
Genesis 29
-276-
‫בראשית פרק יט‬
‫(כח) ַוי ְַשקֵּ ף עַ ל ּפְ נֵּי ְסדֹ ם ַועֲמֹ ָרה וְ ַעל כָל פְּ נֵי‬
‫אֶ ֶרץ הַ ככָר ַוי ְַרא וְ ִּהנֵּה ָעלָה קיטֹ ר הָ אָ ֶרץ‬
:‫כְ קיטֹ ר הַ כבְ שָׁ ן‬
‫בראשית פרק כב‬
‫(ד) בַּ ּיוֹם הַ ְשלישׁי וַיִּ שא אַ ְברהם אֶּ ת עֵּ יניו‬
‫ַוי ְַרא אֶ ת הַ מָ קוֹם מֵ ָרחֹ ק‬
: ‫(יג) וַיִּ שא אַ ְברהם אֶּ ת עֵּ יניו ַוי ְַרא וְ ִּהנֵּה‬
‫אַ יל אַ חַ ר ֶנאֱחַ ז בַּ ְסבַ ְך בְּ קַ ְרנָיו ַו ֵּילְֶך אַ ְב ָרהָ ם‬
:‫וַּיקַ ח אֶ ת הָ אַ יל ַו ַּי ֲעלֵהוּ לְ עֹ לָה תַּ חַ ת בְּ נוֹ‬
‫בראשית פרק כד‬
‫יב) ַוּי ֹאמַ ר יְ קֹ וָק אֱֹלהֵ י ֲאדֹ ני אַ בְ ָרהָ ם הַ קְ ֵרה נָא‬
)‫ (יג‬:‫לְ ָפנַי הַ ּיוֹם ַועֲשֵ ה חֶ סֶ ד עם אֲדֹ ני אַ בְ ָרהָ ם‬
‫הנֵה אָ נֹ כי נצָ ב עַל עֵין הַ מָ ים וּבְ נוֹת אַ נְ שֵׁ י‬
‫ (יד) וְ הָ יָה הַ ַנע ֲָר‬:‫הָ עיר יֹ צְ אֹ ת ל ְשׁאֹ ב מָ ים‬
‫אֲשֶׁ ר אֹ מַ ר אֵ לֶיהָ הַ טי נָא כַדֵ ְך וְ אֶ ְשׁתֶּ ה וְ אָ ְמ ָרה‬
‫ְשׁתֵ ה וְ גַם גְ מַ לֶיך אַ ְשׁקֶ ה אֹ תָ ּה הֹ כַחְ תָּ לְ עַבְ ְדך‬
:‫לְ יצְ חָ ק וּבָ ּה אֵ דַ ע כי עָשיתָ חֶ סֶ ד עם אֲדֹ ני‬
‫(טו) וַיְ הי הוּא טֶ ֶרם כלָה לְ דַ בֵּ ר וְ ִּהנֵּה רבְ קָ ה‬
‫יֹ צֵ את אֲשֶׁ ר יֻלְ דָ ה לבְ תוּאֵ ל בֶּ ן מלְ כָה אֵ שֶׁ ת‬
:‫נָחוֹר אֲחי אַ בְ ָרהָ ם וְ כַדָ ּה עַל שׁכְ מָ ּה‬
‫בראשית פרק כד‬
‫סג) ַוּיֵצֵ א יצְ חָ ק לָשוּחַ בַּ שָ דֶ ה לפְ נוֹת ע ֶָרב‬
)‫ (סד‬:‫וַיִּ שא עֵּ יניו ַוי ְַרא וְ ִּהנֵּה גְ מַ לים בָּ אים‬
‫ו ִַּתשא ִּר ְבקה אֶּ ת עֵּ ינֶּיה וַתֵּ ֶּרא אֶּ ת יִּ צְ חק‬
‫ מה חסר‬,‫ [לפי התבנית‬:‫וַתּפֹּ ל מֵ עַל הַ גָמָ ל‬
]!!‫פה? תנסחו אחרת‬
‫בראשית פרק כו‬
‫(ח) וַיְ הי כי אָ ְרכוּ לוֹ שָׁ ם הַ ּיָמים ַוי ְַשקֵּ ף‬
‫אֲ ִּבימֶּ לְֶּך מֶ לְֶך פְּ ל ְשׁתּים בְּ עַד הַ חַ לוֹן ַוי ְַרא‬
:‫וְ ִּהנֵּה יצְ חָ ק ְמצַ חֵ ק אֵ ת רבְ קָ ה א ְשׁתּוֹ‬
‫בראשית פרק כט‬
Jacob resumed his journey and came to
the land of the Easterners. 2 There before
his eyes was a well in the open. Three
flocks of sheep were lying there beside it,
for the flocks were watered from that
well. The stone on the mouth of the well
was large. 3 When all the flocks were
gathered there, the stone would be rolled
from the mouth of the well and the sheep
watered; then the stone would be put back
in its place on the mouth of the well.
4
Jacob said to them, “My friends, where
are you from?” And they said, “We are
from Haran.” 5 He said to them, “Do you
know Laban the son of Nahor?” And they
said, “Yes, we do.” 6 He continued, “Is he
well?” They answered, “Yes, he is; and
there is his daughter Rachel, coming with
the flock.”
Genesis 31
10
“Once, at the mating time of the
flocks, I lifted my eyes up and saw in a
dream [ve-hinei] the he-goats mating
with the flock were streaked, speckled,
and mottled. 1 1 And in the dream an
angel of God said to me, ‘Jacob!’ ‘Here,’
I answered.
Genesis 33
Jacob lifted his eyes and saw [ve-hinei]
Esau coming, accompanied by four
hundred men. He divided the children
among Leah, Rachel, and the two maids.
Genesis 37
24
[The brothers] took him and cast him
into the pit. The pit was empty; there
was no water in it. 2 5 Then they sat down
-277-
:‫(א) וַיִּ שא ַיעֲקֹ ב ַרגְ ליו ַו ֵּילְֶך אַ ְרצָ ה בְ נֵי קֶ דֶ ם‬
‫(ב) ַוי ְַרא וְ ִּהנֵּה בְ אֵ ר בַּ שָ דֶ ה וְ ִּהנֵּה שם ְשֹׁלשָׁ ה‬
‫ע ְֶד ֵרי צ ֹאן רֹ בְ צים ָעלֶיהָ כי מן הַ בְּ אֵ ר הַ הוא‬
:‫י ְַשׁקוּ הָ עֲדָ רים וְ הָ אֶ בֶ ן גְ דֹ לָה עַל פּי הַ בְּ אֵ ר‬
‫(ג) וְ נֶאֶ ְספוּ שָׁ מָ ה כָל הָ עֲדָ רים וְ ָגלֲלוּ אֶ ת הָ אֶ בֶ ן‬
‫מֵ עַל פּי הַ בְּ אֵ ר וְ ה ְשׁקוּ אֶ ת הַ צ ֹאן וְ הֵ שׁיבוּ אֶ ת‬
:‫הָ אֶ בֶ ן ַעל פּי הַ בְּ אֵ ר ל ְמקֹ מָ ּה‬
‫ֹאמרוּ‬ ְ ‫(ד) ַוּי ֹאמֶ ר לָהֶ ם ַיעֲקֹ ב אַ חַ י מֵ אַ ין אַ תֶּ ם ַוּי‬
‫ (ה) ַוּי ֹאמֶ ר לָהֶ ם הַ יְ דַ עְ תֶּ ם אֶ ת‬:‫מֵ חָ ָרן ֲאנָחְ נוּ‬
‫ (ו) ַוּי ֹאמֶ ר לָהֶ ם‬:‫ֹאמרוּ יָדָ עְ נוּ‬ ְ ‫לָבָ ן בֶּ ן נָחוֹר ַוּי‬
‫ֹאמרוּ שָׁ לוֹם וְ ִּהנֵּה רחֵּ ל ִּבתֹו‬ ְ ‫הֲשָׁ לוֹם לוֹ ַוּי‬
:‫באה עִּ ם הַ צ ֹאן‬
‫בראשית פרק לא‬
‫(י) וַיְ הי בְּ ֵעת יַחֵ ם הַ צ ֹאן ואֶּ שא עֵּ ינַי ואֵּ ֶּרא‬
‫בַּ חֲלוֹם וְ ִּהנֵּה הָ ַעתֻּ דים הָ עֹ לים עַל הַ צ ֹאן‬
‫עֲקֻ דים נְ קֻ דים וּבְ רֻ דים‬: ‫(יא) ַוּי ֹאמֶ ר אֵ לַי‬
:‫מַ לְ אַ ְך הָ אֱֹלהים בַּ חֲלוֹם ַיעֲקֹ ב וָאֹ מַ ר ִּהנֵּנִּ י‬
‫בראשית פרק לג‬
‫(א) וַיִּ שא ַיעֲקֹ ב עֵּ יניו ַוי ְַרא וְ ִּהנֵּה עֵשָ ו בָּ א‬
‫וְ עמוֹ אַ ְרבַּ ע מֵ אוֹת אישׁ ַוּיַחַ ץ אֶ ת הַ יְ לָדים עַל‬
‫ (ב) ַוּיָשֶ ם‬:‫לֵאָ ה וְ עַל ָרחֵ ל וְ עַל ְשׁתֵּ י הַ ְשפָחוֹת‬
‫אֶ ת הַ ְשפָחוֹת וְ אֶ ת יַלְ דֵ יהֶ ן ראשֹׁ נָה וְ אֶ ת לֵאָ ה‬
:‫וילָדֶ יהָ אַ חֲרֹ נים וְ אֶ ת ָרחֵ ל וְ אֶ ת יוֹסֵ ף אַ חֲרֹ נים‬
‫(ג) וְ הוּא עָבַ ר לפְ נֵיהֶ ם וַּי ְשׁתַּ חוּ אַ ְרצָ ה שֶׁ בַ ע‬
‫ (ד) ַוּי ָָרץ עֵשָ ו‬:‫פְּ עָמים עַד ג ְשׁתּוֹ עַד אָ חיו‬
‫ָארו וַּישָ קֵ הוּ‬ ָ ‫לקְ ָראתוֹ וַיְ חַ בְּ קֵ הוּ וַּיפֹּ ל עַל צַ וּ‬
‫ (ה) וַיִּ שא אֶּ ת עֵּ יניו ַוי ְַרא אֶּ ת הַ נ ִּשים‬:‫וַּיבְ כוּ‬
‫וְ אֶּ ת הַ יְ ל ִּדים וַּי ֹאמֶ ר מי אֵ לֶה לְָך ַוּי ֹאמַ ר‬
)‫ (ו‬:‫הַ יְ לָדים אֲשֶׁ ר חָ נַן אֱֹלהים אֶ ת עַבְ דֶ ך‬
:ָ ‫וַתּג ְַשׁן ָ הַ ְשפָחוֹת הֵ נָה וְ יַלְ דֵ יהֶ ן וַתּ ְשׁתַּ ֲחוֶין‬
‫בראשית פרק לז‬
‫(ז) וְ ִּהנֵּה ֲאנַחְ נוּ ְמאַ לְ מים ֲאלֻמים בְּ תוְֹך‬
‫הַ שָ דֶ ה וְ ִּהנֵּה קָ מָ ה ֲאלֻמָ תי וְ גַם נצָ בָ ה וְ ִּהנֵּה‬
)‫ (ט‬...:‫ְתסֻבֶּ ינָה ֲאלֻמֹ תֵ יכֶם וַתּ ְשׁתַּ ֲחוֶין ָ ַל ֲאלֻמָ תי‬
to a meal. They lifted their eyes up and
saw [ve-hinei] a caravan of Ishmaelites
coming from Gilead, their camels
bearing gum, balm, and ladanum to be
taken to Egypt…..2 9 When Reuben
returned to the pit [ve-hinei] there was
no Joseph in the pit, and he rent his
clothes.
Genesis 39
7
After a time, his master’s wife cast her
eyes upon Joseph and said, “Lie with
me.”] [no seeing here]
Genesis 40
6
When Joseph came to them in the
morning, he saw [ve-hinam] that they
were distraught. 7 He asked Pharaoh’s
courtiers, who were with him in custody
in his master’s house, saying, “Why do
you appear downcast today?” 8 And they
said to him, “We had dreams, and there
is no one to interpret them.” So Joseph
said to them, “Surely God can interpret!
Tell me [your dreams].” [no lifting eyes
here]
Genesis 43
29
Looking about, he saw his brother
Benjamin, his mother’s son, and asked,
“Is this your youngest brother of whom
you spoke to me?” And he went on,
“May God be gracious to you, my boy.”
Exodus 2
5
The daughter of Pharaoh came down to
bathe in the Nile, while her maidens
walked along the Nile. She spied the
basket among the reeds and sent her
slave girl to fetch it. 6 When she opened
it, she saw that it was a child, a boy
-278-
‫ַו ַּיחֲֹלם עוֹד חֲלוֹם אַ חֵ ר וַיְ סַ פֵּר אֹ תוֹ לְ אֶ חָ יו‬
‫ַוּי ֹאמֶ ר הנֵה חָ ל ְַמתּי חֲלוֹם עוֹד וְ ִּהנֵּה הַ שֶ מֶ שׁ‬
)‫ (יג‬:‫וְ הַ ּי ֵָרחַ וְ אַ חַ ד עָשָ ר כוֹכָבים מ ְשׁתַּ חֲוים לי‬
‫ַוּי ֹאמֶ ר י ְש ָראֵ ל אֶ ל יוֹסֵ ף הֲלוֹא אַ חֶ יך רֹ עים‬
‫בּ ְשׁכֶם לְ כָה וְ אֶ ְשׁ ָלחֲך ֲאלֵיהֶ ם ַוּי ֹאמֶ ר לוֹ‬
‫ (טו) וַּי ְמצָ אֵ הוּ אישׁ וְ ִּהנֵּה תֹ עֶה בַּ שָ דֶ ה‬...:‫ִּהנֵּנִּ י‬
‫(כד) וַּיקָ חֻהוּ ַוּי ְַשׁלכוּ אֹ תוֹ הַ בֹּ ָרה וְ הַ בּוֹר ֵרק‬...
‫(כה) ַוּי ְֵשׁבוּ ֶל ֱאכָל לֶחֶ ם וַיִּ ְשאּו‬:‫אֵ ין בּוֹ מָ ים‬
‫עֵּ ינֵּיהֶּ ם וַיִּ ְראּו וְ ִּהנֵּה אֹ ְרחַ ת יִּ ְש ְמעֵּ אלִּ ים בָּ אָ ה‬
‫מגלְ עָד וּגְ מַ לֵיהֶ ם נֹ ְשאים נְ כ ֹאת וּצְ רי וָֹלט‬
‫ (כט) ַוּיָשָׁ ב‬... :‫הוֹלְ כים לְ הוֹריד מצְ ָריְ מָ ה‬
‫ְראוּבֵ ן אֶ ל הַ בּוֹר וְ ִּהנֵּה אֵ ין יוֹסֵ ף בַּ בּוֹר וַּיקְ ַרע‬
‫ (ל) ַוּיָשָׁ ב אֶ ל אֶ חָ יו ַוּי ֹאמַ ר הַ ֶּילֶד‬:‫אֶ ת בְּ גָדָ יו‬
:‫אֵ י ֶננוּ ַואֲני אָ נָה אֲני בָ א‬
‫בראשית פרק לט‬
‫(ז) וַיְ הי אַ חַ ר הַ ְדבָ רים הָ אֵ לֶה ו ִַּתשא אֵּ שֶּ ת‬
‫אֲ דֹ ניו אֶּ ת עֵּ ינֶּיה אֶּ ל יוֹסֵ ף ַותּ ֹאמֶ ר שׁכְ בָ ה‬
:‫עמי‬
‫בראשית פרק מ‬
‫(ו) ַו ָּיב ֹא ֲאלֵיהֶ ם יוֹסֵ ף בַּ בֹּ קֶ ר ַוי ְַרא אֹ תם וְ ִּהנם‬
:‫זֹ ֲעפִּ ים‬
‫(ז) וַּי ְשׁאַ ל אֶ ת ְסריסֵ י פ ְַרעֹ ה ֲאשֶׁ ר אתּוֹ‬
‫בְ מ ְשׁמַ ר בֵּ ית אֲדֹ נָיו לֵאמֹ ר מַ דוּ ַע פְּ נֵיכֶם ָרעים‬
:‫הַ ּיוֹם‬
‫ֹאמרוּ אֵ לָיו חֲלוֹם חָ ל ְַמנוּ וּפֹ תֵ ר אֵ ין אֹ תוֹ‬ ְ ‫(ח) ַוּי‬
‫ַוּי ֹאמֶ ר ֲאלֵהֶ ם יוֹסֵ ף הֲלוֹא לֵאֹלהים פּ ְתרֹ נים‬
:‫סַ פְּ רוּ נָא לי‬
‫בראשית פרק מג‬
‫(כט) וַיִּ שא עֵּ יניו ַוי ְַרא אֶּ ת ִּבנְ י ִּמין אָ חיו בֶּ ן‬
‫אמוֹ ַוּי ֹאמֶ ר ֲהזֶה אֲחיכֶם הַ קָ טֹ ן אֲשֶׁ ר אֲ מַ ְרתֶּ ם‬
:‫אֵ לָי ַוּי ֹאמַ ר אֱֹלהים יָחְ נְ ך בְּ ני‬
‫שמות פרק ב‬
‫(ה) וַתֵּ ֶּרד בַּ ת פּ ְַרעֹ ה לִּ ְרחֹ ץ עַל הַ יְ אֹ ר‬
‫וְ ַנעֲרֹ תֶ יהָ הֹ לְ כֹ ת עַל יַד הַ יְ אֹ ר ַותֵּ ֶּרא אֶ ת הַ תֵּ בָ ה‬
)‫(ו‬:‫בְּ תוְֹך הַ סוּף ו ִַּת ְשלַח אֶ ת אֲמָ תָ ּה ו ִַּתקחֶּ ה‬
‫ַו ִּתפְ תַ ח ו ִַּת ְראֵּ הּו אֶּ ת הַ ֶּילֶּד ו ְִּהנֵּה ַנעַר בֹּ כֶה‬
:‫ַותַ ְחמֹ ל ָעלָיו ַותּ ֹאמֶ ר מּיַלְ דֵ י הָ עבְ רים זֶה‬
crying. She took pity on it and said,
“This must be a Hebrew child.”
Exodus 2
12
He turned this way and that and,
seeing no one about, he struck down the
Egyptian and hid him in the sand
13
When he went out the next day, he
found two Hebrews fighting; so he said
to the offender, “Why do you strike your
fellow?”
Exodus 3
Now Moses, tending the flock of his
father-in-law Jethro, the priest of
Midian, drove the flock into the
wilderness, and came to Horeb, the
mountain of God. 2 An angel of the Lord
appeared to him in a blazing fire out of a
bush. He gazed, and there was a bush all
aflame, yet the bush was not consumed.
Exodus 14
9
the Egyptians pursued them, and they
(Pharaoh’s chariot horses, his horsemen,
and his warriors) caught up to them
encamped by the sea, near Pi-hahiroth,
before Baal-zephon.
10
As Pharaoh drew near, the Israelites
lifted up their eyes [ve-hinei] the
Egyptians were advancing upon them
and they were greatly frightened [yiru]
and the Israelites shouted to the Lord.
Exodus 34
29
So Moses came down from Mount
Sinai. And as Moses came down from
the mountain bearing the two tablets of
the Pact, Moses was not aware that the
skin of his face was radiant, since he had
spoken with Him. 3 0 Aaron and all the
Israelites saw that the skin of Moses’
face was radiant; and they shrank from
coming near him.
‫שמות פרק ב‬
‫(יב) וַּיפֶן כֹ ה וָכֹ ה ַוי ְַרא כִּ י אֵּ ין ִּאיש ַוּיְַך אֶ ת‬
‫ (יג) ַוּיֵצֵ א בַּ ּיוֹם הַ שֵ ני‬:‫הַ מצְ רי וַּי ְט ְמנֵהוּ בַּ חוֹל‬
‫וְ ִּהנֵּה ְשׁנֵי ֲאנָשׁים עבְ רים נצים ַוּי ֹאמֶ ר ל ָָרשָׁ ע‬
:‫לָמָ ה תַ כֶה ֵרעֶך‬
‫שמות פרק ג‬
‫א) וּמֹ שֶׁ ה הָ יָה רֹ עֶה אֶ ת צ ֹאן י ְתרוֹ חֹ ְתנוֹ כֹ הֵ ן‬
‫מ ְדיָן וַּינְ הַ ג אֶ ת הַ צ ֹאן אַ חַ ר הַ מ ְדבָּ ר וַיב ֹא אֶּ ל‬
‫(ב) ַוּי ֵָרא מַ לְ אַ ְך יְקֹ וָק‬:‫ֹלהים חֹ ֵּרבה‬ ִּ ֱ‫הַ ר הא‬
‫אֵ לָיו בְּ לַבַּ ת אֵ שׁ מתּוְֹך הַ ְסנֶה ַוי ְַרא וְ ִּהנֵּה הַ ְסנֶה‬
:‫בֹּ עֵר בָּ אֵ שׁ וְ הַ ְסנֶה אֵ ינֶנוּ ֻאכָל‬
‫(ג) ַוּי ֹאמֶ ר מֹ שֶׁ ה אָ ס ָֻרה נָא וְ אֶ ְראֶ ה אֶ ת הַ מַ ְראֶ ה‬
:‫הַ גָדֹ ל הַ ּזֶה מַ דוּ ַע ל ֹא יבְ עַר הַ ְסנֶה‬
‫(ד) ַוּי ְַרא יְ קֹ וָק כי סָ ר ל ְראוֹת וַּיקְ ָרא אֵ לָיו‬
‫אֱֹלהים מתּוְֹך הַ ְסנֶה ַוּי ֹאמֶ ר מֹ שֶׁ ה מֹ שֶׁ ה ַוּי ֹאמֶ ר‬
‫ִּהנֵּנִּ י‬
‫שמות פרק יד‬
‫(ט) וַּי ְר ְדפוּ מצְ ַרים אַ ח ֲֵריהֶ ם ַוּיַשיגוּ אוֹתָ ם‬
‫חֹ נים עַל הַ ּיָם כָל סוּס ֶרכֶב פּ ְַרעֹ ה וּפ ָָרשָׁ יו‬
)‫ (י‬:‫וְ חֵ ילוֹ עַל פּי הַ חירֹ ת לפְ נֵי בַּ עַל צְ פֹ ן‬
‫וּפ ְַרעֹ ה הקְ ריב וַיִּ ְשאּו ְבנֵּי יִּ ְשראֵּ ל אֶּ ת‬
‫עֵּ ינֵּיהֶּ ם וְ ִּהנֵּה מצְ ַרים נֹ סֵ ַע אַ ח ֲֵריהֶ ם וַּי ְיראוּ‬
:‫ְמאֹ ד וַּיצְ עֲקוּ בְ נֵי י ְש ָראֵ ל אֶ ל יְ קֹ וָק‬
‫שמות פרק לד‬
‫וּשׁנֵי לֻחֹ ת‬ ְ ‫כט) וַיְ הי בְּ ֶרדֶ ת מֹ שֶׁ ה מֵ הַ ר סינַי‬
‫הָ ֵעדֻת בְּ יַד מֹ שֶׁ ה בְּ ר ְדתּוֹ מן הָ הָ ר וּמֹ שֶׁ ה ל ֹא‬
‫ (ל) ַוי ְַרא‬:‫יָדַ ע כי קָ ַרן עוֹר ָפּנָיו בְּ דַ בְּ רוֹ אתּוֹ‬
‫אַ הֲרֹ ן וְ כל ְבנֵּי יִּ ְשראֵּ ל אֶּ ת מֹ שֶּ ה ו ְִּהנֵּה קָ ַרן‬
:‫עוֹר ָפּנָיו וַּי ְיראוּ מגֶשֶׁ ת אֵ לָיו‬

-279-
Numbers 24 ‫במדבר פרק כד‬
Now Balaam, seeing that it pleased the ‫(א) וַי ְַרא בּלְ עָם כי טוֹב בְּ עֵינֵי יְ קֹ וָק לְ בָ ֵרְך אֶ ת‬
Lord to bless Israel, did not, as on ‫י ְש ָראֵ ל וְ ל ֹא הָ לְַך כְ ַפעַם בְּ ַפעַם לקְ ַראת נְ חָ שׁים‬
previous occasions, go in search of :‫ַוּיָשֶׁ ת אֶ ל הַ מ ְדבָּ ר ָפּנָיו‬
omens, but turned his face toward the ‫(ב) וַיִּ שא ִּבלְ עם אֶּ ת עֵּ יניו ַוי ְַרא אֶ ת י ְש ָראֵ ל‬
wilderness. 2 As Balaam looked up and :‫שֹׁ כֵן ל ְשׁבָ טָ יו ו ְַתּהי ָעלָיו רוּחַ אֱֹלהים‬
saw Israel encamped tribe by tribe, the ‫(ג) וַיִּ שא ְמשָׁ לוֹ ַוּי ֹאמַ ר נְ אֻם בּלְ עָם בְּ נוֹ בְ עֹ ר‬
spirit of God came upon him. 3 Taking :‫וּנְ אֻם הַ גֶבֶ ר ְשׁתֻ ם הָ עָין‬
up his theme, he said:
Word of Balaam son of Beor,
Word of the man whose eye is true,
Deuteronomy 4: 19 ‫דברים ד‬
19
And when you look up to the sky and ‫יט) וּפֶן תּשָ א עֵינֶיך הַ שָ מַ יְ מָ ה וְ ָראיתָ אֶ ת‬
behold the sun and the moon and the ‫הַ שֶ מֶ שׁ וְ אֶ ת הַ ּי ֵָרחַ וְ אֶ ת הַ כוֹכָבים‬
stars, the whole heavenly host, you must
not be lured into bowing down to them
or serving them. These the Lord your
God allotted to other peoples everywhere
under heaven
Joshua 5 ‫יהושע פרק ה‬
13
Once, when Joshua was near Jericho, ‫(יג) וַיְ הי בּהְ יוֹת יְ הוֹשֻׁ ַע בּיריחוֹ וַיִּ שא עֵּ יניו‬
he lifted up his eyes and saw [ve-hinei] ‫ַוי ְַרא וְ ִּהנֵּה אישׁ עֹ מֵ ד לְ נֶגְ דוֹ וְ חַ ְרבּוֹ ְשׁלוּפָה‬
a man was standing before him [le- ‫בְּ יָדוֹ ַו ֵּילְֶך יְ הוֹשֻׁ ַע אֵ לָיו ַוּי ֹאמֶ ר לוֹ ֲהלָנוּ אַ תָּ ה‬
negdo], drawn sword in hand. Joshua :‫אם לְ צָ ֵרינוּ‬
went up to him and asked him, “Are you
one of us or of our enemies?”
Judges 19 ‫שופטים פרק יט‬
15
They turned off there and went in to ‫(טו) ַו ָּיסֻרוּ שָׁ ם לָבוֹא לָלוּן בַּ גבְ עָה ַו ָּיב ֹא ַוּיֵשֶׁ ב‬
spend the night in Gibeah. He went and ‫בּ ְרחוֹב הָ עיר וְ אֵּ ין ִּאיש ְמאַ סֵ ף אוֹתָ ם הַ בַּ יְ תָ ה‬
sat down in the town square, but nobody ‫ (טז) וְ ִּהנֵּה ִּאיש זָקֵ ן בָּ א מן מַ עֲשֵ הוּ מן‬:‫לָלוּן‬
took them indoors to spend the night. ‫הַ שָ דֶ ה בָּ ע ֶֶרב וְ הָ אישׁ מֵ הַ ר אֶ פְ ַרים וְ הוּא גָר‬
16
In the evening, [ve-hinei] an old man ‫ (יז) וַיִּ שא‬:‫בַּ גבְ עָה וְ אַ נְ שֵׁ י הַ מָ קוֹם בְּ נֵי יְ מיני‬
came along from his property outside the ‫עֵּ יניו ַוי ְַרא אֶּ ת ה ִּאיש האֹ ֵּרחַ בּ ְרחֹב הָ עיר‬
town. (This man hailed from the hill :‫ַוּי ֹאמֶ ר הָ אישׁ הַ ּזָקֵ ן אָ נָה תֵ לְֵך וּמֵ אַ ין תָּ בוֹא‬
country of Ephraim and resided at ‫( (כז) וַיקם אֲ דֹ נֶּיה בַ בֹ קֶּ ר וַיִּ פְ תַ ח דַ לְ תֹות‬
Gibeah, where the townspeople were ‫הַ בַ יִּ ת ַויֵּצֵּ א ל ֶּלכֶּת לְ דַ ְרכֹו וְ ִּהנֵּה הָ אשָ ה‬
Benjaminites.) 1 7 He lifted up his eyes :‫פילַגְ שׁוֹ נֹ ֶפלֶת פֶּתַ ח הַ בַּ ית וְ יָדֶ יהָ עַל הַ סַ ף‬
and saw the wayfarer in the town
square. “Where,” the old man inquired,
“are you going to, and where do you
come from?”…. 2 7 When her husband
arose in the morning, he opened the
doors of the house and went out to
continue his journey; and [ve-hinei]

-280-
there was the woman, his concubine,
lying at the entrance of the house, with
her hands on the threshold.
2 Samuel 13 ‫שמואל ב פרק יג‬
32
But Jonadab, the son of David’s brother ‫(לד) וַּיבְ ַרח אַ בְ שָׁ לוֹם וַיִּ שא הַ נַעַ ר הַ צֹ פֶּ ה‬
Shimah, said, “My lord must not think ‫אֶּ ת עינו עֵּ יניו ַוי ְַרא וְ ִּהנֵּה עַם ַרב הֹלְ כים‬
that all the young princes have been :‫מדֶ ֶרְך אַ ח ֲָריו מצַ ד הָ הָ ר‬
killed. Only Amnon is dead; for this has
been decided by Absalom ever since his
sister Tamar was violated. 3 3 So my lord
the king must not think for a moment that
all the princes are dead; Amnon alone is
dead.” 3 4 Meanwhile Absalom had fled.
The watchman on duty looked up and
saw a large crowd coming from the
road to his rear, from the side of the
hill. 3 5 Jonadab said to the king, “See, the
princes have come! It is just as your
servant said.” 3 6 As he finished speaking,
the princes came in and broke into
weeping; and David and all his courtiers
wept bitterly, too.
2 Samuel 15 ‫שמואל ב פרק טו‬
30
David meanwhile went up the slope of ‫(ל) וְ דָ וד עֹ לֶה בְ מַ ֲעלֵה הַ ּזֵיתים עֹ לֶה וּבוֹכֶה‬
the [Mount of] Olives, weeping as he ‫וְ ר ֹאשׁ לוֹ חָ פוּי וְ הוּא הֹ לְֵך יָחֵ ף וְ כָל הָ עָם ֲאשֶׁ ר‬
went; his head was covered and he )‫ (לא‬:‫אתּוֹ חָ פוּ אישׁ ר ֹאשׁוֹ וְ עָלוּ עָֹלה וּבָ כֹ ה‬
walked barefoot. And all the people who ‫וְ דָ וד הגיד לֵאמֹ ר אֲחיתֹ פֶל בַּ קֹ ְשׁרים עם‬
were with him covered their heads and ‫אַ בְ שָׁ לוֹם ַוּי ֹאמֶ ר דָ וד סַ כֶל נָא אֶ ת עֲצַ ת‬
wept as they went up. 3 1 David [was] ‫ (לב) וַיְ ִּהי דוִּ ד בא עַ ד הר ֹאש‬:‫אֲחיתֹ פֶל יְ קֹ וָק‬
told that Ahithophel was among the ‫ֵּאֹלהים וְ ִּהנֵּה לקְ ָראתוֹ‬
ִּ ‫אֲ שֶּ ר יִּ ְשתַ ֲחוֶּה שם ל‬
conspirators with Absalom, and he :‫חוּשַׁ י הָ אַ ְרכי קָ רוּ ַע כֻתָּ נְ תּוֹ ַואֲדָ מָ ה עַל ר ֹאשׁוֹ‬
prayed, “Please, O Lord, frustrate
Ahithophel’s counsel!” 3 2 When David
reached the top, where people would
prostrate themselves to God, [ve-hinei]
coming to meet him was Hushai the
Archite, with his robe torn and with earth
on his head.
2 Samuel 18 ‫שמואל ב פרק יח‬
24
David was sitting between the two ‫(י) ַוי ְַרא ִּאיש אֶ חָ ד ַו ַּיגֵד לְ יוֹאָ ב ַוּי ֹאמֶ ר ִּהנֵּה‬
gates. The watchman on the roof of the :‫יתי אֶ ת אַ בְ שָׁ ֹלם תָּ לוּי בָּ אֵ לָה‬ ִּ ‫ר ִּא‬
gate walked over to the city wall. He ‫(יא) ַוּי ֹאמֶ ר יוֹאָ ב לָאישׁ הַ מַ גיד לוֹ וְ ִּהנֵּה ר ִּאית‬
lifted his eyes and saw [ve-hinei] a ‫וּמַ דוּ ַע ל ֹא הכיתוֹ שָׁ ם אָ ְרצָ ה וְ ָעלַי לָתֶ ת לְ ך‬
man running alone. ‫(כד) וְ דָ וד יוֹשֵׁ ב‬.... :‫עֲשָ ָרה כֶסֶ ף ַוחֲגֹ ָרה אֶ חָ ת‬

-281-
 ‫בֵּ ין ְשׁנֵי הַ ְשעָרים ַו ֵּילְֶך הַצֹ פֶּ ה אֶ ל גַג הַ שַ עַר‬
‫אֶ ל הַ חוֹמָ ה וַיִּ שא אֶּ ת עֵּ יניו ַוי ְַרא וְ ִּהנֵּה אישׁ‬
:‫ָרץ לְ בַ דוֹ‬
2 Kings 6 ‫מלכים ב פרק ו‬
15
When the attendant of the man of God ‫(טו) ַוּי ְַשׁכֵם ְמשָׁ ֵרת אישׁ הָ אֱֹלהים לָקוּם ַוּיֵצֵ א‬
rose early and went outside, he saw a ‫וְ ִּהנֵּה חַ יל סוֹבֵ ב אֶ ת הָ עיר וְ סוּס ו ָָרכֶב ַוּי ֹאמֶ ר‬
force, with horses and chariots, ‫(טז) ַוּי ֹאמֶ ר‬:‫ַנעֲרוֹ אֵ לָיו אֲהָ ּה ֲאדֹ ני אֵ יכָה ַנעֲשֶ ה‬
surrounding the town. “Alas, master, ‫אַ ל תּ ָירא כי ַרבּים אֲשֶׁ ר אתָּ נוּ מֵ אֲשֶׁ ר‬
what shall we do?” his servant asked ‫(יז) וַּי ְת ַפּלֵל אֱלישָׁ ע ַוּי ֹאמַ ר יְ קֹ וָק פְּ קַ ח‬:‫אוֹתָ ם‬
him. 1 6 “Have no fear,” he replied. ‫נָא אֶ ת עֵינָיו וְ י ְראֶ ה וַיִּ פְ קַ ח יְ קֹ וק אֶּ ת עֵּ ינֵּי‬
“There are more on our side than on ‫הַ נַעַ ר ַוי ְַרא וְ ִּהנֵּה הָ הָ ר מָ לֵא סוּסים וְ ֶרכֶב אֵ שׁ‬
theirs.” 1 7 Then Elisha prayed: “Lord, :‫ְסביבֹ ת אֱלישָׁ ע‬
open his eyes and let him see.” And the
Lord opened the servant’s eyes and he
saw the hills all around Elisha covered
with horses and chariots of fire. 1 8 [The
Arameans] came down against him, and
Elisha prayed to the Lord: “Please strike
this people with a blinding light.” And
He struck them with a blinding light, as
Elisha had asked.
Ezekiel 8 ‫יחזקאל פרק ח (ד) וְ הנֵה שָׁ ם כְ בוֹד אֱ ֹלהֵ י‬
4
And the Presence of the God of Israel )‫ (ה‬:‫י ְש ָראֵ ל כַמַ ְראֶ ה אֲשֶׁ ר ָראיתי בַּ בּקְ עָה‬
appeared there, like the vision that I had ‫ַוּי ֹאמֶ ר אֵ לַי בֶּ ן אָ דָ ם שא נא עֵּ ינֶּיָך דֶ ֶרְך צָ פוֹנָה‬
seen in the valley. 5 And He said to me, ‫ואֶּ שא עֵּ ינַי דֶ ֶרְך צָ פוֹנָה וְ ִּהנֵּה מצָ פוֹן לְ שַׁ עַר‬
“O mortal, turn your eyes northward.” I ‫הַ מזְבֵּ חַ סֵ מֶ ל הַ קנְ אָ ה הַ ּזֶה בַּ בּאָ ה‬
turned my eyes northward, and there,
north of the gate of the altar, was that
infuriating image on the approach
Zechariah 2 ‫זכריה פרק ב (א) ואֶּ שא אֶּ ת עֵּ ינַי ואֵּ ֶּרא‬
I looked up, and I saw four horns. 2 I asked :‫וְ ִּהנֵּה אַ ְרבַּ ע קְ ָרנוֹת‬
the angel who talked with me, “What are
those?” “Those,” he replied, “are the
horns that tossed Judah, Israel, and
Jerusalem.” 3 Then the Lord showed me
four smiths. 4 “What are they coming to
do?” I asked. He replied: “Those are the
horns that tossed Judah, so that no man
could raise his head; and these men have
come to throw them into a panic, to hew
down the horns of the nations that raise a
horn against the land of Judah, to toss it.”

-282-
Zechariah 5
5
Then the angel who talked with me came
forward and said, “Now look up and
note this other object that is
approaching.”
Daniel 8
In the third year of the reign of King
Belshazzar, a vision appeared to me, to
me, Daniel, after the one that had
appeared to me earlier…. 3 I looked and
saw a ram standing between me and the
river; …
Daniel 10
4
It was on the twenty-fourth day of the
first month, when I was on the bank of
the great river—the Tigris— 5 that I
looked and saw a man dressed in
linen, his loins girt in fine gold.
I Chronicles 21
16
David looked up and saw the angel of
the Lord standing between heaven and
earth, with a drawn sword in his hand
directed against Jerusalem. David and
the elders, covered in sackcloth, threw
themselves on their faces.
-283-
‫זכריה פרק ה‬
‫(ה) ַוּיֵצֵ א הַ מַ לְ אָ ְך הַ דֹ בֵ ר בּי ַוּי ֹאמֶ ר אֵ לַי שא‬
‫נא עֵּ ינֶּיָך ְּוראֵּ ה מָ ה הַ ּיוֹצֵ את הַ ּז ֹאת‬:
‫דניאל פרק ח‬
‫(א) בּ ְשׁנַת שָׁ לוֹשׁ לְ מַ לְ כוּת בֵּ לְ אשַׁ צַ ר הַ מֶ לְֶך‬
‫חָ זוֹן נ ְראָ ה אֵ לַי אֲני דָ נּיֵאל אַ ח ֲֵרי הַ נ ְראָ ה אֵ לַי‬
‫(ב) וָאֶ ְראֶ ה בֶּ חָ זוֹן וַיְ הי בּ ְראֹ תי ַואֲני‬:‫בַּ ְתּחלָה‬
‫בְּ שׁוּשַׁ ן הַ בּ ָירה אֲשֶׁ ר בְּ עֵילָם הַ ְמדינָה וָאֶ ְראֶ ה‬
‫(ג) ואֶּ שא‬:‫בֶּ חָ זוֹן ַואֲני הָ ייתי עַל אוּבַ ל אוּלָי‬
‫עֵּ ינַי ואֶּ ְראֶּ ה וְ ִּהנֵּה אַ יִּ ל אֶּ חד עֹ מֵ ד לפְ נֵי‬
‫הָ אֻבָ ל‬
‫דניאל פרק י‬
‫(ד) וּבְ יוֹם ע ְֶשרים וְ אַ ְרבָּ עָה לַחֹ דֶ שׁ הָ ראשׁוֹן‬
:‫ַואֲני הָ ייתי עַל יַד הַ נָהָ ר הַ גָדוֹל הוּא חדָ קֶ ל‬
‫(ה) ואֶּ שא אֶּ ת עֵּ ינַי ואֵּ ֶּרא וְ ִּהנֵּה אישׁ אֶ חָ ד‬
:‫לָבוּשׁ בַּ דים וּמָ ְתנָיו ֲחגֻרים בְּ כֶתֶ ם אוּ ָפז‬
‫דברי הימים א פרק כא‬
‫(טז) וַיִּ שא דוִּ יד אֶּ ת עֵּ יניו ַוי ְַרא אֶּ ת מַ לְ אַ ְך‬
‫יְ קֹ וק עֹמֵ ד בֵּ ין הָ אָ ֶרץ וּבֵ ין הַ שָ מַ ים וְ חַ ְרבּוֹ‬
‫ְשׁלוּפָה בְּ יָדוֹ נְ טוּיָה עַל יְ רוּשָׁ ָלם וַּיפֹּ ל דָ ויד‬
:‫וְ הַ ּזְקֵ נים ְמכֻסים בַּ שַ קים עַל פְּ נֵיהֶ ם‬
-284-
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: THE DEMONIZATION OF LABAN:
417
ARAMI OVED AVI

Did Laban Wish to Destroy Our Father Jacob?

The biblical Laban can be read either sympathetically or not, but
why did the rabbis turn him into a villain?

A Fugitive Aramean Was My Father

At the beginning of “Ki Tavo” (Deuteronomy 26) we have an
enigmatic phrase at the beginning of the farmer’s recitation of
bringing the first fruits to the place where God will establish His
name in the future: “My father was a fugitive Aramean” (arami oved
avi). He went down to Egypt with meager numbers and sojourned
418
there; but there he became a great and very populous nation. In the
simple reading, the text refers to the Israelites who moved to Egypt,
and were eventually enslaved there. Concerning its opening words,
Jeffrey Tigay writes:
The precise meaning of this phrase is uncertain …[and]
probably very ancient, for it is unlikely that Israelite
tradition would have chosen to describe Israel’s ancestors
as ‘Arameans’ once the Arameans of Damascus became
419
aggressive toward Israel in the ninth century B.C.E.
According to S. R. Driver, this depiction is of Jacob, and is
intended to disparage him. The word “oved” implies lost, like a stray
animal. The reference is probably to Jacob who wandered or may

417
This article appeared in a very abridged form as “Arami Oved Avi: The
Demonization of Laban,” https://thetorah.com/arami-oved-avi-the-demonization-
of-laban/ (August 2018)
418
‫ דברים פרק כו‬:‫א) וְ הָ יָה כי תָ בוֹא אֶ ל הָ אָ ֶרץ אֲשֶׁ ר יְ קֹ וָק אֱֹלהֶ יך נֹ תֵ ן לְ ך ַנ ֲחלָה ויר ְשׁתָּ ּה וְ יָשַׁ בְ תָּ בָּ ּה‬
ָ‫(ב) וְ לָקַ חְ תָּ מֵ ֵראשׁית כָל פְּ רי הָ אֲדָ מָ ה ֲא שֶׁ ר תָּ ביא מֵ אַ ְרצְ ך ֲאשֶׁ ר יְ קֹ וָק ֱאֹלהֶ יך נֹ תֵ ן לְָך וְ שַ ְמתָּ בַ טֶ נֶא וְ הָ לַכְ תּ‬
ָ‫ (ג) וּבָ אתָ אֶ ל הַ כֹ הֵ ן אֲשֶׁ ר יהְ יֶה בַּ ּיָמים הָ הֵ ם וְ אָ מַ ְרתּ‬:‫אֶ ל הַ מָ קוֹם אֲשֶׁ ר יבְ חַ ר יְ קֹ וָק אֱֹלהֶ יך לְ שַׁ כֵן ְשׁמוֹ שָׁ ם‬
‫ (ד) וְ לָקַ ח הַ כֹ הֵ ן‬:‫אֵ לָיו ִּהג ְַד ִּתי הַ יֹום לַיקֹ וָק ֱאֹלהֶ יך כי בָ אתי אֶ ל הָ אָ ֶרץ ֲאשֶׁ ר נ ְשׁבַּ ע יְ קֹ וָק ַל ֲאבֹ תֵ ינוּ לָתֶ ת לָנוּ‬
‫ (ה) וְ עָניתָ וְ אָ מַ ְרתָּ לפְ נֵי יְ קֹ וָק אֱ ֹלהֶ יך אֲ ַר ִּמי אֹ בֵּ ד א ִּבי ַוי ֵֶּּרד‬:‫הַ טֶ נֶא מּיָדֶ ך וְ הניחוֹ לפְ נֵי מזְבַּ ח יְ קֹ וָק אֱ ֹלהֶ יך‬
:‫ִּמ ְצ ַריְ מה וַיגר שם ִּב ְמתֵּ י ְמעט וַיְ ִּהי שם לְ גֹוי גדֹול עצּום ורב‬
419
Tigay in his commentary on “my father was a fugitive Aramean” in
Deuteronomy (JPS Torah Commentary), p. 240.
-285-
have been lost and thus in danger of perishing.420 Jacob may have
been a vagrant or a nomad who was possibly a refuge who went to
421
Egypt because of famine. As to the Aramean, it is simply a
422
statement of Jacob’s (or his ancestor’s) origin as an Aramean.
This ancient confession thus reflected a belief or tradition that
Israel’s ancestors were Arameans who moved to Egypt. Reading the
text canonically, as part of the Pentateuch, the Aramean likely refers
specifically to Jacob, who came down to Egypt with his 70
descendants. He is called an Aramean either because:

 His grandfather Abraham was from Aram (Gen 12:4);

 Jacob’s mother Rebekah was from Aram (Gen 25:20);
 or Jacob himself lived in Aram for a time and married
Aramean women (Gen 29-30).

An Aramean Tried to Destroy My Father

Rabbinic midrash however, does not translate the first three words as
“my father was a fugitive/wandering Aramean” instead reading the
present participle ‫ אֹ בֵ ד‬not as the adjective “wandering” but as the verb
“destroying.” They thereby creatively understood the phrase to mean
423
“an Aramean (would have) destroyed my father.” The midrash
thus identifies the Arami as Jacob’s father-in-law Laban, who, after
Jacob stole away from him, chased after him (Gen 31:23). However,

420
S. R. Driver, Deuteronomy, International Critical Commentary (Edinburgh,
1902), p. 289.
421
W. F. Albright, From the Stone Age to Christianity (New York, 1957), p. 238; B.
Mazar, "The Aramean Empire," BA 25 (1962): 101, n. 8, reprinted in D. N.
Freedman and E. F. Campbell, eds., Biblical Archeologist Reader, vol. (New York,
1964), p. 130, n. 8; J. van Seters, Abraham in History and Tradition (New Haven,
1975), p. 33.
422
Alan R. Millard, “A Wandering Aramean,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Vol.
39, No. 2 (Apr., 1980) writes that “it is hard to find evidence that it [Aram] has a
general derogatory sense.” p. 153.
423
For more on rabbinic readings of this phrase, see Marty Lockshin, “Did an
Aramean Try to Destroy Our Father? A Medieval Non-Traditional interpretation,”
TheTorah.com (2015). Lockshin points out that the root ‫ד‬.‫ב‬.‫ א‬in the qal form never
means “destroy” in biblical Hebrew, making the rabbinic interpretation even less
likely as peshat.
-286-
once Laban catches up with Jacob, before he even speaks with him,
God appears to Laban and warns him not to cause harm (literally
“speak good or bad”) to Jacob (Gen 31:24). Laban even admits that
this visitation from the deity made him rethink any harm he was
considering to Jacob: “I have it in my power to do you harm; but the
God of your father said to me last night, “Beware of attempting
anything with Jacob, good or bad” (Gen 31:29).
The Rabbis even specify the type of harm, noting in the same
midrash, well known to many since it forms a key part of the
Passover Haggadah: “Go and learn what Laban the Aramean wished
to do out our father Jacob: for Pharaoh only issued a decree about the
[Israelite] males, but Laban wished to uproot everything.”
Obviously, one’s interpretation of the Aramean is connected
with one’s agenda. Both understandings of the present participle ‫אֹ בֵ ד‬
are grammatically possible before the intervention of vocalization of
the word: thus, it is possible for the phrase to contain both meanings
at once: “my father was a wandering Aramean” and “an Aramean
destroyed my father.”
Uprooting everything means that Laban intended to slaughter
Jacob and his entire family, thus uprooting Israel’s future existence
entirely. This is a very harsh accusation. It is one thing to consider
the possibility that Laban intended to murder Jacob—something the
text does not quite say—but another to assume he would murder his
daughters and his own grandchildren. But this fits with the overall
approach the rabbis take towards Laban.

Not an Aramean (Arami) but a Trickster (Ramai)

The Torah presents Laban as fooling Jacob into marrying the wrong
sister, thus extending his years of labor, and even changing the
agreed upon pay multiple times (at least according to Jacob). The
Hebrew word for a trickster or deceiver is ramai (‫)רמאי‬, a word
formed with the same letters as Aramean (‫)ארמי‬, like an anagram.
The Bible uses the verbal form of this root in Jacob’s accusation
against Laban (Gen. 29:25), though it never actually calls Laban a
ramai, for this noun is never found in the Bible. The sages use this
arami-ramai pun frequently; for example, Genesis 25:20 uses the
word Aram three times: “Isaac was forty years old when he took to
-287-
wife Rebekah, daughter of Bethuel the Aramean of Paddan-aram,
sister of Laban the Aramean.” (Gen 25:20). Bothered by this three-
fold repetition, Genesis Rabbah offers this midrash:
R. Yitzhak said: “If it just wanted to teach us that he was from Padan-Aram,
what does ‘Laban the Aramean’ teach us? It comes to teach us that her
father was a trickster and her brother was a trickster, and even the people
who lived there were tricksters, and that this righteous woman who came
from there can be likened to ‘a lily among the thorn-bushes’ (Song 2:2).”
(Toledot 63, Theodor-Albeck)
In short, Laban is a cheat from a family of cheats in a town of cheats.
But this is the least of the rabbis’ accusations.

Whitened with Wickedness

The story in which Abraham’s servant goes to Haran to find a wife
for Isaac introduces Rebekah and her brother. “Rebekah had a brother
whose name was Lavan” (Gen 24:29). In commenting on this verse,
the midrash offers a play on Laban’s name, which means “white”.
“R. Yitzhak said: “He was a paradox (i.e., a light name for a dark
person).” R. Berechiah said: “He was whitened (meluvan) in
wickedness” (Genesis Rabbah 60:7, Theodor-Albeck). R.
Berechiah’s reading stands out when we contrast it to other rabbinic
texts who see “white” as a color with positive connotations, such as
“whitened from sin” as in pure (see, e.g., m. Middot 5:4, Abot de-
Rabbi Nathan B, ch. 29), or the white clothing of the high priest. It is
clear that R. Berechiah is already certain that Laban is filled with sin,
and his midrash on the name merely confirms this. It is ironic that by
casting Laban as the villain, they “whiten” the character of Jacob.

Laban’s Alter-Egos
One particularly popular way of blackening Laban is to say that he is
424
one and the same as some other biblical villain. Following are
some examples:
Laban is Kemuel: Genesis 22:20-24 lists the sons of Nahor, one of
whom is named Kemuel (v. 21), who is described as “the father of
424
See discussion in, Richard Steiner, “The Aramean of Deuteronomy 25:5: Peshat
and Derash,” in Tehilah leMoshe: Biblical and Judaic Studies in Honor of Moshe
Greenberg, ed. by M. Cogan, B. Eichler and J. Tigay (Winona Lake, 1997), 131, n.
23.
-288-
Aram” (‫)אֲ בי אֲ ָרם‬. “Laban and Kemuel are the same person. So why
does the verse call him Kemuel? Because he stood (kam) against the
people of God” (Genesis Rabbah Vayera 57). The assertion that
Kemuel is Laban is particularly strange; Kemuel’s brother is Betuel,
Laban’s father—in other words, according to this midrash, Laban is
his own uncle! The claim that Kemuel was the father of Aram surely
influenced the rabbis, since Laban is consistently referred to as “the
Aramean.” The opportunity to play negatively on Kemuel’s name
was likely also attractive to the rabbis.
Laban is Balaam: In a midrashic source Laban is equated with
“Balaam the sorcerer, who wanted to destroy ‫ בלע‬the inheritance of
the Lord, the offspring of his (own) daughters [=Leah and Rachel], as
it is said, ‘An Aramean [=Laban] wanted to destroy my father…”
Laban (alias Balaam) continued his quest to destroy Jacob by going
down to Egypt and joining forces with Pharaoh” (Targum Pseudo-
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Jonathan on Num 22:5). The story here assumes, as rabbinic
midrash does in general, that Balaam was a wicked character who
wished to curse Israel, and notes the sad irony, that if Balaam is
Laban, he would be cursing his own descendants.
Laban is Cushan Rishatayim: The book of Judges lists the first of
the many peoples who attacked Israel after the death of Joshua. God
became incensed at Israel and surrendered them to King Cushan-
rishataim of Aram-naharaim; and the Israelites were subject to
Cushan-rishataim for eight years. Noting that this king and Laban
come from the same place, the Jerusalem Talmud quotes Rabbi Acha
who suggests that Laban and Cushan-rishataim, whose name means
“doubly wicked,” were one and the same person (J. Nedarim 9:1).
Laban and Cushan-rishataim are the same person. So why was he
called Cushan-rishataim? Because he did two wicked things: he
violated the oath [Laban made with Jacob] and because he subjugated
Israel for eight years.
Here R. Acha draws on the story of Gal-ed, where Jacob and
Laban make an oath not to cross the border with malice, to explain
why Cushan who subjugated Israel is one who committed “two
425
Richard Steiner. “The Aramean of Deuteronomy 25:5: Peshat and Derash,” in
Tehilah leMoshe: Biblical and Judaic Studies in Honor of Moshe Greenberg, ed.
by M. Cogan, B. Eichler and J. Tigay (Winona Lake, 1997), footnote 23, p. 131.
-289-
wrongs,” the literal meaning of rishataim. The fact that this story is
set hundreds of years after the story of Laban and Jacob is not a
problem for this midrash.
Laban is Nabal: The latest character with whom Laban is associated
is Nabal the Carmelite, who speaks rudely about David and is only
spared by David because his Abigail, Nabal’s wife, talks David out of
hurting him by bringing David gifts and punning on her husband’s
unfortunate name: “Please, my lord, pay no attention to that wretched
fellow Nabal. For he is just what his name says: His name means
'boor' and he is a boor” (1 Sam 25:25).
The midrash notes that in two separate places in Psalms that
use the word nabal (Psalms 14:1 and 53:2), “Nabal and Laban are the
same person – the names have the same letters. Just as Laban was a
426
swindler, so too Nabal was a swindler…” (Midrash Tehillim).
This is perhaps the hardest of the four midrashim to understand, since
Nabal is not some foreign antagonist but a Judahite who lives in
Hebron hundreds of years after Jacob.
Laban Was Many of These People: The Babylonian Talmud makes
the most sweeping identification of Laban, saying that he was both
Cushan and Balaam. (Ostensibly it identifies Laban with Balaam’s
father Beor, but it seems that the text is actually translating bar Beor
not as son of Beor, but as “the one with the donkey,” i.e., Balaam.)
“It was taught: Beor, Cushan-rishataim, and Laban the Aramean are
all the same person. Beor –because he had sex with a donkey (bair);
Cushan-Rishataim, because he did two wicked things to Israel, once
in the time of Jacob and again in the time of the judges. And what
was his actual name? Laban the Aramean” (b Sanhedrin 105a).
In short, the rabbis revel in the ability to find some connection
between an ancient villain from the Bible and Laban, so they can pin
more sins onto the latter.

Is the Biblical Laban Really So Bad?

Many of these midrashim are well-known, and influence the manner
in which we understand the biblical Laban. But what does the Torah

426
The text here is from the Buber edition on Psalms 53; the text on Psalm 14 has
some light differences but the point is the same.
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actually say about Laban? We first meet him when Abraham’s
servant arrives in Haran and wishes to take Rebekah back to Canaan
to marry Isaac. While Laban attempts to stall the servant, no motive
for this is given. Perhaps Laban wanted to keep his sister close to
home. In any event, Abraham’s servant was not to be detained, and
Rebekah departed with him forever one day after he arrived.
Skipping many years later, Rebekah’s son Jacob comes to claim
another woman in his family, this time his daughter Rachel. This
time, Laban devises a way to keep his daughter by him for the next
twenty years. Perhaps Laban was hoping for a situation in which
"Jacob would have become like the Nuzi herdsmen, who, through
debt and dependence on the livestock owner, affiliated with [Laban's]
family permanently.” Because Jacob would not have been able to
leave, Laban would not have to change their relationship and
complete the marriage agreement. According to Martha A. Morrison,
because Laban claims to own everything, “he concedes that he had
not formally transferred his daughters and their children and the
livestock to Jacob.” To rectify the situation, he establishes the
covenant which is a sort of peace treaty which also “formalizes the
marriage of Laban's daughters.” Ironically, according to Morrison,
the covenant or final contract both cements the family relationship
427
and ends it. As part of the contract, Laban demands exclusive
rights for his daughters as Jacob’s wives (31:50), yet it is also a
parting of ways. Though Rachel takes the terafim, Jacob’s family will
no longer consider themselves to be Arameans.
Laban’s stalling succeeds for twenty years, but eventually,
Jacob loses patience with the situation, figures out a way to make
enough money to gain independence, and rushes off without a word
to his father-in-law. Moreover, even his daughters feel like their
father has mistreated them and wholeheartedly support Jacob’s
unannounced departure.

427
"The re-payment of missing livestock was a fundamental aspect of the herding
system of the Old Babylonian period and at Nuzi. Moreover, restitution for stolen
livestock is specifically mentioned elsewhere in the biblical record (Exodus 22:12).
Martha A. Morrison, "The Jacob and Laban Narrative in Light of Near Eastern,"
The Biblical Archaeologist, 46: 3 (Summer, 1983):155-164, 161.
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 As discussed above, Laban chases Jacob down and catches up
with him in the Gilead area. The verses imply that Laban wished to
do Jacob harm, but God warns him not to and he does not. In fact,
Laban makes a peace treaty with Jacob, and Laban’s only extra
stipulation is that Jacob may not marry any other women. In other
words, his last act is to protect the daughters that rejected him. Even
if they rejected him for good reason—that he manipulated their
husband and even them—in the end, he behaves honorably. His final
428
act in the treaty may even be fairly described as “repentant.”

The Arami is one of our forefathers

Ibn Ezra already questions this tradition and points out that if it was
429
Laban, it should have been written ma’avid or me-aved. He
understands oved as an intransitive word. Rashbam and Behkhor
Shor understand both my father and the Aramean to be a reference to
Abraham. This is because he lived in Aram for most of his life and he
certainly travelled a lot, and described himself as such in Genesis
430
20:13. Also Abraham is certainly the major father figure of all the
nations. In Genesis Apocryphon, which is “re-written Bible” offering
an early interpretation of Genesis, Abram is associated with the
Aramean. Daniel Machiela persuasively argues that there is a
“conscious association of Abram with the Aramean of Deut 26:5 and that
the word oved is understood by our author to refer to the patriarch's itinerant
existence … [ in] both Genesis and the Genesis Apocryphon …. Abram is
literally wandering by stages from Haran, without knowing where he is
headed… Abram is on the verge of reaching Egypt… (recall the statement
in Deut 26:5, "and he went down to Egypt"). In sum, God telling Abram to
take heart in his "wandering" not only makes good sense during this
uncertain time in the patriarch's life, but is also - just before his descent into

428
For this upbeat drasha see Ronen Ahituv, “Laban at Eye-Level,”
http://ozveshalom.org.il/from-old-site/parsha-eng/vayetze5765.html
429
‫ היה הכתוב אומר מאביד או מאבד אבן עזרא דברים פרק כו פסוק ה‬,‫ואילו היה ארמי על לבן‬
430
‫רשב"ם בראשית פרשת וירא פרק כ‬
‫ משום‬,‫ וזהו שכת' ארמי אובד אבי‬,‫ הגלני ממקומי שנא' לך לך מארצך‬- ‫(יג) כאשר התעו אותי‬
‫ צאן אובדות היו‬,‫שהוגלה משם כי "התעו אותי" ו"אובד אבי" כפל לשון הוא כדכת' תעיתי כשה אובד‬
:‫עמי רועיהם התעום‬
-292-
 Egypt - the perfect place to identify him as the "wandering Aramean" of
431
Deuteronomy.”
Thus, it is possible to see that the Arami does not have to be Laban. It
can also be Jacob who is the Aramean who was destitute or wandered
or was cast off/left Syria/driven to Aram or who even perished
432
there. Or even Abraham, who also wandered as far as Egypt.

The Passover Haggadah’s Identification of arami oved avi

There are many who point to the ancient tradition of identifying
Laban as the Arami. The usual sources mentioned are Targum
Onkelos, Sifre Deuteronomy, Midrash Tanhhuma, and the Haggadah.
By including this source in the Haggadah we adhere to the Mishnah’s
dictum that we begin the narrative part of the Passover seder with
genut (disparagement, negative things, such as living in exile) and
end with shevah (praise, positive things, redemption, returning to the
433
land). Many commentators have tried to understand the phrase
arami oved avi. The earliest Midrash writes that this phrase means
that “Laban tried to destroy my father”, the Aramean is Laban and
my father is Jacob because Laban tried to destroy Jacob by uprooting
434
everything when he pursued Jacob. Thus the derogatory approach
to Laban is familiar to us as it is ensconced in the Passover
Haggadah.
Clearly there is historiography behind this declaration. It
begins with arami oved avi (“My father was a fugitive (or
wandering] Aramean” (Deut. 26:5). Does my father, refer to my
435
ancestor Jacob/Israel, to all the patriarchs, as Ramban suggests,
or to just Abraham who came to Canaan from Aram? Does it
mean that in Canaan, Abraham or Jacob continued to have a
431
Daniel Machiela, “Who Is the Aramean in "Deut" 26:5 And What Is He Doing?
Evidence of a Minority View from Qumran Cave 1 ("1QapGen" 19.8),” Revue de
Qumrân 23, 3 (91) (June 2008), p. 401.
432
This list is adapted from Daniel Machiela, “Who Is the Aramean in "Deut" 26:5
And What Is He Doing? Evidence of a Minority View from Qumran Cave 1
("1QapGen" 19.8),” Revue de Qumrân 23, 3 (91) (JUNE 2008), p. 399.
433
‫ משנה מסכת פסחים פרק י משנה ד‬:]‫[ד‬
434
.:‫ספרי דברים פרשת כי תבוא פיסקא שא‬
435
.‫חידושי הרמב"ן מסכת בבא בתרא דף פא עמוד א‬
-293-
refugee status of wandering/fugitive, with no rights? And why did
they go down to Egypt? Why didn’t they stay in Canaan? What
does it mean to “sojourn” there? Clearly the wandering status
implies that our forefather/s were an insecure people without a
permanent land. Despite this they arrived in Egypt with “meager
numbers” and then became “great and populous”. Despite all the
troubles they had, and caused, God redeemed them and brought
them back from Egypt to the promised land.
Intertextual Demonization of Laban
Case 1: Deuteronomy 26:5 and Genesis 31:23-25
I argue that Laban is not the enemy but the rightful ruler protecting
his own interests and that one can even argue that his “dedication to
family is honorable and praiseworthy” and that we should emulate
him. However, that is not what our tradition does. It has consistently
and continuously demonized him until the present day. Thus, in a
modern-day example, after writing only positive things about Laban,
Shlomo Riskin concludes his dvar torah on Chayai Sarah as follows:
“But Laban's narrow vision is a source of grave danger to Jewish destiny.
With Laban at the helm, we would never turn toward God and listen to his
words. Instead, we'd happily sit with our paychecks and allow Jewish
destiny to be perverted and sidetracked. We'd be converted from the world
of ladders connecting heaven and earth, to the world of Wall Street and
investment, cattle and livestock. From the very first moment we're
introduced to Laban, we see him running. The question we have to ask is, if
his destination is the same as ours, if we want to join him on his track. To
436
do so would be to uproot everything God desires to be our destiny.”
Karin Zetterhorn argues that the rabbis understanding of the
phrase to mean that an Aramean destroyed my father was natural,
given “the way they understood the verse, given their assumptions
437
and presuppositions.” Thus the first intertextual example which
436
Rabbi Shlomo Riskin in “Laban: A Role Model?” Jewish News of Greater
Phoenix (Friday, November 21, 1997) http://www.jewishaz.com/laban-a-role-
model/article_46007d14-38da-11e6-8f7f-afd9a6d99cf1.html
437
“Thus, confronted with a biblical phrase that seemed to be saying that Laban
destroyed Jacob, the rabbis came to think of Gen 31:23-25, which read together
with Deut 26:5 could be understood to mean that Laban intended to kill Jacob when
the latter fled from Haran. This is not to say that the rabbis interpreted ‫ארמי אובד אבי‬
(arami oved avi) to mean that Laban sought to destroy Jacob and then went looking
for a verse to prove this idea, but rather that an unintentional association to Gen
-294-
forms the basis for rabbinic understanding of Laban is based on
Gen 31 where Laban’s intention to kill Jacob is thwarted by God’s
intervention. Just as God thwarted Balaam’s attempt to curse
Israel. We have seen that God appeared to Laban the Aramean in
a dream by night and said to him, “Beware of attempting
anything with Jacob, good or bad.” … But the text then
continues with Laban understanding statement: “3 0 Very well, you
had to leave because you were longing for your father’s house; but
why did you steal my gods?” 3 1 Jacob answered Laban, saying, “I
was afraid because I thought you would take your daughters
from me by force” (Gen 31: 22-31).
Why not sympathize with Laban, who understands Jacob’s
“longing for his father’s house” and is correct when he points out
that Jacob did steal off with his daughters at night and, to add
insult to injury, took his gods.
To smooth over Jacob’s deception of his own brother, his father
and even his uncle, it is Laban who takes on a sinister character.
438
Thus, innocent Rebekah is a “rose who grows up in thorns” and
has a narrow escape from her notorious family, including her father
439
who enjoyed deflowering virgins.
I would therefore argue that Zetterhorn’s understanding of this
process lets the rabbis off too easily as she writes in her conclusion:
“Accordingly, an ideology is formed through the reader’s struggle with the
text, and the ideology in turn affects the understanding of the text in a
constant interaction. … [A] portrait of a villain can develop simply as a

31:23-25 made this interpretation of Deut 26:5 possible. ” [italics mine] Karin
Hedner-Zetterholm, “The Attempted Murder by Laban the Aramean: An Example
Of Intertextual Reading In Midrash,” in Hanne Trautner-Kromann (editor) From
Bible to Midrash: Portrayals and Interpretative Practices (Lund: Arcus, 2005), p.
99 and p. 101.
438
.‫ד‬: ‫בראשית רבה (וילנא) פרשת תולדות פרשה סג‬
439
Bereshit Rabbah explains that her father died that night. Rabbi Meir of
Rotenberg, connects this midrash with Tractate Ketubot of the droit du seigneur,
the "lord's right" of the first night—jus primae noctis.. Then there is the
paronomasia of Bethuel and betulah (virgin). For an excellent article, see David,
Malkiel “Manipulating Virginity: Digital Defloration in Midrash and History,”
Jewish Studies Quarterly 13: 2 (2006): 105-127. There are other midrashim which
say that Bethuel tried to poison Abraham’s servant and then ended up poisoning
himself.
-295-
 result of hermeneutics without identification with a historical enemy. It also
indicates that an image of an enemy can develop primarily as a side-effect
440
of concerns other than interest in the villain himself….” [italics mine]
What she does not take into account is the animus in rabbinic
literature; that there is a genuine fear of this particular villain, who
is an existential threat to the nation, as represented by Jacob/Israel.
Case 2: Laban (Genesis 31: 22-36) and Saul (I Samuel 19:2-17)
Laban is not the only one who threatened a “holy seed”. Saul did
as well, for if he had succeeded in killing David, there would be
no Davidic dynasty. Douglas Wilson writes how
"Saul is a Laban, only with the power to kill. …[B]oth Saul and Laban
changed the terms of their agreements.” They both deceived their sons-in-
law; Both of them had sons who had to escape them; both withheld a
daughter. Both had daughters who use terafim (Gen 31:33-5; 1 Sam 19:12-
16). “Laban wants to know why he was deceived, when the answer should
have been obvious (Gen. 31:27). Saul wants to know why he was deceived,
when the answer should have been obvious (1 Sam. 19:17). The writer of
the book of Samuel is making the point very clear—he wants us to see Saul
441
as a Laban."
Laban and Jacob's relationship is one of mutual dislike and
distrust, yet Laban has his daughters' interest in mind: in our town,
we don’t let the younger marry first; and he threatens Jacob that if
he lays a hand on either of his daughters he will come after him.
Saul in contrast has a love/hate relationship with David—much of
it has to do with his fear of being usurped as king and also as a
beloved figure by his own children (Michal and Jonathan). And
unlike Laban he relates to his daughters as things—they are
objects to be bartered and interchangeable with each other.
According to Barbara Green, "Saul draws his daughter
Michal as an object to be given, as a snare to bring someone
440
Zetterhorn, p. 105.
441
Douglas Wilson, http://www.dougwils.com/Book-of-Samuel/saul-among-
the-prophets.html Of course, one could argue the opposite, that the author wants
us to see Laban as Saul!
J.P. Fokkelman was among the first to establish the connection between the
two: both are poor and cannot pay mohar for their brides, the father-in-law of
both is their employer; and there are many intertextual words like ‫ נ ְַחבֵּ את‬in
Genesis 31:27 and I Samuel 19:2. J.P. Fokkelman, Narrative Art and Poetry in
the Books of Samuel II: The Crossing Fates (1 Sam. 13-31 and 2 Sam. 1). p.
274 Studia Semitica Neerlandica 1986.
-296-
down, and as an alibi for his own hand, as well as to be a wife for
David. He sets her up to diminish her husband, though that
442
intended result is not his to manage fully."
Whereas Laban respects his older daughter’s right to
marriage, Saul gives Meirav to another man, just like that—as a
whim, so that David will be challenged to bring his gruesome
bride price to get the next daughter, Michal. And Michal’s
relationship with David will end up being similar to that of her
father’s with David — love turning to hate. Laban will succeed in
siring a dynasty, whereas Saul’s progeny will die out or be killed.
Both Saul and Laban have lost their children in the popularity
contest; worst of all God also loves their sons-in-law more than he
loves them. In addition to the many characteristics they share is
that both are deceptive fathers. Keith Bodner suggests that the
reason Saul
"shares many characteristics with Laban [and] …why these two deceptive
fathers in Genesis 31 and I Samuel 19 have intersecting character zones is
because Saul is presented here as a 'new Laban'. By comparing Saul with
Laban, the Deuteronomist is able to provide some implicit appraisal of
Saul's conduct configured on the Laban model, then both of these fathers are
having to respond to a son-in-law who is under the promise of election, and
443
in both cases, the father-in-law's schemes are ultimately foiled."
But I would make a major argument in favor of Laban, for unlike
Saul, he wants his son-in-law back in the fold and ALIVE,
444
whereas Saul would be very happy to have a dead son-in-law.

Case 3: Judges 19 and Genesis 24

Another inner biblical comparison with Laban can be assumed in
Judges 19 where home hospitality (or lack of it) for a weary
wanderer is a major theme:
He happened to see the wayfarer in the town square. “Where,” the old
17

man inquired, “are you going to, and where do you come from?” … I made a

442
Barbara Green, How Are the Mighty Fallen? A Dialogical Study of King Saul in
1 Samuel. Sheffield: JSOT Supplement Series 365, 2003 p. 303.
443
See I Samuel 18.28. Keith Bodner, 1 Samuel: A Narrative Commentary,
Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2008, p.208.
444
See Barbara Green, p. 304 "We might say Saul is thinking, 'be my dead son-in-
law-apparent'."
-297-
 journey to Bethlehem of Judah, and now I am on my way to the House of
the Lord, and nobody has taken me indoors. 1 9 We have both bruised
straw and feed for our donkeys, and bread and wine for me and your
handmaid, and for the attendant with your servants. We lack nothing.”
20
“Rest easy,” said the old man. “Let me take care of all your needs. Do not
on any account spend the night in the square.” 2 1 And he took him into his
house. He mixed fodder for the donkeys; then they bathed their feet and ate
and drank.
Compare this with verses from Genesis, where the first person to
see Jacob effusively welcomes him and provides for all of his
needs.
28
The maiden ran and told all this to her mother’s household. 2 9 Now
Rebekah had a brother whose name was Laban. Laban ran out to the man at
the spring— 3 0 when he saw the nose-ring and the bands on his sister’s
arms, and when he heard his sister Rebekah say, “Thus the man spoke to
me.” He went up to the man, who was still standing beside the camels at the
spring. 3 1 “Come in, O blessed of the Lord,” he said, “why do you remain
outside, when I have made ready the house and a place for the camels?”
32
So the man entered the house, and the camels were unloaded. The camels
were given straw and feed, and water was brought to bathe his feet and the
feet of the men with him.”
In this intertextual context we can also include the necessary crossing
of borders that Abraham's servant did to find a wife for Isaac.
Another intertextual point is the comparison of the hospitality offered
to the servant by Laban at the time when Rebekah's future was at
stake. It is quite similar in language to that of the concubine's father
in Judges 19. If we look at the delaying tactics of the concubine's
father in the context of Laban's offering hospitality, then it might be a
comment on Laban's attempt to keep his sister from leaving. It is
worth noting that the only time both ‫ תֶּ בֶ ן‬and ‫ ּמ ְספּוֹא‬appear together is
445
in Genesis 24:32 and Judges 19:19-21. If the similarity is
“deliberate”, then the inter-texts are insinuating that had Laban’s
tactics worked, there would be no Israel—just as the delaying tactics

445
‫ּומ ְסּפֹוא לַגְ מַ לִּ ים וּמַ ים ל ְרחֹ ץ‬ִּ ‫בראשית פרק כד (לב) ַו ָּיב ֹא הָ אישׁ הַ בַּ יְ תָ ה וַיְ ַפתַּ ח הַ גְ מַ לים וַיִּ תֵּ ן תֶּ בֶּ ן‬
:‫ַרגְ לָיו וְ ַרגְ לֵי הָ ֲאנָשׁים אֲשֶׁ ר אתּוֹ‬
‫ֲמֹורינּו וְ גַם לֶחֶ ם ָויַין יֶשׁ לי וְ ַלאֲמָ תֶ ך וְ ַל ַנעַר עם עֲבָ דֶ יך שופטים פרק יט‬ ֵּ ‫יט) וְ גַם תֶּ בֶּ ן גַם ִּמ ְסּפֹוא יֵּש ַלח‬
‫אֵ ין מַ חְ סוֹר כָל דָ בָ ר‬:(‫סוֹרך ָעלָי ַרק בָּ ְרחוֹב אַ ל תָּ לַן‬ ְ ְ‫כ) ַוּי ֹאמֶ ר הָ אישׁ הַ ּזָקֵ ן שָׁ לוֹם לְָך ַרק כָל מַ ח‬:( )‫כא‬
‫וַיְ ביאֵ הוּ לְ בֵ יתוֹ ויבול ַוּיָבָ ל ַלחֲמוֹרים וַּי ְרחֲצוּ ַרגְ לֵיהֶ ם ַוּי ֹאכְ לוּ וַּי ְשׁתּוּ‬::
-298-
of the concubine’s father resulted in devastation for the tribe of
446
Benjamin.

The Rationale for Demonizing Laban

Despite the many alternative traditions that do not consider the Arami
to be Laban, the Jewish tradition has preponderantly come down on
the side of the first interpretation, that of Laban as a villain, the one
who would have destroyed the Jewish people as we know from the
Passover haggadah. What is to be gained by demonizing Laban?
Moreover, as we have seen, the tradition goes out of its way to relate
other villainous figures, such as Balaam as a Laban like figure. We
saw how Zetterholm tried to answer the question of why Laban is
portrayed in rabbinic literature as the enemy of Jacob and Israel
based on a reading of Gen 31:23–25 that reads it as Laban attempted
447
to kill Jacob when the latter fled from Haran. Zetterholm argues
that the portrait of Laban as a villain developed in accordance with
the ideological code of the rabbis. She starts out by showing how
early this was and points to the writings of Philo (c. 20 B.C.E.-50
C.E), who is an example of an early witness to a negative
understanding of Laban.
“Philo sees Laban as a contrast to Jacob, who to him represents everything
that is good and noble, a polarity that is possibly dependent on his view of
the nature of man's soul . . . Jacob symbolizes the rational part of the soul,
the mind and reason . . . Laban is also contrasted with Jacob's virtue,
448
representing passions and above all the senses and corporeal ideas.”

446
I am working on a paper on the Judges 19 and Genesis 24 on the differences in
hospitality with a focus on the root ln to be given in March 2019 at the ACLA
conference in Washington. Hopefully, the article will appear in a published volume
after the conference.
447
This is from the abstract of an article by Karin Hedner-Zetterholm, “The
Attempted Murder by Laban the Aramean: An Example Of Intertextual Reading In
Midrash,” in Hanne Trautner-Kromann (editor) From Bible to Midrash: Portrayals
and Interpretative Practices (Lund: Arcus, 2005), p. 95. This idea is developed by
Dalit Rom-Shiloni below who argues that there is an intra-biblical polemical
relationship with these two passages.
448
Karin Zetterholm, Portrait of a Villain: Laban the Aramean in Rabbinic
Literature (pp. 40, 41) as quoted in a nasty review of her book by Jacob Neusner,
The Jewish Quarterly Review, Vol. 95, No. 4 (Fall, 2005), pp. 705-709.
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Who or what is the “everything”? One reason for demonizing
Laban
An important question about the early texts that culminate in the
Haggada passage that Laban wanted to uproot “everything” (et ha-
kol) must be what is the “everything” that is referred to? In the
midrash (Genesis Rabbah 60:7) we already have seen the negative
associations with his name, Lavan (white); “his color is symbolic of
449
his actions” : We have seen that he is considered to be an exemplar
of pure wickedness, a refined evil person who is polished in the art of
deception. To me the question has always been why paint him so
negatively at this early stage?
I believe it is connected to his great love of his sister
Rebekah, who was lost to him. He tried to stall her going back with
the Servant and had he succeeded, perhaps she would have remained
with him and there would have been no marriage between her and
Isaac and there would have been no Jacob. In Genesis 24 we read:
“5 And the servant said to him, ‘What if the woman does not consent
to follow me to this land, shall I then take your son back to the land
from which you came?’” Abraham answers: no! He adds: “The Lord,
the God of heaven, …. took me from my father’s house and from my
native land…”, suggesting that this was also a trauma that he had to
live with. Perhaps that is why it is so important for Abraham to have
a relative from his homeland marry his son. For the same reason,
Laban does not want to lose his sister.
Laban is introduced as Rebekah’s brother: “Now Rebekah
had a brother whose name was Laban.” This is fairly unusual, since
his identity and status is related to hers and not vice versa. He tries to
delay the inevitable by arranging home hospitality. Yet after
spending the night, eating drinking and sleeping, there is a sudden
change of heart. This time it is the mother, not the father, who
together with Laban say: “Let the maiden remain with us some ten
days; then you may go.” The decision to go is made by Rebekah who

449
Yehudah Friedlander, “Who's Afraid of Laban the Aramean? (or: Profile of a
frustrated uncle) Parashat Vayetze (Bar-Ilan University's Parashat Hashavua Study
Center, 5760/1999).
-300-
answers to the question: “Will you go with this man?” a simple
response: “I will.”
I argue that Laban’s biggest tragedy in life was the loss of his
beloved sister Rebekah. He had tried to delay her leaving with the
Servant decades ago. He had not succeeded. Now we skip twenty
years later and this time another relative comes to claim a female
from his family. He recognizes that he is going to lose his daughters.
Ever since he heard that Yitzchak and Rebekah had twin sons, he has
known that both of them have first rights to his daughters. That was
the way of the world according to the midrash in Babba Batra
450
123a. Then Jacob came-- and to Laban it was a re-play of the scene
at the well with the servant and Rebekah—and fell for his daughter,
just as Rebekah fell off her camel when she saw Isaac—it was love at
first sight. All Laban wanted to do was postpone the inevitable.
First, the seven years, and then the trick of switching his
daughters. After so many years, Jacob has to resort to trickery to get
some income of his own. Rashi describes the process as one of
counter-trickery, since Laban cheats by leaving only the sick animals
for Jacob. Others point to Laban’s lack of faith in their negotiations,
451
with a constant change of mind. After all of his chicaneries, which
did not work, Laban no longer had any way of holding on to his
daughters. He desperately wanted Jacob to stay, but apparently his
450
It is true that the purpose of this midrash is to explain why Leah’s eyes were
rakot: Rebekah has two sons, [and] Laban has two daughters; the elder [daughter
should be married] to the elder [son] and the younger [daughter should be married]
to the younger [son].
‫ ולא גנאי הוא לה אלא תלמוד בבלי מסכת בבא בתרא דף קכג עמוד א‬,‫ לעולם רכות ממש‬:‫רב אמר‬
,‫ שני בנים יש לה לרבקה‬:‫ שהיתה שומעת על פרשת דרכים בני אדם שהיו אומרים‬,‫שבח הוא לה‬
‫ גדול‬:‫ והיתה יושבת על פרשת דרכים ומשאלת‬,‫ גדולה לגדול וקטנה לקטן‬,‫שתי בנות יש לו ללבן‬
,‫ איש תם יושב אוהלים‬+‫בראשית כ"ה‬+ ?‫ קטן מה מעשיו‬,‫מה מעשיו? איש רע הוא מלסטם בריות‬
‫והיתה בוכה עד שנשרו ריסי עיניה‬.
451
Jeremy Burton writes that “As with much of Genesis, this is a foundational
narrative for Jewish perspectives and values, with Jacob seen as an ideal worker
and Laban's behavior as an example to be avoided. The law code the Shulchan
Aruch cites this story in laying out the obligations of employers to act fairly
(Choshen Mishpat 337:20)."Jeremy Burton,"Laban's Excuse: Labor Ethics and
Community
Standards,"http://www.myjewishlearning.com/texts/Bible/Weekly_Torah_Portion/
vayetze_socialaction5762.shtml
-301-
daughters did not share the same feelings that he had for them and
they conspired with Jacob to leave and go back to Jacob's home. He
ran after Jacob, but it didn't do any good—and then he realized that
he would have to back down and made the pact.
One wonders why the tradition relates to Laban as a villain,
for at the end he behaves honorably (Gen. 31:43-52). The great
scholar of Semitic languages, Cyrus Herzl Gordon (1908-2001),
noted that “in a magnanimous forgiving way, Laban allowed Jacob's
household to depart’. Strictly speaking, Laban has pardoned Jacob for
452
the crime of breach of trust. …” He takes care of all the loose ends,
he makes it clear if Jacob mistreats his wives, the contract will be
invalidated. He sets boundaries and one can even read this as mutual
respect—a relationship between equals, now that Jacob is set free to
return to his land and family. It is the end of hostilities! In this
reading, Laban could be construed as a tragic figure, one who
suffered personal loss, and who wished to keep his family together.
But even if one wants to read Laban’s acts in a harsher light, and
suggest that he was simply a deceiver who wished to make as much
money as possible, the character hardly deserves the animus
displayed against him by the rabbis.
Thus, to answer the question what is “everything” that is
being jeopardized by Laban’s tactics to keep Jacob and his daughters
and grandchildren with him in Aram: it is literally “everything” that
God promised Abraham and his progeny. The promise was to inherit
a land, to be the owners of this land, to live in peace in their own way
on this land. The everything being jeopardized is the substance of
God’s covenant with Abraham and Sarah and their offspring. In
modern terms Laban getting his way would imply a total assimilation
453
of the “Hebrew nation” to Aramean culture and civilization.

Why Does Rabbinic Tradition Demonize Laban?

452
Quoted in Charles Mabee, “Jacob and Laban: The Structure of Judicial
Proceedings (Genesis XXXI 25-42),” VT 30.2 (April, 1980): 205, n. 40. [From, C.
H. Gordon, The World of the Old Testament (Garden City, New York, 1958)].
453
Michael Graetz, personal communication.
-302-
So why do the rabbis paint him as full of iniquity, the embodiment of
Israel’s foes throughout the centuries, and a threat to the very
existence of Israel, worse even than Pharaoh himself? In other words,
why do the rabbis demonize Laban? To understand this, it is
necessary to understand Hate studies and other examples of
demonization.
Hate Studies: Why We Demonize Others
Fred Guyette discusses the criteria for demonization and asks “On
what basis do groups create ‘insiders’ who are accepted, and
‘outsiders’ who are marked as enemies?” Why do we need enemies?
He notes how the book of Psalms makes use of animal metaphors to
describe Israel’s enemies. Wild animals are bestial, they are not easy
to control or dominate. He quotes from Psalm 83:14 which “calls on
God to break his silence and utterly destroy the enemies who are
plotting against Israel…. [A]adversaries are often categorized as sub-
human creatures. In Psalm 59 they are ‘growling dogs.’ Psalm 22
refers to them as destructive ‘bulls.’ According to Psalm 17:12, the
454
enemy is a predator, ‘like a hungry lion’.” Thus, it is easy to fear
and or hate them.
Often this hatred is extended to other races or ethnic groups.
We “other” them, turn them into enemies and subsequently our
hatred is accompanied by racialization, as a consequence of real or
perceived threat that one group feels from another. We perceive
differences and then exploit them for political ends; legitimating
ideology. Amy Chua, Professor of Law at Yale, writes of this danger:
When groups feel threatened, they retreat into tribalism. When groups feel
mistreated and disrespected, they close ranks and become more insular,
455
more defensive, more punitive, more us-versus-them.
Hatred allows us to define ourselves in comparison to others. We
view those outside our group negatively. They are hateful and
threatening. By negating them we also self-define. We are what not
what we hate.
Self-Defining

454
Fred Guyett, “Scripture and the Field of Hate Studies: Traversing Biblical
Landscapes,” Biblical Theology Bulletin, 41: 2 (2011): 59-60.
455
Amy Chua, “How America's Identity Politics Went from Inclusion to Division,”
Political Tribes. (Excerpted in The Guardian, March 1, 2018).
-303-
Katherine Southwood in her anthropological study of the mixed
marriage crisis in Ezra points to the boundary maintenance that takes
place during times of upheaval. She claims, that in such times, when
ethnicity is emphasized
“it is often those who are most similar, the ‘proximate Others’, rather than
those who are profoundly different, hat constitute the greatest perceived
threats…. Therefore, so-called ‘foreigners’ are often used to reaffirm the
456
ethnicity of the group.”
Another way of looking at this is to determine why a culture
creates monsters. Do the creation of monsters and the process of hate
and demonization of the other reveal the anxieties held by a group? Is
it a form of identity as well? The separation from the other? Brandon
R. Grafius writes that it is possible that
“the monster serves as a way for a social group to construct identity, by
constructing a picture that is the opposite of how they see themselves.
However, because our self-image is always distorted, this monstrous other
457
will often reveal uncomfortable truths about ourselves.”
One uncomfortable truth the Rabbis may have been facing is
that Jacob is depicted as every bit as cunning as his uncle. Jacob’s
name can mean the deceiver—certainly that is how Esau understands
it when he accuses Jacob of tricking him twice, once out of his
458
birthright and next out of his blessing (Gen 27:36). Later, after
being duped by Laban into marrying Leah, he gets Laban back with
his peeled-stick trick, to ensure that the baby sheep all come out
speckled or spotted. By calling Laban the deceiver, the Rabbis
distanced themselves from Jacobs’s long history of deception. As
Grafius points out, “the monster is a paradoxical embodiment of both

456
Katherine Southwood, Ethnicity and the Mixed Marriage Crisis in Ezra 9-10: An
Anthropological Approach (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013): 31.
457
Brandon R. Grafius, “Text and Terror: Monster Theory and the Hebrew Bible,”
Currents in Biblical Research 16:1 (2017): 35.
458
Dalit Rom-Shiloni, “When an Explicit Polemic Initiates a Hidden One: Jacob’s
Aramaean Identity,” In Athalya Brenner and Frank H. Polak (editors), Words,
Ideas, Worlds Biblical Essays in Honour Of Yairah Amit (Sheffield: Sheffield
Phoenix Press, 2012), p. 210. She builds upon Yairah Amit, Hidden Polemics in
Biblical Narrative (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2000).
-304-
Otherness and sameness, seeming to reflect our fears that we are not
459
really as different from the Other as we would like to think.”
In his fine article, David Berger points to Christian sources which
blame Jacob for deceptive behavior and the need for Jewish sources
to counter this by blaming Laban. “As for Laban, the answer to the
Christian critique was that Jacob was the real victim of deception,
and his treatment of his father-in-law was marked by extraordinary
460
scrupulousness.” In fact, as Herbert Basser has shown,
Shakespeare uses this reading as a basis for Antonio’s playful jabs
461
against Shylock, for being like Jacob in this regard. In a similar
fashion we have seen how the midrash consistently transposes the
letters of arami to ramai, a scoundrel or cheat. Rebekah’s father and
Laban are both scoundrels and cheats and by association all the
462
inhabitants who lived in Syria/Aram.

Descendants of Arameans
The demonization of Aram cannot begin, however, until the sons of
Jacob take brides who are not from Aram. As Sarah Shectman notes,
all of Jacob’s sons are as legitimate heirs as Abraham, Isaac and
Jacob who marry Aramean brides:
“Of Jacob’s twelve sons, we only learn about the marriages of three, but
none is a relative, let alone an Aramean: Simeon marries a Canaanite
woman (who seems to be one of multiple wives), as does Judah. Joseph

459
Grafius, p. 39.
460
David Berger, “On The Morality of The Patriarchs In Jewish Polemic And
Exegesis,” Understanding Scripture: Explorations of Jewish and Christian
Traditions of Interpretation, ed. by Clemens Thoma and Michael Wyschogrod
(Paulist Press: New York, 1987) :49-62. He cites Rosenthal, Sefer Yosef ha-
Meqanne,
461
See Herbert Basser, "Shakespeare Plays on the Questionable Source of Jacob's
Wealth," TheTorah.com (2015).
462
‫בראשית רבה (וילנא) פרשת תולדות פרשה סג מה ת"ל ארמי בת בתואל הארמי מה ת"ל אחות‬
‫ והצדקת הזו שהיא יוצאה‬,‫לבן הארמי אלא בא ללמדך אביה רמאי ואחיה רמאי ואף אנשי מקומה כן‬
‫ מה תלמוד לומר אל‬,‫ ר' פנחס אמר כתיב וילך פדנה ארם‬,‫מביניהם למה היא דומה לשושנה בין החוחים‬
.‫ מלמד שכולן כללן ברמאות‬,‫לבן הארמי‬
-305-
 marries Asenath, the daughter of an Egyptian priest. All of these unions are
463
reported without a word of censure.”
Shectman points out that Jacob has to break with Laban in
order to be the paterfamilias. Laban’s daughters too have to break
464
with their beit av. This is the challenge that Jacob has and the
break has to be complete. In effect Rachel, Leah and Jacob are now
breaking with the Aramean family connection, they have nothing
more to gain by the association. As Shectman points out, “It may also
be significant that Laban is referred to as ‘Laban the Aramean’ only
three times in Genesis, two of which instances appear in this chapter,
thus emphasizing the Aramean connection
465
that is being broken.” No looking back to the Arameans and
perhaps from now on the associations will have to be negative. It is
probably worthwhile restating that had Jacob remained with Laban,
they would have been part of the latter’s family, having the status of
466
slaves or vassals.

463
Sarah Shectman, “Rachel, Leah, And The Composition of Genesis,” in Thomas
B. Dozeman, Konrad Schmid, and Baruch J. Schwartz (editors), The Pentateuch:
International Perspectives on Current Research (Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011):
210.
464
‫ (טו) הֲלוֹא‬:‫בראשית פרק לא (יד) וַתַּ עַן ָרחֵ ל וְ לֵאָ ה ַותּ ֹאמַ ְרנָה לוֹ הַ עוֹד לָנוּ חֵ לֶק וְ ַנ ֲחלָה בְּבֵּ ית א ִּבינּו‬
‫ (טז) כי כָל הָ עֹ שֶׁ ר אֲשֶׁ ר הציל אֱֹלהים מֵ אָ בינוּ‬:‫נָכְ רּיוֹת נֶחְ שַׁ בְ נוּ לוֹ כי ְמכ ָָרנוּ ַוּי ֹאכַל גַם אָ כוֹל אֶ ת כ ְַספֵּנוּ‬
:‫לָנוּ הוּא וּלְ בָ נֵינוּ וְ ַעתָּ ה כֹ ל ֲאשֶׁ ר אָ מַ ר אֱֹלהים אֵ לֶיך עֲשֵ ה‬
465
Shectman, p. 220. In footnote 45 on this page, she points to the references of
Gen 25:20; 31:20, 24; and then adds that elsewhere he is referred to fifty-one times
just as Laban.
466
I point this out at this juncture, because the leitworts of ‫ עבד‬and ‫ עבודה‬appear a lot
in the stories of Jacob working for Laban and one can transpose the ‫ ע‬with an ‫ א‬to
get the concept of ‫ ארמי עובד אבי‬rather than as written. An Aramean worked
(enslaved) or served my father. After thinking about this, I found that Yair
Zakovitch ("My Father Was a Wandering Aramean" (Deuteronomy 26:5) Or
"Edom Served My Father", In N. S. Fox, D. A. Glatt-Gilad, And M. J. Williams
(Editors), Mishneh Todah: Studies In Deuteronomy and Its Cultural Environment
In Honor Of Jeffrey H. Tigay (Winona Lake, In: Eisenbrauns, 2009): 133-137) and
Yigal Levin (“My Father was a Wandering Aramean”: Biblical Views of the
Ancestral Relationship between Israel and Aram,” Wandering Arameans:
Arameans Outside Syria Textual and Archaeological Perspectives Edited by
Angelika Berlejung, Aren M. Maeir and Andreas Schuler (Wiesbaden:
Harrassowitz Verlag, 2017) refer to this argument. Levin writes
-306-
 The distancing of Israel from Aram begins in the Bible.
When Jacob appears at Laban’s house, Laban declares that the two
are close family (‫“—(עצמי ובשרי‬the same bone and flesh” (Gen.
29:14). When they meet in Gilad, Laban even suggests that, through
their common ancestry, he and Jacob share the same God (Gen
31:53). But Jacob will not acknowledge this connection, and each
man swears in the name of his own ancestral God. Moreover, the two
men end up referring to the place of their oath in their respective
languages, Hebrew for Jacob, and Aramaic for Laban.
Dalit Rom-Shiloni suggests that,
[I]n its insistence on Jacob’s non-Aramaean origin in spite of
the family connection, in its presentation of the …
distinctions between Jacob and Laban at their parting, Genesis
31 reveals a hidden polemic and establishes its own position
467
within the polemics concerning Jacob’s identity.”
My Father Was Not an Aramean
We have seen that the distancing that begins in the Bible is taken
further by the rabbis into the realm of demonization. Returning to the
rabbinic midrash, Jeffrey Tigay points out that the demonization of
Arameans
may underlie the fanciful interpretation of the clause as
‘[Laban the] Aramean sought to destroy my father.’ This
interpretation, found in the Pesach Haggadah and reflected
in the Septuagint and the targums, is due, perhaps, to a
disbelief that the Bible would describe one of Israel’s
468
ancestors as an Aramean.

in a footnote on page 40: “Zakovitch (2009) argues for an “original” ‫ אבי עבד אדמי‬,
“Edom Served my Father”, which was “purposely changed to ‫ אבי אבד ארמי‬in order
to blur Israel’s ill treatment of Edom – an example of reprehensible behavior between
brothers”.
467
Rom-Shiloni, “Explicit Polemic,” 216. Karin Zetterhorn had argued this earlier;
see her, “The Attempted Murder by Laban the Aramean: An Example of
Intertextual Reading In Midrash,” in Hanne Trautner-Kromann (editor) From Bible
to Midrash: Portrayals and Interpretative Practices (Lund: Arcus, 2005) and
Portrait of a Villain: Laban the Aramean in Rabbinic Literature (Leuven and
Dudley, Mass.: Peeters, 2002).
468
Tigay in his commentary on “my father was a fugitive Aramean” in
Deuteronomy (JPS Torah Commentary), p. 240.
-307-
The rabbinic polemic against Arameans likely reflects more than
just discomfort with the biblical text. The linguistic hegemony of
Aramaic extended past the Persian period and into the Rabbinic
period, even when Aram no longer had any political influence.
Not only did all of the Rabbis’ neighbors speak Aramaic, but they
themselves spoke Aramaic.
For the rabbis, an Aramean became a euphemism for
outsiders, and yet, these were outsiders with whom they shared a
land and a language, and whom the Bible ties together with Israel
from its inception. The rabbis, therefore, felt the need to draw a
razor-sharp line between “us” and “them.” What better way than
to turn our “Aramean ancestor” referenced in Deuteronomy, into
our wicked “Aramean uncle” who tried to destroy us for hundreds
of years in his various different guises. And thus, the rabbinic
villain “Laban the deceiver,” who tried “to destroy our father” was
born.
Despite this negative assessment, our ancestors continued to go there
to get their brides for they are family. They are relatives with whom
“we share a common ancestry, [yet we do] not consider Aram to be a
469
direct ancestor of Israel.” They are like us, yet they are demonized.
They are demonized so much that when the Mishnah wants to
describe the law against sexual relations with a non-Israelite woman,
it refers to her as an Aramean (even though in the Torah story she
was a Midianite). The Mishnah’s law (Sanhedrin 9:6) that “one who
has intercourse with an Aramean woman” (‫ )הבועל ארמית‬can be
executed without a trial could hardly be a starker contrast with the
stories of Isaac and Jacob. The Aramean at this point is so foreign to
us that she is the very embodiment of “enemy.”
The demonization of Arameans and their language
The examples of demonization of Laban and his ancestry go on and
on. Jacob was punished because he spoke Aramaic. Even the
beautiful blessing of Laban to his sister, which is still recited at some
469
Yigal Levin, p. 42. On p. 46 he points out that there seems to be an “‘Aramean
realm’ that was made up of twelve components, not unlike the future ‘nation’ of
Israel. In fact, Israel and its ‘uncle’ Aram seem to have been seen as experiencing
parallel stages of development, although Aram was seen as preceding Israel by two
generations.”
-308-
weddings today, (ahotenu at heyeh le-alfei revava) is interpreted as
470
not being answered until Isaac prays to God on her behalf. Because
of Laban’s switching of the sisters, Joseph was not the first born and
the troublesome son Reuven, who caused much family chaos, was. It
is clear to me that because the Arameans were so close to the
Hebrews (both in language and culture) they had to be demonized.
Had their influence been lesser perhaps this would not have been the
case. Our ancestry is clearly Aramean. Bethuel and Laban are called
Arameans, and are the descendants of Nahor, Abram’s brother. Both
Abraham and Isaac sent their sons to marry Arameans. They were
considered family. There was a constant association between us and
the Arameans. A great number of their states were on the borders of
Israel. There is much evidence of cultural interchange. And as
Pfeiffer has pointed out: "The mutual influence of the two languages
[Hebrew and Aramaic] reaches back to early times: Aramaisms occur
471
in the earliest parts of the Old Testament."
Yet, as Raymond Bowman points out,
When the Hebrews had become a nation and experienced difficulties with
neighboring Arameans, they naturally sought to sever their ancient bonds
and at every opportunity attempted to explain away the confession
pertaining to their father, Jacob. It would take a major operation, however,
472
to excise all the evidence for Hebrew-Aramean patriarchal connections.
I argue that the distancing had to be done. Otherwise, how do
we distinguish between ourselves and the Arameans. As I mentioned

470
‫אלבק) פרשת חיי שרה פרשה ס‬-‫אחותינו את היי לאלפי רבבה ר' בראשית רבה (תיאודור‬
‫ שלא‬,‫ברכיה ור' לוי בשם ר' חמא בר' חנינא (אמר) מפני מה לא נפקדה רבקה עד שנתפלל עליה יצחק‬
'‫ ר‬,)‫יהו אומות העולם א' תפילתינו עשת פירות אלא ויעתר יצחק לי"י לנכח אשתו (בראשית כה כא‬
'‫ברכיה בשם ר' לוי (אמר) כתיב ברכת אובד עלי תבוא (איוב כט יג) ברכת אובד זה לבן הארמי שנ‬
‫ עלי תבוא זו רבקה אחתינו את היי לאלפי רבבה ועמדו ממנה אלופין‬,)‫ארמי אובד אבי (דברים כו ה‬
'‫ רבבה מיעקב] שנ‬,)‫מעשו ורבב ה מיעקב [אלופין מעשו אלוף תימן אלוף אומר וגו' (בראשית לו טו‬
‫ ויש א' אילו ואילו עמדו מיעקב ובנוחה יאמר שובה י"י‬,)‫רבבה כצמח השדה נתתיך וגו' (יחזקאל טז ז‬
.)‫רבבות אלפי ישראל (במדבר י לו‬
471
R. H. Pfeiffer, Introduction to the Old Testament (New York, 1941), p. 687;
quoted by Raymond A. Bowman, “Arameans, Aramaic, and the Bible,” Journal of
Near Eastern Studies, Vol. 7, No. 2 (Apr., 1948): 65-90.
472
Raymond Bowman, “Arameans, Aramaic, and the Bible,” Journal of Near
Eastern Studies 7: 2 (Apr., 1948): 6. In fn 12 he points out that “The tendency was
operative already in the LXX, where the word obehd was regarded as transitive:
‘My father rejected a Syrian’…”
-309-
earlier, Dalit Rom-Shiloni pointed to the polemics in portraying
Jacob as distancing himself from the negative, opportunistic Laban
the Aramean. She described Jacob as having negative trickster traits
in the beginning of his life and then as Nahum Sarna pointed out
473
“being hoisted on his own petard.” In breaking from Laban, he is
totally the victim and no longer the trickster. Laban does not
experience growth, continuing to be the ruthless employer who
cheated Jacob out of his wages and rightful wife. Because it is God
who intervenes in Genesis 31, Jacob now is blameless and faithful—
determined only to leave Aram and get back to Canaan. At the same
time that Jacob is being purified, Laban’s character is stained. He is
the bad father, trying to cheat not only Jacob, but his own daughters.
In a sense “Jacob’s return from Haran is as important a foundational
474
story as Abraham’s previous immigration from that place.” God
warned Abimelech in a dream not to sleep with Sarah. When God
warns Laban in a dream not to interfere with Jacob, he is referred to
as Laban the Aramean. “… Jacob’s departure [from Haran is
depicted] as a story of familial (legal)-economic, national, religious,
475
linguistic, and geographic separation.”
The dangers of engaging in demonization
Shlomo Riskin has an intriguing suggestion incorporating the idea
that
“Laban was family, one of our own. Sometimes the destructive force of
one's own family is worse than the destructive force of the stranger. We
hurt our own relatives in ways that we would not hurt the stranger. In
Jewish history, it was apostate Jews who were often our worse
enemies…. Strangers can be destructive but our own families can be far
476
more destructive.”

473
Yairah Amit, Hidden Polemics in Biblical Narrative (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2000).
474
Dalit Rom-Shiloni, “When an Explicit Polemic Initiates a Hidden One: Jacob’s
Aramaean Identity,” In Athalya Brenner and Frank H. Polak (editors), Words,
Ideas, Worlds Biblical Essays In Honour Of Yairah Amit (Sheffield: Sheffield
Phoenix Press, 2012), p. 210.
475
Rom-Shiloni, p. 210.
476
This reference is by Rabbi Michael Gold, “Parshat Kee Tavo (5777): The
Chutzpah of the Rabbis” http://rabbigold.com/weekly-message/kee-tavo/
-310-
The apostate knows us too well; he knows the weaknesses, he
understands family dynamics and if he is disaffected, or
misunderstood, then he knows where to strike. This of course works
both ways.
If we define ourselves by what we are not, then who are we?
Normally, one who cares for his family is viewed positively. It is
interesting that Riskin in an early piece (1999) argues that “Laban's
primary concern is the welfare of his immediate family, his children
and grandchildren.” But instead of praising him for his concern for
family values, he argues that Laban is a failure because he puts
family above faith:
“[H]e is more than willing to sacrifice the faith ideals on the altar of his
commitment to family. He deceives, lies and cheats -- the very antithesis of
righteousness and justice -- in order to marry off an unpopular daughter and
to keep his children and grandchildren in his own back-yard.”
Ultimately Riskin falls back on the traditional line when he
writes:
“Our Sages understand that had Laban succeeded in keeping Jacob and his
children in Aram -- thereby allowing family ties to overwhelm their faith in
ethical monotheism -- the ensuring assimilation would have de-railed the
purpose of the Abrahamic election, aborted the mission of Israel, and ended
477
Jewish history almost before it began.”
Privileging a particular interpretation reveals much about the
chooser, ourselves. Just as the metaphors we choose reflect our belief
system, our social class, race, gender, nationality etc., so does
following a midrashic party line, which demonizes characters such as
Esau, Ishmael, Laban, Balaam, Pharaoh etc. Unfortunately, we lock
ourselves into a holding pattern and see no way out with such binary
thinking (he/she is either good or evil). A much more nuanced
reading, while continuing in the tradition of seeing a flawed Laban,
would be that of seeing him as a ba’al teshuvah.
At the end of the story, God points out to him all the “evil” that
he has done to Jacob and warns him not to harm Jacob. As a penitent,
Laban now makes a treaty with Jacob and even warns Jacob not to

477
Torah/Commentary: Parashat Vayetze (Genesis 28:10-32:3), Commentary on
the Weekly Torah Reading for 11 Kislev, 5760 (November 20, 1999) by Rabbi
Shlomo Riskin http://www.hebroots.org/hebrootsarchive/9911/991120_j.html
-311-
follow in his own footsteps, by abusing his daughters. In taking leave
of his family, he kisses his grandsons and daughters and blesses them
and goes back home. The homily here is that it is possible to turn the
tables on years of demonization and remind us that even Laban is
478
capable of teshuvah.

478
For this upbeat drasha see Ronen Ahituv, “Laban at Eye-Level,”
http://ozveshalom.org.il/from-old-site/parsha-eng/vayetze5765.html

-312-
‫‪CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: WITNESS OR NOT? “LO NISHAR‬‬
‫)‪AD EHAD” (HEBREW‬‬

‫‪479‬‬
‫לא נשאר עד אחד‪ :‬שבת שירה‬
‫היום קראנו את "אז ישיר" ו שירת דבורה‪ .‬ובשני המקומות מופיעים המילים‪:‬‬
‫בשמות פרק יד כתוב ל ֹא נ ְשׁאַ ר בָּ הֶ ם ַעד אֶ חָ ד‪ :‬וגם בספר שופטים לא נשאר עד אחד‪ .‬בפרשה‬
‫כתוב‪ :‬שמות פרק יד (כח) ַוּיָשֻׁבוּ הַ מַ ים ַו ְיכַסוּ אֶ ת הָ ֶרכֶב וְ אֶ ת הַ פּ ָָרשׁים לְ כֹל חֵ יל פּ ְַרעֹ ה הַ בָּ אים‬
‫אַ ח ֲֵריהֶ ם בַּ ּיָם ל ֹא נ ְשׁאַ ר בָּ הֶ ם עַד אֶ חָ ד‪ .‬אז ברור‪ .‬כל המצרים מתים‪ ,‬פרעה וכל חילו טבעו בים‬
‫סוף‪ .‬נכון? אבל האם פרעה באמת מת? צריך לקרוא טוב‪ :‬אם לא היה מופיע הביטוי לא נשאר‬
‫בהם עד אחד יתכן שפרעה לא מת! אני מקווה שעד סוף דבר התורה שלי אני אשכנע אתכם‬
‫שיש אפשרות אחרת כיצד לקרוא את הביטוי "לא נשאר עד אחד"‪.‬‬

‫חוץ משמות פרק יד ושופטים הביטוי הופיע בפרשת בא בפרק י ל ֹא נ ְשׁאַ ר אַ ְרבֶּ ה אֶ חָ ד בְּ כֹ ל‬
‫גְ בוּל מצְ ָרים‪ .‬מעניין מאד שיש הרבה דוגמאות אינטרטקסטואליות בין מכת הארבה בפרק י‬
‫לבין הפרשה שלנו‪ .‬לדוגמא‪:‬‬

‫שמות פרק יד‬ ‫שמות פרק י‬

‫ַוּיֵט מֹ שֶׁ ה אֶ ת יָדוֹ עַל הַ ּיָם‬
‫וַיְ ַנ ֲהגֵהוּ בּכְ בֵ דֻת‬
‫וַּיוֹלְֶך ה' אֶ ת הַ ּיָם בְּ רוּחַ קָ דים ַעּזָה כָל‬
‫הַ לַיְ לָה ַוּיָשֶ ם אֶ ת הַ ּיָם לֶחָ ָרבָ ה וַּיבָּ קְ עוּ‬
‫הַ מָ ים‬
‫ַוּיָסַ ר אֵ ת אֹ פַן מַ ְרכְ בֹתָ יו ַו ְי ַנ ֲהגֵהוּ בּכְ בֵ דֻת‬
‫ַוּיֵט מֹ שֶׁ ה אֶ ת מַ טֵ הוּ עַל אֶ ֶרץ מצְ ַרים‬
‫וַה' נהַ ג רוּחַ קָ דים‬
‫וַה' נהַ ג רוּחַ קָ דים בָּ אָ ֶרץ כָל הַ ּיוֹם הַ הוּא וְ כָל‬
‫הַ לָיְ לָה הַ ֹבּקֶ ר הָ יָה וְ רוּחַ הַ קָ דים נָשָ א אֶ ת‬
‫הָ אַ ְרבֶּ ה‬
‫וְ יָסֵ ר מֵ ָעלַי ַרק אֶ ת הַ מָ וֶת הַ ּזֶה‪:‬‬

‫וגם קראנו היום הרבה דוגמאות לאינטרטקסטואליות בין הפרשה שלנו וההפטרה‪ .‬אבל אין‬
‫כל כך הרבה קישורים בין שלושת הפרקים חוץ מ‪ :‬לא נשאר בהם עד אחד‪ .‬בהפטרה סיסרא‬
‫חי וקיים והצליח לברוח עד שיעל הרגה אותו‪ .‬אצל הארבה‪ ,‬למרות שכתוב ש ל ֹא נ ְשׁאַ ר‬
‫אַ ְרבֶּ ה אֶ חָ ד בְּ כֹ ל גְ בוּל מצְ ָרים אנחנו יודעים מהניסיון שלנו‪ ,‬כשמביאים מדביר לבית שמבטיח‬
‫לבער את הבית מג’וקים תמיד נשאר אחד (אפילו לפעמים יותר) להזכיר לנו שיש דברים‬
‫שלא בשליטתנו‪.‬‬

‫ועכשיו נדון בפרעה! בואו נתחיל עם הפשט‪ :‬לא כתוב בשום מקום שפרעה נפטר‪ .‬כפי‬
‫שראינו כתוב ב‪ :‬שמות פרק יד (כח) ַו ָּישֻׁבוּ הַ מַ ים ַו ְיכַסוּ אֶ ת הָ ֶרכֶב וְ אֶ ת הַ פּ ָָרשׁים לְ כֹ ל חֵ יל‬
‫פּ ְַרעֹ ה הַ בָּ אים אַ ח ֲֵריהֶ ם בַּ ּיָם ל ֹא נ ְשׁאַ ר בָּ הֶ ם עַד אֶ חָ ד‪ :‬וב‪ :‬שמות פרק טו (ד) מַ ְרכְ בֹ ת פּ ְַרעֹ ה‬
‫וְ חֵ ילוֹ י ָָרה בַ ּיָם וּמבְ חַ ר שָׁ לשָׁ יו טֻבְּ עוּ בְ יַם סוּף‪ :‬ושוב ב‪( :‬יט) כי בָ א סוּס פּ ְַרעֹ ה בְּ רכְ בּוֹ וּבְ פ ָָרשָׁ יו‬

‫‪479‬‬
‫‪This is a drasha I gave at my Massad Reunion in Jerusalem, 2018. It is based on‬‬
‫‪the paper on The Witness (see above).‬‬
‫‪-313-‬‬
 ‫בַּ ּיָם ַוּיָשֶׁ ב ְיקֹ וָק ֲעלֵהֶ ם אֶ ת מֵ י הַ ּיָם‪ .‬ובסוף כתוב‪( :‬כא) וַתַּ עַן לָהֶ ם מ ְריָם שׁירוּ לַי ֹקוָק כי גָאֹ ה‬
‫גָאָ ה סוּס וְ רֹכְ בוֹ ָרמָ ה בַ ּיָם‪:‬‬

‫זאת אומרת לא כתוב שפרעה בכבודו ובעצמו טבע בים‪....‬סוס ורכבו כן‪...‬אפילו סוס פרעה‬
‫אבל לא הוא עצמו‪.‬‬

‫ואכן‪ ,‬לפי כמה מדרשים פרעה נשאר בחיים להיות עד לנס של יציאת מצרים‪ .‬אבל להבין את‬
‫הביטוי לא נשאר בהם עד אחד‪ ,‬צריכים לפרש את זה ולתת משמעות אחרת שאפילו סותרת‬
‫את הפשט‪ .‬אז רואים את זה ב מכילתא דרבי ישמעאל בשלח ‪ -‬מסכתא דויהי פרשה ו ‪:‬‬
‫וישובו המים ויכסו את הרכב ואת הפרשים” ‪ . ...‬ר' נחמיה אומר חוץ מפרעה‪ ,‬עליו הכתוב‬
‫אומר [ואז ר נחמיה מוסיף] ואולם בעבור זאת העמדתיך (שמות ט טז)‪[ .‬אבל המכילתא ערה‬
‫לאפשרות אחרת כי כתוב עוד דעה‪ :‬ויש אומרים באחרונה ירד פרעה וטבע‪ ,‬שנ' כי בא סוס‬
‫פרעה ברכבו ובפרשיו בים וישב ה' עליהם את מי הים‪.‬‬

‫עוד דוגמא לפרשנות חתרנית כזאת באה מבעל הטורים שמות פרק יד שמצטט את פרקי דרבי‬
‫אליעזר מג "לא נשאר בהם עד אחד (פסוק כח) שלא נשאר בהם אלא אחד והוא פרעה והלך‬
‫לנינווה ומלך שם‪ ".‬זאת אומרת שמשמעות המילה "עד" זה "רק אחד נשאר"‪ .‬או כולם‪ ,‬חוץ‬
‫מאחד‪ .‬בכדי לקשר את פרעה עם מלך נינווה בעל הטורים מקשר את הפסוק וַּי ְיראוּ הָ עָם אֶ ת‬
‫ה' ַו ַּי ֲאמינוּ בַּ ה' וּבְ מֹ שֶׁ ה עַבְ דו‪ :‬שמופיע בשמות יד‪ :‬לא אם ספר יונה שכתוב בפרק ג‪:‬ה ַו ַּיאֲמינוּ‬
‫אַ נְ שֵׁ י נינווה באלוהים‪.‬‬

‫וכך ממשיכים במדרש פנטסטי של המאה ה‪ 11‬על "מי כמוך במדרש ויושע ואקריא את הכל‪:‬‬

‫מי כמוך ‪,‬אמרו חז״ל בשעה שאמרו ישראל זאת השירה לפני הקב״ה‪ ,‬שמע אותה פרעה‬
‫כשהיה מטורף בים‪ .‬ונשא אצבעו לשמים ואמר "מאמין אני בך שאתה הצדיק ואני ועמי‬
‫הרשעים‪ ,‬ואין אלוה בעולם אלא אתה"‪.‬‬

‫באותה שעה ירד גבריאל והטיל על צווארו שלשלת של ברזל ואמר לו‪" :‬רשע! אתמול אמרת‪,‬‬
‫מי ה׳ אשר אשמע בקולו‪ ,‬ועכשיו אתה אומר ה׳ הצדיק"‪ .‬מיד הורידו למצולות ים ועכבו שם‬
‫חמשים יום וציער אותו כדי שיכיר נפלאותיו [גבורותיו] של הקב״ה‪.‬‬

‫ולאחר כן [העלו מן הים ו]המליכו על נינווה [העיר הגדולה]‪ ,‬וכשבא יונה לנינווה ואמר‪:‬‬
‫"עוד ארבעים יום [שנה] ונינווה נהפכת"‪ ,‬מיד אחזו אימה ורעדה וקם מכיסאו ויכס שק וישב‬
‫על האפר‪ .‬והוא בעצמו זעק [צועק] ואמר‪" :‬האדם והבהמה הבקר והצאן אל יטעמו מאומה אל‬
‫ירעו ומים אל ישתו‪ ,‬כי יודע אני שאין אלוה אחר בכל העולם כמוהו‪ ,‬וכל דבריו אמת וכל‬
‫משפטיו באמת ובאמונה"‪.‬‬

‫ועדיין [הוא] פרעה חי ועומד בפתחו של [על פתח] גיהינום‪ ,‬וכשנכנסין מלכי אומות העולם‪,‬‬
‫מיד הוא מודיע להם גבורותיו של הקב״ה‪ ,‬ואומר להם "שוטים שבעולם! מפני מה לא למדתם‬
‫ממני דעת‪ ,‬שהרי אני כפרתי בהקב״ה‪ .‬לכן שלח בי עשר מכות‪ ,‬ואף טבעני בים ועכבני שם‬
‫חמשים יום‪ .‬ו[ל]אחר כן העלני מן הים‪ ,‬ולבסוף האמנתי בו בעל כרחי‪".‬‬
‫‪-314-‬‬
 ‫[ולפיכך] לכך שררו ישראל [שירה זאת] זאת השירה ואמרו כולם יחד‪ :‬מי כמוכה באלים ה׳‬
‫מי כמוכה נאדר בקדש נורא תהלות עושה פלא‪.‬‬

‫אני רוצה לחזור לנקודת המוצא שלי‪ .‬מאיפה בא הרעיון לשנות את הפשט בצורה כל כך‬
‫מהפכנית‪ .‬ברור שמשחקים עם כל מיני פסוקים‪...‬מי כמוכה‪ ...‬ומשמות פרק ט‪ :‬טז וְ אוּלָם‬
‫בַּ עֲבוּר ז ֹאת הֶ עֱמַ ְדתּיך בַּ עֲבוּר הַ ְראֹ ְתך אֶ ת כֹחי וּלְ מַ עַן סַ פֵּר ְשׁמי בְּ כָל הָ אָ ֶרץ‪:‬‬
‫מה המסר של תחיית פרעה מהמתים על שפת הים? המסר הראשון הוא שחרטה חשובה‪ ,‬ושמי‬
‫שמודה על חטאתו וחוזר לאדני ומספר על גבורותיו‪ ,‬מגיע לחיים ארוכים‪.‬‬

‫אבל אני חושבת שיש עוד שני דברים שמסתתרים מאחרי הקלעים כאן‪ .‬הלא כתוב כבר‬
‫אחרי מכת הארבה חָ טָ אתי לַה' ֱאֹלהֵ יכֶם וְ ָלכֶם‪( :‬יז) וְ עַתָּ ה שָ א נָא חַטָ אתי אַ ְך הַ ַפּעַם וְ הַ עְ תּירוּ‬
‫לַה' אֱֹלהֵ יכֶם ‪ ....‬אבל אלוהים לא היה מוכן לקבל את החרטה האמיתית‪ .‬לא רק שהוא לא‬
‫מקבל את חרטת פרעה‪ ,‬כתוב ש ‪ :‬וַיְ חַ ּזֵק ה' אֶ ת לֵב פּ ְַרעֹ ה וְ ל ֹא שׁלַח אֶ ת בְּ נֵי י ְש ָראֵ ל‪ .‬אני‬
‫מתארת לעצמי שהיו אצל חז"ל כאלו ששאלו למה אלוהים לא היה מוכן לקבל את העתירה‬
‫של פרעה ואפילו הוסיף עוד שתי מכות של חושך ובכורות‪ .‬בדרך כלל לא מתייחסים לזה‬
‫אצל חז"ל‪ ,‬אז זו רק השערה שלי‪.‬‬

‫אבל לי יותר חשוב‪ ,‬כפי שאמרתי בהתחלה‪ ,‬לגבי המשחק עם הפשט‪ ,‬שאף אחד לא שרד‪ ,‬לא‬
‫נשאר עד אחד‪ ,‬שכבר ראינו חז"ל הבינו הפוך שכן נשאר אחד‪ ,‬ז‪.‬א‪ .‬פרעה! אני מציעה‬
‫שניתן לקרוא את הכתב "לא" עם ה קריא "לו" עם "ו" במקום "א" ולתקן את ה עַד (עם‬
‫פתח) עם עֵד (עם צירה)‪ .‬ואז קוראים ֹלו (לאלוהים) נ ְשׁאַ ר בָּ הֶ ם עֵד אֶ חָ ד‪ :‬אלוהים השאיר עד‬
‫אחד לגבורותיו ואחר כך לרחמנותו‪ .‬והקריאה הזו לא יותר חתרנית מהמדרשים שהבאתי לכם‬
‫הבוקר‪.‬‬

‫שבת שלום‬

‫‪-315-‬‬
-316-
 480
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: THE RED TENT, A NOVEL

In case you haven’t noticed, The Red Tent, a novel by Anita Diamant is on the best
seller list. The book was originally published in hardcover and then went to print
more than fourteen times after being issued in paperback form. If you search the
Internet, you will find that there is a study guide for use in small groups. It is widely
popular with both Christian and Jewish women who apparently find that it meets
their religious needs. Why is a book based on an obscure biblical female character
selling like hotcakes? It is probably a combination of a publisher’s promotion
campaign, women’s longing for romance (made respectable in the form of a bible
story) and a craving for more fleshed out women characters in our religious tradition.
Anita Diamant has written a very subversive book. She has taken biblical
women’s stories from behind the scenes and brought them forward to center stage.
In the process she is implying that goddess worship is better for women than the cold
rules of the Jewish god. We meet the narrator of this book, Dinah, from the day she
is born until the day she dies. Dinah addresses her story to western modern women:
“women with hands and feet as soft as a queen’s with more cooking pots than you
need, so safe in childbed and so free with your tongues.” The purpose of her telling
her story is threefold: first the reader “craves words to fill the great silence that
swallowed me, and my mothers, and my grandmothers before them.” Second,
“remembering seems a holy thing.” (p. 3) The book concludes by adding another
purpose, that, if we keep the stories of our ancestresses alive, they remain immortal.
People who are loved never die—they remain in our hearts. (p. 321)
Diamant chose the title of the book very carefully. It is more than Dinah’s
story; it is the story of our foremothers—of the red tent. The tent is a woman’s retreat
when she is bleeding, either from menstruation or after childbirth; it is a place in
which she celebrates her womanhood. It is a place where she is free to worship her
goddesses. It is not a place to which a woman is banished, or to which she flees. It is
a place of refuge where men are not welcome. “Men knew nothing of the red tent or
its ceremonies and sacrifices.” (p. 174). When Jacob, Dinah’s father finds out about
the goings on, he smashes all the women’s household gods and buries them. These
goddesses could not co-exist with his ancestral God, the god of Abraham and Isaac.
The core event of the book is of course the relationship of Dinah with her
lover who is killed by her evil brothers. In the novel, Dinah lives, has a son and
escapes with him to Egypt where she raises him as a noble person. Parallels to Moses
and later to Joseph abound. Dinah can be seen as a Joseph figure thrown out by
his/her brothers. Diamant’s work is in counterpoint to classical midrash aggadah. It
is clear that she is aware of the tradition which has Dinah having a baby girl (Asenat)
who ends up being given away and then marrying Joseph.

480
This review was accepted for publication by Conservative Judaism, but they
asked me to write an essay, and so this was never published; it was written for
rabbis.
-317-
 The Dinah of the novel gets to raise her son, have a career as a midwife and
eventually re-marry. It is the story of the triumph of a good woman of the world who
faces harrowing odds over the evil machinations of her brothers. Dinah is forced into
exile and anonymity because of the shame. She hides her identity, because of the
abhorrence felt by the nations toward the deeds of Simon and Levi after they pillage
the town of Shechem. Prior to this pivotal event, Jacob’s four wives, Dinah’s four
mothers (our foremothers) have a cordial relationship of reciprocity with the
townspeople. The political implications are clear. Had Dinah been allowed to marry
Shalem, the king’s son, we would not be at war with our neighbors. Her use of this
name, rather than Shechem, son of Hamor, tells all. Jacob’s sons kill peace. It is a
brilliant touch.
I plead guilty to reading this book twice. The first time, I must admit, I
couldn’t put it down. I thought it fabulous midrash and still do. As someone who has
studied and written imaginatively about the Dinah story and its repercussions, I am
fascinated by Diamant’s interweaving of the Bible and traditional midrash. But when
asked to review the book as a novel, I took a closer look and see that it is flawed.
The characters lack depth—the villains are too villainous—the women too virtuous.
There are stock characters here. Thus Laban is a southern sheriff type who drinks,
swears, beats his pitiful wife, and gambles with his cronies. He has no redeeming
virtues and he deserves to be duped by the virtuous Jacob, Rachel and Leah.
The plot is loosely based on the bible. The core event takes place in the last
third of the book. The reading is slow up to this point. We are introduced to many
women along the way, characters such as Dinah’s friends and her impressive, but
cruel grandmother Rebecca who is cast in the role of high priestess. The narrator
(Dinah) stays an innocent girl until her rape. After the event, the major tone is that
of bitterness and resentment. This does not change despite the fact that at the end of
the book there is some resolution in the form of a reunion with her brothers and
father. It is a romance type novel replete with villains and a happy end, including a
description of her own peaceful, painless death.
Despite these flaws, I highly recommend the book—for many
reasons. First, it is a great read. Second, you should know what your female
congregants (and their religious non-Jewish friends) are reading—it is after
all a best seller. Third, it may make you rethink some of your assumptions of
what it means to be a chosen people. Finally, it will send you back to the
bible and midrash to read and re-read.

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CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: SARAH LAUGHED: MODERN
LESSONS FROM THE WISDOM AND STORIES OF BIBLICAL
481
WOMEN
The midrashic impulse is the gift of modern Jewish women to biblical women,
bringing them life and voice. It is thanks largely to feminism that midrash flourishes
482
today. There are many reasons why this has happened. Since the mid-1970s,
feminists have been reclaiming the canon, engaging in the rereading of texts that
483
often omitted women’s presence even as they inscribed our “essence.” The canon
– literary, philosophical, or religious – delineated women’s proper role while
defining us as irrational, passionate human beings. Religious feminists began to
liberate the Jewish canon when they realized that the Bible is used to keep woman in
her place by legitimating patriarchal power. Judith Plaskow writes of the power of
midrash to remember, to invent, and to receive the “hidden half of Torah, reshaping
484
Jewish memory to let women speak.” Since most mainstream midrashim present
biblical women as being of marginal importance or place them in a negative light,
there is a need for contemporary feminist midrash to change that image, to create
role models for the next generation of women.
In Sarah Laughed: Modern Lessons from the Wisdom and Stories of Biblical
Women, Vanessa Ochs gives the matriarchs a new life, using her own
reinterpretations of the biblical text. Ochs, the author of Words on Fire (1991), is
Director of Jewish Studies at the University of Virginia, where she teaches courses
about Judaic traditions, Jewish spiritual journeys, Judaism, medicine, and healing,
and women in Judaism. This reader was unprepared for the very personal revelations
in the introduction, in which Ochs relates how her new book came into being. This
book is partly about positionality – about Ochs, where she is coming from, and where
she wants the reader to go, based on her life experiences. She is quite transparent
about how she “got religion”; and she has read her life back into her biblical
characters and now advises us how to use the lessons thereby gained to get on with
our own lives. Ochs’s particular journey has to do with a mysterious health problem
that caused her debilitating and unrelenting pain over a two-year period. She

481
Review of Vanessa L. Ochs, Sarah Laughed: Modern Lessons from the Wisdom
and Stories of Biblical Women in Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women's Studies &
Gender Issues (Number 11, Spring 5767/2006): 280-284.
482
Lori Lefkovitz, “When Lilith Becomes a Heroine,” Melton Journal (Spring,
1990): 7.
483
Judith Fetterly, The Resisting Reader: A Feminist Approach to American Fiction
(Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1978). Fetterly’s approach did not
really address the omission of women from canonical text, only the need to reread
these texts as a resisting reader.
484
Judith Plaskow, “Standing Again at Sinai,” Tikkun, I/2 (1986): 32.
-319-
concealed her illness and found the disguise almost as unbearable as the pain. At this
crossroads in her life, she encountered the biblical Tamar, who had once stood at a
crossroads, disguised as a prostitute, in order to entice her father-in-law, Judah, to
sire a child with her in the stead of his dead sons Er and Onan. Ochs experienced an
epiphanic moment, during which she “heard the voice of Tamar and what I
understood her to be telling me.” Tamar led her to understand that disguises may
work, but they come at a price. Just as Tamar had to give up her disguise in order to
save her life, so Ochs learned how to shed her identity as a woman who ostensibly
was perfectly fine and functioning. Thus empowered by Tamar, Ochs was able to
write the stories in this book.
The back cover tells us that
“by learning about the gifts of these ancient women, you’ll discover
exhilarating ways to embrace your own personal gifts and gain fresh insight
into: finding your inner wisdom, speaking your true self, being a good friend,
maintaining romantic partnerships, raising a family, letting go of children,
feeling blessed with a life well lived, and much more!”
This statement positions the book’s genre as New Age and its intended audience as
those who are interested in self-help, a booming industry that offers us development
of our potential and encouragement to look inward. Females in their fifties are big
consumers of self-help guides, which purport to help create a new us. Very often
such readers are well educated, with fulfilling jobs, but they feel that something is
amiss. Whereas life in the past seemed to be pretty straightforward, today’s world in
full of uncertainty.
Given the presumed audience, the retellings in Sarah Laughed are not meant to
be sophisticated and do not require great effort of the reader. Ochs explains that she
does not call her stories midrash because “the early authors of midrash claimed that
their work was divinely inspired and represented the true explanation of what the
Bible meant.” She makes no such claims for herself, but she does describe her stories
as “midrash-like”. She then goes on to explain what midrash is: “an established
rabbinic manner of interpreting the Bible by creating stories that fill in the gaps in
the text and answer some of the questions that a cryptic, enigmatic, or troubling text
poses.”
Sarah Laughed comprises six thematic sections, each addressing an aspect of
what it means to be a modern woman: Being Wise, Living in a Woman’s Body,
Being a Friend, Being a Parent, Healing, and Being in the Divine Presence. Each
chapter within the sections begins with a brief passage, adapted by Ochs from the
Bible, in which a woman appears. The translations are mostly her own. Then comes
her retelling of the woman’s story, followed by an explanation of how it can
illuminate the lives of women today. The chapters conclude with rituals meant to
help readers remember the lessons of the book and apply them to their lives.
Skimming through the contents, one immediately notices that the chronology of the
Bible is irrelevant to the order of the chapters: Eve, Hagar, Miriam, Tzlofhad’s
Daughters, Eshet Hayil, Esther, Dina, Jephthah’s Daughter, Naomi and Ruth, Sarah,
Rebecca, Yocheved, Job’s Wife, Vashti, Leah, Hannah. It is the themes and the
modern lessons to be learned from these stories that are important, less so the original
-320-
stories; the translations only excerpt the parts to which the author will later refer,
leaving out the complexity and ambiguity of the original. Ochs’s women of the Bible
are exemplars, raw material for modern morality tales.
The opening chapter is “Eve’s Own Story” and it augurs well for the book. In
true midrashic style, Ochs links Genesis 2–3 with verses from Proverbs. Wisdom has
sent her women friends to announce: “Come eat my food and drink my wine. …
Live, walk in ways of understanding. … Knowledge of the Holy One is
understanding. … If you are wise, you are wise for yourself.” Ochs tells us about
Eve’s wisdom, how she and Adam created a home for themselves, trusting their
instincts, improvising, making mistakes along the way. Eve created a table around
which all felt welcome, safe, and nourished; she learned powers of listening and
holding her tongue, and she discovered God as an ongoing presence in her life. But
Adam and the boys got it all wrong, telling the fruit story again and again. This
usurpation of the “real” story did not really bother Eve, since it is knowledge that
made her alive and gave her power. She is depicted as a self-taught woman who turns
to God for wisdom in order to do what Mary Catherine Bateson calls “composing a
life,” a process that permits women to be flexible, to notice snakes along the path
and learn how to negotiate their presence. In the process, Eve teaches us that life
makes us wise and that wisdom is really learning to regard all ways of learning with
respect. Ochs ends the chapter with a ritual that fittingly includes baking an apple
cake. This is how we embrace the gift of Eve.
The quality of some of the other stories is uneven, and the lines between the
retellings and the messages can be blurry. The retelling of Miriam’s story, for
example, reads like a gathering of Debby Friedman groupies singing and dancing to
Miriam’s song. Miriam’s entire essence, the source of her inspiration to others and
her cathartic abilities, is based on her lifelong ability to use her timbrel. Ochs chooses
to have Miriam speak to us through a cancer patient whose name, conveniently, is
Mara. The gift of Miriam is the understanding that everything will work out for the
best:
“the sources of your inspiration, your Miriams are never too far from you. ...
I have one Miriam for spiritual dilemmas and another for ethical ones. … I
have a fashion Miriam who tells me …that … I will find a dress for my
cousin’s wedding.”
Ochs also urges us to note who our “non-Miriams” are: “They are the ones who ask
you if it really is such a good idea to move … to have another child. … They’re the
ones who ask you, ‘Do you have any idea what you’re doing?’”
Ochs’s story of Dina is that of a pre-adolescent woman who had a strong
imagination, but, unlike her brothers who went out and became worldly men, she
“stayed in and simply didn’t become.” Her story is compared with those of Tamar,
Esther, and Ruth, which ended happily. But Dina’s story, despite its tragic ending,
leaves us a legacy of gumption, which is why her name is nevertheless so often given
to daughters. “Dina encourages us to step out and form relationships with unfamiliar
people. … It is too risky, Dina teaches, for us to remain safe in our own tents. The
global implications are obvious.” The gift of Dina is to make peace, which invokes
the angels of peace; hence, the ritual associated with her is making “angel cards.”
-321-
 One of Ochs’s more successful commentaries, which resonated with me
personally, is about Sarah. She summarizes a story entitled “Sarah” by Allegra
Goodman, about a 56-year-old mother who teaches a class on creative midrash.
Unlike the biblical Sarah, who pined for children, Goodman’s Sarah pines for literary
success; she wants to be discovered. But when success finally comes, she realizes
that other accomplishments have come to define happiness for her. Ochs writes:
“Maybe you know what it feels like to have a dream that has been deferred for so
long that you can hardly remember how intense your desire once was or how painful
the disappointment was each time you got close to achieving what you hoped for.”
Many of us have had the experience of reaching the pinnacle and then thinking that
we should be happy at last. Yet by making our other experiences ordinary, we lose
our pleasure. Ochs wonders with us: “Would no accomplishment ever convince me
I was good enough?” (The cynic in me answers her: That’s because of our collective
mothers!) Thus, the lesson that we learn from Sarah is to stop measuring our
happiness; it is all precious.
Some of our heroines are nameless: the woman of valor, the woman who has
given birth, the women who bake cakes for the Queen of Heaven. The latter were
admonished by the prophet Jeremiah, yet they protested that they would continue to
make their offerings. Here Ochs straddles a difficult line in writing that there are
different paths to God. She writes: “Learning about our women ancestors who
worshipped a goddess doesn’t mean we plan to replicate what they did. Studying
their ways, however, does help us make our rituals more women-centered.” She adds
that it is important to honor their memory and other women’s sacred practices that
have been suppressed. These women challenge us to make sure that our own rituals
actually reflect who we are. If we don’t have such rituals, we must create them. The
book ends with a list of effective rituals and a description of Ochs’s approach to
traditional worship, which is not the standard liturgy. The Bible never discusses how
to balance work and family. Ochs uses the biblical text in order to impart invaluable
advice on how to balance our complicated lives, empower ourselves spiritually, and
fully develop our human potential.

-322-
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: CELEBRATING THE LIVES OF
485
JEWISH WOMEN: PATTERNS IN A FEMINIST SAMPLER

In their edited collection of life-stories, Celebrating the Lives of Jewish

Women: Patterns in a Feminist Sampler, Rachel Josefowitz Siegel and Ellen
Cole have put together a very uneven Jewish women's sampler. The editors
in their preface write that "a sampler is a carefully and lovingly crafted
collection of varied stitches and patterns that represent a culture's and
family's heritage as well as the innovations of the individual woman who
created it." [xxvii] Their claim is that "the stitches and patterns form an
expression of personal and communal identity." Their basic principle in
putting together this collection was one of "inclusivity" to convey the
multiple patterns in Jewish women's life and the many issues that Jewish
women are faced with n the modern world.
The book is divided into five sections with each section representing
a major pattern. The topics in each section include the meanings of family,
the fracturing of Jewish lives by geography, the journey home to a Jewish
identity, the relationship of Jewish women with learning and ritual. The last
section is entitled "Pain and Healing, Sorrow and Hope." There are 28
chapters, each one of which includes a story. Thus there are 28 Jewish
women's voices in this feminist sampler. I particularly like the fact that the
first thing one is greeted by is the pictures of all the authors immediately after
the table of contents. It is a reminder that the voices in this sampler are
unique, yet form a pattern in this feminist/Jewish collection.
The Sampler claims to be inclusive and representative of modern Jewish
women—it includes the stories of Jewish women who are adolescent/elderly,
atheist/orthodox, newly converted/religious, immigrants/old time North
Americans, heterosexual/queer, Sephardi/Ashkenazi, Canadian/American,
secular/observant, Jewishly learned or ignorant. It bends over backwards to
include at least five lesbian women, although I question the choice of
focusing "davka" on a Reconstructionist lesbian rabbinical student when
there are so many other women rabbis (single, married, divorced
with/without children) out there struggling with their Jewishness and
modernity, who might have written a piece more representative of the
ambivalent experience of being a woman rabbi in the latter part of the
twentieth century.
485
Review of Rachel J. Siegel and Ellen Cole, eds., Celebrating the Lives of
Jewish Women: Patterns in a Feminist Sampler in Bridges: A Journal for
Jewish Feminists and Our Friends 7:2 (Summer, 1998): 116-118.

-323-
 Despite the Sampler's claims to inclusivity there are no experiences
of Jewish women who are black, adopted, or of bi-racial origin. There are no
stories of the physically and mentally handicapped Jewish women among us,
or those on welfare or who are impoverished. Most of them are middle class,
educated, professional. A preponderant number of them seem to be in the
helping professions, particularly academics and psychologists. Moreover, an
unusual number of contributors to the Sampler seem to come from Ithaca,
Vermont, Canada or were participants in The First International Conference
on Judaism, Feminism, and Psychology held in Seattle, Washington, in 1992.
Based on a reading of all the articles chosen for inclusion in the
Sampler, it would seem that the editors are more aware of the impact of the
Holocaust on the consciousness of North American Jewish women than the
impact of the State of Israel. This is certainly borne out by the fact that the
authors choose to end this book with a very enigmatic moving piece by Judith
Chalmer, "Violent Legacies, Dialogues and Possibilities"—which in no way
offers hope or resolution. They do not include even one story of the many
uplifting experiences of North American women who have made Aliyah and
stayed there. The only two mentions of Israel are with a woman who is
married to a yored (Israeli, who emigrated) and the experience of one woman
who is a yoredet, after living in Israel for 12 years. Might the choice of this
focus on the holocaust represent the feeling that for North American Jewry
holocaust identification has become its definition of Judaism? As a feminist
North American Jewish woman who has lived in Israel since 1967, I am
acutely sensitive that this identification is focused around the death and
destruction of the past rather than on the potential of the life force and
renewal for the future.
Many of the pieces in the book are self-conscious and self-
promoting. Most are in need of good, tight editing. Intermixed in this volume
are some very good pieces, almost classic. Were any guidelines given to the
author? How were contributors chosen? Most of them seem to know the
authors personally. Despite the unevenness of the book, the reader can learn
a lot from the many types of women represented. There is the teenage
daughter, the PK (preacher's kid), the Russian Jewry activist, artists,
psychologists, even a homemaker or two. It is a veritable potpourri of Jewish
women experience. This reader came out confused, but somewhat
empowered. It took a lot of courage on the part of the editors, not to dictate
a line or formula to follow and to allow each woman her "own voice". One
could thus argue that the weakness of the book (its unevenness and lack of
uniformity) is also its strength.
Among the pieces which make this book worth the while of the
reader are those by Norma Joseph, Evelyn Torton Beck, Sandra Butler, Susan
-324-
Weidman Schneider, Michelle Clark and Nina Perlmutter. These six articles
meet my criteria of "worth the read and the price of the book". From all these
six women, I either learned something new, or had validated what I "knew"
to be true. From each if I experienced a frisson or got a new take on the
familiar. The readings were uplifting—they made me think and make
connections. From each one, I learnt about what it meant to be Jewish and
feminist and the difficulties in being both. These pieces were honest and
personal, though not necessarily confessional. Unlike some of the pieces in
the book, they did not "whine" or kvetch. All six are knowledgeable Jewish
feminists who are secure enough to afford to be open and willing to share and
impart their life experience with us.
Does this book meet the intentions of the editors? As I have
indicated, yes and no. It is after all a sampler. This sample encourages us to
read on. To experience. None of the samples are so weighty that we have
trouble reading them. The stories are all interesting, even though they could
have been told better. Should we be adding this book to our libraries? If we
can look past the editing, and look for the jewels and flowers in the sampler,
I think that the answer is Yes.

-325-
-326-
Section Two: VIOLENCE AMONG JEWS

The articles in this section are a mix of the scholarly and popular. But they
all address the same theme. They all make the point that there is violence and
abuse in the Jewish community and these behaviors must be acknowledged
in order to deal with them. They are all related to the theme of violence, abuse
and trafficking in the Jewish community. Because of my book Silence is
Deadly: Judaism Confronts Wifebeating (1988) I was asked by Moshe Shalvi
to write the entry “Wifebeating” for his Jewish Women’s encyclopedia and
it turned out to be a piece that was more than just a summary of my book. I
decided to include this here rather than with the other encyclopedia entries
which appear in section five. The article on Jewish Law appeared in a law
book and updates my book.
I began to write on Trafficking in the Jewish community at the urging of
Professor Julie Cwikel with whom I collaborated on my first article. I was
recently commissioned to write an article for My Jewish Learning about
“Judaism and Prostitution” which is available online at http://
www.myjewishlearning.com/article/judaism-on-prostitution/. I was asked by
an on-line journal to use my perspective as a Jewish leader who had written
about wifebeating in order to give some “Tips on Helping a Loved One”.
This was the first time I wrote a “how to” type of article. It was totally non-
academic in nature.
The Baruch Lanner case in New Jersey spurred me to write a letter to the
editor which was not published. It addressed “Abuse in the Orthodox Jewish
Community” and the dangers when we allow our leaders to get away with
criminal behavior. While preparing this book, I found in my files, a letter that
I wrote to David Bar Illan, which may have been published; but I had no
record of it. It was very critical of an approach to Israel, which is still rampant
today, and thus I decided to include it. This section concludes with the very
first book review I wrote, which stirred up a lot of comments, partially
because I implied that the author denied the seriousness of wifebeating in the
Jewish community.

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-328-
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: WIFEBEATING486

Wifebeating is found in all cultures, because women’s status is usually lower

than men’s and wives are expected to perform specific tasks to serve their
husbands. In some societies men have the right to beat wives who do not do
their tasks or who are disrespectful to them. Physical abuse is found more
often in those cultures where men have control over divorce and where the
husband’s family controls a widow’s remarriage. Analysis of sex-role and
gender theories describes the patriarchal nature of society and its concomitant
culture of violence. Societies’ approval of violence legitimatizes what is
popularly called “domestic violence” and these attitudes are transmitted from
generation to generation, thus creating a tradition in which violence leads to
more violence. In the early 1970’s, Richard J. Gelles and Murray R. Straus
coined the term “the marriage license as a hitting license” to describe the
acceptance of wifebeating by society.
In biblical times, it is clear that acts of sexual assault and abuse against
women are of concern only because they are a violation of male property
rights. The Bible delineated the marriage relationship by calling the husband
ba’al which implies both ownership as well as lordship (Ex. 21:28). The
woman is property, whose ownership is transferred to the husband upon
marriage. In the case of a divorce, the husband renounces his right to his
(sexual) use of the property. If the husband’s property is damaged,
compensation is paid to him. He is not only the owner of his wife, he is also
the owner of her pregnancy (Ex. 21:22). All of this may have contributed to
an attitude that there was nothing wrong with physically abusing women.
Although the word îëä (strike, blow, hit, beat) appears in the Bible, it is not
associated with wifebeating until the Talmud.
In Mishnaic and Talmudic times, there is no reference to battered women
as a class. The Talmud does not overtly discuss wifebeating as a separate
category of corporeal damage. There is one major allusion to wifebeating in
the Talmud which is couched in a discussion about the unlearned lower class,
the am ha-arez (lit. “people of the land”). “It was taught, R. Meir used to say:
Whoever marries his daughter to an am ha-arez is as though he bound and
laid her before a lion: just as a lion tears [his prey] and devours it and has no
shame, so an am ha-arez strikes [hits/beats] and cohabits and has no shame”
(B. Pesahim 49b).

486
“Wifebeating,” in Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia
(Jerusalem: Shalvi Publishing Ltd, 2004). It also appears on-line
https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/wifebeating-in-jewish-tradition
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 Much of the discussion around beating of wives as “punishment” occurs
in the context of the grounds for a divorce. Immodest behavior deemed
worthy of punishment includes “going out with uncovered head, spinning
wool with uncovered arms in the street, conversing with every man.” The list
of women deemed worthy of being divorced without receiving their
ketubbah, (“divorce compensation”), include the following case as well:
“Abba Saul said: Also that of a wife who curses her husband’s parents in his
presence [and in his children’s presence]. R. Tarfon said: also one who
screams. And who is regarded a screamer? A woman whose voice can be
heard by her neighbors when she speaks inside her house” (B. Ketubbot 72a).
Although beating is not allowed or even suggested in the case of the
screamer, the woman who curses is in later texts repeatedly used as an
example where beating is seen as a justified means to an end.
The most useful source to study wifebeating is responsa literature. There
are a variety of attitudes found in the responsa literature towards wifebeating.
While there are sources in this literature that declare wifebeating unlawful,
there are others that justify it under certain circumstances. Gratuitous
wifebeating, striking a wife without a reason, is unlawful and forbidden by
all. Rabbinic sources are in general agreement about the beating of “good
wives” who do not deserve beating. However, the attitude of rabbinic sources
toward “bad wives” (who do not behave the way good women should) is
ambivalent, and wifebeating is occasionally sanctioned if it is for the purpose
of chastisement or education.
A bad wife is one who does not perform the duties required of her by
Jewish law, who behaves immodestly, or who curses her parents, husband,
or in-laws. Rabbis regularly advise men to restrict their wives to the home
and be responsible for educating them. Thus the husband, who “owns” his
wife, is given a great amount of latitude in educating her. In this view it is
permissible and acceptable to beat one’s wife in order to keep her in line. The
rabbis who justify beating see it as part of the overall “duties” of a husband
to chastise his wife for educational purposes.
David Grossman and Solomon B. Goitein pointed to the influence of the
Moslem surroundings on the Geonim and later on during the Golden Period
of Spanish Jewry in Moslem Spain. Talmudic academies flourished in Iraq
(Babylon), where Islamic jurisprudence developed in the eighth to ninth
centuries. By the time of Mohammed (570–633), the redaction of the Talmud
was near completion. Both systems viewed women as enablers and in both
societies women were supposed to stay at home.
In the Koran, a husband is encouraged to beat his wife if he thinks she is
not acting modestly or is not obeying him: “Men shall have the pre-eminence
over women … but those whose perverseness ye shall be apprehensive of,
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rebuke; and remove them into separate apartments, and chastise them. But if
they shall be obedient unto you, seek not an occasion of quarrel against them:
for God is high and great” (Chapter 4, Sipara V, verse 33). “And if ye fear a
breach between the husband and wife, send a judge out of his family, and a
judge out of her family: if they shall desire a reconciliation, God will cause
them to agree; for God is knowing and wise” (verse 34).
Abd al-Qadir (1077/8–1166, Iran), in his commentary on the passage,
“Those whose perverseness,” from the Koran quoted above, makes it clear
that: Recreant wives are to be punished in three degrees: (1) They are to be
rebuked, (2) if they remain rebellious, they are to be assigned separate
apartments, and so be banished from bed; and (3) they are to be beaten, but
not so as to cause any permanent injury (commentary on Sipara V, verse 33,
p. 83). It is clear that the Moslems too made a distinction between the good
and the bad wife, the latter to be punished if necessary.
There are sources which make it clear that a husband has no right to beat
his wife as one beats a prisoner. Also when one beats a wife, one should take
care not to hit her on the face, avoid brutality and not injure her permanently.
In Islam, there are many kinds of divorce and a woman can initiate divorce
if she is willing to lose her assets. There are diverging opinions on whether a
husband can be forced to divorce his wife depending on the different streams
of Islam.
In Babylon, during the post-Talmudic Geonic period, Zemah ben Paltoi,
Gaon of Pumbedita (872–890), “calls upon a man to flog his wife if she is
guilty of assault.” Rabbi Yehudai b. Nahman (Yehudai Gaon, 757–761)
writes that: “…when her husband enters the house, she must rise and cannot
sit down until he sits, and she should never raise her voice against her
husband. Even if he hits her she has to remain silent, because that is how
chaste women behave” (Ozar ha-Ge’onim, Ketubbot 169–170). The ninth-
century Gaon of Sura, Sar Shalom b. Boaz (d. c. 859 or 864), distinguishes
between an assault on a woman by her husband and an assault on her by a
stranger. The Gaon of Sura’s opinion was that the husband’s assault on his
wife was less severe, since the husband has authority over his wife (Ozar ha-
Ge’onim, Bava Kamma, 62:198).
In Moslem Spain, R. Samuel ha-Nagid (936–1056), was one of the first
sages to advise the husband to beat his dominating wife so that she stay in
her place. His attitude toward the domineering woman is that she can be hit
in order to educate her. He writes in his book Ben Mishlei: “Hit your wife
without hesitation if she attempts to dominate you like a man and raises her
head [too high]. Don’t, my son, don’t you be your wife’s wife, while your
wife will be her husband’s husband!” Underlying his words is that the ideal
woman is one who is subservient; the bad woman is one who is disputatious.
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 In the following period, kown as that of the “Rishonim,” Maimonides
(1135–1204) recommends in his Code, the Mishneh Torah, that beating a bad
wife is an acceptable form of discipline: “A wife who refuses to perform any
kind of work that she is obligated to do, may be compelled to perform it, even
by scourging her with a rod” (Isshut 21:10). Some rabbis, such as Shem Tov
b. Abraham ibn Gaon (d. Safed, 1312), in his commentary Migdal Oz on
Maimonides, understand the referent to be the rabbinic court (beit din), since
the word “force” (kofin) is in the plural, rather than the singular. However,
most commentators concur that Maimonides means that it is the “husband”
who can force her. R. Vidal Yom Tov of Tolosa, the well-known fourteenth-
century interpreter of Maimonides’s Mishneh Torah, writes in the Maggid
Mishneh that “Nahmanides wrote that we force her with a stick and it is also
the view of Rabbenu (i.e., Maimonides) and the major rabbis.” It should be
noted that Maimonides was most liberal in grounds for divorce, allowing
sexual incompatibility, “me’is alai” (lit. “He is repulsive to me”) as grounds
(cf. also Ket. 63b).
An example of a rabbi who understood that Maimonides’s words
justified beating one’s wife for a “good” cause was R. Jonah ben Abraham
Gerondi (c. 1200–1263), who accepted the idea that a husband may beat his
wife if she transgresses: “A man must not beat his neighbor. ... The man who
beats his neighbor transgresses two negative precepts...And so it is with the
man who beats his wife. He transgresses two negative precepts, if he did not
hit her in order to reprove her for some transgression” [emphasis mine]
(Iggeret Teshuvah, Constantinople, 1548). Thus R. Jonah distinguishes
between wife assault and stranger assault. One can only assault one’s wife if
justified, but one can never assault one’s female neighbor.
Yom Tov Assis makes it clear that wifebeating was widespread among
Spanish Jews and sees it as a part of the general trend of violence in Hispano-
Jewish society. In this society, according to R. Judah, son of R. Asher
(Toledo, 1270–1349) the husband is the lord and master and the wife fears
her husband and the husband rules in his home and the wife does not
contradict him (Zikhron Yehudah 78). In the responsa of R. Solomon b.
Abraham Adret (Rashba, 1235–1310), we have examples of husbands who
occasionally and or habitually use force. There are not too many examples of
husbands being brought to court for beating a wife in a moment of anger.
However, there are many cases in Rashba’s responsa of wives who
considered the rabbis as allies against violent husbands (Adret, V 264; VII,
477; VIII, 102; IV, 113).
Frances and Joseph Gies, G. G. Coulton, Shulamith Shahar, Erika Uitz
and Heath Dillard have all pointed to the fact that in the Christian-dominated
areas, the overall context is misogynist and patriarchal. In many Christian
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European countries, legislation established women as chattel, to be protected,
chastised and controlled. Men were empowered to rule and punish their
wives. The Christian Church advocated male dominance and displayed
misogyny. There is a theological heritage of patriarchal beliefs that compare
woman’s relationship to man with that of man’s relationship to God. Thus,
many clerics recommend that a wife submit to a husband’s rule regardless of
the amount of abuse she receives. A fifteenth century Sienese church
publication, “Rules of Marriage” (Cherubino de Siena, Regole della vita
matrimoniale, Bologna, 1888) which was endorsed by the Catholic church,
instructed men to “…scold her sharply, bully and terrify her. And if this still
doesn’t work ... take up a stick and beat her soundly … not in rage, but out
of charity and concern for her soul. …” Dillard writes that wifebeating,
permitted in canon law, was not altogether unknown and possibly even
recommended. She describes how in the Leonese town of Benavente (Spain),
and other communities which adopted its customs in the late twelfth and
thirteenth centuries, a husband was granted immunity when, by chance, his
wife died after he had thrashed her. The assumption was that he was beating
her for educational and correctional purposes.
Although it is not clear to what extent Christian teaching influenced
Jewish communities, G. G. Coulton compares the decision of Rabbi Perez b.
Elijah of Corbeil (thirteenth century) with the pronouncement of the
Dominican Nicolaus de Byard (French friar, famous preacher and moral
theologian, d. 1261) of exactly this same period. “A man may chastise his
wife and beat her (verberare) for her correction; for she is of his household,
and therefore the Lord may chastise his own, as it is written in Gratian’s
Decretum (Bologna, 1140 C.E.).” He also quotes the Corpus Juris Canonici
(Decretum Gratiani Causa 33, question 5, chapters 11, 13, 15 and 19. Corpus
Juris Canonici, edited by A. Friedberg, Leipzig 1879–1881; reprint Graz
1955; vol. 1, col. 1254–1256) to show that “woman was not made in God’s
image” and therefore it is natural for her to serve her husband. The husband
is the head of the wife; the man’s head is Christ.”
Coulton implies that the Jews were not like this because they are an older
Jewish civilization unlike the comparatively recent feudal lords whose
fathers had just recently broken off from the Roman Empire. Coulton was
extensively quoted by later Jewish apologists to show that Jewish clerics do
not allow wife beaters to go unpunished. Many of these very stern, anti-
wifebeating responses date from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries among
the Jews of Ashkenaz in Germany and France. Here we have a clear attitude
that rejects the beating of wives without any qualifications.
This may explain why R. Perez b. Elijah became an advocate on the issue
of wifebeating. He felt that cases of maltreatment of wives by husbands that
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came before the Ashkenazi rabbis were not taken seriously enough. So he
proposed a takkanah (regulation enacted by halakhic scholars supplementing
the Talmudic halakha) on the subject of wifebeating. He considered “one
who beats his wife is in the same category as one who beats a stranger” and
“therefore decreed that any Jew may be compelled on application of his wife
or one of her near relatives to undertake by a herem not to beat his wife in
anger or cruelty so as to disgrace her, for that is against Jewish practice.” If
the husband refuses to obey, the Court will “assign her maintenance
according to her station and according to the custom of the place where she
dwells. They shall fix her alimony as though her husband were away on a
distant journey.” It is not clear whether this takkanah ever received serious
consideration.
Some Ashkenazi rabbis considered battering as grounds for forcing a
man to give a get. Rabbi Meir b. Baruch of Rothenburg (Maharam, c.1215–
1293) writes that “A Jew must honor his wife more than he honors himself.
If one strikes one’s wife, one should be punished more severely than for
striking another person. For one is enjoined to honor one’s wife but is not
enjoined to honor the other person. ... If he persists in striking her, he should
be excommunicated, lashed, and suffer the severest punishments, even to the
extent of amputating his arm. If his wife is willing to accept a divorce, he
must divorce her and pay her the ketubbah” (Even ha-Ezer #297). He says
that a woman who is hit by her husband is entitled to an immediate divorce
and to receive the money owed her in her marriage settlement. His advice to
cut off the hand of a habitual beater of his fellow echoes the law in Deut.
25:11–12, where the unusual punishment of cutting off a hand is applied to a
woman who tries to save her husband in a way that shames the beater.
To justify his opinion, R. Meir uses biblical and talmudic material to
legitimatize his views. At the end of this responsum he discusses the legal
precedents for this decision in the Talmud (B. Gittin 88b). Thus he concludes
that “even in the case where she was willing to accept [occasional beatings],
she cannot accept beatings without an end in sight.” He points to the fact that
a fist has the potential to kill and that if peace is impossible, the rabbis should
try to convince him to divorce her of “his own free will,” but if that proves
impossible, force him to divorce her (as is allowed by law [ka-torah]).
This responsum is found in a collection of R. Meir’s responsa and is his
copy of a responsum by R. Simhah b. Samuel of Speyer (d. 1225–1230). By
freely copying it in its entirety it is clear that R. Meir endorses R. Simhah’s
opinions. R. Simhah, using an aggadic approach, wrote that a man has to
honor his wife more than himself and that is why his wife—and not his fellow
man—should be his greater concern. R. Simhah stresses her status as wife
rather than simply as another individual. His argument is that, like Eve, “the
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mother of all living” (Gen. 3:20), she was given for living, not for suffering.
She trusts him and thus it is worse if he hits her than if he hits a stranger.
R. Simhah lists all the possible sanctions. If these are of no avail, he takes
the daring leap and not only allows a compelled divorce, but allows one that
is forced on the husband by gentile authorities. It is rare that rabbis tolerate
forcing a man to divorce his wife and it is even rarer that they suggested that
the non-Jewish community adjucate their internal affairs. He is one of the
few rabbis who authorized a compelled divorce as a sanction. Many
Ashkenazi rabbis quote his opinions with approval. However, they were
overturned by most rabbis in later generations, starting with R. Israel b.
Petahiah Isserlein (1390–1460) and R. David b. Solomon Ibn Abi Zimra
(Radbaz, 1479–1573). In his responsum, Radbaz wrote that Simhah
“exaggerated on the measures to be taken when writing that [the wifebeater]
should be forced by non-Jews (akum) to divorce his wife ... because [if she
remarries] this could result in the offspring [of the illegal marriage, according
to Radbaz] being declared illegitimate (mamzer)” (part 4, 157).
Included among the many rabbis who totally oppose the husband’s
“right” to punish his wife and consider wifebeating as grounds for divorce is
the North African Rabbi Simeon b. Zemah Duran (Rashbez, 1361–1444) who
disagrees with R. Isaac Alfasi (Rif). “Even though the Rif wrote that even if
the husband says ‘I will not provide for her,’ he does not have to divorce her
and give the ketubbah to her [I think otherwise]”. Rashbez shows that one
can interpret the husband’s unwillingness to provide for her as grounds for
forcing a divorce and shows that it is better to live in a house where there is
love than one in which there is hate. He comments, “What good is there for
a woman whose husband causes her sorrow by daily fights?” And he goes on
to show that there are precedents which allow us to force the husband to
divorce her and, if he starves her, obviously this should be the case. He writes
that the difference between forcing him to divorce her and advising him to
divorce her is not that great. If he agrees to divorce her of his own free will,
so be it. But if he does not, we force him. He argues “that the rabbinic judge
who forces a woman who rebelled to go back to her [abusive] husband is
following the law of the Ishmaelites and should be excommunicated. ...”
(Simeon ben Zemah, Sefer ha-Tashbez, Part 2, 8).
A major source of medieval responsa which reject wifebeating
unconditionally is Binyamin Ze’ev b. Mattathias of Arta, Greece (rabbi of
the Corfu congregation in the sixteenth century). He quotes the entire
responsum of R. Simhah (attributed above as being R. Meir’s) to support his
own point of view. Binyamin Ze’ev recognizes that the perpetrator agrees in
the end to divorce her “of his own free will” (ad she-yomar rozeh ani) as a
result of the force of the court. But he interprets this to mean that, by his
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saying “It is my will,” his free consent is assumed at that point. Binyamin
Ze’ev quotes several sages (Samuel of Evreux, first half of thirteenth century,
talmudist and tosafist of Normandy; Elijah ben Judah of Paris, first half of
the twelfth century, French talmudist, commentator, and halakhist; and
Meshullam ben Nathan of Melun, twelfth century, talmudist in northern
France) who were in favor of denying all the privileges of the community to
the perpetrator who refused to give his wife a divorce. This would include
denying his right to circumcise and educate his son and even the right to be
interred (in a Jewish cemetery). Binyamin Ze’ev does not view these
extraordinary means as coercion—they are to be considered as aids to help
the husband to do what is right.
He also was in favor of the herem suggested by Perez (see above) and
quotes his entire takkanah. Binyamin Ze’ev’s views are considered to be
controversial and certainly unusual for the sixteenth century. Most rabbis
base themselves on the Mishnah which says that, when a woman knows prior
to her marriage that something is wrong with her husband, she is more or less
held captive in the marriage. He writes, however: “If we cannot find another
solution for the situation, we compel him to divorce her and give her the
marriage settlement payment even if she had accepted the situation
knowingly” (Responsa #88). But even Binyamin Ze’ev is aware of the
dangers of a forced divorce and so himself hedges at the end of his very long
responsum.
In fifteenth-century Europe we find more rabbis who approve of
wifebeating for the purpose of education. This approach is illustrated in the
collected responsa of Israel Isserlein (Austria, c. 1390–1460). In answer to
the question, “Can a man who hears his wife cursing and saying bad things
about her mother and father reprove her for this several times? If this does
not work, can he then beat her in order to ensure that she does not do this any
more?” He answers: “Even though Mordecai [b. Hillel] and R. Simhah wrote
that he who beats his wife transgresses the negative precept “not to excess”
(pen yosif, Deut. 25:3), and is dealt with very harshly, I disagree with this
strict interpretation. I base my interpretation on R. Nahman [ben Jacob, d. c.
320 C.E., Babylonian amora] writing in the name of R. Isaac [one of the
earliest known Babylonian tannaim, middle of the second century] who
wrote that it was permissible to beat a Canaanite slave woman in one’s
possession in order to prevent her from transgressing. He of course should
not overdo it or else she would be freed. Anyone who is responsible for
educating someone under him, and sees that person transgressing, can beat
that person to prevent the transgression. He does not have to be brought to
court” (Isserlein, Terumat ha-Deshen, Responsum #218).

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 R. Joseph b. Ephraim Caro’s (1488–1575) views on wifebeating are not
consistent in his works. In Kesef Mishneh (Caro’s commentary on
Maimonides’s Mishneh Torah), Caro seems to agree with Maimonides that
the wife’s duties are so important that a husband may beat her if she refuses
to perform them. However, in Beit Yosef: Even ha-Ezer 74:7–12, Caro refers
to R. Jonah ben Abraham Gerondi (Sha’arei ha-Teshuvah) who writes that
anyone who beats his wife transgresses two negative commandments. Caro
suggests excommunicating the perpetrator so that he not transgress the laws
of the Torah and that chastising him is too mild a penalty. To support this
position he cites R. Simhah of Speyer and agrees with his predecessor that if
the husband is a habitual wifebeater, and bruises her (hovel), the court can
even cut off his hand. Thus, in BY 74, Caro makes clear that the wife who
flees her abusive husband is not a rebellious wife and the husband must either
honor her more than himself or divorce her and pay her the money from her
marriage contract. It appears, from the sources he cites here that Caro is
totally opposed to wifebeating—for any reason. Yet in Beit Yosef (BY 154)
Caro quotes R. Simhah’s responsum in its entirety, which favors forcing the
husband who beats his wife to give her a divorce—even through recourse to
the civil courts and writes at the end of this source: “One cannot rely on the
writings of R. Simhah and others to force the husband to divorce his wife
because none of them rely on the famous decisors (poskim).”
His views are further complicated by R. Moses ben Israel Isserles (Rema,
1525 or 1530–1572), the glossator of the Shulhan Arukh. He rules that,
although unwarranted wifebeating justifies compelling a husband to divorce
his wife “if she is the cause of it, for example, if she curses him or denigrates
his father and mother and he scolds her calmly first and it does not help, then
it is obvious that he is permitted to beat her and castigate her. And if it is not
known who is the cause, the husband is not considered a reliable source when
he says that she is the cause and portrays her as a harlot, for all women are
presumed to be law-abiding” (Darkei Moshe, Tur, Even ha-Ezer 154:15).
In two glosses to Caro’s Shulhan Arukh, (EH 80:15 and EH 154:3),
Isserles relates to whether wifebeating is ever justified as a form of
punishment. In EH 154:3, which is a discussion of whether one can force a
recalcitrant husband (who also beats his wife) to give her a divorce, Isserles
returns again to the issue of the wife as cause of the beating: “If she curses
him without reason, or puts down his father or mother and he reproves her
with words and she does not listen to him, some say that it is permissible to
beat her. Some say that it is forbidden even to beat a bad wife, but the first
opinion is the correct one.” What this means is that, although Isserles has two
choices, he chooses to follow the first opinion, that it is permissible to beat a
“bad” wife. Further on in this gloss, Isserles writes that “if she curses him
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with no reason, he divorces her without paying her the money stipulated in
the marriage contract.”
In his commentary on the Talmud, R. Solomon ben Jehiel Luria (Poland,
c. 1510–1574) refers to Maimonides and Isserlein in a discussion about
punishing a “bad” wife. Luria goes further than Isserlein did in Terumat ha-
Deshen #218, when he writes: “A man may hit his wife when she curses her
father and mother, because she transgresses the law. ... There is no need to
bring her to the court, as is so in the case of the Jewish slave. And he can beat
her for other reasons as well—whenever she transgresses the laws of the
Torah. He can beat her until she dies [until her soul departs—ad she-teze
nafshah], even for transgressing a minor negative prohibition. Of course, he
shouldn’t hasten to beat her. He should warn her first. He can only beat her
if she doesn’t heed his warning” (Yam shel Shelomo, Bava Kamma, Third
Chapter, 20b #9).
Most responses in this period are not as extreme as that. They seem to
acknowledge that wifebeating is wrong, yet they avoid releasing the woman
from the bad marriage. These evasive positions vis-à-vis relief for a beaten
wife are part of halakha and rest on the husband’s dominant position in
marriage. Even in the eighth century, R. Hananiah, a Babylonian Gaon, wrote
that, although the husband should not beat his wife, the monetary
compensation due to his wife belonged to him, so there was no real point of
giving her compensation. The husband vowed not to habitually beat her and
in doing this, fulfilled his duty (yaza yedei hovato). She, in turn, was told to
listen to him, forgive him, pacify him and make peace with him (Geonic
responsa Sha’arei Zedek Part 4, 13).
Rabbi Yom Tov ben Moshe Zahalon (Safed, 1559–1619 or 1620) writes
sympathetically about an abused woman who has taken refuge in her father’s
home. Although he wants to help this battered wife, he is caught in the
controversy between Maimonides and Nahmanides on the issue of a forced
divorce. The latter opposes Maimonides’s liberal interpretation and writes
that “one can never force a husband to divorce his wife” (#138). R. Yom
Tov’s compromise is to force him to give her the ketubbah money so she
won’t be destitute (#229), but he does not force him to divorce his wife.
In other responsa of the modern period, the following rabbis uphold the
primacy of the halakhic constraints of not forcing a husband to give a get to
his wife: Jacob ben Joseph Reischer (Austria, Germany c.1670–1733), David
Pipano (Greece and Bulgaria, 1851–1925), Moses Sofer (Pressburg, 1763–
1839), Gabriel Adler ha-Cohen of Oberdorf (c. 1800–1870, brother of Nathan
Marcus Adler, 1803–1890, chief rabbi of England), and OVADIAH YOSEF.
These rabbis base their opinions on the illegality of a coerced divorce and
their very pro-marriage agenda. In the words of Hatam Sofer, we do not force
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a man to divorce the wife he is beating because “it is better to live as a couple
(tan du) than to dwell alone (armalu)” (Responsum, part four, Even ha-Ezer
2). On the other hand, Adler’s responsum on “the law concerning the
rebellious wife” which appears in the Orthodox publication Shomer Zion ha-
Ne’eman (Volume 6, nos. 219 and continued in 220, 1856) raises the question
of the wife who refuses to allow her abusive husband to give her a get and
concludes that “the woman does not have the power to anchor him forever.”
Jews, unlike Christians, are not allowed to separate. If his wife leaves him
for at least a year she must be forced to divorce.
In the modern period the following sages follow the liberal rabbinical
precedents based on the French and German rabbis of the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries: R. Shlomo b. Abraham ha-Kohen (Yugoslavia, 1520–
1601), R. Hayyim ben Jacob Palaggi (Turkey, 1788–1869), R. Avraham
Jacob Paperna (Poland, 1840–1919), Eliezer Shem Tov Papo (Sarajevo, c.
1824), Raphael Aaron Ben Simeon (Cairo, 1848–1928), R. Isaac Herzog
(Dublin and Israel, 1888–1959), R. Eliezer Judah Waldenburg (b. 1912), and
Rabbi MOSES FEINSTEIN. The later rabbis all show an awareness of the
earlier debates and an increased interest in issues of money and property.
They do not hesitate to disagree with earlier rabbis who were influenced by
Islamic society. They do not allow for beating even in the case of the “bad
wife” who curses her husband. They also recognize the power that the
abusive husband has over his wife if he refuses to give her a divorce and
interpret the halakha leniently in order to pressure the husband to divorce his
wife.
In summary, we have noted that both Christian and Moslem sources
sanction wifebeating/chastisement for the purpose of education. In Jewish
sources there are clear differences. The early geonic (Babylon) responsa
while having a mixed attitude toward forced divorce seem to agree that
stranger assault is more severe than wife assault, because the husband has
control over her and not over the stranger. In the Spanish/Moslem sources
there seems to be more leeway for the husband to beat the wife, especially
for the purposes of education and retaining the dominant position. In marked
contrast to these sources are the French medieval sources in which the
attitude is that a husband is as accountable to his wife as he is to a stranger.
The German medieval sources go furthest by stating that one has to be more
stringent in cases of wifebeating than with stranger assault because he must
honor the wife who is under his protection and thus he is more accountable
to her than to a stranger. It is possible that this reflects the higher status of
German women in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
What becomes clear is that from the fifteenth century onwards, when
women’s status declines all over, the cultural differences break down.
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Illustrative of this decline is Isaac ben Judah Abrabanel, who lived in
Christain Spain in the fifteenth century. In his Commentary on Genesis I, he
writes that only man is created in God’s image; masculine man was the
pinnacle of God’s creation and woman was only meant to be a helpmate and
a vessel for man’s use. Thus it should not shock us if rabbis begin again to
allow wifebeating for educational purposes and/or do not view wifebeating
as grounds for divorce. There still remain some rabbis who are bold enough
to choose sides and unconditionally condemn wife beaters and force them to
divorce their wives, but they are a minority. Most are intimidated by the
halakhic problems of mamzerut which might result when a husband is forced
to divorce his wife against his will and then recants. Thus, although in
modern times there are almost no rabbinic authorities who justify wifebeating
for the purpose of education, there are many who still do not allow a forced
divorce to free the victim of wifebeating. Because of the hardships imposed
on women by this reluctance, there has been some talk of reviving a takkanah
procedure such as R. Perez (thirteenth century) suggested. However, without
a rabbinic will, there seems to be no rabbinic way to make use of this creative
halakhic tool.

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CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: JEWISH LAW: THE CASE OF
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WIFEBEATING

Introduction
Jewish law or halakha (derived from the root "h-l-kh," to follow a path) is a
legal system that has fashioned Jewish society and pervaded all aspects of
Jewish life. Halakha is a "religious" system as well; and, as such, its influence
has been much more pervasive than an ordinary legal system, for it has
prescribed not just legal norms but standards of ethical behavior. Rabbis
whose authority was recognized by the relevant Jewish community have
performed both judicial and legislative functions in keeping halakha
responsive to emerging needs. For purposes of our study of Jewish attitudes
toward wife-beating, we must understand that halakha molded the Jewish
institution of marriage and the family according to rabbinic religious
tradition. That tradition was based not only on interpretations of the Biblical
texts, but also on rabbinic attempts to understand its intentions and values
transmitted through a chain of legal tradition throughout Jewish history. (See
appendix at end of this article for more detail).
Halakha is unusual among modern legal systems in giving respect to
minority legal opinions, resulting in a wealth of sometimes conflicting
precedent for decisors to consider. The variety of opinion and interpretation
that constitute halakha can also be found in its treatment of women, which is
ambivalent rather than monolithic. The claim is often made that halakha has
attempted to "redress the fundamental imbalance in power between men and
women which characterizes biblical law," (Biale 1984: 5) and that it is often
in the vanguard of history with its "liberal, compassionate attitude toward
women." (Biale: 7). Biale argues that halakha does not always reflect social
reality in that it is often "more permissive and more generous to women than
life itself." (Biale: 7). However, input of women into the halakhic process is
rare, and it is almost always men who have had the authority to make
halakhic decisions. In addition, social and cultural needs of particular
historical periods have always been major factors in determining the stance
of halakha toward contested issues, including the role and rights of women.

487
This article appeared in "Jewish Law: The Case of Wife-beating," in Feminism,
Law and Religion, Marie Failinger, Lisa Schiltz and Susan Stabile editors
(Burlington VT: Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 2013): 307-326 and then was reprinted as:
"An Overall View of Wife Beating from the Perspective of Judaic Texts," in Violence
and Abuse in Society: Understanding a Global Crisis (Volume Two) Angela
Browne-Miller editor (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2012): 347-359.

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Thus, the Jewish attitude toward wifebeating has varied over time, much of
it being insensitive to women's changing needs.
Wifebeating is not a new issue among Jews. As I will suggest, even
apart from the halakhic treatment of domestic violence, Jewish leaders,
including rabbis, have exercised denial and come up with apologetics to
minimize its importance in Jewish life. Moreover, some Biblical and rabbinic
sources appear to justify limited spousal abuse in some circumstances, to
some extent legitimizing the practice, as I will describe.
Although the word ‫( מכה‬strike, blow, hit, beat) appears in the Bible,
it is not associated with wifebeating until Talmudic times; and even then, it
is not overtly discussed in this literature. The most useful sources for the
study of the law of wifebeating are in the response literature ranging from
Geonic times to the present. In these texts one finds a variety of attitudes
towards domestic violence. Gratuitous abuse, striking a wife without a
reason, is unlawful and forbidden by all decisors. However, the attitude of
rabbinic sources toward perceived “rebellious” and/or "bad” wives is
ambivalent, and wifebeating is occasionally sanctioned if it is for the purpose
of chastisement or education.
Domestic Violence and Wifebeating: Social Excuses
For many centuries, there has been a myth that domestic violence among
Jewish families has been infrequent. However, much contemporary data
demonstrates that domestic abuse is a significant and under-recognized
problem in Jewish communities in Israel and the Diaspora. Jewish women
typically take twice as long to leave battering relationships as other women
for fear that they will lose their children and will have difficulties in obtaining
a get, the Jewish divorce decree which is dependent on the abusive husband's
consent. Without a get, any new intimate relationship, even with a man the
wife has civilly married, is adulterous under Jewish law; and her children of
that second marriage are considered mamzerim, illegitimate outcasts in the
Jewish community.
As I will show in more depth, the halakhic response reflects a variety
of attitudes towards the legality of domestic violence: some decisors declare
it unlawful while others allow it under certain circumstances. However,
domestic violence has also persisted because of two lingering attitudes of the
Jewish community which are not explicitly found in the responsa literature
for obvious reasons: denial and apologetics.
Denial
The first attitude, denial, derives its power from the metaphor that Jewish
society is a relatively more moral form of society at the mercy of a "hostile
gentile world." Denial is the technical term for a common human reaction to
pain or bad news, such as a death; the person who denies that a problem exists
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does not have to deal with it. For the Jewish community, the way to avoid
painful self-examination about domestic violence is to say, "It is the gentiles
who beat their wives." This refrain allows Jewish men to retain their sense of
superiority: We are not like the barbarian who selects his wife by stunning
her by a blow, carrying her back to his camp, and pronouncing her his
property (Remy 1895: 17). We are not like "those" people, i.e., the Indians
and Chinese whose "women hold the lowest position in human society."
(Remy: 19). If a Jew in denial is forced to confront the real problem of
domestic violence, he may cling to denial by saying the problem is new, a
modern phenomenon caused by too much freedom and the erosion of the
strong Jewish family. This form of denial implies that in properly traditional
Jewish families, husbands do not beat their wives.
Similarly, Jewish scholars who deny the existence of domestic
violence often reflect the opinions of the community at large. Rabbenu Tam
(1100: 71), perhaps the most important rabbi of the French Tosafist school
which flourished in the 12th century, made the claim that "wifebeating is
unheard of among the children of Israel." (Klein 1972: xxxv). Or, we might
look to the great modern scholar Louis Finkelstein (1924), who despite Rabbi
Perez of Corbeil's crie de coeur takkanah admitting that the women of Israel
are crying out for relief from their husbands, decided that wifebeating was
not a real problem among Jews.
Indeed, even in this present age, Jewish authorities express denial
that there is domestic abuse in the Jewish community. One modern
Conservative rabbi reported at a Rabbinical Assembly convention, "I have
been in the rabbinate X number of years, and I have never had a case of
wifebeating," despite the fact that at the time, three of his congregants were
in a domestic violence support group run by Rabbi Naomi Levy. To say "not
in my congregation" is to echo the denial-promoting, defensive message of
past generations (Orenstein 1995: 23-4). And, it discourages women from
going to rabbis like this one to report their injuries, thereby giving credence
to rabbinic denials that there is a problem. We might also consider the
example of a modern-day Chassidic rabbi who refused to believe that a
prominent learned and wealthy member of his community (talmid hacham)
was beating his wife or sexually abusing his little daughter. To contextualize
his denial and to imply that nothing untoward was going on, he quoted
Maimonides whom he claimed said that there is nothing wrong with a father
sleeping in the same room with his daughter, and in the same bed, if both are
fully clothed.
Apologetics
The second attitude, which we might term apologetics, evinces some of the
qualities of denial, but also pits an older "traditional" Jewish morality which
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supposedly prevented domestic violence against the "inferior" modern one.
As late as 1990, Robert Gordis wrote in his book, The Dynamics of Judaism,
that in traditional Jewish society:
women were physically weaker than men and legally subordinate to
them, but they were far from helpless. As the Talmud sagely observes,
'A woman carries her weapons in her own person.' (BT Baba Batra
115a, BT Avodah Zarah 25b). As for the physical abuse of women,
488
centuries later the medieval work Sepher Hasidim declared as a
matter of fact, "We Jews do not beat our wives, as do the gentiles."
(Gordis 1990: 146-147).
When apologists are forced to acknowledge that wifebeating is a
phenomenon they cannot ignore, they then resort to marginalizing domestic
violence, claiming that those Jews who do engage in wifebeating do so less
frequently and less violently than non-Jewish batterers. They will sometimes
try to justify domestic violence by claiming that those Jews who actually
engage in such behavior don’t really hurt their wives, and if they do, perhaps
it is for a good reason. Finally, they will displace the blame, by shifting it to
others: It is not our fault; if Jewish men batter, it is only because of
environmental influences.
Like deniers, apologists often romanticize Judaism by painting a
rosy picture of the traditional Jewish family. Jews often quote from those
apologists who perpetuate the myth of the happy Jewish family in order to
reconfirm their own positive self-image.
Such apologetics can sometimes be found even in the best literature
on domestic abuse in Jewish life. For example, Leah Ain Globe’s The Dead
End: Divorce Proceedings in Israel is an important first person account of
the inequities in Jewish divorce law that contributes to the prevalence of
domestic violence in Jewish life. In it, Globe, an Orthodox woman, presents
moving case studies of many women who have been physically or mentally
abused at the hands of their husbands. However, when these women apply
for justice in the rabbinical courts, they are sent back to their home for the
sake of shalom bayit [peace in the home], though these are anything but
peaceful sanctuaries. Claiming that modern-day rabbis have perverted the
ancient Torah tradition of protecting and respecting the status of women as
equals with men, she follows each unhappy case study with quotes from the
halakhic or midrashic sources to demonstrate by juxtaposition the perversion
of justice in present-day rabbinical courts. "The crime of wifebeating, which

488
No source is cited for this point. The interested reader is directed to Sefer
Hasidim, by Yehuda Hehasid (Jerusalem: Rav Kook Institute 1957).
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has been denounced by our Sages in the harshest of terms, is being
disregarded in modern Israel. Ignoring brutality is tantamount to encouraging
it," she claims (Globe 1983: 37). Unfortunately, while she attacks the abuse
of justice by today's rabbis, Globe idealizes the sages of the past. Her
selective use of quotations from these sources implies that all was well in the
Jewish past and that the only problem is that today's rabbis are not basing
their decisions on legal precedents. She omits the decisions of those ancient
scholars who did justify wifebeating and who serve as halahkic authorities
for present day rabbis’ decisions to deal leniently with wifebeaters.
By contrast, Beverly Horsburgh decries
legal scholars who often uncritically praise the Jewish tradition,
omitting its sexism and condonation of woman-abuse.... In creating
various idealistic myths about Jewish law; these academics cause great
harm to Jewish battered women who require the legal community to
face the reality of their problems. Just like the romance of the Jewish
family, the romanticization of halakha increases the difficulties of
Jewish women to receive the help they so desperately need. The
hesitation of legal scholars to criticize Jewish law in effect amounts to
a condonation of the “status quo." (Horsburgh 1995: 211-212).
It is difficult to know whether it is ignorance or refusal to see the
possible roots of misogyny in the past that leads Jewish scholars to imply, by
omission, that Jewish sources are unanimously against wifebeating. This
portrayal is not only dishonest scholarship; it shapes one's world view about
where the problem lies.
Evasion
There is another problematical approach to domestic violence in the Jewish
community, which is reflected in the responsa literature, that of evasion .
Rabbis and scholars may sidestep the question of whether domestic violence
exists or even acknowledge it, and fail to take responsibility for its
consequences. As we will see, the most critical form that such evasion takes
is refusal to grant abused women the right to divorce or other relief based on
the excuse that traditional Jewish law does not permit it.
Rabbinic Attitudes toward Women: Women as Property
To understand the conflict in Jewish legal rulings regarding wifebeating, it is
important to understand Biblical and traditional rabbinic attitudes toward
women. In the Bible, the permission given to the husband to be the master
[ba'al] of the home and to rule over his wife originates in Genesis 3: 16,
where God tells the first woman that her husband shall rule over her: "I will
greatly multiply Your pain in childbirth, in pain you will bring forth children;
Yet your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”
Subsequent sources follow this logic by treating women as their husband’s
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or family’s property, or suggest that men have limited property rights in
damages awarded to women injured by others.
Biblical Depictions of Women as their Husbands’ Property
In biblical law, women are conceived as property, or chattel of their fathers,
or husbands. For example, in the tenth commandment in Exodus, we are
commanded not to covet our neighbor's house, wife, slave, maid, ass, ox, or
anything that belongs to our neighbor (Exodus 20: 17). Similarly, in biblical
times, an exchange of money accompanied many changes in a woman's
status, signifying her property status. For example, a mohar [price of
virginity] had to be paid by a rapist to the father of the "bride" for his
transgression (Genesis 34: 12; Exodus 22: 15-16). In Genesis 20:3,
Abimelech is told that Sarah belongs to Abraham. The word ba’al implies
ownership as well as lordship; as in the law about the ba'al of the ox spelled
out in Exodus (Exodus 21: 28).
The description of how a man comes to take a wife and send her
away also supports this view of women as property. Thus, when a woman
gets married, her father's property rights over her are transferred to her
husband. It is written that: "When a man takes a wife and marries her, and it
happens that she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some
indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her
hand and sends her out from his house." (Deuteronomy 24: 1). The verbs
describing this transfer are lakach [to acquire or take] in Deuteronomy 24:1
and ba'al [to possess or own] in Deuteronomy 22: 13. When she is divorced,
her husband renounces his right to his (sexual) use of the wife as property
and announces that she is "now permitted to any man." (Mishnah Gittin 9:
3). Even the husband's right to perform sexual intercourse is called liv'ol [to
take what is one's property] and the wife's status of "married woman" is
described as be'ulat ba'al [i.e., she belongs to the owner.] Perhaps the
legitimacy of the husband’s being able to use and discard his wife at will also
stems from the dictum: "Yet your desire will be for your husband, and he will
rule over you." (Genesis 3: 16).
Continuing this view in Jewish law, if the husband's property, i.e. his
wife is damaged, compensation is paid to him:
If men struggle with each other and strike a woman with child so that
she gives birth prematurely, yet there is no injury, he shall surely be
fined as the woman’s husband may demand of him, and he shall pay
as the judges decide. (Exodus 21: 22).
Thus, the husband is not only the owner of his wife; he is also the owner of
her pregnancy, even (according to the Babylonian Talmud) where the
cohabitation had taken place not in a married state (BT Baba Kama 43a).
Early Halakhic Discussions of Women as Property
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Although a bride was purchased in biblical times, "in the post-biblical era,
the betrothal was realized by the performance of an act of acquisition
[kinyan]and the making of a declaration by the bridegroom to the bride in the
presence of two witnesses."(Cohen 1948: 9, 75). The Mishnah says that "a
woman is acquired in three ways: with money (or something of nominal
value), with a writ (of purchase), or by cohabitation; i.e., sexual intercourse."
(Mishnah Kiddushin. 1: 1). However, by Tannaitic times, according to Boaz
Cohen, rabbinic decisors understood that although the word kanah [acquire]
literally means to purchase, in the Mishnah it is only meant as "a symbolical
form of acquisition."(Cohen: 75-76). The bride price in the Tannaitic era was
purely symbolic and was given to the bride, or to her father if she were a
minor.
Marriage in Tannaitic times was more than a business arrangement; it
was a religious institution and the rabbinic word for betrothal was kiddushin
[lit. being set aside for exclusive use], not the biblical term erusin [also
betrothal]. Although the Mishnah does speak of the woman who is purchased
(i.e., acquired), "the noun kinyan [acquisition] is not used as a term for
betrothal." (Cohen: 77). Through marriage, however, the woman becomes
"the sacrosanct possession, res sacra, of her husband, or, as the Talmud puts
it, de'asar la achula alma ke-hekdesh," i.e., she is forbidden to others as a
sacred object is forbidden (Cohen: 77). Thus, the metaphor for marriage
becomes a sacred bond which must be preserved at all costs. The new term
"kiddushin" similarly reflects the transition of marriage as a private deal
between two adults or families to a social and religious institution
administered by the community under rabbinical supervision. This change
gives rise to rabbinical control over marriage and divorce, matters which in
the biblical period were purely familial.
Damage to Property: The Tannaitic Approach to the Injured Wife
Rabbinic sources of the Tannaitic period continue the biblical tradition of
thinking about injury to wives as a form of damage to a man’s property. The
earliest strata of halakha, the Mishnah and Talmud, do not discuss
wifebeating overtly. However, wifebeating is essentially acknowledged in
certain laws that assume its existence in the controversy occasioning the
ruling.
In the Tosefta [lit. "additions"], a source which is contemporaneous
and often parallel with the Mishnah, the decisors refer to damages that have
to be paid to those who are embarrassed or hurt in some way, including
husbands of injured wives. To properly see how wifebeating is understood
by Jewish society in this passage, we have to first understand the halakhic
right to damages [habalah]. A man is commanded not to injure or wound his
fellow person, minor or adult, male or female, either accidentally or
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deliberately. If he does so, according to the Mishnah, he must reimburse the
person or the owner of the person for the injury, pain, healing [medical
costs], idleness [loss of livelihood], and humiliation of the injury (Mishnah
Baba Kama 8: 1). In “[the case of] the man whose wife is injured, whether
he inflicted the injury or whether someone else injured her, the damage
money is held for the woman [lit. taken from him] and real estate is purchased
for her, and he has access to the usufruct." (Tosefta Baba Kama 9:14) [trans.
from Lieberman 1988: 45].
The ruling thus holds that because the wife is the husband's property he
administers his (and her) property. He benefits from the profits [fruits] of the
land which belong to her. Though the one who has damaged the wife has to
pay reparations, money reparations go to the husband because any money or
earnings a woman has belongs to the husband. The closest the rabbis can
come to compensating the woman for damages done to her is to award her
land, because land is hers and not her husband's. Yet, she cannot be fully
compensated since the halakha says any earnings that come from the land
belong to the husband. She is thus at once both chattel and free. The prospect
that a husband might beat his wife, give her real property in compensation
for that beating, and then benefit from the profits of this property may have
bothered the writer of this Tosefta. Yet, the husband was allowed by law to
use the profits as he saw fit.
The text of the Tosefta, however, attempts to account for injuries to
the wife which primarily humiliates her:
R. Judah b. Bathyra says: If the injury [Heb. boshet, humiliation] was
done to a hidden part of her body, two-thirds of the compensation is
hers and one-third goes to her husband; if the injury [boshet] was done
to a visible part of her body, two-thirds falls to him and one-third to
her.
His share is given to him directly, but as for hers, land is bought with
it, and he has the use (usufruct) of it (Tosefta Baba Kama 9).
[Lieberman, 1988:45].
Thus, R. Judah qualifies the full force of the first passage, by
acknowledging that the wife has the larger two-thirds remedy for violence
that primarily injures and humiliates her because it is private and invisible to
the public eye. If, however, the wife’s injury is visible it is presumed to injure
the husband more, so the husband’s payment is larger and not deferred but is
"given to him directly [immediately]" in order for him to save face. The
wife’s one-third is given only in the form of land to which she has no right
to the earnings, suggesting that her injury is not severe and need not be
immediately compensated.

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 One would like to assume that in this ruling R. Judah only means to
qualify the case when the damage is not inflicted by the husband. But that is
not clear. In a note to this passage, the modern Talmudic researcher Saul
Lieberman (1898-1983) quotes Maimonides, who said (in the name of the
Geonim) that “if it was her husband who beat her, she can do what she wants
with the money; i.e., she can give it away if she wishes,” without consulting
with her husband (Lieberman 1988: 101, notes to lines 42-44, Maimonides
Hilchot Hovel U-Mazik 4: 16). Clearly Maimonides was appalled by the
inequity of a husband using compensation money for injury he had done his
wife. Other decisors, however, assume that the husband did not mean to harm
his wife (as might happen during the passion of sexual intercourse), and
decree that he only has to pay her the smaller one-third share in land that is
due her under the rule. No doubt it would have been a different matter for the
rabbis if the husband's motivation for the violence was to deliberately inflict
pain.
Accepting WifeBeating because of Her Behavior in Jewish Law
Beyond utilizing the halakhic tradition that considers wifebeating from a
property aspect, the rabbis allowed limited wifebeating under Jewish law.
One was the concept of the rebellious wife, who neglected duties that she had
agreed to by agreeing to marriage and therefore “earned” a beating. The
second, the idea of the “bad wife,” gave rise to the idea that a husband could
use abuse to discipline and educate his wife into proper behavior.
The Doctrine of the Rebellious Wife
The early rabbis often used the concept of breach of contract by a rebellious
wife to justify a husband’s use of violence against her. Although the Bible
does not mention the wife's obligations toward her husband, the rabbis ruled
that, since the husband was obliged to care for his wife, he had to be
compensated for his expenditures. This rabbinical ruling extended the
husband's rule over his wife, which was ordained by God, to four very
specific rights the husband had over his wife: 1) the right to any income
derived from her own work; 2) the right to whatever she found; 3) the right
to the fruits of her property and possessions (e.g., interest); and 4) the right
to inherit her property. These rights exist in law by virtue of the act of
marriage, and they do not have to be renewed or spelled out with every
marriage contract.
In addition, the Mishnah describes the services a wife has to perform
for her husband:
[S]he grinds, bakes, and washes; she cooks and nurses her child; she
makes his bed and spins wool. If [she brought into the marriage] one
maid, she need not grind, bake, or wash; [if she brought into the
marriage] two [maids], she need not make his bed or spin wool; [and
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 if she brought] four [maids], she sits on her throne. R. Eliezer says:
Even if she brings in one hundred maids, he must force her to spin
wool, for inactivity leads to lewdness. Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel
says: If a husband makes a vow to keep his wife from performing any
tasks, he must grant her a divorce and give her the alimony provided
for by the marriage contract, for inactivity leads to boredom (Mishnah
Ketubot 5: 5, see also BT Ketubot 59b).
Maimonides explains the reasoning behind the ruling:
Thus they [the scholars] commanded that the wife should honor her
husband beyond any limit, and his fear should be over her, and
everything she does should be according to his demands. He should be
in her eyes like a prince or a king who behaves in accordance with his
heart's desires. She should remove everything that is hateful to him,
etc. (Maimonides, Ishut 15: 20).
In addition to the household duties, the rulings assume that the wife
willingly engages in sexual intercourse with her husband, or at least hold that
she cannot deny him his conjugal rights. If she does, she is considered to be
a rebellious wife.
The "rebellious woman" [moredet] is a "woman who refuses to fulfill
her obligations toward her husband." There is some debate among the sages
about the precise definition of a moredet. A midrash on Genesis (Genesis
Rabbah 52: 14-16) begins by defining a moredet as a woman who refuses to
fulfill household obligations generally. However, it concludes with the view
of R. Yohanan, a first-generation Amora in the Land of Israel, that a moredet
is a wife who refuses to fulfill her side of the sexual marital bond; i.e., a
woman who refuses to have conjugal relations with her husband. Such a
woman may be fined by having money deducted from her ketubah [marriage
settlement], and her husband may force her to accept a divorce (Riskin 1989:
20). By contrast, a woman’s ability to demand or even initiate divorce is
almost non-existent, even if she is beaten.
The Right to “Educate” “Bad Wives”
The attitude of rabbinic sources toward perceived "bad wives” is ambivalent.
A bad wife is one who is rebellious, i.e., does not perform the duties required
of her by Jewish law; or one who behaves immodestly; or who curses her
parents, husband, or in-laws. Rabbis regularly advise men to restrict their
wives to the home and be responsible for educating them. In this view, it is
permissible and acceptable to beat one’s wife in order to keep her in line. The
rabbis who justify such wifebeating see it as part of the overall “duties” of a
husband to chastise his wife for educational purposes. In modern times, this
has translated into husbands who think they have the right to beat their wives

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for educational reasons, to teach them not to burn the Shabbat meal, or to
properly iron the husband's shirt in time for the Sabbath.
The rabbinic responsa describe a number of wifely derelictions that
allowed a husband to beat a wife. Zemah ben Paltoi, gaon of Pumbedita
(872–90), allowed a man to flog his wife if she was guilty of assault. Rabbi
Yehudai b. Nahman (Yehudai Gaon 757–61) wrote that: "…when her
husband enters the house, [the wife] must rise and cannot sit down until he
sits, and she should never raise her voice against her husband. Even if he hits
her she has to remain silent, because that is how chaste women behave."
(Ozar ha-Ge'onim Ketubot 169–70). In his Mishneh Torah, Moses
Maimonides (1135–1204) recommended beating a bad wife as an acceptable
form of discipline: "A wife who refuses to perform any kind of work that she
is obligated to do, may be compelled to perform it, even by scourging her
with a rod." (Ishut 21:10).
Other responsa seem to minimize, if not justify, wifebeating. The
ninth-century gaon of Sura, Sar Shalom b. Boaz (d. c. 859 or 864),
distinguished between an assault on a woman by her husband and an assault
by a stranger. The gaon of Sura's opinion was that the husband's assault on
his wife should be judged less severely, since the husband had authority over
his wife (Ozar ha-Ge'onim, BK 62: 198). The responsa of R. Solomon b.
Abraham Adret (Rashba 1235–1310) include examples of husbands who
occasionally or habitually use force; few of these men are brought to court
for beating a wife in a moment of anger. (Thankfully, some of Rashba's
responsa suggest that some wives considered their rabbis as allies against
violent husbands (Adret: vol. 5, no. 264; vol. 7, no. 477; vol. 8, no. 102; vol.
4, no. 113)).
Divorce Based on Sexual Abhorrence
Biblical rules permitting husbands to divorce their wives for purely
subjective reasons also contribute to the assumption that wifebeating is
acceptable. For example, in the Bible, if the husband finds something
"sexually abhorrent [ervat davar] about the wife, he may properly seek a
divorce (Deuteronomy 24: 1). In the Mishnah, we read:
The School of Shammai stated: "A man is not to divorce his wife
unless he has found something sexually abhorrent about her, as the
Torah says, '...because he has found something abhorrent about her."
(Deuteronomy 24: 1). The School of Hillel stated: "Even if she burned
his food, as the Torah says, '...because he found anything obnoxious
about her.'" R. Akiba stated: "Even if he found one more attractive than
her, as the Torah says, '...and if she did not find favor in his eyes'"
(Mishnah Gittin 9: 10).

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Thus, the School of Shammai position allows limited grounds for divorce,
e.g., it must be for ervat davar, something (or anything) sexually abhorrent
or obnoxious, while the School of Hillel position allows for a greater variety
of justifications, and Akiba's position seems to permit the husband to be
totally arbitrary in seeking a divorce. Such a subjective reading of the law
might reinforce an abusive husband’s belief in his own power. These
discussions are only somewhat ameliorated by the fact that though the
halakha on divorce follows the Hillelites, the sages indicated that one ought
morally to act according to the Shammaites. An example of this moral
argument is found in an aggadic tale from the Talmud which states that
"Whoever divorces his first wife even the altar of God weeps for him..." (BT
Gittin 90b). The tale reflects the belief that the first marriage is made in
heaven, and God is personally interested in preserving it, along with the
institution of marriage. In this aggadah, the sages have morally tempered the
force of the halakha by criticizing R. Akiba's subjective criteria for divorce
and protecting the wife from the "anything goes" interpretation of davar.
However, by insisting that the righteous should follow the Shammaite
position, they close the doors temporarily to such criteria for divorce as
mutual incompatibility. Their position seems somewhat more consistent with
respect for the wife and her vulnerability, including respect for her bodily
integrity, though continuing to deny the woman’s own right to divorce.
Later Rabbinic Responses to Wifebeating
Rabbinic attitudes toward wifebeating have fluctuated over the centuries
following the rulings of the early sages. Side by side with the early literature,
which certainly allowed beating a bad wife, were always those rabbis who
th th
condemned it. It would seem that the 12 and 13 century rabbis made a
stunning reversal, when many of them rejected the practice of wifebeating in
their response. But they were basing these "reversals" on earlier literature
which quoted from the Talmud and gaonic literature (Graetz 1998: 121-150).
th
It seemed as if the tide turned again in the 15 century, when rabbis again
accepted the practice, but I would argue that these different attitudes were
always there in different times and different places. Thus, even today, rabbis
offer limited relief because of the halakhic constraints around divorce laws.
This allows rabbis to evade their responsibility to free women from abusive
marriages.
Twelfth and Thirteenth Century Responsa Forbidding Wifebeating in All
Circumstances
th th
In contrast to many of the early response many responsa from 12 - and 13 -
century France and Germany reject wifebeating without any qualifications.
This change most likely reflects the fact that in French and German Jewish
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society of this period, women occupied high social and economic status. This
new attitude is reflected in a takkanah issued by R. Perez b. Elijah, who
believed that "one who beats his wife is in the same category as one who
beats a stranger." He decreed that "any Jew may be compelled on application
of his wife or one of her near relatives to undertake by a herem not to beat
his wife in anger or cruelty so as to disgrace her, for that is against Jewish
practice." If the husband refused to obey, the court could assign her
maintenance according to her station and local custom. It is not clear whether
this takkanah ever received serious consideration or whether it was
implemented by rabbis in the Jewish diaspora.
Similarly, North African rabbi, R. Simon b. Tzemach Duran (1361-
1444), who was the author of a collection of responsa called Tashbetz,
forbade wifebeating. Like Maimonides, he was a physician who ended up as
a rabbinical judge in Algiers and fathered a rabbinical dynasty in North
Africa. He responded to a question about a long-suffering wife, whose
husband was a difficult person whom she could not stand. He had deprived
her of food and she hated the thought of living. Duran responded: “You can
write that he should divorce her and give her the ketubah…. for she was given
for life, not for sorrow…and does not have to live in close quarters with a
snake…” Later in this responsum, Duran writes that “the rabbinical judge
who forces a woman who rebelled to go back to her [abusive] husband is
following the law of the Ishmaelites [i.e. Moslems] and should be
excommunicated…”
Some Ashkenazi rabbis of this period considered battering as
grounds for forcing a man to give a get the Jewish divorce decree. Rabbi Meir
b. Baruch of Rothenburg (Maharam, c. 1215–1293) and R. Simhah b. Samuel
of Speyer (d. 1225–1230) wrote that a man has to honor his wife more than
himself and that is why his wife, and not his fellow man, should be his greater
concern. R. Simhah argued that like Eve, "the mother of all the living"
(Genesis 3: 20), a wife is given to a man for living, not for suffering. She
trusts him and thus it is worse if he hits her than if he hits a stranger. R.
Simhah suggested a list of possible sanctions for wifebeating, but if these are
of no avail, he not only recommends a compelled divorce, but allows divorce
to be granted by gentile authorities. This is a highly unusual stance since
rabbis rarely endorse forcing a man to divorce his wife, and it is even rarer
to suggest that the non-Jewish community should be permitted to adjudicate
internal Jewish affairs.
Justifying Wife-beating as Education
Although many Ashkenazi rabbis quoted R. Simhah's opinions against
wifebeating with approval, their opinions were overturned by many
authorities in succeeding generations. Thus, in fifteenth-century Europe, we
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find rabbis who approve of wifebeating for the purpose of education, while
others simply refuse to offer battered wives any realistic relief. This is
illustrated in the collected responsa of R. Israel b. Pethahiah Isserlein
(Austria, c. 1390–1460). Isserlein is asked to issue a ruling on the question,
“Can a man who hears his wife cursing and saying bad things about her
mother and father reprove her for this several times? If this does not work,
can he then beat her in order to ensure that she does not do this anymore?”
He answers:
Even though Mordecai [b. Hillel] and R. Simhah wrote that he who
beats his wife transgresses the negative precept “not to excess” (pen
yosif, Deuteronomy 25: 3), and is dealt with very harshly, I disagree
with this strict interpretation. I base my interpretation on R. Nahman
[ben Jacob, d. c. 320 C.E., Babylonian amora] writing in the name of
R. Isaac [one of the earliest known Babylonian tannaim, middle of the
second century] who wrote that it was permissible to beat a Canaanite
slave woman in one’s possession in order to prevent her from
transgressing. He of course should not overdo it or else she would be
freed. Anyone who is responsible for educating someone under him,
and sees that person transgressing, can beat that person to prevent the
transgression. He does not have to be brought to court.” (Isserlein,
Terumat ha-Deshen, Responsum #218).
In his commentary on the Talmud, R. Solomon ben Jehiel Luria
(Poland c. 1510–1574) also refers to Maimonides and Isserlein in a
discussion about punishing a “bad” wife. Luria goes further than Isserlein in
Terumat ha-Deshen #218, when he writes:
A man may hit his wife when she curses her father and mother, because
she transgresses the law. ... There is no need to bring her to the court,
as is so in the case of the Jewish slave. And he can beat her for other
reasons as well—whenever she transgresses the laws of the Torah. He
can beat her until she dies [literally, until her soul departs—ad she-teze
nafshah], even for transgressing a minor negative prohibition. Of
course, he shouldn’t hasten to beat her. He should warn her first. He
can only beat her if she doesn’t heed his warning.” (Yam shel Shelomo,
Bava Kamma, Third Chapter, 20b #9).
Evasion of the Responsibility to Give Divorce Relief
The responsa of Rabbis Isserlein and Luria are extreme. Most other responsa
seem to acknowledge that wifebeating is wrong, yet they avoid the problem
by refusing to release the woman from the bad marriage. These evasive
positions rest on the husband’s dominant position in marriage, which we have
seen is a central part of halakha. This third attitude, evasion, which is
pervasive today in both social life and rabbinical rulings, is an internal
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polemic attempting to uphold traditional laws and values by assuming that
they are "sacred norms" which are inviolable. Rabbinical authorities claim
that the reality of domestic abuse is not desperate enough to justify tampering
with those norms.
Even as early as the eighth century, R. Hananiah, a Babylonian Gaon,
demonstrated this stance of evasion writing that, although the husband should
not beat his wife, the monetary compensation due to his wife belonged to
him, so there was no real point of giving her compensation. The husband
vowed not to habitually beat her and thereby fulfilled his duty (yaza yedei
hovato). She, in turn, was told to listen to him, forgive him, pacify him, and
make peace with him (Geonic responsa Sha’arei Zedek: Part 4, 13).
In a similar vein, Rabbi Yom Tov ben Moshe Zahalon (Safed 1559–
1619 or 1620) wrote sympathetically about an abused woman who had taken
refuge in her father’s home. Although he wanted to help this battered wife,
he was caught in the controversy between Maimonides and Nahmanides on
the issue of a forced divorce. Nahmanides opposed Maimonides’s liberal
interpretation permitting forced divorce in limited circumstances, and wrote
that “one can never force a husband to divorce his wife.” (#138). R. Yom
Tov’s compromise was to force the husband to give the wife the ketubbah
money so she would not be destitute if she needed to leave him (#229), but
he did not force the husband to divorce his wife. Sixteenth-century response
also seem to acknowledge that wifebeating is wrong, yet they avoid releasing
the woman from the bad marriage. R. Joseph b. Ephraim Caro (1488-1575)
seems to have caused this confusion because his codification of Jewish law
expresses views on wifebeating that are not consistent. In Kesef Mishneh
(Caro’s commentary on Maimonides’s Mishneh Torah), Caro seems to agree
with Maimonides that the wife’s duties are so important that a husband may
beat her if she refuses to perform them. However, in Beit Yosef [BY]: Even
ha-Ezer 74:7–12, Caro cites as an authority the position of R. Jonah ben
Abraham Gerondi (Sha’arei ha-Teshuvah) who writes that anyone who beats
his wife transgresses two negative commandments. Caro suggests
excommunicating the perpetrator so that he will not transgress the laws of
the Torah because simply chastising him is too mild a penalty for
wifebeating.
To identify his own position on the issue of relief for an abused wife,
R. Caro turns to the views of his predecessor R. Simhah of Speyer, but cites
them in a way that creates more confusion. In his first discussion of R.
Simhah’s work, R. Caro cites approvingly R. Simhah’s ruling that if the
husband is a habitual wifebeater, and bruises his spouse (hovel), the court can
even cut off his hand. Thus, in BY 74, Caro makes clear that the wife who
flees her abusive husband is not a rebellious wife and the husband must either
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honor her more than himself or divorce her and pay her the money from her
marriage contract. It appears from the sources he cites in these passages that
Caro is totally opposed to wifebeating for any reason. Yet in BY 154 when
Caro quotes R. Simhah’s entire responsum which favors forcing the abusive
husband to give his wife a divorce through recourse to the civil courts if
necessary, he finishes with the comment: “One cannot rely on the writings of
R. Simhah and others to force the husband to divorce his wife because none
of them rely on the famous decisors (poskim).” Caro’s views are further
complicated by R. Moses ben Israel Isserles (Rema 1525 or 1530–1572), the
glossator of the Shulhan Arukh. He rules that, although unwarranted
wifebeating justifies compelling a husband to divorce his wife,
if she is the cause of it, for example, if she curses him or denigrates
his father and mother and he scolds her calmly first and it does not
help, then it is obvious that he is permitted to beat her and castigate
her. And if it is not known who is the cause, the husband is not
considered a reliable source when he says that she is the cause and
portrays her as a harlot, for all women are presumed to be law-abiding.
(Darkei Moshe, Tur, Even ha-Ezer 154:15).
In two glosses to Caro’s Shulhan Arukh, (EH 80:15 and EH 154: 3), Isserles
considers whether wifebeating is ever justified as a form of punishment. In
EH 154:3, a discussion of whether one can force a recalcitrant husband who
also beats his wife to give her a divorce, Isserles returns again to the
assumption that the wife may be the cause of the beating: “If she curses him
without reason, or puts down his father or mother and he reproves her with
words and she does not listen to him, some say that it is permissible to beat
her. Some say that it is forbidden even to beat a bad wife. but the first opinion
is the correct one.” Thus, although Isserles has two options for controlling
precedent to select from, he chooses to follow the first opinion, that it is
permissible to beat a “bad” wife. Further, in this gloss, Isserles writes that “if
[the wife] curses [the husband] with no reason, he divorces her without
paying her the money stipulated in the marriage contract.”
In response of the modern period, the rabbis who uphold the primacy
of the halakhic constraints of not forcing a husband to give a get, a Jewish
divorce decree, to his wife include Jacob ben Joseph Reischer (Austria,
Germany c.1670–1733); David Pipano (Greece and Bulgaria, 1851–1925);
Moses Sofer (Pressburg, 1763–1839); Gabriel Adler ha-Cohen of Oberdorf
(c. 1800–1870, brother of Nathan Marcus Adler; 1803–1890, chief rabbi of
England); and Ovadiah Yosef. These rabbis base their opinions on the
illegality of a coerced divorce and their very pro-marriage agenda.
Modern Rabbis Who do not Allow Beating even a Bad Wife

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In recent centuries, many decisors have returned to the liberal rabbinic
precedents of the French and German rabbis of the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries to denounce spousal abuse. They include R. Shlomo b. Abraham
ha-Kohen (Yugoslavia, 1520–1601); R. Hayyim ben Jacob Palaggi (Turkey,
1788–1869); R. Avraham Jacob Paperna (Poland, 1840–1919); Eliezer Shem
Tov Papo (Sarajevo, c. 1824); Raphael Aaron Ben Simeon (Cairo, 1848–
1928); R. Isaac Herzog (Dublin and Israel, 1888–1959); R. Eliezer Judah
Waldenburg (b. 1912); and Rabbi Moses Feinstein. These rabbis all show an
awareness of the earlier debates and an increased interest in the discussions
about women, money, and property. They do not hesitate to disagree with
earlier rabbis who were apparently influenced by the practices of Islamic
society in their time. They do not allow for beating even in the case of the
“bad wife” who curses her husband. They also recognize the power that an
abusive husband has over his wife if he refuses to give her a divorce, and
interpret the halakha leniently in order to pressure the husband to divorce his
wife. Conclusion
In summary, we have noted that there have been both social and legal
attempts to justify wifebeating in Jewish history. Some social sources deny
or minimize the ubiquity and harshness of spousal abuse, attribute it to a
decline in Jewish traditional values, or may acknowledge it but evade
granting the battered spouse any realistic relief. Other sources take a legal
approach, permitting at least some limited forms of wifebeating as responses
to the wife’s contractual duties in marriage or as appropriate chastisement for
the purpose of education. Still other legal sources denounce wifebeating both
on principle and as their understanding of Jewish law and thus attempt to find
a solution, such as a forced divorce.
Even though there is diversity of opinion in every generation on this
subject, there are clear differences in rabbinic attitudes from age to age. The
early Geonic (Babylon) responsa, while having a mixed attitude toward
forced divorce, seem to agree that a stranger’s assault is more severe and
wrongful than a husband’s assault, because the husband has control over his
wife and not over the stranger. In the Spanish and Muslim-influenced
sources, there seems to be more leeway for the husband to beat the wife,
especially for the purposes of education and to reinforce his dominant
position. In marked contrast to these sources, the French medieval sources
suggest that a husband is as accountable to his wife as he is to a stranger. The
German medieval sources go farthest in holding that a husband has to be dealt
with more stringently in cases of wifebeating than for stranger assault
because the husband has a duty to honor the wife who is under his protection.
This view may possibly reflect the higher status of German women, including
Jewish women, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. What becomes clear
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is that from the fifteenth century onwards, when women’s status declines all
over the world, these cultural differences break down and women once again
are subject to abuse based on early sources. Illustrative of this decline is the
writing of Isaac ben Judah Abrabanel, who lived in Christian Spain in the
fifteenth century. In his Commentary on Genesis I, he writes that only man
is created in God’s image; masculine man was the pinnacle of God’s creation
and woman was only meant to be a helpmate and a vessel for man’s use.
Thus, it should not shock us if, following this logic, rabbis begin again to
allow wifebeating for educational purposes and do not view wifebeating as
grounds for divorce. Even in this period, there remain some rabbis who are
bold enough to unconditionally condemn wife-beaters and force them to
divorce their wives, but they are a minority. Most are intimidated by the
halakhic problems of the mamzer, a child born from an incestuous or
adulterous relationship or between relatives who are forbidden to marry by
Torah law. A mamzer, who may also be produced by a second civil marriage
where the wife has not obtained a get, may only marry another mamzer or a
convert to Judaism, and his offspring are still mamzerim Some rabbis rule
that if a husband is forced to divorce his wife against his will and then recants,
the wife’s remarriage is retroactively adulterous and her children are
mamzerim. This fear contributes to the fact that, even though in modern times
there are almost no rabbinical authorities who justify wifebeating for the
purpose of education, there are still many who do not allow a forced divorce
to free the victim from abuse. It is also possible that anti-divorce rabbis base
their opinions on the illegality of a coerced divorce and their very pro-
marriage agenda on the words of R. Moses Schreiber, the Hatam Sofer
(Hungary, 1763-1839), who writes that Jews do not force a man to divorce
the wife he is beating because “it is better to live as a couple (tan du) than to
dwell alone (armalu).” (Responsum, part four, Even ha-Ezer 2).
st
Unfortunately, the major halakhic stance in the early 21 century continues
to support the central role and authority of the husband. Thus, domestic abuse
is not automatic grounds for Jewish divorce. Rabbinical courts tend to favor
men who promise to reform their behavior (shelom bayit) and often force
women to return to their vicious husbands or lose their rights to maintenance,
and property, and custody of children.
Appendix I: Introductory Notes on Jewish Law
Judaism is based on the doctrine that there are two sacred Torahs, the Written
Torah (the Bible) and the Oral Torah (the traditions, including the rabbinic
ones) out of which the halakha develops. Eventually the Oral Torah, which
was based on human study of the sacred texts combined with practices that
flourished in Jewish society, was written down and became part of Jewish

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sacred literature. But since the Oral Torah was based on learning and
discussion among sages and rabbis who devoted their life to study and
clarification of the Written Torah, it was never monolithic in the views
reflected in legal decisions. Indeed, halakha has shown amazing flexibility
and staying power by being able to accommodate disagreement.
The earliest codifications and interpretations of halakha the Mishnah (c.
200 C.E.), the Tosefta (240 C.E.), and the Talmud (Jerusalem c. 400 C.E. and
Babylonian c. 500 C.E.), preserve minority as well as majority opinions.
These early strata are the formative building blocks of halakha. Their
authority is, at least theoretically, the highest. Some rabbis have expressed
the opinion that halakha should not contradict the Mishnah and Talmud; on
the other hand, there is a principle that halakha follows the latest authority.
Jewish law from this formative period is directly continued in the works of
the Geonim (7-10th century C.E. leaders of the rabbinical academies of
Babylonia after the Moslem conquest in 634 C.E.). Among the many major
medieval commentators on these works, the most well-known are Rashi
(1040-1105) on the Talmud; Ibn Ezra (12th century) on the Bible;
Maimonides (1135-1204) on the Mishnah; and Tosafot (a school of French
and German commentators, 12th-13th century) on the Talmud. Later,
attempts were made to codify all the preceding material, and Codes appeared,
such as the Yad he-Hazakah, also known as Mishneh Torah, of Maimonides
the Tur of Jacob ben Asher (14th century); and the Shulhan Arukh by Joseph
Caro (16th century). Finally, Jewish decisors and scholars call upon a vast
collection of Responsa literature which includes rabbinic rulings (response
on specific questions. These responsa date back to Geonic times and continue
to be written today. By and large, these works reflect legal interpretation, a
process that decides on modification or application of halakhic principles to
specific cases, and, in turn, each responsum (teshuva) can serve as a
precedent for future responsa. In the responsa literature we find not only a
history of halakha but also useful descriptions of how Jews who were not
scholars actually lived. Less frequently mentioned are takkanot, ordinances
or rulings promulgated to meet a specific need which, in effect, change the
halakha creating legislation. One might argue that Moses originated
takkanot, customs and laws that were not written in the Bible, or that Ezra
the Scribe ordained the first takkanot that included Torah readings on
Mondays, Thursdays, and Sabbath afternoons (Jaffee 1990: 204). Takkanot
instituted marriage contracts, outlawed polygamy, prohibited giving too
much money to charity, specified child support, etc. These takkanot were
ordained by sages when necessary to radically alter, or amend an existing
law. When they are contrasted with the "normal" halakhic process that

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extends Torah laws, takkanot can be described as revolutionary rather than
evolutionary.

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CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: THE JEWISH BOOK NEWS
489
INTERVIEW

JBN: What have we learned about wifebeating within the Jewish

community today? Can you give us a status report?
The topic of wifebeating, couched in the euphemistic terms of "spousal
abuse" and "family violence", continues to be a timely one. In academic
journals which deal with social work, family issues, feminism and
psychology, articles are constantly being published that deal with the
phenomenon. Headlines, movies and popular literature have made topics
such as wifebeating, incest, and child abuse seem almost ordinary. The
Jewish community is finally facing these problems in our community.
The evidence that Jewish wife beating exists is strong. Statistics and
headlines assail us with facts. It is incontrovertible today, something which
was not the case in the mid 70's, that Jewish awareness of the problem is on
the rise--though not enough. Pick up the Denver newspaper, the Boston
Jewish Advocate, The New York Times and you will read about rabbis' wives
who are beaten by their husbands, Jewish surgeons' wives who stay in
abusive marriages for 12-16 years, Kosher shelters and kitchens for Jewish
victims of Domestic Violence in New York City and Boston. The numbers
being bandied about in the media vary from 19-25% of all Jewish families.
'One out of six' or 'one out of seven' Israeli women is regularly beaten at
home. The estimated minimum figure is 100,000 battered women in Israel
(of whom 40,000 end up hospitalized); the maximum number is 200,000
(which includes the Arab population). The conspiracy of silence is breaking,
but not fast enough.
JBN: What would you say is the biggest obstacle to progress in this area?
I would say that there are two major obstacles: 1) One is the attitude of denial
and apologetics that Jewish leaders often take to protect the good name of the
Jewish community. 2) The other culprit is Jewish law with its assumption of
a dominant social standing for males.
How did Jewish leaders until recently relate to the problem of
wifebeating? Their first reaction was to deny its existence: Jews don't do it.
If we deny that the problem exists we do not have to deal with it. We still
hear today, that it is the "way of the gentiles" to beat their wives—not Jews.
(Before Alcoholism was recognized to be a Jewish problem, the
commonplace was that "shiker is a goy"). When I was on sabbatical in 1992

489
This is an interview with Pamela Roth, which appeared in the Jewish Book
News: A Journal of Essays and Reviews, September 3, 1998, pages 7-14.
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as a research associate at Mt. Holyoke, my colleagues and acquaintances
asked rhetorically, "Isn't Jewish wifebeating an oxymoron?" I hear that much
less today.
It is still difficult for Jews to see that wifebeating is a phenomenon
they cannot ignore. Even when forced to confront the fact that it exists, they
often marginalize the phenomenon and state that those Jews who do engage
in wifebeating do so less frequently and less violently than do non-Jewish
batterers. Or, they will sometimes try to justify it by claiming that those Jews
who actually engage in such behavior don’t really hurt their wives, and if
they do, perhaps it’s for a good reason. Finally, they will displace the blame,
by shifting it to others: It is not our fault; if Jewish men batter, it is only
because of environmental influences. But apologists rarely get this far. Not
only do they rely heavily on denial, they usually romanticize Judaism, by
depicting a rosy picture of the traditional Jewish family. Jews often quote
from those apologists who perpetuate the myth of the happy Jewish family
in order to reconfirm their own positive self-image.
The reason that an apologetic attitude is often used by our leaders is to
defend our collective Jewish name from adverse criticism. If we speak badly
of ourselves, we are called "self-hating Jews." Those who engage in
apologetics assume that questioning certain aspects of Judaism threatens the
integrity of Judaism. However, apology, a form of whitewash, often ends up
perpetuating abuse and stifling healthy self-criticism. Worse perhaps is that
Judaism is denigrated by this misguided attempt to “guard the law from
humiliation” and causes modern people, who do not accept the halakhic
system, to question the validity of halakhic analysis for themselves.
The second obstacle to progress in this area is the law: The law of
the State of Israel gives jurisdiction in matters of personal status to Orthodox
rabbinical courts. That means that all matters of marriage and divorce are
adjudicated according to halakha (Jewish law) and that the judges are all
male, Orthodox rabbis. The Israeli rabbinate has in its power to decide
whether or not a man can be ordered to give his wife a get (a bill of divorce)
if he has refused to do so. And, though they can order him to, they prefer to
wait for the husband's consent. The problem outside of Israel is less serious
since there is separation of religion and state. Divorce can be obtained
through civil and religious law. The Conservative and Reform movements
have largely solved the problem of the husband who refuses to give a get by
invoking a halakhic tool akin to annulment. The Reform movement
recognizes civil divorce as equivalent to Jewish divorce. However, it is still
a very serious problem among the Orthodox and Ultra-Orthodox. With the
exception of some very brave Orthodox rabbis (Rabbis Moses Morgenstern
and Rabbi Emanuel Rackman who also use the tool of annulment) Orthodox
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rabbis are unwilling to annul the marriages of agunot, chained or anchored
wives, whose husbands refuse to grant them religious divorces.
In Israel, where there is no civil marriage or divorce, the problem of
the "anchored" wife, the agunah is even more real and painful. Some
estimates of those wives whose husbands have refused divorce reaches over
10,000. It is also a political problem, since the Orthodox rabbinate has a
monopoly on providing religious services and other competing religious
approaches are not recognized by the State of Israel. Thus rabbis who sit in
state recognized rabbinic courts do not have to listen to vox populi and have
no incentive to interpret halakha in a way that might favor women. It is a
commonplace in Israel that rabbinic courts are sympathetic to men in contrast
to civil courts which favor women—but the latter have no jurisdiction in
divorce.
Those sages, past and present, who choose to ignore the distress of
battered women, rate the community's interest in family stability and
obedience to rabbinic law as being more important than the suffering of the
private individual. Thus it is Jewish law which (without malice aforethought)
empowers the man who may be beating his wife to keep her under his control.
JBN: Did Maimonides really permit hitting one's wife with a stick? In
what context did he say this? Has it been taken literally?
There is a world view in which wifebeating is regarded as a means to an end.
Beating can be justified, on occasion, for it is a mitzvah to chastise one's wife,
who is like a child, for educational purposes. It might even be seen as a means
to obtaining shalom bayit, domestic harmony. The communal unit is
perceived to be more important than the individual. There have been many
examples of acceptance of wifebeating in the Jewish community throughout
the ages. One of our great sages who allowed a husband to beat his wife was
Maimonides. If we look at the historical context, we see that there were some
precedents among the sages.
One example was R. Yehudai Gaon (an 8th century scholar to whom are
attributed many anonymous gaonic opinions) who wrote that: "A wife's duty
is to honor her husband, raise her children, and feed her husband (even from
her own hand). She has to wash, cook, and grind in accord with what the
rabbis have decreed. And when her husband enters the house, she must rise
and cannot sit down until he sits, and she should never raise her voice against
her husband. Even if he hits her she has to remain silent, because that is how
chaste women behave."
Another was the medieval Jewish courtier, R. Shmuel Hanagid (936-
1056), an intellectual and military leader who wrote poetry among other
things. He advised the husband to beat his dominating wife to put her in her
place: "Hit your wife without hesitation; if she attempts to dominate you like
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a man and raises her head [too high]. Don't my son, don't you be your wife's
wife, While your wife will be her husband's husband."
Thus there is a precedent for Maimonides' view in the Mishneh Torah,
that beating a bad wife is an acceptable form of discipline: "A wife who
refuses to perform any kind of work that she is obligated to do, may be
compelled to perform it, even by scourging her with a rod." The context in
which he said this is of the list in the Mishnah of the required services a wife
has to perform: "These are the household duties a wife does for her husband:
she grinds, bakes, and washes; she cooks and nurses her child; she makes his
bed and spins wool."
Maimonides explains the reasoning behind the ruling: "Thus [the
scholars] commanded that the wife should honor her husband beyond any
limit, and his fear should be over her, and everything she does should be
according to his demands. He should be in her eyes like a prince or a king
who behaves in accordance with his heart's desires. She should remove
everything that is hateful to him, etc."
Thus when Maimonides rules that if the wife refuses to do this work, she
"may be compelled" it is possible to understand, according to the simplest
meaning of the text, that it is the husband who does the compelling. Although
some commentators would prefer to understand that the intention was that
the beit din (the Jewish court) is the one who compels her, most
commentators on this passage, understood it to mean her husband.
JBN: Does Jewish law permit wifebeating?
Jewish law is not monolithic. That means that I cannot give a simple answer
to your question. I would like to answer "absolutely not"; but as my book
shows there are several approaches to this problem. The one thing I can say
for certain is that "gratuitous" beating is not allowed. Gratuitous beating is
beating without a reason: hatred without cause. On the other hand there is
justifiable wifebeating: an attitude that allows wifebeating under certain
controlled circumstances—for a purpose.
Thus according to the 16th century sage R. David b. Solomon Ibn Avi
Zimra (Radbaz) one "may rebuke and beat [his wife] if she behaves
improperly, according to our Torah, in order to bring her back to the right
path, for she is under his jurisdiction." However, he is not allowed to beat her
gratuitously "for matters which pertain to him personally, for she is not his
servant. And even for those improper things (referred to above) there should
be witnesses to the deed (otherwise he should not beat her). And if he
habitually beats her, he should be punished."
The wife may have cursed the husband or his parents. She may be
rebellious and have to be taught her place. She is not doing her work. Among
the minority of rabbis who condone wife beating there is a tacit assumption
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that men will often behave in this way and that for the greater good of the
marriage the wife should have to learn to live with it.
It must be emphasized however, that the majority of rabbis do not allow
wifebeating under any circumstances. These rabbis can be subdivided into
two categories: those who consider wifebeating as grounds for divorce and
those who take an evasive attitude and do not consider it as a valid reason for
forcing the husband to divorce his wife. On the one hand, most rabbis
acknowledge that wifebeating is wrong, yet many do not take action to get
the woman out of the bad marriage. They evade responsibility for doing
anything about it. R. Solomon b. Abraham Aderet (Rashba, Barcelona,
1235-1310), wrote in response to the question asked of him, "What is the
ruling for a husband who regularly beats his wife, so that she has to leave his
home and return to her father's home?"
The answer is: The husband should not beat his wife. She was given
to him for life, not for sorrow. He should honor her more than his own
body. The beit din investigates to find who is responsible. If he beats
her, she is allowed to run away, for a person does not have to live with
a snake. But if she curses him for no reason, the law is with him, for
the women who curses her husband leaves without her ketubah. At any
rate I don't see that the beit din can do more than tell him in strong
words not to beat her and warn him that if he beats her, not according
to law, he will have to divorce her and give her her ketubah.
Although some rabbis accept the notion that there are occasions when a
beating might be justified, most of them agree that habitual wifebeating is
wrong. Yet, despite the attitude that the wifebeater's action is wrong, the
husband cannot be forced to divorce his wife. Even a hint of coercion runs
the risk of having the get considered invalid.
JBN: Can you describe your book for those who know nothing about it?
The purpose of Silence is Deadly: Judaism Confronts Wifebeating is to
uncover the different attitudes to wifebeating found in Jewish texts. The
premise of my book is that women are regarded as property in patriarchal
societies and as such are potential victims of physical and psychological
abuse. The texts we will study in the Bible and the Midrash do not talk about
actual battering of woman; however, they do create a metaphor for viewing
women as objects of violence and use battering of woman as part of a larger
metaphor describing relationships. I hope to show by my reading of these
texts that the values that are implicit in them can lead to a climate of social
convention that tolerates real battering. I look at selected episodes in the
Bible and see how they are interpreted, commented on, and understood by
"midrash," which is a principal form of rabbinic literature consisting of pieces
of creative expository writing based upon verses from the Bible. I show that
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underlying the stories of Cain, Hagar, Lot's Daughters, the Concubine at
Gibeah, and the Sotah is an ambiance of explicit and implicit family violence.
These stories show how it is easy to perform violent acts against women in a
society in which they have no power and little intrinsic value.
The first sources to deal extensively and explicitly with clear cases of
wifebeating are the responsa literature in Jewish legal tradition (halakha)
which start in Gaonic times (9th century C.E.) and continue through today.
Rabbinic responses to wifebeating can be categorized as follows: In addition
to the attitudes of Denial and Apologetics there are three clearly identifiable
attitudes: Acceptance, Rejection and Evasion. Although most rabbinic sages
deal strictly with the phenomenon of wifebeating, a significant minority of
sages either approve of the phenomenon or else justify its existence. As I
mentioned earlier, Maimonides is most often cited in this context as a rabbi
who says that when a woman does not perform her household duties, it is
permissible to hit her (even with a stick). Most of the responsa literature
decry husbands who beat their wives and reject unconditionally this
phenomenon. Tragically for Jewish women, even those rabbis who
categorically oppose the beating of wives are not always willing to see
wifebeating as a justified reason for ordering the husband to give his wife a
Jewish bill of divorce (get) and take what I call an evasive attitude to the
problem. For Jewish women this means that they may stay in an abusive
relationship longer than it is safe for them to do so. Many agunot (anchored
or chained women) have been created as a result of those rabbis who are
unwilling to use halakhic means to free wives from oppressive husbands.
JBN: In what way do the Jewish Divorce laws exacerbate the problem?
Women cannot initiate divorce, they depend on their husband's will to get
divorce, they bear sole responsibility for the stigma of having illegitimate
children, mamzerim. Until recently, women were not rabbis, and did not have
access to learning and thus could not be part of the halakhic process. There
is a mockery of justice in the Israeli rabbinical court system. The courts
cynically argue that women in the State of Israel are finding themselves in
more difficult straits than Jewish women in the past because rabbis are unable
to impose legal sanctions upon community members and to impose
punishments when a member of the community behaves in an unacceptable
fashion. Rather than accept the blame, they argue it is the fault of civil
legislators who have not authorized Rabbinic judges to impose sanctions
upon violent husbands or upon husbands who refuse to divorce their wives.
JBN: Do you suggest any solutions to the problem of Jewish divorce in
your book?
Yes, I do. I refer to the proposals of The International Coalition for Agunah
Rights, ICAR, who suggest the following major proposals:1) To force a get
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upon refractory husbands. 2) To recommend to couples that they sign pre-
nuptial agreements. 3) To use the solution of the annulment of marriage
by rabbinic court when the husband's actions prove to be recalcitrant. 4) To
give the dayyanim the authority to invoke civil sanctions against a
refractory husband. 5) To prohibit receipt of recompense for granting a
divorce, thus preventing extortion and blackmail which is often associated
with the refusal of the husband to grant a divorce.
This means that I would like to influence decision makers to consider
changing Jewish law (halakha) to forbid battering in an unambiguous way. I
claim along with others that the rabbis have created a hillul hashem (a
desecration of God's name) because of the way they treat agunot. Therefore,
at the end of my book, after discussing all the possible solutions to alleviate
the difficulties inherent in Jewish divorce, I propose a takkanah (a halakhic
amendment) as a model to be formulated by religious leaders which could
alleviate the serious problems of trapped women and redress the power
imbalance found in traditional Jewish marriages.

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-368-
CHAPTER THIRTY: JEWISH SOURCES AND TRAFFICKING IN
490
WOMEN

Let us make human beings in our image, after our likeness. . . So

God created the human beings in [the divine] image, creating [them] in
491
the image of God, creating them male and female (Genesis 1:26-27).
May the One who blessed our ancestors, who brought us out of the land
of Egypt and freed us from being at home in slavery, bless and heal those
who are now suffering in slavery and bring them on the path to freedom,
beautiful, bountiful, and expansive. May Adonai give them strength, courage,
and faith in order that they may live, and may Adonai give us strength,
courage and faith to pursue justice for the sake of the freedom of all
humanity. May no one again know the shame and humiliation of slavery and
may we – all of us – be able to serve G-d as we were created – as free men,
492
women, and children. And let us say: Amen.

INTRODUCTION
Trafficking in humans is inherently immoral. Trafficking violates the basic
moral mandate of viewing human beings as an end and never as a means. The
primary moral transgression of trafficking is that human freedom and respect
for personhood are trampled on and abused. Sexual trafficking in women
intersects with a wide range of activities including prostitution, slavery,
women captured in war, almost all ending in the rape of women. One can
argue that it evolves from normative cultural interactions such as arranged
marriage, withholding of divorce, sexual harassment, and inequality in the
workplace. It exists in any society in which there are undeserved and
unearned privilege allotted to those (usually males) in power. These
arrangements are possible because of the power invested in men by society
to control women’s activities. It is in the interest of patriarchal societies to

490
“Jewish Sources and Trafficking in Women,” in Global Perspectives on
Prostitution and Sex Trafficking: Africa, Asia, Middle East, and Oceania
edited by Rochelle L. Dalla, Lynda M. Baker, John DeFrain and Celia
Williamson (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2011): 183-202.
491
This translation of the Hebrew is from Tamara Cohn Eskenazi and Andrea L.
Weiss, eds., The Torah: A Women’s Commentary (New York: URJ Press and
Women of Reform Judaism, 2008), 7-8.
492.
This prayer “Misheberach for Victims of Slavery” was written by Rabbi Joshua
Boettiger for the organization, Rabbis for Human Rights-North America (August,
2009); see their website: http://www.rhr-na.org/kvod_habriot/home
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collude in controlling women’s movements. A society that facilitates the
view that woman is other and has less personhood than man, is engaged in
the activity of “pimping” and enslaving its women folk. The dynamic is so
powerful that it can even leach out to poison women who in turn become
traffickers themselves.
The Torah includes many laws which place limits on the ability of
the powerful to trample on the freedoms of individuals. The laws reveal an
awareness of the danger of using humans as a commodity and place limits on
abuse rather than totally abolishing it. In rabbinic literature this approach
continues. In this essay we will follow selected Jewish texts and history about
prostitution, slavery, women captured in war, pimping, white slavery and
ransom of captives to see what lessons they teach us about trafficking in
women.
To demonstrate the complexities of Jewish sources vis-à-vis
problematic texts about prostitution and the frequenting of prostitutes by
Jewish men, I bring the following example from the Talmud:
R. Abbahu said on R. Hanina's authority: Better that a man
secretly transgresses and not publicly profane God's name so that no
one learns from his actions.
R. Il'ai the Elder said: If a man sees that his [evil] inclination [yetzer
or urge] overwhelms him, he should go to a place where he is
unknown, wear black clothing and cover himself with black [perhaps
to subdue his lust], and do what his heart desires, so that he does not
publicly profane God's name.
R. Hananel interpreted this phrase thus: God forbid should we
understand that he is permitted to do that which is forbidden. Our sages
were against acting out urges and hoped that if the man went to the
493
trouble of going far away, he would be deterred from transgressing.
Rabbi Hananel interprets Rabbi Il’aii suggestion as a preventive measure
and not as permission. However, this text has been understood by many to
imply that using commercial sex services, although not desirable, is
preferable to masturbation and the wasting of seed and that, if one must, one
should go where one is not known. Yet it is clear that attitudes towards this
famous text, as well as to prostitution and trafficking vary, depending on time
494
and place.
493
. B. Kiddushin 40a and B. Hagiga 16a; (B = Babylonian Talmud; J = Jerusalem
Talmud; see below for more about Talmud) Reproduced in Sefer Orhot Tzadikim
Sha’ar Hateshuvah, Bar Ilan Responsa.
494.
See the discussion about this text in the entry on hilul hashem, the defamation of
God’s name in the Encyclopedia Talmudit volume 15 (Hebrew).
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 This introductory text hopefully illustrates that among Jewish
commentators, and even among the texts themselves, throughout many time
periods, there are those who are matter of fact about the deep seated urge for
commercialized sex and those who deny or claim ignorance of the fact that
Jewish women engage in prostitution or that Jewish men use sex services.
The attitude toward Jewish texts is not monolithic.
In this denying mode, Emma Goldman writes that it is absurd to write
that “Jews furnish the largest contingent of willing prey.” She adds that she
resents the statement that “Jewish prostitutes are imported” because Jewish
girls don’t go to strange countries unless they have relatives who bring them
in. “The Jewish girl is not adventurous. Until recent years she had never left
home, not even so far as the next village or town. . ..” Thus she argues that it
is unbelievable that “Jewish girls would leave their parents or families, travel
thousands of miles to strange lands”, because of the promises of white
slavers. Her proof is to go to the “steamers and see for yourself if these girls
do not come either with their parents, brothers, aunts, or other kinsfolk.” At
least she is willing to say that there are some Jewish girls who are imported
495
for prostitution, but these are exceptions.
Most sources condemn trafficking in women; there are those who
would place the blame on the poor character of the “fallen woman” and the
moral fabric of society while pointing to adverse economic conditions as its
root cause. There are also those who introduce an ethnic or cultural twist and
are lax about Jewish men frequenting non-Jewish prostitutes.
There are many approaches to studying “difficult” Jewish texts and
texts written by Jewish people. One way is to deny their existence; another is
to engage in an apologetic mode, a third is to accept their reality and to move
496
on from there. There are other models as well, such as a confessional
approach, which is similar to apologetics, deconstruction and then
497
reconstruction.

495.
Emma Goldman’s Anarchism and Other Essays. Second Revised Edition. (New
York & London: Mother Earth Publishing Association, 1911), 183-200. On-line at
http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/goldman/aando/traffic.html
496
. In my book, Silence is Deadly: Judaism Confronts Wifebeating (Northvale, NJ:
Jason Aronson: 1998) I divided rabbinical Responsa towards the permissibility of
wifebeating into the categories of denial, apologetics, acceptance, rejection and
evasion.
497.
Mayer. I. Gruber writes that “Jewish scholarship on Rabbinic literature,
especially with respect to the role of women…is clearly confessional. It seeks to
understand, to deconstruct, and ultimately to reconstruct a living religious
tradition…. ““The Status of Women in Ancient Judaism,” in Judaism in Late
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 So it should not be surprising that most laypeople and even involved
social reformers such as Emma Goldman found it difficult to acknowledge
that Jewish women were purposely brought across borders to work in
prostitution or that Jewish men were involved in trafficking of women for the
purposes of prostitution. This practice of closing one’s eyes to a social
phenomenon with distressing overtones created a smokescreen of denial that
prevented the establishment of an effective response to the trafficking of
women.
Another way of avoiding responsibility is via language. Jennie Rubie in
the “Grammar of Male Violence,” writes how
[o]ur use of language in discussing violence works to disguise to the
point of invisibility the perpetrators of most of the violence done in the
world. One especially egregious and pervasive misuse of language is
the focus on women as the victims and not on men as perpetrators.
Crime reports are written in the passive voice, with no mention of the
perpetrator. The result is that the gender of the victim is clearly stated
but the gender of the perpetrator is completely hidden: “A woman was
raped” rather than “A man raped a woman” or “A man raped someone”
498
or even “An unknown male assailant raped a person…” [italics
mine]
If we wish to examine Jewish texts for responsible action we might note
that the gender of the perpetrator is operative and in the active voice, in the
biblical text about the raped captive woman (see discussion below), where it
clearly states, “when you take the field against your enemies, and the Lord
your God delivers them into your power and you take some of them captive.
. . .” (Deut 21:10-14). The repetition of YOU 10 times in this passage makes
clear that the perpetrator is not absolved of his crime. Thus this text does not
deny the rape or minimize its import in any way.
Deconstruction is a form of cultural criticism that breaks down texts
in order to expose the writer’s agenda. The authors of Judaic texts are not
always aware of their agendas and the process of deconstructing these texts
may alienate and confuse the post-modernist reader about her tradition. After
a modern reader loyal to her tradition has deconstructed, one can begin to
reconstruct, that is to integrate between traditional and modern values. We
try not to throw out the baby (tradition) with the dirty (deconstructed) bath
water. Hannah Kehat suggests that this can

Antiquity, Volume Two, Jacob Neussner and Alan J Avery Peck,, eds., . (Leiden:
Brill, 1999), 173.
498.
Jenni Rubie, “The Grammar of Male Violence,” Off Our Backs (September-
October 2004): 26.
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 create genuine dialogue with the world of external values, in contrast
to the apologetic reaction that, seeing the mitzvot [commandments]
and Jewish faith as perfect and all-encompassing, devotes all its efforts
to defending them. The reconstructive approach displays a positive
attitude towards the culture and wisdom outside of the realm of Torah,
and works from the assumption that the Torah and entire Jewish
499
tradition were created within a historical context.
In this reconstructive approach we might want to look at the
Shulkhan Arukh, which is the legal code compiled by the great Sephardic
rabbi Joseph Caro in the mid 1500s and still regarded as a standard legal code
of Judaism. Rabbi Elliot N. Dorff summarizes this approach as follows:
… [I]n the hierarchy of social needs, one must feed the hungry before
one clothes the naked [since starvation is taken to be a more direct
threat to the person’s life than exposure]. If a man and a woman came
to ask for food, we [Jews acting in accordance with Jewish law] put
the woman before the man [because the man can beg with less danger
to himself]; similarly, if a man and a woman came to ask for clothing,
and similarly, if a male orphan and a female orphan came to ask for
funds to be married, we put the woman before the man. Redeeming
captives takes precedence over sustaining the poor and clothing them
[since the captive’s life is always in direct and immediate danger], and
there is no commandment more important than redeeming captives. .
.. Every moment that one delays redeeming captives where it is
500
possible to do so quickly, one is like a person who sheds blood.
In order to reconstruct, it is useful to view the modern day trafficking of
women through the lens of a human rights approach derived from Jewish

499.
This is the suggested approach of the Orthodox feminist, Hannah Kehat, in her
article, “Beyond apologetics: Orthodox feminism in the 21st century,”
http://www.hartman.org.il/Havruta_View_Eng.asp?Article_Id=174 . Another
Orthodox feminist is Tova Hartman, who in Feminism Encounters Traditional
Judaism (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2007) refers to three similar
models for approaching Jewish texts and traditions. These approaches are
reaffirmation, reinterpretation/revisionist, and rejection. What she calls the
reinterpretation/revisionist approach, accepts the traditional texts, but challenges
“its adherents to be in a constant state of engaging and reengaging with the
tradition texts” (43). I would probably locate myself in this approach, which is one
of re-integration.
500.
Elliot N. Dorff, “Why We Must Support Universal Health Care,”
http://www.jewishjournal.com/
cover_story/article/why_we_must_support_universal_health_care_20090826/
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texts and to determine whether these texts can inform us in our response to
this plague. But first we must acknowledge our texts, i.e. deconstruct them,
unpleasant as some may be, in order to determine if there might be some texts
in our tradition that can lead to abusive interpretations. Only after that can
we reconstruct, re-interpret or revise.

BIBLICAL ORIGINS
The Zonah
The major reference to a woman in the bible who prostitutes herself is in
Genesis 38. Tamar, Judah’s daughter-in-law disguises herself so that her
father-in-law will meet her on the road and deposit his seed in her. Tamar
was briefly married to Judah’s two sons who died and the third brother did
not want to marry her. When Judah met the disguised Tamar he thought she
was a zonah (harlot) or a kedeisha (prostitute). In the context of this story,
Tamar is usually praised for her act of seeking out the seed of Judah in order
to carry out the family lineage. In fact, Perez, one of Tamar’s children is listed
501
as the direct ancestor of David at the end of the Book of Ruth.
In Genesis 34, there is a story about the rape of Dinah. In this tale, the
brothers avenge their sister’s abduction and rape by slaughtering all the
newly circumcised males in the city of Shechem. They then seized the cattle,
“children, and their wives, all that was in the houses, as captive and booty”
(Genesis 34:29). Since the people of Shechem had willingly circumcised
themselves and welcomed the intermarriage of Dinah and the prince of
Shechem, the text is in clear violation of the injunction in Deuteronomy not
to lay siege to a town that responds peaceably to offers of peace:
When you approach a town to attack it, you shall offer it terms of
peace. If it responds peaceably and lets you in, all the people present
there shall serve you at forced labor. If it does not surrender to you,
but would join battle with you, you shall lay siege to it; and when the
LORD your God delivers it into your hand, you shall put all its males
to the sword. You may, however, take as your booty the women, the
children, the livestock, and everything in the town—all its spoil—and
enjoy the use of the spoil of your enemy, which the LORD your God
gives you (Deut. 20: 10-14).
Her brothers, Simeon and Levi, famously answer to their father
Jacob’s complaint and future generations, as justification for the trouble they
have brought upon him, “Should our sister be treated like a whore [Hebrew

“This is the line of Perez: Perez begot Hezron, Hezron begot Ram, Ram begot
501.

Amminadab, Amminadab begot Nahshon, Nahshon begot Salmon, Salmon begot

Boaz, Boaz begot Obed, Obed begot Jesse, and Jesse begot David” (Ruth 4:17-22).
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zonah]?” (Genesis 34:31) Although this is possibly the first documented
example of both an honor killing and trafficking in women and children, it
can also be read as a polemic against such violence and zealotry if we look
at Jacob’s last speech before he dies when he dissociates himself from this
action: “Let not my person be included in [Simon and Levi’s] council; Let
not my being be counted in their assembly” (Genesis 49:6). Of course one
can also argue that this distancing from his sons and not taking responsibility
502
for their action are examples of denial and apologetics.
The word “zonah” comes from the root “zun” meaning provide or
nourish as in the word “tezuna” or nutrition. It is usually translated as
“prostitute” or “harlot,” i.e., a provider of sexual services. When it is used in
connection with Rahab in the Book of Judges, it is translated “innkeeper” i.e.,
a provider of board and lodging who literally “feeds” her visitors. By
contending that Rahab was not a prostitute at all but an innkeeper,
generations of teachers have been able to clean up the story. Later, the word
is used for those who “go astray” either after false gods as well as after
random sexual partners. Zenut thus means adultery, actions of a dubious
moral nature as well as prostitution. A zonah can be an adulterer or any
woman of loose morals. Terms connected with harlotry are used figuratively
to characterize unfaithfulness toward the Lord. God is depicted as a powerful
male and the people are depicted as female sinners. For example, the prophet
Nahum writes:
Because of the countless harlotries of the harlot, the winsome mistress
of sorcery, who ensnared nations with her harlotries and peoples with
her sorcery, I am going to deal with you—declares the Lord of Hosts.
I will lift up your skirts over your face and display your nakedness to
the nations and your shame to kingdoms (Nahum 3:4-5).
This derogatory use of the word harlot or prostitute as someone of loose
morals who has strayed from righteousness, dates back to Biblical times and
is still in common use today. The consequences of prostitution in the Bible
are dire:
“Do not degrade your daughter and make her a harlot, lest the land fall
into harlotry and the land be filled with depravity” (Lev. 19:29).
Whoever hands his unmarried daughter (to a man) not for the purposes
of matrimony,” as well as the woman who delivers herself not for the
purposes of matrimony, could lead to the whole world being filled with
mamzerim [pl. bastards] since from his consorting with many women

502
. For more about Dinah, see Naomi Graetz, "Dinah the Daughter", in A Feminist
Companion to Genesis, Athalya Brenner, Editor (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic
Press, 1993), 306-317.
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 and not knowing with whom, or if she has had intercourse with many
men and does not know with whom—he could marry his own
503
daughter, or marry her to his son.
The state of zenut contaminates and for this reason it is written that
priests cannot marry harlots:
Priests shall not marry a woman defiled by harlotry, nor shall they
marry one divorced from her husband. For they are holy to their God
and you must treat them as holy, since they offer the food of your God;
they shall be holy to you, for I the Lord who sanctify you am holy
(Lev. 21:7-15).
Furthermore, a woman who converts to Judaism is considered a
putative zonah: i.e., it is assumed that she was not a virgin (before converting)
and has had previous sexual relationships. That is why a convert, like a
divorcee or harlot, cannot marry a priest. In general, even though zenut
describes depraved behavior for both men and women, it is usually the
woman who is the contaminator or the contaminated. Thus the onus is on the
woman and the role of the man in creating the moral quandary is often
ignored.
The Slave and Captive
There is differential treatment of slaves in the Bible based on their religious
or cultural origin. This attitude toward Jewish and non-Jewish slaves appears
in Leviticus 25:
If your kinsman under you continues in straits and must give himself
over to you, do not subject him to the treatment of a slave. He shall
remain with you as a hired or bound laborer; he shall serve with you
only until the jubilee year. Then he and his children with him shall be
free of your authority; he shall go back to his family and return to his
ancestral holding— . For they are My servants, whom I freed from the
land of Egypt; they may not give themselves over into servitude. You
shall not rule over him ruthlessly; you shall fear your God (Lev. 25:39-
43).
It is clear that an Israelite has to be treated as one of God’s people
who having been released from slavery in ancient times—just as the owner
has—has human rights and must never be permanently reduced to slavery.
However, it is a different picture for non-Israelites, as we see in the
continuation of Leviticus 25:
Such male and female slaves as you may have—it is from the nations
round about you that you may acquire male and female slaves. You

Mamzer; Sifra, Kedoshim 7, 1–5. See entry on “Prostitution” in Encyclopaedia

503.

Judaica.
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 may also buy them from among the children of foreigners’ resident
among you, or from their families that are among you, whom they
begot in your land. These shall become your property; you may keep
them as a possession for your children after you, for them to inherit as
property for all time. Such you may treat as slaves (Lev. 25:44-46a).
It is reiterated that Israelites are not to be treated in the same way as non-
Israelites: “But as for your Israelite kinsmen, no one shall rule ruthlessly over
the other” (Leviticus 25:46b). Thus one might argue based on these sources
that “the other” or non-Jew can be treated in a less humane fashion than the
Jew. Mention of the differential treatment of Israelite and foreign slaves
exists, yet discussion of this issue is usually sidestepped by modern day
504
liberal commentators.
In the case of the Eshet yefat toar (the pretty captive woman) in
Deuteronomy 21, we see a more nuanced approach to the “other”:
When you take the field against your enemies, and the Lord your God
delivers them into your power and you take some of them captive, and
you see among the captives a beautiful woman and you desire her and
would take her to wife, you shall bring her into your house, and she
shall trim her hair, pare her nails, and discard her captive’s garb. She
shall spend a month’s time in your house lamenting her father and
mother; after that you may come to her and possess her, and she shall
be your wife. Then, should you no longer want her, you must release
her outright. You must not sell her for money: since you had your will
of her, you must not enslave her (Deut. 21:10-14).
Given that “the widespread and systematic rape of girls in war zones is
increasingly a characteristic of conflict in many parts of the world. . . .and
that ‘such violations are often perpetrated in a rule of law vacuum as a result
of conflict, and there often exists a prevailing culture of impunity for such

504.
Thus Rabbi Gordon Tucker in his study guide “The Dignity of Work and the
Indignity of Slavery,” http://www.rhr-na.org/resource/2008-conference-transcript-
dignity-of-work-and-indignity which appears on the website of the organization,
Rabbis for Human Rights North America (August, 2009) does not discuss this issue
at all, even though these questions are raised in the source sheet with questions:
“The Bible clearly supports some institutions of slavery, including differentiating
between Jews and non-Jews. Can we place those texts in the contexts of their
times? Would Judaism today be seen to support slavery? What Jewish values can
you think of that might lead us to fight slavery?” [p. 3 of the text with questions.]
The overall problem of treatment of Jews vs. treatment of non-Jews is an
underlying theme in most Jewish social justice work.
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 505
crimes,’” it would seem that in contrast, Deuteronomy 21:10–14 presents
a law that regulates rape on the battlefield. Michael Walzer in his book, Just
and Unjust Wars, positively assessed that it was “the first legislation in
506
human history to protect women prisoners of war.” But one can also view
it as condoning rape, for the soldier is free to “desire” and “take” an enemy
woman in combat.
Yet the law surrounding the beautiful captive woman forces the warrior
to be mindfully aware of his responsibility for his action. The soldier, who
returns home with an enemy woman as booty, cannot do with her as he
would. He has to allow her a mourning period in his home in order to see her
at her physical worst. During this time period she is allowed to mourn her
new status and lament the loss of her mother and father. The bible stresses
that one cannot leave behavior in war on the battlefield; it must be taken
“home.” Thus, even for the captive woman there is ordained behavior, and if
for some reason the soldier does not want her after marriage, she cannot be
treated as a slave, but must be released as a free person.
On the other hand, the rabbis routinely refer to the women of the nations
as impure which allows them to regard the gentile woman not as victim but
as evil temptress. Thus, in the commentary on “she removed her captive’s
garb,” the rabbis teach us that “she transfers her beautiful clothing and puts
on widow’s garb, for the nations are cursed and their daughters decorate
themselves during wartime in order to tempt others into whoring after
507
them.” Clearly there is ambivalence in the attitude toward the law of the
captive beautiful woman.
The law of the beautiful captive was certainly in force, according to the
Talmudic rabbis, at the time of the Kingdom of Israel. The sages were
uncomfortable with certain aspects of this law. Most sources take a middle
of the road position, seeing cohabitation with the beautiful captive during war
as malfeasance. But since it is included in the list of commandments it has

505
. UN News Service “Sexual violence against children now key feature of armed
conflict – UN report” (4 September 2009) quote is by Radhika Coomaraswamy, the
Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict,
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=31959&Cr=&Cr1
506
. Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars (New York: Basic Books, 1977). This is
quoted by James A Diamond, in The Deuteronomic ‘pretty woman’ law:
prefiguring feminism and Freud in Nahmanides,” Jewish Social Studies (January
01, 2008)
http://www.accessmylibrary.com/article-1G1-181815369/deuteronomic-pretty-
woman-law.html
507.
Midrash Tanaim on Deuteronomy 21.
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the potential to prevent more wrongs. In the Talmud and other texts we learn
about many restrictions on having sex with the beautiful captive in the Torah
verses. Their intent is to eliminate completely the permission to take the
508
beautiful woman captive, or at least to minimize its negative consequences.
Pimping
There are several cases of what we could refer to today as pimping, or
procuring a woman for the purpose of monetary or other gain, in biblical
texts. Most of our sources about trafficking in women show that it thrives
during economic necessity and that women do not choose this “profession.”
Although it has been said many times that prostitution, is ‘the oldest
profession’, it has been pointed out many times that it is pimping, not
509
prostitution, which is the ‘profession’.
Abraham and Lot
One can argue that it begins in Genesis 12 with Abraham when he went down
to Egypt during a famine.
As he was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai, “I know what
a beautiful woman you are. If the Egyptians see you, and think, ‘She
is his wife,’ they will kill me and let you live. Please say that you are
my sister, that it may go well with me because of you, and that I may
remain alive thanks to you. When Abram entered Egypt, the Egyptians
saw how very beautiful the woman was. Pharaoh’s courtiers saw her
and praised her to Pharaoh, and the woman was taken into Pharaoh’s
palace. And because of her, it went well with Abram; he acquired
sheep, oxen, asses, male and female slaves, she-asses, and camels
(Genesis 12:10-16).
This cavalier attitude to the use of one’s women folk continues in
Genesis 19 with Abraham’s nephew Lot in the town of Sodom, when the
messengers come to rescue him from impending doom.
The messengers had not yet lain down, when the townspeople, the men
of Sodom, young and old—all the people to the last man—gathered
about the house. And they shouted to Lot and said to him, “Where are
the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, that we may
be intimate with them.” So Lot went out to them to the entrance, shut
the door behind him, and said, “I beg you, my friends, do not commit
such a wrong. Look, I have two daughters who have not known a man.
508.
B. Kiddushin 22a
509
. D.A. Clarke, "Prostitution for Everyone: Feminism, Globalisation, and the 'Sex'
Industry" in Not For Sale – Feminists Resisting Prostitution and Pornography,
Christine Stark and Rebecca Whisnant,, eds., . (Melbourne, Spinifex Press, 2004),
156.
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 Let me bring them out to you, and you may do to them as you please;
but do not do anything to these men, since they have come under the
shelter of my roof” (Genesis 19:4-8).
Has Lot modeled his behavior on his uncle’s, for they both regard their
women folk as property and do not hesitate to offer their bodies in exchange
for their own safety? Obviously neither Abraham nor Lot is a pimp. In other
contexts, they clearly respect their womenfolk. Lot protects his two
remaining daughters after Sodom is destroyed and Abraham is told by God
to listen to Sarah when she complains about Hagar’s attitude to her. Yet the
prevailing ambience is that anything a man wants to do with or to his
wife/slave/child/property is allowed because she is his. Thus the message in
these patriarchal societies is that females are to be used and subjugated by
their owners.
Book of Ruth
It is not only the man who uses his child for monetary gain. One can argue
that Naomi used her daughter-in-law Ruth when she sent her off to Boaz to
redeem her land, in Chapter 3 of the Book of Ruth.
Naomi, her mother-in-law, said to her, “Daughter, I must seek a home
for you, where you may be happy. Now there is our kinsman Boaz,
whose girls you were close to. He will be winnowing barley on the
threshing floor tonight. So bathe, anoint yourself, dress up, and go
down to the threshing floor. But do not disclose yourself to the man
until he has finished eating and drinking. When he lies down, note the
place where he lies down, and go over and uncover his feet and lie
down.”
Ruth does this. When he wakes up he gives her a present and she goes
back to her mother-in-law, who asked,
“How is it with you, daughter?” She told her all that the man had done
for her; and she added, “He gave me these six measures of barley,
saying to me, ‘Do not go back to your mother-in-law empty-handed.’
And Naomi said, “Stay here, daughter, till you learn how the matter
turns out. For the man will not rest, but will settle the matter today”
(Ruth 3:16-18).
What is of passing interest is that like with the story of Tamar, Ruth’s
son becomes the ancestor of King David. Thus the objectification of women
to further a cause gets its justification in both of these stories.
Scroll of Esther
Our last case of pimping is found in the Scroll (Megillah) of Esther. Vashti
has been deposed and King Ahasuerus misses having a wife. His servants
offer to procure for him women to service his needs:

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 2) The king’s servants who attended him said, “Let beautiful young
virgins be sought out for Your Majesty. 3) Let Your Majesty appoint
officers in every province of your realm to assemble all the beautiful
young virgins at the fortress Shushan. . . .4) And let the maiden who
pleases Your Majesty be queen instead of Vashti.” . . . .8) When the
king’s order and edict was proclaimed, and when many girls were
assembled in the fortress Shushan under the supervision of Hegai,
Esther too was taken into the king’s palace. . .. 12) When each girl’s
turn came to go to King Ahasuerus at the end of the twelve months’
treatment prescribed for women. . .. 14) She would go in the evening
and leave in the morning for a second harem in charge of Shaashgaz,
the king’s eunuch, guardian of the concubines. She would not go again
to the king unless the king wanted her, when she would be summoned
by name. 15) When the turn came for Esther. . .. [she] won the
admiration of all who saw her (Esther 2:1-15).
The women are gathered up from all over the king’s realm, brought to
him for his inspection and use and after one night with him they are sent back
to the harem as used goods, deprived of their freedom, presumably
510
unavailable to other men. Esther as the chosen one must have had forced
sex with the king on a regular basis. Later on when her people are threatened
with extermination, her Uncle Mordecai tells her to go to the king, even
though she does not want to, in order to save her people. Under his moral
pressure, she offers to go to the king, “though it is contrary to the law.” Rashi
in his commentary on Esther 4:16, commenting on the words: “contrary to
the law” writes that the midrash understands that “contrary to the law” means
that until now, Esther was coerced to have intercourse with him, but now she
will do so of her own free will. It is clear that Rashi does not want to turn
Esther’s Uncle Mordecai into a pimp who presses her into unwanted
511
intercourse.
This raises the age old question: is trafficking, which is a form of sexual
slavery worse than “sex work” which is voluntary prostitution? It is usually
argued that the distinction between the two has to do with free will and that
though conditions are not great; they are not in the same category as slavery.
Yet as was said at the start of this section, it is the pimps (and organized
crime) that have the most to gain from both trafficking and prostitution and
510.
Feminists have recently looked at this story from the perspective of trafficking,
in particular Bonna Haberman, who analyzes Esther’s declaration to the Jewish
people to fast on her behalf in Chapter 4:16 (see footnote 38 below).
511
. Rashi, the acronym of Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaki (1040-1105), is the author of a
commentary on the Hebrew Bible.
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who are involved in using women’s bodies for their own gain. Donna Hughes
argues against “those who claimed that prostitution was an important
economic option for women in poverty, and advancing the rights of ‘sex
workers’ was the way to combat the trafficking of women.” She points out
that legalizing and unionizing prostitution does not "empower" victims of
512
trafficking, nor does it rescue them. It would seem that Jewish tradition
with its uncompromising attitude toward prostitutes would concur with this
approach.
THE RABBINIC PERIOD
Judaism is based on the doctrine that there are two sacred Torahs, the Written
513
Torah (the Tanakh ) and the Oral Torah (the traditions, including the
rabbinic ones), out of which halakha, or Jewish law develops. Eventually the
Oral Torah, which was based on human study of the sacred texts combined
with practices that had flourished in Jewish society, was written down and
became part of Jewish Sacred literature. The Oral Torah was based on
learning and discussion among sages, rabbis who devoted their life to study
and clarification of the Written Torah. The earliest codifications and
interpretations of halakha were the Mishnah (c. 200 C.E.) and the Talmud
(Jerusalem c. 400 C.E. and Babylonian c. 500 C.E.) which preserve minority
514
as well as majority opinions.
The sages of the Talmud did not in general endorse sexual intercourse
outside the confines of marriage. Yet, it is the Jewish women working in
prostitution who are viewed more negatively rather than the men who buy
their services. The rabbis were aware that the Romans had “commercialized”
sex services – putting them in marketplaces and special districts. One of the
issues discussed in the Talmud was in regard to the prostitute of the Bible,
both concerning her hire and her marriage to a priest. Some were of the

512
. Kathryn Jean Lopez, “The New Abolitionist Movement.” An interview with
Donna M. Hughes, in the National Magazine Review Online January 26, 2006.
http://www.nationalreview.com/interrogatory/hughes200601260824.asp
513.
The terms, Hebrew Bible, Old Testament, Tanakh, Torah (which can either be
the Five Books of Moses (Pentateuch) or the entirety of “Teachings”), Scriptures
are often interchangeable terms. Tanakh, is a specific term that includes the Five
Books of Moses [Torah], The Prophets [Nevi'im] and the Writings [Ketuvim])
514.
Starting with the eighth century, there are official queries directed to a scholar
to clarify questions of Jewish law. The written questions and written answers are
the Responsum (pl. responsa) [In Hebrew she-aylot u-teshuvot, lit., questions and
answers]. The Responsum are collection of legal opinions written by rabbis in
response to questions about actual cases. For examples, see footnotes 32 and 34
below.
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opinion that these references apply only to a professional prostitute, but there
were also other opinions. It is clear that the term “intercourse of prostitution”
(be’ilat zenut) was applied to any intercourse not expressly for the purpose
of marriage and even to a marriage not celebrated in accordance with Jewish
515
law. Although, in general, the sages condemned prostitution, an unmarried
woman who engages in prostitution is allowed to keep her pay. The rabbis
condemned the prostitute and her business, but also condemned
licentiousness in general. Tal Ilan summarizes the ambiguities of Talmudic
opinions on this issue very well:
Yet in their legal discussions, the rabbis were unsure how exactly to
define a prostitute. . .[The] definitions of a prostitute have nothing to
do with a woman who has sexual relations for profit; rather, the
prostitute is the woman who has sexual relations forbidden by Jewish
law. . .the rabbis were aware of the definition of ‘prostitute’ as a
professional woman who offered sexual services, but some preferred
to broaden the definition. . .These rather broad definitions turn
prostitution from a specific profession into an abstract concept which
516
includes all sexual behavior deviating from societal norms.”
Prisoners
Alyssa Gray, writing about “Halakhic Sources on Human Trafficking” refers
to Talmudic stories about the “sexual servitude” of captured women in Rome
after the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE. She emphasizes that the
Talmud’s discussion of the redemption of captives was “rooted in a real
awareness of the human tragedy involved.” She sketches out the sources that
pertain to the prohibition against “stealing human beings,” in the bible and
then the Talmudic injunction to redeem captives. In her discourse she also
relates to the “biblical injunction not to stand idly by one’s brother’s blood.”
There is a rabbinic tradition that interprets Exodus 20:13, the Eighth
517
Commandment, as stealing human beings. Maimonides writes: “Whoever
steals a human soul transgresses a negative commandment, as it is said
(Exodus 20:13), ‘Do not steal.’ This verse which is said in the ‘Ten Words’
518
is a warning to the one (who would) steal living souls.” He adds that

515.
Jerusalem Talmud Gittin 7:448d.
516.
Tal Ilan, Jewish Women in Greco-Roman Palestine: An Inquiry Into Image and
Status (Tübingen, Germany: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1995), 219.
517.
Mekhilta de-R. Yishmael, Yitro 8, Mishpatim 5.
518.
Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Geneivah 9:1.
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redeeming captives is more important then supporting the poor, because
519
captives are in danger of their lives.
Gray points out in her uses of these sources that Maimonides continues
to rule that one who “hides his eyes” from the redemption of another violates
a number of biblical prohibitions and fails to fulfill other biblical commands.
Maimonides uses the following source from Deuteronomy to make the point:
If, however, there is a needy person among you, one of your kinsmen
in any of your settlements in the land that the Lord your God is giving
you, do not harden your heart and shut your hand against your needy
kinsman. Rather, you must open your hand and lend him sufficient for
whatever he needs. Beware lest you harbor the base thought, “The
seventh year, the year of remission, is approaching,” so that if you are
mean to your needy kinsman and give him nothing, he will cry out to
the Lord against you, and you will incur guilt. Give to him readily and
have no regrets when you do so, for in return the Lord your God will
bless you in all your efforts and in all your undertakings. For there will
never cease to be needy ones in your land, which is why I command
you: open your hand to the poor and needy kinsman in your land (Deut.
15:7-11).
He also quotes from the book of Leviticus, using the following
quotations: “Do not stand idly by your brother’s blood” (Lev. 19:16); “He
shall not rule ruthlessly over him in your sight” (Lev. 25:53); and “Love your
fellow as yourself” (Lev. 19:18). He also insists that the one who “hides his
520
eyes” from redeeming captives violates “many (other verses) like these.”
Gray points out that later Jewish law authorities, following Maimonides
lead, continued to stress the overriding importance of redeeming captives.
She cites the 16th century Greek Jewish scholar Rabbi Binyamin b.
Matityahu Ze’ev who writes:
A donation for redeeming captives is preferable to any tsedakah
[charity] that is given. For the captive stands in danger of sword,
hunger, and nakedness, and the one who redeems him saves him from
them all, which is not the case with one who supports a poor person
521
[who is living] in the house.
519.
Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Matanot Aniyyim 8:10.
520
. He also uses Proverbs 24: 10-12, see end of paper for full quote. I thank Alyssa
Gray, for sharing with me her unpublished paper,” Halakhic Sources on Human
Trafficking,” given at the 2005 Backman Symposium at Hebrew Union College-
Jewish Institute of Religion, NY, on the topic of “Freeing the Captives: The Jewish
Response to Human Trafficking” (December 2005).
521.
Responsum #230 of Binyamin Ze’ev as cited in Gray, 5.
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 Before we move on to the modern period we should remind ourselves
that the redemption of captives and the concern for prostitutes are in the most
part concern for Jewish captives and prostitutes. Gray makes this clear when
she writes:
To be clear, I am not claiming that these legal authorities held the
egalitarian view that redeeming non-Jewish captives was religiously
the equivalent of redeeming Jewish captives. What I am saying is that
these sources tell us in general of the supreme value Jewish authorities
placed on this mitzvah [commandment]; consistent with a liberal
Jewish hermeneutic, it is appropriate to mine these sources for
522
guidance for ourselves today.
One of the characteristics of modernity is the concern for the universal
and a movement away from the parochial. But in the nineteenth and early
twentieth century, the discourse about prostitution, white slavery, and
pimping centers on Jews.
THE MODERN PERIOD
By the nineteenth century there is clear recognition that prostitution abounds
and that there are Jews involved in the pimping of women. Our sources are
matter of fact about this. Thus, in a nineteenth century source which discusses
honors in the synagogue, there is a question of whether a man of priestly
descent, the Cohen, can get an honor if he engages in the trade. It is clear that
there is a difference between the use of Jewish women as prostitutes and that
of non-Jewish women:
Question: What happens when there is only one Cohen in town and he
happens to be a Shabbat violator, can he be called up to the Torah?
And what happens if in this small town there is only one Levi and he
523
is a pimp, can he be called up to the Torah for an aliyah?
Rabbi Joseph qualifies the question: He starts by saying that it wasn’t
stated if this is a pimp who practices exclusively among non-Jews or among
Jews as well. “I will relate to both cases,” he writes. In the first case, if the
clientele is non-Jewish the bottom line is that it is possible to honor the pimp.
But in the second case--where Jews are involved--if he brings a non-Jewish
prostitute to Jews or Jewish women to non-Jews, he cannot be called up to
the Torah. Yet despite this discussion, Rabbi Joseph writes at the end of his
legal responsum, that despite the fact that the profession of pimping is

522.
Gray, 3.
523.
The Responsa of Rav Pe`alim (Rabbi Joseph Chaim ben Elijah al-Chakam (b
Baghdad, ca. 1835-1909).
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frowned upon, if it is just alleged that he deals in prostitution with Jews, he
524
can still be honored.
During this same time period when there was much trafficking in
women, Bertha Pappenheim (1859-1936), the European Jewish social
activist, directed protest against white slavery, prostitution, and illegitimacy.
Pappenheim decried the conspiracy of silence of synagogues and rabbis that
allowed proceeds of white slavery to be laundered by contributions to Jewish
institutions. At the Jewish International Conference on the Suppression of the
Traffic in Girls and Women, held in London in 1910, Pappenheim offered a
comprehensive explanation for the problem at hand:
Undoubtedly economic need is a great factor in the question. It appears
to me that spiritual poverty and the decay of the family is yet greater
and infinitely more momentous. But I have observed still other
grounds, educational grounds, queer views of honor and shame, the
525
concept of the inferiority of the female sex.
At this conference the participants voted to remind the leaders of Jewish
communities in Eastern Europe of the problem by mailing them a copy of the
following letter written by rabbis in 1898:
… The sad tidings have come to us that evil men and women go about
in your countries from town to town and village to village and induce
young maidens, by false representations, to leave their native land and
to go, by their advice, to distant countries, telling them that they will
find there good and remunerative situations in business houses. In
some instances, these wicked men add to their iniquity by going
through the form of religious marriage with the girls. They then take
them on board ship to India, Brazil, Argentina or other countries in
South America and then sell them to keepers of houses of evil
526
repute.
This letter was written by the chief rabbi of the British Empire, Dr.
Hermann Adler and was co-signed by the chief rabbis of France, Berlin,
Hamburg, Frankfurt, Vienna and Rome and was addressed to the rabbis and
officers of the towns in Eastern Europe.
Edward Bristow describes how

524.
My paraphrase of this Responsum of Rabbi Joseph.
525.
Edward J. Bristow, Prostitution and Prejudice: The Jewish Fight Against White
Slavery 1870-1939. (New York: Schocken Books, 1982), 102.
526.
Victor A. Mirelman, "The Jewish Community Versus Crime: The Case of
White Slavery in Buenos Aires," Jewish Social Studies, Vol. 46, 2 (Spring, 1984):
148.
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 Procurers from Buenos Aires sometimes brought along the Jewish
marriage contract, the ketubah, which traditionally was part of the
religious betrothal. On these contracts the procurer’s name was already
filled in, along with those of two witnesses. The schemer would then
arrange to meet the daughter of a poor family and explain that there
was no time to lose before getting back to his business across the
ocean. Or, he would claim to be acting on behalf of the eligible groom
527
who was too busy to leave America.
Bristow goes on to describe the stillah chuppah, a clandestine
betrothal in which poor families knew what was going on when they gave
their daughters to these overseas grooms. The assumption was that the
528
daughters would then support them with her earnings from prostitution.
Bristow devotes an entire chapter “The Road to Buenos Aires” to the women
he refers to as the “unclean ones.” They are also known as Polacas or the
Ladies of the Night. Most of the trafficking took place between the 1880s and
the 1930s when Jewish women of European descent came through European
ports as immigrants to Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay and became
prostitutes there. Sandra McGee Deutsch writes how
[s]ometimes they arrived under false pretenses of promises of
marriage, and sometimes, to escape the despair of their lives in Europe.
(Some were already prostitutes in Europe or knew they were destined
for the bordellos of South America). … The Polacas were also
continually shunned, ostracized, and harassed within their own Jewish
communities, even though some of them had been duped into
prostitution or had become prostitutes because they had no other
529
means of support or communal assistance for their sustenance.
According to Victor Mirelman, the Jewish traffickers organized their
own community life, synagogues, burial societies, cultural and social
institutions. They had two main guilds, the largest one comprised of Poles,
while the other guild consisted of Russians and Romanians. They participated
in Jewish ritual ceremonies. The women were almost exclusively Jewish. The
pimps, brothel keepers and prostitutes were referred to as t’meyim (impure
ones) by the rest of Buenos Aires’ Jewry who waged a constant war against
527.
Bristow, 105.
528.
Bristow, 106.
529.
See Sandra McGee Deutsch, "Argentina: Jewish Women." Jewish Women: A
Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia. Jewish Women's Archive.
http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/argentina-jewish-women and Nora. Glickman,
"Raquel Liberman." Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia.
Jewish Women's Archive. http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/liberman-raquel
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them and tried to excommunicate them. Yet these traffickers insisted on
identifying themselves as Jews.
21ST CENTURY JEWISH/RABBINIC RESPONSES
Recently, there has been an interest in Jewish/rabbinic circles of the need to
address trafficking in women, not necessarily among Jewish victims. In 2002,
Bonna Haberman with Mistabra: The Israel-Diaspora Institute for Jewish
Textual Activism at Brandeis University, created an event for the Fast of
Esther. They wrote a 27-page play "Unmasking the Fast of Esther” that
Haberman shared with hundreds of congregations across the world. It weaves
the Scroll of Esther with the Talmud and news articles and uses the day before
Purim, the Fast of Esther, as a time for education and activism concerned
530
with gender and power.
The Jewish Orthodox Feminist Association (JOFA) has an article on its
website by its founder Blu Greenberg. She decries those religious leaders
who are standing by idly and not taking a greater stand to eradicate
531
trafficking, despite the fact that it violates some core principles of Judaism.
The Reform movement had a one day workshop about trafficking in NYC in
532
2005. The Jewish journal Sh’ma devoted an entire issue in 2009 to the
problem of trafficking of women as a growing concern for Jews in the United
533
States and in Israel. Most recently, the organization of the Rabbis for
Human Rights in North America are making this part of their agenda a

530.
Bonna Devora Haberman “Changemaker: An Interview.” Journey (Winter,
2003): 18-20. http://www.jccmanhattan.org/attach/journey/journey-winter2003.pdf
See also, Bonna Devora Haberman, “Unmasking the Fast of Esther,” in, Best
Jewish Writing 2002, Michael Lerner, Editor (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2002):
123-131. See also “Trafficking, Sex Work and Power in Megillat Esther”
http://ajws.org/what_we_do/education/resources/from_the_sources/fts_purim.pdf
531.
Blu Greenberg, "Religious Leadership and Traffic in Women." in Sexual
Trafficking: An International Horror Story, Rita J. Simon, Editor (Washington DC:
Women’s Freedom Network: 2000): 69-76. http://www.jofa.org/pdf/uploaded/946-
CFDK4679.pdf
532.
The 2004 Convention of the Central Conference of American Rabbis adopted a
resolution which condemned human trafficking and urged each of us to engage in
fighting the ongoing tragedy of human slavery. With the co-sponsorship of the
Women’s Rabbinic Network, the topic of 2005 the Backman Symposium at
Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, NY, was “Freeing the
Captives: The Jewish Response to Human Trafficking.”
533
. http://www.shma.com/2008/10/
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 534
well. Most of these organizations are taking a human rights approach to
the problem and moving away from an acceptance of some of the problematic
texts discussed in this chapter. In a sense they have moved on to the phase I
referred to earlier as Reconstruction. In this phase, they are modeling their
approach to this problem based on sources that have the potential to be
interpreted as compassionate and proactive. This approach models itself on
the “Canaanite slave,” the gentile slave of a Jew, who enjoyed better
conditions than other slaves throughout the world. On the Sabbath he did no
work, he had to be released if he were bodily injured by his master, he could
be released if someone paid his worth, his owner was not entitled to sell him
to a gentile (lest he become an idolater), and he could not be turned in even
if he were fleeing abroad from Israel. This is the model used to develop a
more compassionate human rights approach to women who have entered into
the trafficking experience.
What exactly is meant by a human rights approach? I would suggest
that it is the need to shake off the indifference of rabbinic leaders and
lawmakers who have been too lenient up until now regarding trafficked
women possibly because the victims are not Jewish, or because of other more
pressing concerns. Some have been outspoken about demonstrating the
Jewish moral and legal basis for supporting the human rights position.
535
Atzum, which has a Task Force on Human Trafficking, coordinated a
special petition called Pidyon Petition for Rabbis and Cantors of all
denominations in countries throughout the world. It asked all rabbis to
address the problem of selling human bodies. It was dated March, 2007 and
addressed to the former Prime Minister of Israel. It is interesting to compare
selected sentences from this petition with a quotation from the book of
Proverbs, the same passage referred to above by Maimonides:
If you showed yourself slack in time of trouble, wanting in power,
If you refrained from rescuing those taken off to death, those
condemned to slaughter---If you say, “We knew nothing of it,”
Surely, He who fathoms hearts will discern [the truth], He who
watches over your life will know it, And He will pay each man as
he deserves (Proverbs 24: 10-12).
In this mode, the petitioners write:

534.
Rabbis for Human Rights-North America: see their website: http://www.rhr-
na.org/ . In the initial phase of their campaign, RHR-NA is educating the Jewish
community about the problem of modern slavery and human trafficking, and urging
synagogues and individuals to get involved with local anti-trafficking efforts.
535.
Atzum’s Task Force on Human Trafficking works to end sex trafficking to
Israel, which is a major destination for sex slavery. Their site is http://tfht.org/
-389-
 As individuals deeply committed to Israel and the Zionist vision,
we cannot sit idly by while an evil of this proportion permeates
Israel society. For too long, the illegal trade of women has gone
largely unpunished and only half-addressed.
In the third paragraph, there is the following sentence:
The continued presence of human trafficking is an embarrassment to
those who sought to create Israel as a moral and compassionate nation,
and to those who continue to love and defend Israel as a ‘light unto
nations’. It is now time for action; it is time for justice.
Among its pleas is a demand to eradicate trafficking and slavery from
Israel’s borders and to cut off the “supply” of enslaved women by closing its
border with Egypt to trafficking, to close all brothels and “discreet
apartments” known to the police. They do this because of the “dark stain on
Israel’s moral reputation.” It is signed by “The Rabbinic Coalition Against
536
Human Trafficking Slavery in Israel.” With modernity, reconstruction is
in full bloom: The Jewish community is no longer interested in denials and
apologetics. Instead it is taking full responsibility for its role in the
perpetuation of sex trafficking in Israel and around the globe.

536.
http://tfht.org/take-action/pidyon-petition-for-rabbis-and-cantors/
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 537
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE: JUDAISM ON PROSTITUTION

Today, sexual trafficking -- and prostitution in general -- is widely

condemned by Jewish leaders, as it violates the basic moral mandate of
viewing human beings as an end and never as a means. Most traditional
Jewish sources also condemn trafficking and prostitution, although some
place the blame on the poor character of the “fallen woman” and the moral
fabric of society, or point to adverse economic conditions as its root cause.
In addition, some texts seem to apply different standards to Jewish and non-
Jewish women and are tolerant of Jewish men patronizing non-Jewish
prostitutes. Both the narrative and legal parts of the Bible offer mixed
messages when it comes to the sexual use of women. In Genesis, Abraham
essentially pimps his wife to protect himself (Genesis 12:10-20 and 20), and
later, Jacob’s sons respond to their sister Dinah’s rape with a violent act of
vengeance, though their anger may be less out of sympathy for Dinah than
concern that their own honor has been violated (Genesis 34). In Genesis 38,
Judah’s daughter-in-law, Tamar, is praised for disguising herself as a harlot
so that her father-in-law will meet her on the road and deposit his seed in her.
The legal sections of the Bible make it clear that you cannot prostitute your
daughter: “Do not degrade your daughter and make her a harlot, lest the land
fall into harlotry and the land be filled with depravity” (Leviticus 19:29). Yet
the law allows male soldiers to rape foreign captive woman (Deuteronomy
21:10-14) and permits slavery, calling for differential treatment based on the
slave’s religious or cultural origin. In the case of the Eshet yefat toar (the
pretty captive woman) in Deuteronomy 21, we see a more nuanced approach
to the “other”. In contrast to the widespread and systematic rape of girls in
many war zones around the world today, Deuteronomy 21:10–14 regulates
rape on the battlefield. The law surrounding the beautiful captive woman
forces the warrior to be aware of his responsibility for his actions. The soldier
who returns home with an enemy woman as booty cannot do whatever he
wants with her. Instead, he must follow certain rules, and if for some reason
the soldier does not want the woman after marrying her, she cannot be treated
as a slave, or passed on to someone else, but must be released as a free person.
Thus the text simultaneously condones, yet regulates, rape.
Later in the Bible, in the Book of Esther, women are gathered up from
all over the king’s realm, brought to him for his inspection and use and after
one night with him they are sent back to the harem as used goods, deprived

537
This was commissioned by My Jewish Learning, 2016. See:
http://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/judaism-on-prostitution/
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of their freedom and presumably unavailable to other men. The text does not
appear to criticize this practice, and when Esther becomes queen, her cousin
Mordecai tells her to initiate sex with the king in order to save her people.
Like the Bible, the Talmud offers mixed messages on prostitution. A text
about prostitution and the frequenting of prostitutes by Jewish men allows
that it is “Better that a man secretly transgress and not publicly profane God's
name so that no one learns from his actions” and that “If a man sees that his
[evil] inclination [yetzer or urge] overwhelms him, he should go to a place
where he is unknown, wear black clothing and cover himself with black
[perhaps to subdue his lust], and do what his heart desires, so that he does not
publicly profane God's name” (B. Kiddushin 40a). In the discussion
concerning this text, it is understood that this policy is meant as a preventive
measure and not as blanket permission. Yet this text has been used as an
excuse for religiously observant Jewish men to patronize prostitutes,
something that while not considered ideal, is viewed as preferable to
masturbation and the resultant wasting of seed. This text does not address the
question of whether the prostitute is impregnated or whether an out of
wedlock child is considered a better outcome than wasted seed.
Of course not all prostitution involves trafficking, a form of sexual
slavery, and some women choose to work in the sex trade, although how
much this is a genuine choice rather than lack of better options, is up for
debate. Some activists have argued that prostitution is an important economic
option for impoverished women and that advancing the rights of “sex
workers” is the way to combat the trafficking of women. In 21st-century
Israel, prostitution is legal, and sexual trafficking of women not uncommon.
In the past decade, approximately 25,000 women, nearly all from the Former
Soviet Union, were smuggled into Israel via the Egyptian border to be
brutalized as sex slaves. Once in Israel, victims were repeatedly sold and
resold to pimps and brothel owners. In confronting this issue, religious
leaders advocating on behalf of trafficked women generally take a human
rights approach and disavow or ignore the problematic biblical and rabbinic
texts. They point instead to Jewish sources that can be interpreted as
compassionate and proactive, such as the case of the “Canaanite slave,” the
gentile slave of a Jew, who enjoyed better conditions than other slaves
throughout the world and offers a model for a compassionate approach to
trafficked women. In fighting trafficking, rabbis also often quote Proverbs
24. For almost 15 years the Task Force on Human Trafficking and
Prostitution, a joint initiative of the Israeli NGO ATZUM-Justice Works and
the Kabiri-Nevo-Keidar law firm has pressed for measures to eradicate
trafficking and slavery within Israel’s borders. Partly because of their
ongoing lobbying the Israeli government has responded. Some brothels have
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been closed and many women forced into prostitution have been rescued. In
addition, the U.S. State Department's annual "Trafficking in Persons Report"
in 2012 raised Israel to Tier 1, placing it among 35 other countries worldwide,
including Canada, the U.K. and Germany, that have “acknowledged the
existence of human trafficking” and “made efforts to address the problem.”
Of course trafficking has not been eliminated altogether and remains a
problem worldwide -- and not all prostitution is a result of international
trafficking. Israel is still included in Tier 1 nations. Prostitution is commonly
referred to as “the world’s oldest profession,” one that has endured to the
present day, and although the Jewish response to it has been mixed, Judaism
offers some powerful moral arguments in the fight against global trafficking.

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-394-
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO: ABUSE IN THE ORTHODOX JEWISH
COMMUNITY: SO WHAT ELSE IS NEW?538

I thought that I could ignore the whole issue of the allegations against Rabbi
Baruch Lanner. Considering my expertise on the attitude of the halakha to
the subject of wifebeating, I have remained conspicuously silent. When I first
read the article in the New York Jewish Week by the paper's editor and
publisher Gary Rosenblatt, who documented many cases of abuse committed
by Lanner against Orthodox teenagers in the NCSY's programs, my
inclination was to keep silent.
Denial of abuse and apologetics for it are not only associated with the
Orthodox community. The attitude that “only a goy does that” has been
prevalent for too long a time in the Jewish community. The attitude that the
more traditional and observant the Jews are, the “better” they are vis á vis
other members of the community has been around since we became the
“chosen people.” Denial is a form of lying and very often everyone has to
cooperate in order to maintain the lie. The person who denies that a problem
exists does not have to deal with it. Denial and not dealing with the problem
is what the OU did for twenty years. In the light of that institutional behavior,
I felt I must break my silence.
Apologetics is a close relative of denial. It is used to justify the
superiority of the Jewish way of life in general, and the Orthodox way in
particular. It absolves the user of the responsibility for perpetuating abuse.
Examples of this abound: Jews don't do it. When they do, it's not as bad as
when others do it. If Jews do it, then it is because of environmental
influences.
Religion neither defends us from abuse, nor causes abuse. However, it
can seem to encourage community leaders (who are often rabbis) to react
wrongly “for the sake of_________”! Just fill in the blanks with the word of
your choice. Very often the word is related to the reputation of the Jewish
people. The terms hillul hashem, and lashon ha-ra are used to protect the
guilty. It is wrong to speak lashon ha ra about a rabbi. It is hillul hashem to
do so. We are God's people (and Orthodox people think they are more so,
and thus have more of an obligation to defend HIS (sic) name. We are silent
when abuse is perpetuated in the name of religion among other groups:
against other religious streams, gays, agunot, women's tefillah groups,
Palestinians-to name a few. We are used to being silent at the abuse

538
This was an unpublished letter to the editor of Jewish Week. It subsequently had
wide circulation on an e-mail list which was meant for concerned Jews who were
affected by Baruch Lanner, including survivors of his abuse.
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committed against women by our rabbis, so what is so strange when there is
a cover up in the Orthodox world when abuse is committed against our
children. After all, the silence is for a cause. In this case, it was for the cause
of a successful, dynamic youth leader, who brought many children back to
religion. So what if he abused a few individuals along the way. After all, he
was upholding the collective!
I wrote a book and titled it Silence is Deadly: Judaism Confronts
Wifebeating, precisely because silence is so deadly. The attitudes of sha,
shtill (be quiet, keep still) for the scandal will go away and sweeping the dirt
under the rug are disquieting. But not speaking our mind is a new attitude.
Our Jewish sources recognized the fact that men were beating their wives and
that it was wrong. The same texts showed awareness of the fact that
reprimanding children could be overdone and that there was a line that should
not be crossed.
Is it the memory of the melamed who was given great powers by the
community to discipline their children, that allows us to overlook abuse, that
allows us to close our eyes to the bruises on our children's bodies, that
prevents us from complaining? But there were parents who complained. They
can be likened to the woman who was beaten and went to the beit din, hoping
for rabbis who would release her from pain, who would force the husband to
give her a get, who would do something. Instead she got short shrift. There
were many parents, in many different communities who did complain--for
the past twenty years--and found that their complaints were dismissed or
ignored.
I did not want to write about this, because I felt that, as someone
associated with the Conservative community, I would be accused of
Orthodox Bashing. But this has gone too far. To blame Gary Rosenblatt for
blowing the whistle was the red line for me. I, too, have been blamed for
writing a book which dredges up some sources that show that wifebeating is
allowed in carefully controlled situations (to educate the wife; to prevent her
from sinning; when she doesn't perform her required household duties).
Those rabbis, who allowed wifebeating as a means to an end, justified it as a
means to obtaining domestic harmony. In those cases, the rabbis made a
judgment call that the preservation of the communal unit was more important
than the suffering of an individual.
I have been accused of being a self-hating Jew for bringing such sources
to light, despite the fact that these unfavorable sources form a very small part
of my book. This does not bother me, for I believe that to keep quiet is the
real hillul hashem-the desecration of God's name. Doesn't the Orthodox
community realize that the REAL danger is NOT that the children will leave
Orthodox Judaism? The real danger is that because its religious leaders do
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not protect them, these children will see abusive charismatic leaders such as
Rabbi Lanner getting away with it. They will see in him a role model,
someone to be imitated. It is common knowledge that the children of abusers
tend to abuse others when they grow up. This is the danger. This is what is
scary. If your melamed beat you as a child, that will be normal to you. Haven't
we all heard that a potch in tuchus (a slap on the behind) can't hurt; it may
even be good? So when the melamed of today abuses a child, but is a fantastic
educator, it is felt that the ends justify the means. Thus, the Orthodox Union
is inadvertently perpetuating a cycle of violence.
Rabbi Riskin of Efrat chose to believe the beit din over the members of
the community-dismissing their complaints about Rabbi Lanner as rumors.
“When NCSY first sent Rabbi Lanner, I did contact the beit din to check on
him and heard that they had found him not guilty. I didn't go into it any
further.” Once it made the press, he said that he was “surprised at the extent
of the allegations. It's a terrible thing that should not have been permitted to
go on.” Much as I congratulate Rabbi Riskin for his courageous stance about
some women's issues and for opposing the actions of some ultra-Orthodox
who burn Conservative synagogues, his attitude is a bit disingenuous. Why
not go into it further? I agree that it's a terrible thing that should not have
been permitted to go on. But isn't the OU, Rabbi Riskin's union, his
organization? If the OU had only listened to their constituencies and not been
blinded by the aura, by the respect due Rabbis (even when they do not
deserve it), twenty years of abuse could have been prevented. He was in his
twenties when he first started. He got away with it. He could have been
redeemed. Now it is too late. So many souls have been abused and hurt. The
cover-up is the real hillul hashem. Children should be safe when they are
being educated. Parents should not have to fear that their organization looks
out for the interest of their union at the expense of their children's safety. The
need for a very deep bedek ha-bayit (house cleaning) in the OU is long
overdue. For the sake of Judaism, for the sake of our children, I hope the
newly formed commission to investigate the allegation does it soon. Delay
in issues such as these just makes things worse.

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-398-
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE: “YES, DAVID. SOME OF YOU DID
539
BEAT YOUR WIVES TODAY!”

A visceral reaction to “Have we all beaten our wives today?” by David Bar-
Illan, in his column Eye on the Media, The Jerusalem Post, Friday, August
30, 1991.

Several acquaintances of mine asked my opinion of the article “Israel’s Men

on the Verge” which appeared in Newsweek, August 19, 1991. They asked,
as I am in the process of writing a book on battered women in the Jewish
tradition. My initial reaction was similar to my reaction to another article
which appeared in Time magazine last year. There, Alice Shalvi was featured
complaining about the problem of the aguna (anchored wife) in Israel. The
aguna problem was in the context of wifebeating, wife murder, raped,
clidorectomy, etc. in third world countries. My gut reaction then and now
was anger and shame. The anger was because I felt it was unfair to list Israel
as a third world country and that the aguna situation was not comparable to
wifebeating, murders of passion and legitimatized rape in these countries.
The shame was that the accusation is true. If the rabbis (and the society which
allows them to get away with it) cared, the problem of the aguna could be
solved. If our society genuinely felt that women are equal to mean—and were
willing to do something about it—wifebeating, rape, and crimes of passion
would either be crimes of the past or at least would be punished more severely
than they are now.
After reading David Bar-Illan’s article in The Jerusalem Post
facetiously entitled, “Have we all beaten our Wives today?” I reread the
Newsweek article. This time I was again angry, but not with Newsweek. I
was very angry with David Bar-Illan. There is nothing in the Newsweek
article which can be described as “Israel bashing”. In accusing Theodore
Stanger and Susan Greenberg of being “propaganda purveyors who exploit
such painful universal afflictions to attack the culture and character of a
targeted nation…” (emphasis mine), David Bar-Illan is guilty of “defending
the faith.”. Defenders of the faith assume that any and all criticism directed
to Israel is unjust and motivated by anti-Semitism or self-hate. In keeping
with his defense, Bar-Illan writes that “the article is a tendentious distortion
full of ill will.” He criticizes Stanger and Greenberg for not mentioning “equivalent

539
This is a copy of the first letter I sent. David Bar-Illan called me and asked if I
would shorten the letter and told me that he was hurt at the tone of my letter since--
and I quote him--“I consider myself to be a feminist.” I think a shortened, edited
version was published, but I don’t have a record of it.
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conditions in other countries” and accuses them of demonizing “not only Israel’s
policy-makers but its society and values.” He calls the assertion that domestic
violence is caused by unemployment, inflation and strain brought about by Arab-
Israeli tensions “speculative drivel”.
However, he “demonizes” feminist journalist Gail Har-Even and demeans
himself by referring to her as a “radical feminist” as if that guarantees the reader that
any contention of hers is not to be taken seriously. If she is “radical” it follows she
is wrong-headed when she asserts that the Israeli army propagates the “image of
women as second-class citizens.” Bar-Illan’s article creates an atmosphere that
inadvertently justifies the phenomenon of wife abuse. He plays with statistics to
show how much better off the Israeli woman is vis a vis her American counterpart.
In doing so, he underplays the prevalence of wifebeating in Israel. But the real evil
is his stating that Norway has “a large enough number of battered wives to fill 50
shelters” in contrast to Israel which can barely fill four. He thus implies that a country
which has less shelters has less wife-battering. This is a distortion. He has fallen into
his own trap. He is guilty of what he accuses the Newsweek reporters when he writes
that wifebeating “is probably more prevalent in societies in which it is least
discussed.” Doesn’t he know that not having shelters is the signal that the problem
is not recognized? Has Bar-Illan ever visited a shelter? Does he realize that there is
a waiting list? Does he know that a battered wife who has no place to run to is a
woman whose life is in danger?
The fact that we do not have enough shelters is because Israeli Society is
not concerned about battered women. We don’t have enough shelters in Israel to
meet the demand. The reason is not because there aren’t enough battered women to
fill them. Ruth Rasnic has said many times that she has to turn away between 65-85
percent of the women who seek safety in her shelter in Herziliya. The reason is that
in cities such as Beersheba (which always make the headlines on this issue) the
powers that be, either deny the extent of wife abuse or expect women to raise the
funds through their own efforts. And when funding was found, the Welfare
Department refused to give us matching funds and we were unable to accept the hard-
raised money. The shelters in the Herziliya, Jerusalem, Haifa and Ashdod are under-
funded, under-staffed and over-populated. It is a shame that David Bar-Illan has
abused his column “Eye on the Media” to imply that a free and open discussion of
wife-beating in the press is a propagandistic attack on our culture and character. He
has not addressed the issues themselves. I would have preferred him to use his
column to try and understand why this problem continues to exist precisely in a
country in which the family is considered to be a sanctuary. An open-minded
approach and honest examination should confront facts about our Jewish tradition,
Israel’s justice system and law enforcement agencies. He may not have “meant” to
deny the seriousness of the problem in Israel, but that is the impression he has left
with this reader.

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CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR: SPOUSE ABUSE: TIPS ON HELPING A
LOVED ONE WHOM YOU SUSPECT IS BEING BATTERED540

“Let us be called by your name—Take away our Disgrace” (Isaiah 4:1).

“It is better to live [an unhappy life] in a married state than to live [a happy
life] in solitude” (B. Yevamot 118b).

I have known Rebecca Cohen * (not her real name) for more than twenty
years. Becky joined our Community Center when she was a graduate student.
She was vivacious, in her late twenties, a successful chemistry teacher. She
had one “flaw”: she was desperate to get married and have a child. Finally,
she found herself a successful good-looking, sharp dressing lawyer, who had
three children from a previous marriage. I didn’t really like him. He
patronized us; he made fun of her friends. On the plus side, he was very
attentive to her. He waited on her every wish. He was very interested what
she was wearing, whom she was speaking to.
Becky and Dan got married. She had the child of her dreams with
him. Although he seemed less interested in this son than in his older children,
she justified his behavior: She “understood” his tensions of having a new
child, his jealousy of not having her as a full time lover. We were appalled
that she labeled “cute” his jealous behavior when she breast-fed her son.
Then, one night, out of the blue, she knocked on our door, son in
hand, to tell us that Dan had hit her. She didn’t understand what had provoked
this action on her husband’s part.
Over the years that I have been studying the topic of wifebeating in the
Jewish community, many battered women and professional caregivers have
consulted with me and told me their stories. However, Becky was my friend
and I berated myself for not really reading the signals at an earlier stage. I
immediately offered her shelter in my home and told her not to go back. I
used all the arguments I knew to keep her with us. I was sure that I knew
what was “best for her.”
I discovered, however, that all of my academic learning was to no
avail, in the face of her desire to stay with this monster-man who had hit her.
I could not persuade her of the danger she was putting herself in. She was not
ready to hear me, and with all the best intentions in the world, I could not
convince her that I was right. Finally, I had to respect her viewpoint, and it
was a very humbling experience for me. I realized that until she could define
herself as an abused wife, until she could see her husband as a wife beater,
she would not take steps to remove herself from danger. Ultimately, I could

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not force her to stay with me. All I could do was reiterate that my door was
open and that I was her friend.
What do we do when the problem of suspected abuse is deposited on
our collective doorsteps? Until relatively recently the Jewish community’s
first reaction was to deny the existence of wifebeating: Jews don't do it. By
denying the problem, the community did not have to deal with it. It is easy
for us to overlook the signals. We accepted the excuses that our friends gave
us. There were very few professional Jews who were listening to the Beckys.
Even I reflected the larger community’s interest in encouraging family
stability—after all, I did dabble in “match-making”!
It is not only the community that has to be ready to help. In this case,
Becky wasn’t ready to listen to us. When Becky was trying to understand
why her husband hit her, she displaced the blame, she rationalized and she
shifted it to the tension of his workplace, the rat race he was in, his need to
get ahead. His “excuse” on that occasion was that dinner was fifteen minutes
late. She was at fault. Becky had internalized his attitude, which placed the
responsibility for a crime on the victim: “you made me do it.” But by
whitewashing the problems of her marriage, by justifying her husband’s
abuse (and not defining it as such) Becky inadvertently was setting herself
up for more abuse.
She went home and tried to make peace. After all, shalom bayit,
peace in the home, is a Jewish goal. Her husband the lawyer, had the upper
hand—he also knew the law. He convinced her that their joint property was
safer if it was on his name. He kept tabs on her and told her that she could
not visit her friends unless he was present.
We saw less of her. She started to wear clothing that completely
covered her arms and legs, saying that she was always cold because of the
air-conditioning at work and at home. We felt it would be over-stepping the
bounds of her privacy to suggest that she was hiding bruises beneath the long
sleeves. We heard about her success at work, took pride in her
accomplishments and the lovely son she was raising. We still did not like her
husband. Yet, they were clearly in love. He was devoted to her. The proof:
he would never let her out of his sight.
Three years later, she again knocked on my door, this time with a
black eye, which, neither makeup nor sunglasses could disguise. “I don’t
know what to do. Danny threw me against the wall and hit me. I know it’s
my fault because I was questioning one of the new household laws he’s
always making up. What should I do? This isn’t the first time he’s slapped
me, but…”
This time, without any hesitation, with a great feeling of guilt for my
previous respect for her privacy, I told her, “Get out! File for divorce in the civil
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courts! Get a lawyer! Make sure he’s someone from out of town who is not one of
your husband’s buddies.” I was not quite as abrupt as the above sounds. After all, it
is wrong to snap out orders at anyone—especially to someone who is vulnerable.
But, I did make it clear to her that quick action is very important. It has to do with
the nature of Jewish Divorce. On the one hand, according to Jewish law, the husband,
of his own free will has to agree to give her the get, the Jewish bill of Divorce.
Remember that Becky lives in the State of Israel. Here there is a religious court
system and a civil court system. Rabbis in the Rabbinic Courts in Israel tend to
discriminate against women. Civil Courts are more impartial. The court you choose
to file for divorce has binding jurisdiction on items such as alimony, custody and
child maintenance. Thus it was crucial for Becky’s future welfare that she get to a
civil court and not let her husband get the jump on her by getting to the religious
court first. In addition, her husband was a lawyer (and this was his second divorce).
He was experienced and he already had her over the barrel financially.
It was important that we give her the information that she needed, although
had she not been ready, I would have had to back off, as I did the first time.
Fortunately, this time, she was ready to follow our advice. Matters had escalated and
she knew she needed to get out. She got custody of her child, but lost most of the
joint property. She didn’t care. She was one of the lucky ones. She was mentally
scarred, physically bruised, but alive and well. Had our door not been open, had we
not been as forthcoming with practical advice, the second time, she might have gone
back again. Then too, had her husband filed first in a rabbinic court, she might not
have gotten custody of her child, because Jewish Divorce law often exacerbates the
problems for women by sometimes awarding custody of sons to their fathers. Jewish
women cannot initiate divorce; they depend on their husband's will to give them a
get (a Jewish bill of divorce).
Becky survived. She is still undergoing therapy. She is minus a home, but
has a profession and a staunch support group of friends and family who are there for
her and her son. Together we are working on guidelines to help families and friends
to recognize signs of abuse with the goal of communicating their concern to the
victim.
Tips for recognizing an abusive situation and for helping a loved one who may
be in one
What to look for (besides the obvious)
1. A woman might continue to date a man who has assaulted her and may even use
the additional dates to re-assess the situation and fit such experiences into a
worldview that she can live with.
2. A man who exudes love and sensitivity, who is overly attentive and controlling,
who is unwilling to leave her side, may be a potential batterer. He might be
showering her with gifts and pampering in an attempt to gain control over her.
3. A man who is always having intimate heart to heart talks after violent episodes
will enable the victim to see the relationship positively. Be wary of the phrase, "he's
under a lot of stress."
4. Vague complaints that have no obvious physical cause are a danger sign.

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Make sure that you are not escalating the danger
1. Do not confront her in front of her family.
2. Do not fail to recognize her sense of danger.
Ask: Do you have a place to go?
3. Do not call the police without her consent.
4. Do not prescribe divorce, separation, and counseling.
She is an autonomous adult.
5. Do not fail to respond to her disclosure of abuse and do not trivialize it.
Try to Empower Her
1. Build trust. Ensure her safety. Respect her confidentiality.
2. Listen to her and believe her. Let her know she is not alone.
3. Make sure she knows that violence perpetrated against her is not her fault.
4. Recognize her right to make a move when she is ready;
she is the expert on her life.
5. Suggest community resources such as a hotline or a shelter.
Make sure she has a place to go if she needs to escape.
6. When she tells her story, respond by asking her:
"How do YOU feel about that?" or "How does that make YOU feel?"
This will help her get in touch with her feelings, as part of being
in an abusive relationship is a loss of self.
What to do when she won't leave
1. Keep in mind that it may be a devastating step to call abuse by its name.
It means that someone she loves is an abuser and it means that she must
see herself as a victim.
2. Keep in mind that by forcing the issue, you are usurping her authority
to define her own experience. On the other hand, it doesn't hurt
to ask directly.
3. Keep in mind that on some level she may think she "deserves it".
4. Keep in mind that she may not have the economic possibility of
leaving her abuser.
5. Keep in mind that she may be afraid for her safety if she ends
the relationship.
6. Do not assume that her choice to stay in this relationship indicates that
she is safe.
7. Try to maintain a connection with her. In the future, she may be ready and
need your help. For right now, any connection that strengthens her
inner self is important to her, even if it may be frustrating for you.

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CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE: SINS OF OMISSION: THE JEWISH
541
COMMUNITY’S REACTION TO DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

Carol Goodman Kaufman is an industrial and organizational psychologist

who has worked in the academic, business and non-profit worlds. She has
also been an active leader of several Jewish organizations. These are her
qualifications for her insider’s view of the Jewish community. She has
chosen to focus not on the sinners who commit domestic violence but on
those who are sinning by not doing enough to help the victims in their
communities—hence the very suggestive title of her book. Since the sinners
often include Conservative and Reform rabbis (33 of whom were interviewed
for this book) much of this book will anger the readership of this journal,
while hopefully inciting them to change their ways. If the intended readers
of this book can resolve their cognitive dissonance while reading this
important book, they will learn a lot.
Kaufman sets the tone in her introduction by describing her
experience in shul during the Yom Kippur service and relating to the “sins of
omission.” She writes: “Jews do not have to have personally committed a
particular sin to have to confess to it. We are held responsible as a community
for these violations of God’s laws.” She backs this statements with a quote
from Lev. 19.16 “Do not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor” and “All
Israel is responsible one for the other.” She wonders how the Jewish
community responds when it is “confronted with a blatant violation of the
very precepts that define its faith?” During this service she realized that “she
was trained to look at organizational structure and culture” and that if she
would cast her eye on domestic violence from this perspective she should ask
“what would the culture and structure of the Jewish community reveal about
its response to domestic violence?” So armed with expertise and passion she
begins her quest.
Kaufman discovered from a review of the literature that one of the
biggest obstacles victims of DV faced was the lack of response of the
organizations whose job it is to provide support. Her book is not about why
men abuse women, nor is it about Jewish law (although she has a chapter of
26 pages that deals with it, much of which leans heavily on my book). Rather
it is meant to be a close look at “one specific organization—the Jewish
community—in order to analyze it as a living organizational system.” She

541
Review of Carol Goodman Kaufman, Sins of Omission, Conservative Judaism
(Spring, 2005):117-119.

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justifies lumping the entire Jewish community as an “organization” because
it is small, insular and because all of Jewish life is based on study, ritual and
acts of loving kindness. The basis of this claim is her study of three
communities in Massachusetts (Boston, Central Massachusetts, and the
Berkshires).
Sins of Omissions includes 6 chapters. The first consists of the stories
real women tell about their experiences with abuse. She finds it disturbing
that many of the 22 women in her sample did not approach their rabbis and
that many found their therapists unable to help them as well. One of the
biggest reason women did not go to their rabbis was that they never heard
their rabbi talk publicly about the topic of DV.
One would expect from the title and subtitle of the second chapter
“Wife Beating is a Thing Not Done in Israel: The Myth of Shalom Bayit”
that Kaufman would relate to the quotation from Rabbenu Tam and the theme
of shalom bayit. However, the title is used ironically, i.e. that wife beating is
a thing done among Jews and that there is no peace in the home. Considering
that she recognizes that “the bulk of American Jews are far too assimilated
even to be aware of the term” (44) I find it strange that she does not discuss
it. However, in her case studies of Paula, Linda, Sarah, Rivka et al she
demonstrates that Jewish husbands know how to both beat their wives and
how to choose places under their clothing where the bruises will be hidden.
Most of the facts and statistics in this chapter are about abuse at large and not
necessarily related to abuse in the Jewish community per se.
In the last two paragraphs of this chapter Kaufman tacks on a
rhetorical question to connect back to the topic when she asks what does this
mean for the Jewish community. She writes that Jews have been bemoaning
assimilation and that Jewish continuity has become a rallying cry of the
community. “But, a continuity of what? Is it continuation of more
humiliation, degradation, pain, injury, and threats? Is this how the Jewish
values of the pursuit of justice and valuing life have devolved?” It is a bit out
of place to position this question here; although it does allow her to segue
into the next chapter which she says will teach us about what both Jewish
and secular law has to say about abuse. Chapter three is titled “What Does
Jewish Law Say about Abuse?” and nowhere in this chapter does she lay out
what secular law has to say about it. This would have been a valuable
contribution. In this chapter Kaufman leans on Spitzer, Dorff, Twerski and
542
mostly on Graetz’s typology to summarize what halakha has to say about

542
Julie Ringold Spitzer. When Love Is Not Enough: Spousal Abuse in Rabbinic
and Contemporary Judaism (New York: Women of Reform Judaism, The
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wife beating. There are no attempts to evaluate what any of these sources
have to say and it is clear that Kaufman did not see it as her purview to do
more than cite these sources. Her major point is that "spousal abuse is not a
phenomenon unique to modern times, despite apologists' statements to the
contrary."
Her integration of other's research is good and her narrative and
summary gives a good sense of the state of the art—although her lack of
543
knowledge of Hebrew and citing of sources is painfully apparent. More
egregious in this section is that she cites anonymous modern rabbis and
women’s organizations to imply they deny that there is a problem of DV.
Since we don’t know who the “leader of a national women’s organization” is
who told her that “domestic violence would not be an appropriate topic for
an annual convention…” and more importantly in what YEAR, there is no
way to evaluate the accusation that the message of denial is being transmitted
from top down, i.e. from rabbinic and lay leaders to the community.
Her insights concerning the real conflict between the Jewish
tendency to look upon reporting wife abuse as lashon hara, or a hillul hashem
or mesira (washing one’s dirty laundry in public) versus the principle of dina
demalchuta dina, which requires mandatory reporting of suspected abuse is
excellent and probably should have been developed more. She also implies
that only the Orthodox and Reform use prenuptials and not the Conservative
movement, since they rely on the Lieberman clause (which she implies is a
544
recent change). What she fails to note is that the Conservative movement
does have halachic tools which they actually use to annul marriages in the
case of the recalcitrant husband who refuses to give his wife a get.
Chapters four and five points out that neither rabbis nor the
community are aware of the problem of abuse and that even when they are
they are not very well equipped to handle these problems. She quotes a

Federation of Temple Sisterhoods, 1995); Elliot Dorff, Family Violence: A

Responsum for the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards of the Rabbinical
Assembly (New York: The Rabbinical Assembly, 1995); Abraham Twerski. The
Shame Borne in Silence: Spouse Abuse in the Jewish Community (Pittsburgh:
Mirkov Publications, 1996); Naomi Graetz. Silence is Deadly: Judaism Confronts
Wifebeating (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1998). The organization of her sources
into Acceptance, Rejection, Denial, Apologetics, and Evasion follows mine.
543
E.g. in her reference to “dina de-malchuta dina” she keeps on referring to it as
the “dina”.
544
On p. 73 “The Conservative movement, according to Telushkin, has inserted a
clause into its ketubah obliging the husband to give his wife a get in case of
divorce, but, strangely, not one Conservative rabbi mentioned this change to me.”
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Conservative rabbi (no footnote on this quote): “We have so many important
things to worry about. If I thought this was a real problem, then I would do
something about it. Show me some statistics.” In the chapter entitled “the
Rabbis and Willful Neglect she interviews a sample of 33 rabbis from the 3
movements (mostly R & C, and one of two O). Each member of the clergy
“thought that the problem of spousal abuse was more serious in movements
of Judaism other than his or her own.” She criticizes rabbis for either ignoring
the problem or mishandling it and putting the wife at risk. To be fair, she
mentions one Conservative rabbi who devoted one Shabbat every year to the
topic of spousal abuse and who is active in relevant forums. This rabbi saw
more abuse victims because he had a visible record.
Among the salient questions Kaufman asks are:
Have you ever participated in a panel in your community dedicated
to the subject of spousal abuse?
Are you aware of whether the annual convention of your rabbinical
association has ever addressed the topic of spousal abuse in Jewish families?
Have you ever attended an education session on spousal abuse at one
of the rabbinical conventions?
Have you ever attended any other forum, workshop, or course
focused on spousal abuse within the Jewish community?
Have you ever attended any other forum, workshop or course
focused on spousal abuse outside the Jewish community?
Have you ever been asked to hang a poster in your synagogue that
advertises a “Hot Line”? Did you agree to do so?
In her summation of the answers to these questions she writes:
“Ignorance, confusion, inconsistency, and fear. These four characteristics can
sum up the rabbis’ responses regarding the topic of spousal abuse regardless
of sect.” She writes that despite the Responsum that Elliot Dorff wrote on
behalf of the RA’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards “few of the
rabbis with whom I spoke indicated that they were aware of…the
responsum.”
The central and longest chapter (almost 50 pages) is about
“Communal Leaders’ Response to Abuse” and discusses how the mandate to
provide for abuse victims is carried out in reality. She begins the chapter by
referring to a seminal moment when Ruth Wisse, who she describes as an
“archconservative professor” spoke at a Hadassah Convention. While I am
no great fan of Wisse’s, surely Kaufman’s demonization of her seems
unnecessary:
“Wisse, veins bulging from her forehead and neck, accused the
organization of violating its own principles and that of Judaism, and
shrieked, ‘We are bleeding. They [Hadassah] are spreading through
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 their fact sheets all kinds of lies about domestic violence. And in fact,
what is it that Hadassah has to do with domestic violence?’”
Kaufman implies that Wisse’s influence on those in attendance at this
and other gatherings of Jewish leaders is incalculable. This leads in to her
investigation of how Jewish communal organizations deal with the scourge
of DV? First she starts with a brief description of Jewish Federation,
Synagogue organizations of the major movements, volunteer, Zionist, and
philanthropic organizations. She points to the decline in Women’s
organizations and a decline in membership with those that remain. She
mentions Jewish social service agencies as well. She spoke to sixty current
and past leaders of such organizations; the few who refused to speak to her
claimed that DV did not exist within their own community.
What ensues is the thrust of her book. She provides us with a detailed
investigation of Lay Leadership in the Jewish Community, divided into two
groups, the Leadership Conference of National Jewish Women’s and what
she calls Non-Conference Members, those whose mission is not the fight
against DV, but the fight for the physical and spiritual survival of Jews. There
is another section listing the professional Jewish community, including the
Jewish family agencies and services. She demonstrates that there is variation
in the Jewish community’s approach to DV, ranging “from excellent in a few
rare communities, to unsystematic in most, to non-existent in many.” In this
section Kaufman’s expertise and ability to evaluate organizations shine. This
very long chapter is the raison d’être of the book, and should have been
expanded into an entire book. What is also missing in this very important
chapter is a chart, to clearly compare and contrast each group. Her
organization of groups is alphabetical, and she simply lists them and states
what they do or do not do. Had she organized the groups better, the “sins of
omission” would be clearer. She refers to the Secular Community Domestic
Violence Services but only to make the point that it is mostly lower class
women who use this and not middle class Jewish women. She concludes that
though the idea of the Leadership Conference of National Jewish Women’s
organizations was a wonderful one, the organizations need to challenge the
rabbis who continue to resist addressing the issue of violence. Throughout
the book, she reminds us that this is not only a women’s issue and her
challenge to the Jewish Community is that it has to decide what constitutes
continuity, and if supporting that is more important than providing resources
to help victims of DV.
Her last two chapters contain recommendations and 2 appendices.
Recommendations of interest to rabbis is the need for explicit rabbinic
training in dealing with spousal abuse and the rabbis need to speak up to their
“captive audiences” on the High Holidays to address the issue of DV. In the
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first appendix she discusses her research protocol and concludes that her
sample size was too small to conduct a sophisticated analysis on the
quantitative data that she obtained. Yet she found that this in fact liberated
her to being able to gathering “a treasure trove of attitudes and opinions.”
Her second appendix is a listing by state of the shelters available to women.
As she indicates in a footnote, most of this material has appeared elsewhere
and might be out of date by the time the book goes to press. Since the book
was published in 2003, well before the first conference on DV sponsored by
the Jewish Women International (she alludes to the fact that there will be a
conference in that year), the material is already out of date. The JWI is on to
its second conference (2005) and its influence is therefore not evaluated in
this book.
I would recommend this book primarily for the chapters in which she
uses her expertise and for a useful summarizing of previous research. Written
in the tone of Zola’s J’accuse, the book is a wake up call to the Jewish
community to make a drastic shift in its priorities.

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CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX: JEWISH WOMEN/JEWISH MEN: THE
545
LEGACY OF PATRIARCHY IN JEWISH LIFE BY AVIVA CANTOR

Aviva Cantor has written an important book that will be read, discussed and
debated for many years. Jewish Women Jewish Men: The Legacy of
Patriarchy in Jewish Life (JWJM) is a book which may irritate you, making
you feel angry at society, at ourselves, at the Jewish tradition, at the author.
This is to be expected of a journalist like Cantor who is passionately
committed to Jewish culture and the Jewish people. ln 1976 she was a
founding co-editor of Lilith, the first national Jewish feminist magazine and
is as well the author of The Egalitarian Hagada (Beruriah Book's, 1992) and
The Jewish Woman 1900-1985: A Bibliography (Biblio Press, 1 987). Cantor
wrote JWJM to analyze, through the prism of Socialist-Zionist theory, how
the legacy of patriarchy has influenced Jewish life. Her goal is to "understand
why Jewish women were excluded from the public religious and secular
spheres of communal life and why there was so much resistance [by the
patriarchy] to integrating [women] in the community as equals. . . " (p. 1).
Her goal of analyzing the roots of the patriarchal structure is original and
innovative and directs our attention to the need for organizational and
structural change in present day Jewish communities in the United States and
elsewhere. She has done an important job in opening up the Jewish
communal structure to criticism, exposing the origins of its patriarchal and
plutocratic nature and exposing the "machers" (the big-shots, literally the
makers) who control philanthropic organizations.
The book should be required reading as an outline for future
research. The book has sixteen chapters which Cantor has divided into three
sections: "Patterns of Traditional Jewish Culture," "The Impact of
Assimilation on Jewish Public and Private Life" and "The Struggle for a
Correct Reading of Reality." The scope and breadth of the book is amazing.
It takes on all of Jewish history starting with Biblical times and working its
way up until today. Some of the topics dealt with include the nature and
dynamics of exile, the evolution of Jewish constitutional law, the Jewish
woman as enabler, Jewish family life, the American Jewish mother, the

545
This book review appeared in Bridges, Summer, 1996 (6:1): 107-110. There was
quite a stir about this review and the review by Paula Hyman who wrote a shorter
and even more critical review in Lilith. Both these reviews led to an "angry,
contemptuous, even sneering" [Jewish Currents editor, p. 17] piece by Gwynn
Kessler, "A Patriarchy by Any Other Name" in Response (Spring, 1997). The book
was further discussed in Jewish Currents (October, 1997) and refers to both
Kessler's and my reviews.
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bankruptcy of American Jewish communal life, women's volunteer
organizations, the legacy of the sixties and the effects of the Holocaust on
Jews.
The double thesis of Cantor's interpretation of Jewish history is:
1) Jews the world over share a mass rescue fantasy of an omnipotent (male)
deity who will save us from our common enemy (hostile non-Jews) and 2)
The Jewish community is defined by its reaction to hostile non-Jewish
environments in which we have been forced/chosen to live. Life in the
Diaspora has conditioned all Jews to respond with an attitude of "don't rock
the boat" in the hope that no one will notice we are here--for if they do, they
will finish us off (as Hitler attempted). All Jews--especially women--have
internalized this message of keeping a low profile. Under classic patriarchy,
which glorifies masculinity, Jews have learned to survive by cultivating
powerful (male) protectors and projecting a victim mentality.
Her theses are problematic but plausible and useful towards her goal
of analyzing the roots of the particularities of Jewish patriarchal communal
structures. However, the work is undermined by Cantor's use of many
assumptions and unsupported interpretations of Jewish history. Cantor shows
that rabbinic Judaism "reformed" classical patriarchy by redefining power as
knowledge and learning. In order for Jewish communities to survive in the
hostile Diaspora environments, she says, they incorporated "female values"
such as reverence for life, nonviolence, emotionalism, and empathy for the
helpless. "It is striking how many of the female values enshrined in Judaism
and institutionalized by halakha are those associated with the extended
family.... Only by functioning as classic extended families imbued with the
values of altruism, interdependence, and cooperation originated by women
could Jewish communities maintain the cohesion necessary for group
survival" (p. 79). Her emphasis on female values is an example of a
problematic assumption of this book. She conflates the Jews as a group with
women as a group and discusses the parallels of the powerless: The Jewish
people are a product of a victim mentality like the "wife who is supposed to
behave obediently" married to God in "an unequal partnership" (p. 50) and
have therefore responded to oppression in the same manner as do women.
Cantor attempts "an in-depth analysis of Jewish patterns of culture
by using feminism as the key... [and applies] feminist theory to Jewish
society and culture..." (p. 1) to comprehend why the Jewish community (the
reformed patriarchy) has refused to integrate women on an equal basis.
Despite this claim, it is not clear what "feminist theory" she follows, and this
ends up weakening the focus of the book. At the end of her introduction she
writes: "infusing patriarchy with female values...is not going to transform
society fundamentally. Even eliminating patriarchy is not enough. It is the
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idea of the legitimacy of power as the organizing principle of society and its
exercise by any individual or group over others and over nature, that must be
challenged and overcome" (p. 10).
According to Cantor, Jewish response to hardship has resulted in
Jews behaving better than their neighbors, and Jewish women have gained
from an ethos which demands that the helpless be treated fairly and which
eliminates violence against women. The result is that there is no burning need
to institute justice for women. Cantor writes that Jewish women recognize
that they have "not suffered from the kind of oppression that women have
faced under classic patriarchy, particularly misogynist violence. How angry
could they be?" (p.426)
Communal cohesion has been the overriding concern. Once violence
against women is eliminated, it is important that men continue to feel like
men--otherwise they might drop out of the survival struggle--and thus it is
important for men to be given power inside the community and to dominate
all aspects of communal life. Hence the formation of the Jewish plutocracy.
The reader should be aware that the book oversimplifies. It is
chockful of references and thus looks and feels authoritative. Cantor reads
her sources idiosyncratically and supports her thesis with anecdotes. Though
her use of anecdote enlivens her theories and makes them more readable, its
frequent use often distracts this reader from the focus of the book. For
instance, writing about the Federation's "donor directed" approach Cantor
writes that funds are raised for projects which interest the donors and "not
those which meet the needs of the Jewish people" (p. 258). A little later she
writes: "Organizational 'leaders' and their hired bureaucrats bestow koved-
fixes (koved is (Hebrew for honor) on Big Givers with the cavalier and
hardened cynicism of the old-style Tammany Hall politicos when dispensing
patronage" (p.261-2).
What I find most troubling is that throughout the book she claims
that Jewish men are less violent than other men and that is because Jewish
values are female-oriented. In chapter four, "From Macho to Mentsch:
Redefining Jewish Manhood," Cantor shows why violence was outlawed in
the Jewish community by referring to revolts in Roman times. Cantor
explains in her introduction how this came to be: "The need for communal
cohesion to ensure survival under patriarchy necessitated several important
variations in gender role definition. It was primarily because
survival…required the community to be a safe haven that male violence had
to be eliminated. While Jewish male domination of the community was
upheld, male power was stripped of the use of force and was redefined as the
power of the mind and intellect. Masculinity was redefined as spiritual
resistance: the intellectual labor of studying Torah..." (p.4-5). The above
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succinctly summarizes the issue and the exceptional relevancy of this fine
and, in the end, troubling work. It is misleading to read Jewish history in this
way and refer to it as a feminist perspective. The advertisements promoting
this book are suggesting that leading rabbis have succeeded in eliminating
wife beating in the Jewish community. I am disturbed by this because I have
been writing and lecturing about the battered woman in the Jewish tradition
for the past six years. In my ongoing work, I show by using rabbinic sources,
primarily the vast Responsa literature, that wife abuse and male violence
exists and has existed in the Jewish community from the Gaonic period in
Babylon through the modern era in Israel and the United States. It is a myth
to refer to our community as a "safe haven" in which male violence has been
eliminated. Studies suggest that at least 25% of women in the U.S. are
physically assaulted by their intimate adult (usually male) partners. Studies
on domestic violence in Jewish homes suggests that the Jewish population
mirrors the general population (Women's League for Conservative Judaism:
Outlook, Fall, 1995) and that rates are the same for Jews and Christians,
546
across branches of Judaism, and across urban, suburban, and rural families.
Cantor herself points out that rabbinic Judaism was well-aware of
wife-beatings and that their reaction was never monolithic. She refers to the
three Ashkenazi rabbis of the Middle Ages, Rabbi Simhah ben Shmuel of
547
Vitri (sic), Rabbi Meir of Rothenberg and Rabbi Peretz [of Corbeil] who
not only outlawed wife-beating but prescribed extreme punishment for the
wife-beater (p. 129-130). " Rabbinical opinion on the issue, however, was
not unanimous. Despite the fact that batei din [rabbinical courts] in twelfth-
century Egypt sided with the wife in cases of wife-beating, Maimonides, who
lived there in that era, allowed limited beatings as a form of discipline, as did
Rabbi Moses Issereles, a leading rabbinical arbiter in sixteenth-century
Poland. Maimonides wrote that the wife who refuses to perform any of her
obligatory chores 'may be beaten even with a rod until she does it"'(p. 130).
Thus Cantor correctly makes clear the fact that though the majority
of rabbis throughout Jewish history decried this phenomenon, there were
some rabbis who advocated hitting one's wife to punish her when her

546
E-mail communication on the Bridges list from a student who worked at the
SHALVA organization for battered women in Chicago: Wed,7 July 1993.
547
This is an example of sloppy scholarship for the source is Simchah ben Shmuel
of Speyer. Rachel Biale, in Women and Jewish Law (Schocken Books, New York,
1984: 94), is the source of this mistake, and it is amazing how many scholars who
do not deal directly with the primary sources have fallen into the trap of this
mistake. Cantor is not the only one.
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behavior was out of line with normative expectations. Wife-beating is still
not an unconditional reason for forcing an abusive husband to grant his wife
a Jewish divorce decree (get). But Cantor’s conclusion after facing these facts
is disturbing: "That some rabbinical arbiters had to create elaborate
rationalizations to justify limited beatings means that a consciousness already
existed that the physical abuse of women was a 'thing not done in Israel.’
This normative ideal was incorporated into the Jewish self-image to the
extent that reports of wife-beating in Jewish families in North America and
Israel today are often greeted with incredulity: 'Jews don't do that"'(p. 130).
Not one of the rabbinic sources I know of created ‘elaborate' rationalizations
to justify beatings that were meant to educate the wife or to stop her from
misbehaving. To end this scanty section on wife-beating by implying that the
Jewish self-image is one that "Jews don't do that" at a time when it is quite
clear to us that Jews "do do it" is misleading. To perpetuate the myth of the
non-violent Jewish husband in our midst protects the wife-beaters in our
community and keeps the victims victimized. Unfortunately, we are not
better than non-Jews. By rewriting Jewish history to prove that Jewish history
is primarily reactive, Cantor performs a disservice to the truth and covers the
past so that it accords with her vision. It would be ironic were Aviva Cantor
548
to become the Jewish Christina Hoff Sommers.
Furthermore, to see most of Jewish history as Jewish men in search
of a savior is to belittle rabbinic Judaism which sees God as a partner to life's
problems (not only a solution). Her reading disregards the prophetic vision
of the Bible (e.g. Hosea 2; Ezekiel 16,23) which metaphorically depicts the
nation of Israel in gendered terms as a sinning female and then blames her
for its plight (Diaspora existence). To say that Jewish men behave in typical
female fashion and then applaud them for being better (i.e. female) is an
interesting thesis but does not take into account the various violent episodes
that Jews actively participated in (e.g. the Biblical conquest, the Maccabean
Wars, the Bar Kochba revolution, the Israeli-Arab wars, the violent rhetoric
towards women and non-Jews, the summary execution of Jewish informers
throughout history, etc.).
One wonders also if the oversimplification and attempt to read every
aspect of Jewish history and life into one model will further the feminist

548
Christina Hoff Sommers, Who Stole Feminism? How Women Have Betrayed
Women (New York: Simon Schuster, 1994: 320 pp.) argues in her book that the
statistics on wife-beating, rape etc. are exaggerated and a creation of academics
who are interested in creating niches for themselves. She distinguishes between
gender (bad) and equity (good) feminists setting up the former group as straw
persons to knock down.
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cause, or will be pointed to as an excuse that "women are over-reacting, as
usual" on the one hand, or will cause feminists to give up the fight, on the
other. In her last chapter, "The Rise and Future of Jewish Feminism," she
puts the entire burden on Jewish feminists when she writes that "feminization
is the only possible alternative for an authentic and creative Jewish future "
(p. 441). She implies that it was misguided of Jewish feminists to concentrate
on winning acceptance by the "intellectually stagnant and spiritually
bankrupt patriarchal community" (p. 441) rather than dedicating itself to the
more needed course of action, "the feminization of Jewish life." On the other
hand, if feminist Jews are not overwhelmed by the burden, they can regard
Cantor's vision as an empowering call to action. Then feminism can mean for
us the transformation of all society and "the dismantling of the current
patriarchal structure and institutions and their replacement by those whose
organizing principle is not power but the female value system that
characterized traditional Jewish communities." This time around, Cantor
hopes, unlike the past, the Jewish community of the future will enfranchise
women and will "rejuvenate (reJEWvenate)" the Jewish community.

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Section Three: PRAYING AND BEING FROM AN ISRAELI
PERSPECTIVE

This section includes material which is very personal and which reflects the “me”
which has developed as a result of being a feminist Jew who lives in Israel. The piece
on reconstructing prayer was written in Ramah Camps. I went there for one month
in the summer of 1985. I was very disappointed to find that the one Ramah camp I
went to was not egalitarian, i.e. they did not count women in the minyan. Even
though I knew it intellectually, the experience of not being counted, was humiliating
and at the age of 42, I allowed myself to lose control (among the twenty-something
counselors) and cried. This also marked the first piece that I wrote, and since I was
computer literate and the oldest person in camp, I spent a lot of time reworking it.
The piece got a lot of attention among Ramah leaders, so I had the heady experience
of having my writing be of influence. “A Feminist Mother's Prayer” is a political
statement if one bothers to read between the lines. It depicts the confusion that I as a
feminist Jew had as to the political realities in Israel. “Can an Orthodox Feminist
Pray at the Wall and Find Happiness?” was the first article written in the Jerusalem
Post by a woman and questioned the motivation of those who were behind the move
to pray at the Wall in 1989. It was not popular at the time it was written--nor was it
549
included the anthology about WOW -- but it reflected what I thought at the time.
More than one quarter of a century later (!) I still stand behind what I wrote. For the
Status of Women in Masorti Judaism I wrote about the struggle of the committee to
have woman rabbis. The best thing that happened to me was that I learned how to
touch type in Hebrew as a result of my assignment to summarize the Responsa
Literature in Hebrew. The book reviews in this section are academic in tone and gave
me much satisfaction both in the writing and editing. Finally, “The Day the Sky Fell
In,” “Keeping Our Israeli Kids Jewish,” and “Reflections on Being Married to a
Rabbi” are personal pieces which relate to my family but give an intimate picture of
what life is like in Israel for someone who lives on the periphery of Israel, both
religiously and geographically. I decided to include a political piece, “Can there be
Peace Between the Houses of Shechem and Jacob,” which is a workshop that I gave
in different venues for which I wrote up a summary/introductory statement, which
was revised each time I spoke. I look upon it as a work in progress. The last article
“Women and Religion in Israel” is academic and can serve as a summary article to
this section. It puts into context all of the issues raised in this section.

549
Phyllis Chesler and Rivka Haut (editors). Women of the Wall: Claiming Sacred
Ground at Judaism's Holy Site (Jewish Lights, 2003).
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CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN: DECONSTRUCTING PRAYER:
550
PRAYER IS NOT A FOREIGN LANGUAGE: AN OPEN LETTER

Dear Friends,
I would like to share with you my feelings on the subject of tefillah in Camp
Ramah. I came to Ramah with expectations of being exposed to a model of
davening to which I could relate and use for my own and other people's
edification.
I began my initiation into prayer in Camp Ramah by being assigned
to the magshimim edah (pre-teen division), The people who lead this division
in prayer are top-notch serious Jews. One is an expert (male) baal koreh who
is finishing rabbinical school; another is a female rabbinical student who
wears a tallit and tefillin. Both, with great patience, explain the significance
of selected items to these pre-teens. Though one of their major concerns is
discipline, the tefillah takes place in an atmosphere of ruach; there are
nigunim (melodies) to get the campers into the mood of participatory prayer
with a good mix of song and recitation. Song is occasionally accompanied
by hand movements as well; almost in a hassidic mode. Although many of
the campers felt uncomfortable with this form of prayer (initially), they seem
to have accepted it after steady exposure. There is some experimentation;
after a couple of weeks there was explanation of the structure of prayer and
hopefully, as time goes by, more will be done.
But therein lies my problem: “What is our goal?” I do not think that
it is to have 100 campers sit quietly every morning, some resentfully, through
a service of mind and heart that they do not understand, mouthing the
meaningless words only when they recognize the melody. Some of them
cannot read from the Siddur. Some of them stare vacantly into space or try to
talk to their neighbors. One girl who sat next to me on a Tuesday morning
had a major concern: “Are they reading the Torah today?” When I told her
no, she was relieved, either despite or because of the fact that I had been the
Torah reader on the two previous occasions. In the class, where I occasionally
use the Siddur as a text, the students react violently to its presence at a time
when they don't expect to see it. Other teachers have confirmed this—even
those who have day school kids.
I might have accepted this behavior as the norm here, had I not had a
spiritually uplifting experience with the Amitzim division on the first

550
"Prayer is a Foreign Language: An Open Letter to the Ramah Community,”
The Melton Journal, (Spring, 1987): 24.

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Shabbat—an experience which made me question what is happening in, and
to, our tefillot. And I use “our” in the sense of “our Conservative world” both
in Camps Ramah and in Israel. The big difference is that in Israel, although
we are uncomfortable with the forms of prayer, we understand the Hebrew
language.
The Amitzim division is a special edah in Camp Ramah. Amitzim is the
name used in Camp Ramah in New England for the campers in the Tikvah
Program. Offshoots of this, the original Tikvah Program, exist in the Ramah
camps in Wisconsin and California. All the campers have various degrees of
learning disabilities, syndromes and/or levels of retardation. There are also
some graduates of this program who are working as counselors and being
paid for their work. The group is both sheltered from, and integrated into, the
total camp program. It is a model of how a carefully thought out program can
affect the entire camp population. Campers of all ages are aware of and are
sensitized to children who are different from themselves. The Amitzim are
divided into various sub-groups depending on their ability to function
independently, but many of the activities, such as prayer services, are on the
division level.
It was my privilege to participate in their first Shabbat tefillot. When
one of the counselors asked me to read Torah for this edah, I agreed without
fully appreciating that it was the Amitzim.
I walked into their beit tefillah to find what appeared to be total chaos.
All that was missing, it seemed to me, were people climbing up the walls. I
wondered how I would survive the two hours I was to spend with them in
tefillah and how I could ever concentrate on reading the Torah correctly.
Would they even care, and what was the point of it all if they couldn't
understand? This was my introduction to a new world.
How was order restored to this apparent chaos? The counselor in
charge distributed cards with the name of a tefillah on it and asked for
volunteers to lead the particular prayer. Amazingly, most of the volunteers
were accommodated. What struck me immediately was how interested they
were in the service and in what was going on; some of the campers
volunteered for more than one card. The card seemed to have intrinsic value
and some, upon coming to their turn to “lead” the service, simply handed in
their card to the leader, creating in my mind associations of “teruma,”
“ma'aser” and “korbanot.”
I was observing and learning at the same time. They had their own
“siddur” in loose-leaf folders which consisted of 1) Hebrew, 2) transliteration
and 3) English translation with each prayer separately bordered off from the
other. The graphic aspect had clearly been thought out, and although much

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was abridged, the prayers followed the order of the traditional service—
including the amidah, Torah reading and musaf.
What made this service so memorable were the explanations,
questions and answers and the participation of invited guests. The
maintenance man, Jerry, a high- powered labor lawyer in real life, talked to
them about how he can help fix things, how they can help him and how we
can help God to preserve the world He created. Danny Margolis (a former
Ramah director) told two charming stories, one about two stones and another,
a midrash about Noah by Marc Gellman called 'The First Hamburger” from
Moment Magazine, which I think should be told to all thinking people.
Barbara Greenberg gave a d' var torah which she adapted on the spot for the
kids whose attention was rapidly waning.
When my turn came to read Torah my previous nervousness was
dispelled. I read it as well as I usually do, but I read it deliberately and slowly,
trying to force understanding by emphasizing each word. I don't think they
understood a word, but I hope that some of my feeling conveyed itself to
them. It was a special moment for me. Throughout, I felt that this service
could serve as a model for the entire community. Obviously the needs of the
“normal” population are different, but the fact remains that a group with
special problems is having its needs catered to. The 60% of the campers who
do not attend day schools could also benefit from some special attention.
Instead of trying to mold the entire camp into davening in a monolithic
manner, why not create a service which caters to those who cannot
understand and/or read Hebrew? I understand the goal of the Camp and
personally feel very comfortable with what is being done here. A genuine
sense of kavanah permeates the tefillah for me. This is brought about in part
by the introduction of niggunim. I most definitely feel an atmosphere of
prayer, until I look around. Honesty compels me to feel for Anne, a camper
in my class who constantly irritates me by disrupting my shiur and who
hysterically expressed her negative feelings about Shabbat, which she saw as
an encroachment on her space, seeing it as the culmination of the entire
horrible first week of camp. I must add that I failed her in not understanding
how far away from her world is the world we, the Ramah leadership and I,
inhabit.
The big, big question is, “Can and should we fashion a service for the
Annes of the camp?” Those who know her, including me, would probably
react with an honest “Who are you kidding?” I certainly don't know how to
go about it. I am throwing this question into the laps of those who are more
experienced than I. I am after all an outsider; this was my very first year in
Ramah.

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 The solution as I see it is not a facile cosmetic one. While Ramah can
accommodate different kinds of minyanim in camp, it is my sense that the
problem it of a much deeper nature.
The majority of campers and counselors are illiterate worshippers.
Although most can read, reading prayers is not praying. I'm not thinking
about kavanah, because it is a later stage, not consistently reached even by
those who know how to pray. I'm talking about simple understanding of
words, concepts, the structure of the prayer, the whys, the history of prayer—
the need to pray, the relationship of prayer to God, the difference between
Jewish forms of prayer and Moslem, Christian, Hindu and Buddhist forms of
prayer, and the roots of prayer in the biblical, Mishnaic and Talmudic
sources.
In my discussions with several teachers of Judaica I have become
convinced that we must actively teach prayer. I know that material exists.
What is needed is an integrative approach. This means that Judaic studies,
Hebrew language instruction, life in the camp and teflllah must impinge
actively upon one another. I have seen some starts in this direction,
particularly in the Nivonim edah (the C.I.T.s). Nothing can be in isolation;
the teachers and counselors need to study, too. The mishlahat from Israel
especially needs such a course. If it is important to us, prayer must be put
back on the agenda. We have to immerse ourselves totally in its study and
observance; otherwise the message that prayer is something that must be
endured silently is loud and clear.
The children in Amitzim are very friendly. They are very social human
beings, practicing their good manners whenever they can. They also like each
other and are exceedingly supportive of each other in their group interaction.
They applauded enthusiastically when one of them answered correctly. It was
as if the respondent was answering for each and every one of them—which
brings me full circle back to my feelings of understanding what it is to be in
a really religious situation. The words of affirmation which were uttered by
the people of Israel, “Amen,” at various times seemed to be very appropriate
in this setting. These verbally inarticulate people are affirming their faith and
confidence in each other in a more positive manner than most of us do for
each other in a life time. Yishar Kocham—and may we learn from them.

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CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT: CAN AN ORTHODOX FEMINIST
PRAY AT THE WALL AND FIND HAPPINESS?551

I've been following closely your reporting and editorial line concerning the issue
of the Orthodox women's prayer group at the Western Wall. I find it curious
that no woman has been asked to write an editorial or a report from a feminine
or feminist perspective.
I take a multi-faceted approach as a feminist, a Masorti Jew and an Israeli
citizen.
The issue of Jews' rights at the Wall has been dealt with admirably by Andy
Court in his article “While Police Stood by Watching” (Jerusalem Post 3/23/89)
and by an editorial entitled “Whose Western Wall?” (Jerusalem Post 3/24/89) I
concur with the conclusions of both: The Western Wall is not the haredi's
private shtiebel. We pay taxes to maintain this monument; my son will be sworn
in as a soldier at the Kotel in May. The Wall, as a symbol of past national
glories, belongs in the public domain. I find hard to fathom why policemen
stood by while women were being attacked. Is one to infer that the police
sympathize with hoodlums who, in the name of religion, beat up on women or
are they afraid of the consequences of attacking “pious” ultra-Orthodox men?
As a Masorti Jew my perspective is somewhat different than the Orthodox
women who participate in this prayer group. First of all, they are very careful to
call themselves a tefillah group, not a minyan, because they have accepted the
authority of some Rabbis who have decreed that women may not constitute a
minyan.
Yet they do not accept the authority of the same Rabbis who consider a
woman's voice lascivious (kol b'isha erva). Moreover, they do not accept the
opinions of rabbis who have decreed that a woman may not read from a Torah
scroll or wear tefillin or tallit. They seem to be picking and choosing their
authorities. They avail themselves of Norma Joseph's interpretation of some of
Rabbi Moshe Feinstein's responsa (teshuvot) concerning women.
These Orthodox women clearly have a problem. Who is their authority?
Since they take an eclectic approach to rabbinic responsa one wonders why they
continue to ignore genuine halachic responsa of Masorti rabbis who have
already given desired halachic response to their questions.
As a Masorti Jew I don't have the same problem that these women do. The
“battle” was fought in my local synagogue through dialogue, cooperation and
ultimate consensus in the community based on extant halachic opinions on

551
"Can an Orthodox Feminist Pray at the Wall and Find Happiness?" The
Jerusalem Post (April 13, 1989): 7.

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issues concerning women. Orthodox women are afraid to accept these halachic
rulings as valid. If they do, the major barrier between them and Masorti
feminists will drop. What's in a label? Everyone has the right not to be
Conservative or Reform, but if you choose to be Orthodox and a feminist you
have to à priori give up some of your principles.
Why are feminism and orthodoxy incompatible ideas? Feminism demands,
not cosmetic changes but basic changes in the prevalent patriarchal world view.
Orthodoxy today, as opposed to the past, does not seem disposed to making
basic changes in its outlook. On the contrary, it is becoming more frozen as it
continues to ritualize existing customs and learning and moves toward
extremism. Charles Liebman pinpointed the problem in “Extremism as a
Religious Norm” (Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion XX, 1983): The
Jewish religious extremist today has “the desire to expand the scope, detail and
strictness of religious law; social isolation and the rejection of the surrounding
culture.”
In contrast to both religious extremism and Orthodoxy one of the main
qualities of classical Judaism is its ability to make basic changes in Jewish
practice while still maintaining links and continuity with tradition. This quality
in Masorti Judaism is what attracts me to it as a feminist.
As for the Wall, as a religious feminist I choose not to pray there. A
discussion about praying at the Wall took place during the Jewish Feminist
Conference in Jerusalem last November. The meeting was run by Rabbi Debra
Brin of Toronto of the Reconstructionist branch of Judaism. Norma Joseph and
Rivka Haut represented the Orthodox branch; Rabbi Helene Ferris spoke for the
Reform Movement.
No one from the Masorti movement was in favor of the move. (Ironically
the media implied that Masorti and Reform women were behind it). There were
about 38 women in the group, a third of who were Israelis like me; most of
whom voted against praying at the Wall. The reasons we gave then were many.
We felt that it smacked of a public relations gimmick. Since part of the
discussion included “military” preparedness--i.e. what to do if attacked by irate
haredim, we questioned the sincerity of women who claimed to be seeking
solely a spiritual experience. I felt I could not pray with kavanah (concentration)
if praying there meant putting me and my friends into unnecessary physical
danger. Yet I admired my North American “sisters” for their persistence even
as I opposed what I perceived as a misguided PR move.
I was relieved when Professor Alice Shalvi spoke up to oppose the
move--as an Israeli, not necessarily in her capacity as Chairwoman of Israel
Women's Network. “Why do you want to pray at the Kotel anyway?” she asked.
“If you want to pray, get together here at the Hotel at which the conference was
being held tomorrow morning.” If Orthodox women are serious about making
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changes, the place to do so is in their own local congregations and in the
educational institutions with which they are connected.
The last place to be doing this is in the public, symbolic arena of the Wall.
There is a lot of wasted effort trying to get the Orthodox “seal of approval”. We
women are not going to get it and we must face up to it. Instead we should be
getting together. There are more issues that unite us than divide us and together
we should be fighting for our rights. We need to engage in dialogue.
Except for a few brave male Orthodox leaders, like Rabbis Haskell
Lookstein, Avi Weiss, Bernard Joseph, Yitzchak Greenberg, Irving Haut,
Michael Chernik, what we hear is the loud and clear fundamentalist message:
“You commit blasphemy when you try to change tradition and if you push us
we'll push you harder.”
Why not accept mainstream Masorti Halakha which allows women to be
counted in a minyan, to read from the Torah, to be called up for an aliya, to wear
tefillin, tallit, even to sing in public as a hazzanit and to sit together as a family,
not behind a partition?
Despite the fact that I, as a Masorti Jewish Woman, do not need the Wall
for purposes of personal prayer, I solidly support any group of Jewish people
who want to pray at the Wall: be it women together; men, women and children
together; or men together. If the Wall is such a point of contention, then it must
be made accessible to all Jewish people who wish to pray in the manner to which
they are accustomed. No one has the right to assault another person for
committing “sacrilege”.
Unfortunately, today there is general capitulation to the demands of
ultra-Orthodoxy. The assumption too often is that what the ultra-Orthodox
want is what they and the general population get. This was not the case in our
past. Few are willing to take a stand. If one does take a stand, she runs the
risk of being targeted for physical violence. Even though I think they are
mistaken, given the political climate today, the “Women of the Wall” are to
be commended for their bravery. I hope they are not being set up for
martyrdom.

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-426-
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE: A FEMINIST REVIEW OF THE NEW
ISRAELI SIDDUR: VA’ANI TEFILLATI552

Preface
I am writing this review from a double perspective, as a feminist and as an
active user of the new siddur (prayerbook) Va’ani Tefillati in the Masorti
(Conservative) congregation of Kehillat Magen Avraham in Omer, Israel. To
complicate issues, I am also married to the chairperson of the committee that
formulated the siddur, Rabbi Michael Graetz. Over the years I have been
party to the birthing process of this endeavor, and I am aware of the
frustrations and joy that go into putting together such a work. Although I
have been privy to the process, I will relate primarily to the product, to which
I and any other user have access on a daily basis.
Jewish feminists very often ask three crucial questions in
approaching the Jewish prayerbook: “Can a traditional liturgy, created
exclusively by men and replete with masculine imagery for God, express the
religious sensibilities of women?” The answer seems to be: only partially.
“How can Jews incorporate women into a tradition that has marginalized
them?” I think Va’ani Tefillati is trying very hard to do this. “What are the
limits of the ongoing reinterpretation of classical Jewish texts that are at the
heart of the perpetuation of Judaism?”553 It seems to be that there is no need
yet to discuss limits, since we are still in the stages of process, of the ongoing
reinterpretation that is what Va’ani Tefillati is all about.
Having given my short answers to these questions, I will proceed to
elaborate on them in the following pages.
What’s in a Name?
The name of the siddur, Va’ani Tefillati, is based on Psalms 69:14: “And I,
my prayer unto You, O Lord – let it be at an acceptable time.” The Talmud
(Berakhot 7b) asks and responds: “What is an acceptable time? - when the
congregation worships.” However, the intention in choosing this title is also
to emphasize the “ani” (I), the person praying. In the words of the editor,
Rabbi Simha Roth, “I am my prayer; my prayer and I are one. I do not say
one thing while meaning another.” Thus, one of the stated purposes of this

552
“Review Essay: Siddur Va’ani Tefillati.” NASHIM: A Journal of Jewish
Women’s Studies and Gender Issues 2 (March 1999): 161-172. Those interested
in acquiring a copy of the siddur should write to RAISRAEL@JTSA.EDU
553
Paula Hyman, “Looking to the Future: Conclusions,” in Susan Grossman and
Rivka Haut (eds.), Daughters of the King: Women and the Synagogue
(Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society 1992): 303.
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siddur is to take into account the needs of the individual, the “ani,” as well
as those of the community, the tzibbur.
Who is the “ani” reviewing the siddur? I, along with other liberal
Masorti Jews with strong feminist inclinations, have a problem relating to
anthropomorphic descriptions of God, supernaturalism, hierarchy, the issue
of the chosen people, gender inequalities, class discrimination and animal
sacrifice. Being aware of Marcia Falk’s Book of Blessings and other feminist
prayer texts and their solutions to many of these problematic issues
complicates my uneasiness with traditional prayer.554
Process: On-Going Relationships
Va’ani Tefillati belongs to a Conservative theology that views humankind
and God as partners. Its philosophy is that there must be a constant give and
take for the relationship to remain valid, not stuck in the old roles. In view of
both the history of Jewish liturgy and the halakhic sources, neither the
committee chairperson nor the editor saw halakhic difficulties in composing
new hymns to be added into the existing prayers, or with “incidental” changes
to the traditional text. In this context, Roth quotes from the collected responsa
of former Israel Sefardi Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, who writes that “the order
of service of each tribe must be appropriate to the ethos of its soul.”555
The stated audience for this siddur is an Israeli, Hebrew-speaking
public in general, and worshipers in the congregations of the Masorti
movement in particular – a public quite varied in its opinions. The siddur
committee thus had a mandate to create a siddur whose character would be
Masorti, Israeli-Zionist, pluralistic and innovative.556 Furthermore, Graetz
stresses in his preface that “the texts of the prayers must clearly express the
role of women in Jewish history and the contribution of our mothers to the
faith and to the spirituality of Israel. ... Masorti Judaism ... strives to attain an
attitude of equality for women in all that is connected with their status in
Judaism.”
These multiple goals inevitably compete with one another. Further
tension is added by the proud commitment of the Conservative Movement

554
Marcia Falk, in Book of Blessings (San Francisco: Harper 1996) has “solved”
the problem of addressing our prayers to a masculine God (Barukh ata adonai)
who is ruler of the world (melekh ha‘olam) by introducing the formula “Let us
bless the source of life” (nevarekh et ein ha-hayyim). This has ironically become
the standard gender-inclusive blessing formula, though Falk has never referred to
her work as a siddur.
555
Yabbia omer, part VI, Orach Chayyim 10.
556
Va’ani Tefillati, editor’s preface.
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both to preserving the tradition and to adjustment and change.557 The siddur
was a product of consensus after intense debate, not only within the
committee of the Israeli Rabbinical Assembly but also within an advisory
committee drawn from all parts of the Masorti Movement, including the
youth movement. Any product that is worked over by a committee reflects
compromise between different viewpoints, and will be hard-pressed to be
consistent with a groundbreaking ideology like feminism.558
I would like to look at some of the accomplishments of Va’ani
Tefillati and see whether it passes the test for a feminist Jew.
a. A Conservative/Masorti Siddur
It is fitting that in a siddur that is a product of the Conservative Movement,
one finds emendations, annotations and commentary that reflect critical
scholarship and try hard not to offend modern sensibilities. These
characteristics make of Va’ani Tefillati not only a book that can be used for
prayer, but a sourcebook for study about prayer and all of the mitzvot
connected with it. This is especially important to women, who may be
unfamiliar with the service because they have been denied the opportunity to
learn about prayer. Va’ani Tefillati also serves as a “primer” of Masorti
theology and weltanschaung. For instance, the introduction to the Musaf
service explains clearly and succinctly the theological and religious positions
of the Masorti movement on the question of temple worship.
b. An Israeli - Zionistic Siddur
The siddur is intended not only for a Masorti audience, but for a Hebrew-
speaking Israeli audience in general. Though the average Israeli reads
Hebrew, s/he is often illiterate when it comes to the language of prayer, with
its “complicated sentences ... with their accumulation of adjectives and
verbs,” as Roth puts it. The siddur therefore tries very hard to be “user
friendly.” For instance, passages recited in the liturgy only on certain
occasions, such as the additions for the Ten Days of Penitence, are set off by
being printed both in italics (somewhat inappropriately in a Hebrew context)
and in a different color. Va’ani Tefillati has many textbook qualities: clear
graphics; symbols which are explained; alternative readings; guides to the
physical practice of Jewish prayer; and most of all explanations which take

557
See the now-classic exposition of this philosophy in Mordecai Waxman (ed.),
Tradition and Change: The Development of Conservative Judaism (New York: The
Burning Bush Press 1958).
558
While there were two women rabbis, Einat Ramon and Valerie Stessin, on the
14-member siddur committee, it is not clear what the extent of their input was. I
was told that the insertion of the word imoteinu (“our mothers”) in brackets was a
last-minute compromise.
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the “lack of comfort” factor of most Israeli worshippers into account. Again,
this may be important to women who have been made to feel unwelcome or
irrelevant in the “normal” Israeli synagogue.
As for the Zionist aspect of the siddur, if we look at the Grace after
Meals (Birkat Hamazon), we find that it includes a blessing for soldiers (in
the masculine)559 and for the State of Israel. A new paragraph, to be added to
the Grace and to the daily prayers, has been composed for Israel’s
Independence Day, on which the complete festive Hallel is to be recited. A
whole section is devoted to rituals, special prayers and commemorative days
connected with the land and the State of Israel. Moreover, Roth changes a
single letter of one word in the Grace – “and lead us upright in our own land”
(and not “to our own land”) – to make of it “a plea for the values of
uprightness, equity and pride in the public life of the Jewish state.”
c. An Innovative, Pluralistic Siddur
When we look at the Table of Contents, the siddur appears to be following
the traditional order. However, one major section, Beshivtekha beveitekha
(“When you are in your home”), an expansion of the usual section of
everyday blessings, breaks the traditional order of the prayers. It is divided
into four sections: Holy Days, Blessings, Beheik hamishpaha (“in the bosom
of the family”), and Belekhtekha vaderekh (“When you go on your way”).
While this placement may make the kiddush and zemirot for Shabbat harder
to find for those who are accustomed to their traditional location, it is clear
that a statement is being made: this siddur is not meant to be used only in the
synagogue. Religious activity deserves a central place in the home.
In many places in Va’ani tefillati, commentary takes the place
occupied in bilingual prayerbooks by the omission or revision of problematic
passages in the translation. In others, the problematic passages themselves
have been revised or alternative versions are offered, either on the page itself
or in the Eilu ve-eilu section near the end of the book. Thus, many of the
passages that relate to animal sacrifice have been replaced with passages

559
Though both the patriarchs and the matriarchs are invoked in the blessing for the
State of Israel and for the soldiers in the IDF on p. 373, the land itself is described
as promised to avoteinu; the blessing refers to the soldiers as hayalei tzahal; and we
are charged with loving aheinu benei Yisrael – all masculine plural forms. In
Kehillat Eshel Avraham in Beersheba, the (female) rabbi routinely adds the missing
female population. Yet even this does not solve the problems of Avinu
shebashamayim (our Father in heaven) and veyashvu ish tahat gafno (“and each
man will sit under his vine”). This prayer is a good example of the confused nature
of the siddur. It raises the questions: Where do we start? Where do we stop? I shall
return to this further on.

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reflecting more humanist concerns. In the popular hymn Ein keloheinu, the
last line, which speaks of the incense offered in the Temple, has been
replaced by a phrase from Psalms 102. A much more radical innovation
appears in the musaf prayers for Shabbat and festivals, where the user-
friendly directions allow me to skip the sacrificial menu of “lamb and
couscous.” Instead, those of us who so choose can say prayers composed of
phrases from the prophets calling for peace, universal knowledge of God and
“sacrifices” of words rather than animals. In the festival musaf, we are
offered the option of omitting the phrase “because of our sins we were exiled
from our land.” Though the rationale given for this omission is the phrase’s
inappropriateness to those of us who live here, I have always been
theologically uncomfortable with its “sin-leads-to-punishment” formula.
An alternative version of Aleinu softens the particularistic quality of
Israel's chosenness. The line “He did not make us like the other nations” is
replaced with a verse appearing in Reconstructionist prayerbooks, “who gave
us teachings of truth and planted eternal life within us.” Although I am happy
that I can choose to say this, it would have been more “user friendly” in this
case if the line were printed, even in brackets, where the prayer appears in
the regular service. I find it annoying to have to turn to the end of the siddur
each time, and the fact that this version appears only in the Eilu ve-eilu
section is a statement in itself.
An Inclusive Siddur
The siddur has taken the direction of including women and of recognizing
their contributions to Jewish life and history, but it has done so in a manner
that clearly expresses the dispute around this position and the compromises
that were made. For example, the word ve-imoteinu (“and our foremothers”),
wherever it appears next to avoteinu in the obligatory prayers (and it does not
always appear), is placed in brackets, making it evident that this is merely an
optional alternative to the male norm.
Part of the problem, of course, has to do with the gendered nature of
the Hebrew language. The traditional language of the siddur, which Va‘ani
tefillati attempts as far as possible to retain, uses masculine forms, and
whether these can or should be taken to include women is moot. Roth is
convinced that “the expression avoteinu [‘our ancestors’ or ‘our fathers’]
includes the foremothers,” but adds that in order to placate those “many
people [who] prefer to give more salient expression to this view ... wherever
the avot are mentioned I have added (in square brackets) the imahot. Those
who wish to will include them; those who do not will omit them.” For many

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of us, this amounts to a bone thrown to the starving.560 Ironically, these same
decisions are cited by some Masorti rabbis who refuse to allow prayer leaders
to use this siddur in their services. Because of its variances with the
traditional language, they feel that the siddur is not halakhically acceptable
as a vehicle to fulfill the mitzvah of prayer.
The inclusion of women in religious life, on the other hand, is much
less in dispute, as exemplified by the ceremony for the birth of a daughter
(Zeved habat), the assignment of significant roles to women in the
circumcision ceremony, the revision of the customary prayer for rain to
mention both forefathers and foremothers, and the equivalent prayers for
benot and benei mitzvah. The picture used to show the correct placement of
the head phylactery is of a woman.561 And despite the controversy about the
insertion of imahot in the central Amida prayer, the imahot are inserted before
the avot in the Grace after Meals.
Despite these very important efforts to include women more
thoroughly in the siddur, I found it very disturbing to discover in the daily
Amida a newly created passage for Yom hashoah (the Memorial Day for the

560
I was originally asked to write this review because of my strong feelings
(expressed in the Bridges electronic discussion forum) regarding the conclusion of
the second blessing of the Amida, which addresses God as “the Shield of
Abraham,” an allusion to Genesis 15:1. Many feminist Jews have argued that
Abraham’s spouse, the Matriarch Sarah, should be invoked here as well, and some
have suggested the formula poked (or pakad) Sarah (“who remembered Sarah,”
i.e., by enabling her to conceive). Other feminists have argued against the use of
pakad, because it reeks of functional biology. But in the biblical context, if God
gives Abraham a protective shield (magen) and Sarah a baby, I ask: which is more
valuable? Without God's gift to Sarah, there would be no Jewish people. I stand by
my now-silent use of pakad; Va’ani Tefillati reads Magen Avraham ve-Sarah.
561
I would like to thank David Ellenson for sharing with me in manuscript his
forthcoming article, “A New Rite from Israel: Reflections on Siddur Va’ani
Tefillati of the Masorti (Conservative) Movement,” which will appear in
Contemporary Judaism, published by the Institute for Contemporary Judaism at the
Hebrew University. He writes on pp. 29–30 that the “move towards gender-
inclusivity that marks the ethos of Va’ani Tefillati is most fully and obviously
expressed ... by a woman, garbed in a kippah (head-covering), wearing the head
tefillin (p.10). This picture delivers a powerful statement. It indicates that the
Masorti Movement has internalized a feminist critique that contends that
patriarchal cultures posit the male as normative ... . The icon of the female wearing
tefillin presents the argument that the female is no longer ‘other.’ From the
standpoint of semiotics, this is the single most powerful example of innovation
contained in the siddur.” [n.b. the female is a picture of me!]
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Holocaust) in which no attempt at inclusivity is made.562 Thus, we read “our
fathers” (no imoteinu this time) and Zaken ve-na‘ar (“old and young,” in the
masculine). This, despite the overly rich biblical metaphors available to the
writer of this new prayer depicting the punishment of Female Israel by God.
On the other hand, the very moving Seder Yom Hashoah included elsewhere
in the siddur relates to women’s experiences as well.
God-language
As we have seen, the ideology of the Va’ani tefillati is egalitarian with regard
to religious practice. As is becoming increasingly clear today, the problem
with this, and with the siddur, is that egalitarianism does not necessarily take
into account women’s needs. Women are “allowed” to be equal to men
provided that they (we) follow their rules. Because we want to come aboard,
we allow our voices to be silenced and agree not to rock the boat too much.
Cosmetic changes such as adding the names of the Matriarchs are tolerated,
as long as we don’t look too closely at the metaphors for the Godhead.
It is serious to me, as a feminist, that the God-language of the siddur
is exclusively male, that God is addressed only in the masculine, and that the
prayers often reflect male perspectives masquerading as universal concerns.
Tikva Frymer-Kensky has pointed out the problem:
The God of biblical Israel is grammatically male: all the verbal
forms, adjectives and pronouns are masculine. God in the Bible is also
sociologically male: the husband, the father, the king .... This cumulative
impact of male-centered language and imagery is profoundly alienating to
women .... The fact that these images are used for God ... reinvests these male
images with ... status and power. Women are completely left out of both the
imagery and the power loop.
If we did not have to contend with committees, what solutions could
we offer? There is a need to introduce female or gender-neutral God-
language into the siddur.563 God’s name is not the only problem. What about
the marriage imagery: the all-powerful, loving God who protects the weak

562
As Dalia Ofer and Lenore J. Weitzman (eds.) have pointed out in Women in the
Holocaust (New Haven: Yale University Press 1998), men and women did not
necessarily experience the Holocaust in the same way.
563
We could use Shekhinah, Malkat Ha ‘olam (The Queen of the World), Malkat
Hashamayim (The Queen of Heaven), or Rahamema (the Merciful One). But are
these really solutions? Frymer-Kensky points out that although their “resonance is
indeed biblical; [they are] quite negative. The historical use of these terms to refer
to pagan gods gives them connotations far beyond the normal meanings of the
words” (Frymer-Kensky, “On Feminine God-Talk,” The Reconstructionist 59:1
(Spring 1994): 48-55).
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(female) people of Israel?564 On the other hand, Frymer-Kensky asks about
the Friday-night hymn Lecha Dodi:
What then can we do with this imagery? We could, of course, toss it
out, but in doing so we would not only lose a large part of our traditional
imagery but we would also deprive ourselves of its emotional effect.
She thus states for me the problem that I have as a “traditional”
feminist. On the one hand, I recognize the abusive potential of an all-
powerful God. On the other, if I toss out many of the traditional images, I
lose a lot of the beauty – melodies to words I know, images, associations –
that are part of the Jewish tradition that I grew up with. I am often in a state
of cognitive dissonance when I pray. On the one hand, I believe that I should
not be praying to a masculine God, that I should not be using the formula
Barukh ata adonai, Eloheinu melekh ha-olam, that I should be using gender-
free and inclusive language. When I think, I try to avoid using exclusively
male language, to make my own small changes, so that I am at least a
resisting worshipper. However, the reality is that this is how I pray, how I
was brought up to pray. Thus, my behavior is inconsistent with my belief.
It is much easier for me to mix up the gender, to alternate by saying
avinu, imenu (instead of avinu malkenu) or to add Miriam the prophet to
Elijah when we say havdala, than to actually introduce and use totally new
forms such as those Marcia Falk suggests. Intellectually, I would like to, but
emotionally it is difficult. Melodically, it takes a great effort, and I might be
fighting an uphill battle. So although I am in a state of discomfort in my
“egalitarian-traditional” synagogue, I am not acclimatized to some of the
newer forms, whose use would probably entail much effort and a change of
venue for me. In many ways, my cognitive dissonance is similar to the
Masorti movement’s (and this siddur’s) problem of choosing between
tradition and change.
Cognitive dissonance may help me to understand why I put up with
the old imagery, but, as Frymer-Kensky eloquently points out, there is no
going back once we see the light. Once we engage in de-gendering,
incorporating feminine forms for God, we can either leave the fold, or remain
and be complicit.
What I and Other Feminists Want
Not only the language but also the content of the siddur is problematic for
feminists. In the daily Amida, for example, most of the topics addressed
reflect men’s concerns as if they were the universal norm. From this point of
view, it might be easier to write an alternative prayer than to change the God-

564
I have written extensively about this is my book Silence is Deadly: Judaism
Confronts Wifebeating (Jason Aronson, 1998).
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language, because a new prayer would fill in what is missing, rather than
replace a hallowed existing form. Many prayers have already been composed
to addresss women's concerns,565 which are often related to biology and may
not necessarily mesh with “universal” or “human” concerns.
In his introduction to the morning amida, Roth points out that the
worshiper may add personal prayers – for instance, a request to do well on
an exam. This presents an ideal opportunity for a woman grieving over a
miscarriage or a mastectomy, celebrating the birth of a child, noting the
occasion of the first menstrual period or of menopause566 to insert a personal
prayer. I would rather see some of these prayers in the siddur I use than keep
on praying for the restoration of a Jewish monarchy or of temple worship in
Jerusalem—two things I neither believe in nor desire.
Feminists would like some choice in male and female images. I have
regularly “solved” this problem for myself by using grammatically incorrect
forms, alternating “father” and “mother” or referring to the divine “parent.”
Frymer-Kensky suggests using the technique of “morphing” images, by
which we can represent the multiple facets of divinity by seamlessly merging
images of God–the rock–the tree–the father–the mother–the lover–the judge–
the male warrior–the woman-warrior, thus avoiding the creation of
permanent gendered images of divinity.
Rachel Adler points out that although Judaism and its prayerbooks
have changed, women are still required to “temporarily abandon the selves
they really are in order to pray in the words of the community, [to]
fundamentally disorient themselves in order to orient their hearts.”567 She
proposes new texts and modes of prayer which may break the rules or
undermine the texts we use. But in order to do this, we have first to
acknowledge that women as well as men are members of the community; to
involve both women and men when we create the new prayers, and to
acknowledge honestly the extent to which our current service reflects

565
Susan Grossman has suggested a “Meditation after a Miscarriage” and Tikva
Frymer-Kensky a “Ritual for Affirming and Accepting Pregnancy.” See Grossman
and Haut, Daughters (above, note 2). The Israeli poet Esther Raab wrote “A
Woman's Song,” a poem that is very much a prayer, using the formula barukh she-
asani isha (“Blessed are You for making me a woman”). See Ellen M. Umansky
and Diane Ashton (eds.), Four Centuries of Jewish Women’s Spirituality: A
Sourcebook (Boston: Beacon Press 1992).
566
Rachel Adler, in Engendering Judaism: An Inclusive Theology and Ethics
(Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society 1998, p. 69, note 27), refers to a simhat
Hokhma ceremony honoring a woman’s entrance into age and wisdom.
567
Ibid., p. 65.
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maleness (in both language and theology), rather than continuing to argue
that male includes female.
Conclusion
I stated at the beginning of this review that I would try to relate only to the
product and not to the process. As product, Va’ani tefillati does not
adequately meet the needs of the “ani” who is a committed feminist. But if I
now view it rather as the starting point of an ongoing process – as a way to
engage in dialogue for the future – it might suffice for the “ani” who is a
liberal Masorti Jew and a member of an egalitarian community. That this
siddur is a step forward for feminists was brought home to me during the
High Holy Days, when our congregation uses a traditional Mahzor. My state
of cognitive dissonance was redoubled, and I was quite relieved to return
“home” to Va’ani tefillati.
Yes, the radical in me would like more change. In the Introduction,
Roth emphasizes: “I repeat that despite all the innovativeness of siddur
Va’ani tefillati, anyone who does not want to deviate from the text with
which they were educated should have no difficulty in doing so.” In other
words, the tension between tradition and change has been resolved by
assigning more weight to tradition. Any move towards equality involves
breaking with a past that was patriarchal in outlook. Va’ani tefillati is a
welcome step in this direction, but for Jews like myself, whose feminism is
crucial to their theology and to their stance towards God, it has taken the step
neither far enough nor clearly enough.

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 568
CHAPTER FORTY: THE TORAH: A WOMEN’S COMMENTARY
569
The Torah: A Women’s Commentary (TWC ) is a user friendly book that is
equally accessible to layperson and scholar. It is a work that was many years
in the making; the Women of Reform Judaism (WRJ) began thinking about
the project in 1995, committing itself then to funding the commentary. Even
before the reader gets to the Foreword, s/he is treated to the sight of what is
a unique collaboration of feminist minds. The editorial board reads like a
veritable “who’s who” of women scholars, mostly identified with the Reform
Movement. Though the translations relied upon are mostly done by men, two
women are consulting editors for four of the five books. The dedication
pages, which include donors, are tastefully done in the names of the four
matriarchs, and some of the parashot (weekly portions) have their
contributors mentioned as well, mostly in recognition of “women on whose
shoulders we stand” (ix). The TWC goes out of its way to attribute in its table
of contents—so you know exactly who is responsible for the overall work as
well as each of its parts. Thus the books of Genesis, Leviticus, and Numbers
are edited by Tamara Cohn Eskenazi, and Exodus and Deuteronomy by
Andrea L. Weiss.
This is the big picture—but the real picture is that for each of the 54
parashot, there is an overall commentator responsible for the central
commentary which contains the Hebrew text and an updated, gender-
accurate translation with a verse by verse explanation of the biblical text
when relevant to female characters or women’s issues. This is followed by
four sections written or edited by a different woman scholar/writer/rabbi. The
first is a short section “Another View,” which focuses on and often
challenges one element in the portion. The “Post-Biblical Interpretations”
includes rabbinic, classic Jewish commentaries and highlights the traditional
sources relevant to women. The third section “Contemporary Reflection” has
a more philosophical bent encouraging the reader to reflect on how the Torah
speaks to us now as Jewish women. The last section entitled “Voices” is
primarily inspirational poetry which responds to the portion almost as stream
of consciousness. Giving each contributor her due—although not mentioned

568
Review Essay of The Torah: A Woman’s Commentary. Bridges 14:2 (Autumn,
2009): 140-144.
569
Tamara Cohn Eskenazi (Editor) and Andrea L. Weiss (Associate Editor), (New
York: URJ Press and Women of Reform Judaism, 2008). It Includes bibliography,
description of post-biblical sources, detailed biographies of authors and
contributors, detailed publication credits and 3 indices; 1350 pages
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as part of the philosophy of this commentary—is important, given the fact
that women’s voices have been silenced, used, and stolen, starting perhaps
with the attribution of Miriam’s song to Moses, continuing with the lack of
credit given to managing editor of Jewish Publication Society, Henrietta
Szold by Louis Ginsburg in his compilation of Legends of the Jews (1920’s),
and the mostly unattributed use of Rosalind Franklin’s research on the
structure of DNA by Nobel Prize winners Watson and Crick (1962) (she is
belatedly receiving credit). As Sarah Sager points out in the Preface, it is
doubtful that this work could have been started earlier than the last decade of
the 20th century. The explosion of women poking into the “patriarchal gloss
of the text…prodding [the] communal memory and inventing what we have
forgotten” [xxviii] only began in the late ’70s. In the Introduction, Eskenazi
and Weiss explain “Three words reflect our guiding principles:
contemporary, Jewish and women.” By contemporary they mean that there
will be new insights, scholarly approaches and 21st century concerns
included. By Jewish they acknowledge the sacredness of the Torah, yet point
out that Jewish approaches have always included interpretation and
flexibility in adapting to new contexts. They are quite careful to continue the
tradition of 54 portions (parashot) with the entire Torah accompanied by a
translation and by running commentaries although there is no division by
570
aliyot to the Torah). One major change is that haftarot are not included in
this book which I will discuss later in this review.
Another major change from previously published commentaries is that
the sages here are all women. A decision was made not to invite male voices
as “mere tokens” since it would also detract from giving women a full
representation. Although the editors claim to represent the full spectrum of
the Jewish community, the book’s contributors are mostly Reform and/or
American women, “Jewish thinkers, rabbis, cantors, educators and other
Jewish interpreters” [lvi]. They base their translation on the 2006 version of
the URJ [Union of Reform Judaism] Press’s publication of The Torah. All in
all, though, this commentary is unique in its scope and breadth. There is
nothing out there in terms of women’s Torah commentary that has this range.
If one wants more depth, there is an extensive bibliography at the end which
lists more than enough leads for further reading.

570
On the Sabbath, in addition to the Torah portion, a haftarah is read. This reading
is taken from the Prophets which includes “early prophets” such as Joshua, Judges,
Samuel and Kings, as well as the “later prophets” such as Isaiah, Jeremiah and
Ezekiel and the twelve “minor prophets” such as Amos, Hosea, Habakuk. It is not
clear when or why these readings were added on. But the tradition is old and is
already referred to in early Christian sources.
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 In a recent article, feminist scholar Esther Fuchs criticizes the
“neoliberal” tendencies of those feminists who attempt to historicize, add to,
transcend, or reinterpret the Bible. These critiques, she writes, are “reformist
and gradualist, rooted in a vision of inevitable progress.” These neoliberal
feminist writers are concerned with “surface exclusions of women and only
interested in limited criticism of existing social and epistemological
mechanisms”.
“Feminist biblical studies should not be about accommodation,
supplementarity, or coexistence with the disciplinary status quo,” she
writes, rather, it should be “post-structuralist” in that it should open up
a “radical interrogation of biblical theology, biblical literary criticism,
biblical religion and biblical historical criticism…..Ideally it is about
the ability to rethink our terms of reference, concepts like autonomy,
571
equality, humanity.”
An interesting sidebar is that Fuchs, in one of her two contributions to the
TWC (Another View on p. 105) starts out by writing that “women are
constructed largely as sexual objects and procreative instruments with mostly
a physical and corporeal relationship to the story of threatened birth and
threatened survival.” Yet she puts a positive spin by pointing out that “it is
Sarah’s son…who is God’s chosen…” and by valorizing Lot’s daughters
who… “daringly initiate incestuous sexual relations with their father and
secure generational continuity” without herself identifying how awful a role
model this is in a society where incest is so problematic.
Should a women’s commentary on the Torah radically interrogate the
bible? To a certain extent the function of all good commentary is to
interrogate the text. Yet the person who chooses to be a bible scholar usually
has a special relation with tradition and views the bible as being a privileged,
sacred text which is, to use Fuch’s words in another article, “the alleged locus
572
of divine revelation.” Most of the contributors to TWC do not have an
explicit agenda of guarding the status quo, but they do have a vested interest
(as I do) in keeping within the bounds of tradition—even when stretching its
borders. The TWC goes beyond the neoliberalism, yet it is not post-

571
Esther Fuchs, “Reclaiming the Hebrew Bible for women: the neoliberal turn in
contemporary feminist scholarship,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, Fall
2008, 24:2; pp. 45-65.; see also her book, Sexual Politics in the Biblical Narrative:
Reading the Hebrew Bible as a Woman (2000)
572
Esther Fuchs, “The Literary Characterization of Mothers and Sexual Politics in
the Hebrew Bible,” in Alice Bach (editor), Women in the Hebrew Bible: A Reader.
New York: Routledge. 1998. p. 127
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structuralist in that it does not really question the epistemological and
disciplinary presuppositions of the humanities and social sciences in general.
Nor indeed should that be the goal of a work that is meant to be used by all
stripes of women. In some of the “Other Voices” we find questioning of
hegemonic structures and hints at the need for immediate change, in others
we find the neoliberal approach. For instance, in the Charge to Remember
Amalek (Deut 25:17-19), the bible scholar Adele Berlin points out the need
to blot out the name of Amalek and the irony of a command to remember to
blot out his name. She also connects Haman, the Agagite, as the symbol of
later Jewish enemies as well (p. 1184). However, one would expect of Judith
Plaskow, a contributor to the TWC and a member of its editorial board who
has brilliantly analyzed the structures of patriarchy in her influential 1990
book Standing Again at Sinai, to do more with this text than simply “use” it
to say that
“we blot out the memory of Amalek when we create Jewish
communities in which the perpetual exclusion of some group of
people—or the denial of women’s rights—are so contrary to current
values as to be almost incredible. Yet, if we are to safe-guard our
achievements, we can also never forget to remember the history of
inequality and the decisions and struggles that have made more
equitable communities possible” (p. 1188).
Neither she nor any of the contributors to this section ask whether we
should continue to frame our Jewish identity in reference to our enemies, or
of the existential danger when we do so, as was seen in the case of Baruch
Goldstein who, in 1994 massacred 29 Muslims at prayer (and wounded
another 150) in the Cave of Patriarchs in Hebron. On the other hand, Suzanne
Singer in her Contemporary Reflection (p. 374) on parashat Bo in Exodus,
in her discussion of God’s Hardening of Pharaoh’s heart makes it clear that
we
“as readers must confront and challenge troubling aspects of our sacred
narratives. The persistent hardening of Pharaoh’s heart results in the
Israelites’ night of redemption, but we must never forget that this same
night was one of horror for the Egyptians. We must continue to ask the
questions that preserve our awareness of the Other’s story…. [W]e
must remember the price the Other paid for our liberation.”
Wendy Zierler in her “Contemporary Reflection” on Vayeitzei (pp. 178-
179) seems to address Fuch’s concerns. She manages to re-read Rachel’s
stealing of her father’s terafim (household Gods) and show that by using
double-speak she can seize control of the patriarchy and her inheritance.
“In telling her father that she cannot ‘rise before’ him because the ‘way
of women is upon her,’ Rachel is ‘speaking two languages
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 simultaneously.’ Laban hears Rachel as saying that she cannot honor
him by standing because she is menstruating. But Rachel’s speech also
reads as a complaint that she has no forum for rising before her father
and pleading her case for inheritance; the social ‘way of women’
constrains her possibilities for speech, advocacy, and direction action.”
In Zierler’s reading, Rachel undermines male definitions of women and
creates new meanings out of male language. One of course can argue that she
is working within the system and that to be a trickster is not very subversive.
I would disagree. The master’s house has to be dismantled brick by brick, not
blown up.
Having pointed this out, would I want this commentary to take such post-
structural risks and alienate the readership by being a political tract? Truth
be said, the answer is no! Most of the alternative views and reflections “are
clearly in the present and have implications for the future.” [lviii] However,
were the haftarot included for each portion, the authors could use the
occasional cross referencing and internal commentaries available and stay in
the tradition. For instance it is clear that the haftarah for Shabbat Zachor of
the debate between Samuel and Saul over whether to wipe out all traces of
the Amalekites could be used (in a traditional setting) to hint at politics
without actually getting their hands dirty! An example of a neo-liberal
approach is in the commentary on “your neighbor’s wife” (Exodus 20:14) in
the Ten Commandments. The argument is that if the Commandments were
addressed to both women and men, there would have been a parallel
prohibition about coveting “your neighbor’s house…wife…male…female
slave, …ox etc.” Yet the commentator writes:
“But the lack of mutuality here does not rule out that the previous
provisions of the Decalogue addressed themselves to both men and
women. Rather, each provision is addressed to whomever it applies. In
ancient Israel, marriage was not a symmetrical arrangement….That
alone would seem to account for why ‘husband’ is not mentioned in
this verse….”
Is the fact that the TWC has differing points of view an intellectual lack
of rigor? Inconsistency? To me consistency is the hobgoblin of little male
minds. Our religion is thankfully not monolithic, even our views of God are
diverse and that is for the good, or as God said in Genesis, very good! There
is nothing wrong in veering back and forth between the two approaches and
we can remain feminists in good standing while doing our tightrope act. For
the most part, I am willing to overlook the occasional solicitous approach,
and even the lack of haftarot, for the many jewels and insights on every
passage. The high level of religious commitment on the part of the

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contributors almost guarantees that ultimately the Feminist-Jewish message
will be neo-liberal and not post-structural.
One of the most exciting experiences for me as a reader of the bible is to
have my queries answered in the text. For years I was bothered by the JPS
translations of Genesis 3:6 which are used both by the Gunter Plaut (Reform)
and Etz Hayim (Conservative) commentaries:
“When the woman saw that the tree was good for eating and a delight to
the eyes, and that the tree was desirable as a source of wisdom, she took of
its fruit and ate. She also gave some to her husband, and he ate.”
Compare this with the Women’s Commentary:
“So when the woman saw how good to eat the tree’s fruit would be,
and how alluring to the eyes it was, and how desirable the insight was
that the tree would bring, she took some of its fruit and ate; and then
she gave some to her man who was with her [Heb. immah] and he ate.”
Most commentaries ignore the Hebrew word immah [with her]. What a
difference this addition makes! Imagine my joy in reading Eskenazi’s
comment in the TWC:
“Most earlier translations unfortunately omit ‘with her,’ letting readers
assume that the man was ignorant of the exchange and thereby
innocent. Genesis, however, portrays both woman and man as
culpable. The woman takes the first step toward what modern
interpreters call consciousness-raising. If the tree entails ‘knowing all
things,’ then woman is bringer of civilization, not death” (15).
Despite the brilliance of this observation, and the change in the
translation, the writer unfortunately does not acknowledge that the Spanish
exegete, Abraham Ibn Ezra (1093–1167) already wrote that the reason for
the word “immah” is that “together they ate and discovered the secret of the
snake. Therefore, the man did not innocently eat from the tree [Heb. lo hayah
adam shogeg] and for that he was punished.” Another little gem is to be found
in the commentary of Genesis 43:14 “if I am bereaved, I am bereaved!” Here
we have an insertion by the editor in brackets thrown in as a gift: “[Jacob
expresses his resignation in a manner resembling that of Queen Esther when
Mordecai convinces her to risk her life. Her words: ‘If I am to perish, I shall
perish’ (Esther 4:16)—Ed.] Long ago I noted the similarity in the structures
and was pleased to see my insight validated even though it is not developed.
However, in the midrash there are connections between the figures of Esther

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and the feminine aspects of Joseph and it would have been nice if the authors
573
had picked up on this some place.
Lest one think this commentary is perfect, there are some missed
teaching opportunities. One example is in the commentary on Gen 9:6 in the
portion about Noach, “The shedder of human blood” the authors do not talk
about how the Hebrew “the one who spills the blood that is inside the person”
(shofech dam ha-adam be-adam) was used in rabbinic texts as an anti-
abortion text (b Sanhedrin 57b). Strangely enough this was picked up in the
Gunter Plaut commentary, but not the Etz Hayim. Instead the Other View
focuses on a small piece at the end of the portion to emphasize the barrenness
of Sarah, something that could easily be done elsewhere. The purpose of the
TWC is not to supplant existing Torah commentaries but rather to supplement
them. Yet, I find myself questioning this unstated goal. Because this is truly
an amazing collection of insights and innovations, I want to come back to the
issue of the lack of haftarot. To “test out” the usefulness of this commentary,
I have been taking it with me to the synagogue on a weekly basis. I have
enough time during the torah service to carefully read all the commentaries
and sections and even occasionally compare texts and intertexts, but the TWC
does not include a haftarah. This means I cannot use it as my default
commentary. I know that adding the haftarah would be a financial and
physical burden, but not adding them means that I have to sit with two
commentaries. More important, it means that the first line internal
commentary that has existed for centuries is not available to the average
reader and that is a major break with tradition. For instance, our
understanding of Naso (which includes both vows of the Nazirite and the
case if the Sotah, the suspected adulterous woman) would be increased
immensely by having the story of Samson’s mother’s encounter with the
angel as well as the vows he must make not to drink or cut his hair. Yet,
because the haftarah is not included, no mention is made of it. To be fair in
the comments on p. 826 both Samson and Samuel are mentioned as sons
designated as Nazirites by their mothers. But there is no mention that this is
a haftarah. It is because I am so enthusiastic about this commentary and think
it should be freely available, I want them to include the haftarah. Then it will
be practical for synagogues to buy this as an alternative text to be used on a
regular basis by both men and women in the Sabbath service. In the book of
Proverbs 1:8 it is written “…heed the discipline of your father, and do not

573
Nora Gold once wrote a midrash that she called “Yosepha” in Lilith magazine
(Issue 12/13, Winter/Spring 1985), reproduced in her book Marrow and Other
Stories (Warwick Publishing, 1998).
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abandon the instruction [Heb. torat] of your mother. The Torah: A Women’s
Commentary not only insures that the next generation will not abandon the
Torah of our mothers, but will inspire it to augment the teachings of the past
to make them relevant for us in the future. We will never again be mere
bystanders at Sinai.

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CHAPTER FORTY-ONE: A FEMINIST MOTHER'S PRAYER:
574
ON HER SON'S INDUCTION INTO THE ARMY

You were a miracle child, discovered one month old in utero when I had a cyst
removed. Eight months and eight days later you were inducted into the Jewish
faith, with a cut, a knife, blood, wine on a shabbat morning during Kislev while
I huddled in the bedroom waiting for your cry. When you were thirteen, we said
“baruch she-petaranu mi-onsho shel zeh,” blessed the One who absolves us of
this one's punishment. We laughed, because you weren't a punishment and
thirteen was too young an age for us to be getting rid of you.
You are eighteen now and I feel that I am being punished in your going
575
off: not only will I have to start doing laundry on shabbat ; but I will be
expected to send you and your friends the unhealthy candy and cookies from
which you were previously “deprived”. No more trips abroad together for us.
The long awaited sabbatical will have to be delayed. My newly found need to
focus on finding myself as a woman clashes with your needs.
I've been dialoguing with Palestinian women and now have to shift my
empathy from them to you, the Israeli soldier, who is their enemy. It gets to be
too much; the dialogue group disbands.
The rethinking I undergo is minor compared to my newly churned up
feelings of pride and dread. Every article in the newspaper about a soldier's
suicide, Russian roulette, training accidents—causes introspection and
guilt--did I raise him strong enough to withstand basic training?
I re-visit the story of akedat yitzchak and identify with Sarah, Isaac's
mother. I wonder if Sarah, like me, questioned why she allowed herself to be
dragged on aliyah. I never thought of myself as a self-sacrificing Jewish
mother--certainly not sacrifice of one who is part of my self, flesh of my flesh,
my only son. But I have chosen. I identify too with Joshua's mother. Is any land
so important, that I must teach my son to be a good soldier? Giving birth to a
son in the State of Israel means to me:
The knife, the Agony.
574
Naomi Graetz, “A Feminist Mother’s Prayer,” in Rachel Josefowitz Siegel,
Ellen Cole, Susan Steinberg-Oren, eds., Jewish Mothers Tell Their Stories
(Binghamton, NY: The Haworth Press, 2000): 87-90.
575
The Israeli army sends its soldiers home every other shabbat; the trade-off for this
is that the army is not responsible for laundering its soldiers clothing. Guess who is
expected to wash the grimy uniforms? The religious Israeli family with a soldier in its
midst has to figure out how to get the laundry washed, dried and ironed from erev
shabbat, the time the soldier walks in, until motzei shabbat, when he goes back to the
base.
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The pain, again to Choose....my son, the live one.
I am he. Or am I the dead one--
Lost, abandoned, On the altar,
On the way to the knife...
576
Send him off if you can.”
I write this and realize that not only do I have the strength to send you off,
but that I must. It is important that you learn to be on your own with a support
system backing you up. Eighteen is young to become your own man--if not
now, when. This is your test and mine. You will be told to shoot first--and I will
hope that you will not have to; that you will not witness battles and death at first
hand; but that if you do, you will be able to draw sustenance from our tradition.
How do I, a feminist with pacifist leanings, send you off? With
ambivalence, with love, with fear, with pride, with support, with the knowledge
that whatever you do we will be there for you. Lech be-shalom; Hazor
be-shalom. Go in peace. Come back safely.
577
AKEDA REVISITED
578
Choose! Bechor
Why?
579
I am what I am!
You are what you are!
Why choose?
I have put before you
Life and Death,
Blessing and Curse.
Choose Life--
580
If you and your offspring would live.
One for Life.
One for Death.
My sons! I can not.
The knife, the Agony.
576
This is an excerpt from a poem I wrote entitled “Akeda Revisited” (Judaism,
Summer, 1991) reprinted in my collection of aggadot, S/He Created Them: Feminist
Retellings of Biblical Stories (Professional Press, 1993).
577This poem appears in Judaism (Summer, 1991): 322-323. It was written just before my son Zvi Yehuda Graetz was
inducted into the Israeli Defense Force at age eighteen.
578In Hebrew behor is to choose; bechor is the elder. Different roots and sounds, yet...
579Ex. 3:14
580Deut. 30:19

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The pain, again
To choose.
Father? God? Son?
I lived. Why?
To choose!
No!
You must!
It is not choice if I must.
To choose is to die.
Two nations are in [her] womb.
Two separate peoples...
One people shall be mightier than the other.
581
And the older shall serve the younger.
It is not the practice in our place
582
To prefer the younger over the elder.
Give up one.
Divide your heart.
This is my son, the live one.
I am he.
Or am I the dead one--
Lost, abandoned,
On the altar,
On the way to the knife.

A sword was brought before him.

To cut the live child in two.
583
One shall rule.
No!
I shall choose love.
Let it be.
Give the live child to her.
There will be no glory for you
That the choice will be
584
In the hands of a woman.
Do not put him to death.

581Gen. 25:22-23
582Gen. 29:26
5831 Kings 3:22-26
584Judges 4:9

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 585
She is his mother.
Choose well my dear.
There are no returns
When destiny means choice.
Send him off if you can.
My son, our sons.

5851 Kings 3:27

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CHAPTER FORTY-TWO: THE RABBI'S WIFE: THE REBBETZIN
586
IN AMERICAN JEWISH LIFE
In the interests of disclosure, I married a rabbinical student in 1963 (ordained,
1967) and have been the wife of a congregational rabbi since 1974. True I
have lived in Israel since 1967, yet I am not a disinterested reader and
reviewer of this book. Having said this, I must admit to having been
fascinated by Shuly Rubin Schwartz's The Rabbi's Wife: The Rebbetzin in
American Jewish Life which is both a historical review and a sociological
study as well as having gossip value! Moreover it engages in feminist
analysis. All of this makes it a treat to read and I strongly recommend that it
be read by female rabbis, male rabbis (to make them appreciate how much
the behind the scenes "little woman" has made them big), and their spouses,
who are the subject of this book.
The spouse is called rebbetzin, or rabbi's wife, most of the time in the
book, since until recently most rabbis were male. It is the thesis of the book
that the rebbetzin "chose" to be the rabbi's wife, since she could not be a rabbi
herself. Because this position was closed to her, she either remained the
power behind the throne or found other para-rabbinic outlets for herself, only
rarely coming out of the shadows (after illness or death of the rabbi) to reign.
Thus on the downside "contributions of rabbi's wives to the American
rabbinate largely [remained] ignored." On the upside her being the "wife of"
gave her access to status and power that would not have been attainable
otherwise. Schwartz's purpose in writing this book is to look at "the evolving
role of the American rabbi's wife." It also shows how marriage can serve as
a way for women to gain power. This was not always evident since the
rabbinic couple both worked behind the scenes and as partners. However,
Schwartz maintains that there is a fluid boundary between the rebbetzin's
public and private life. Schwartz also relates to clergy wives in general and
how their lives impacted on the rebbetzin. She looks at the traditional terms
used to describe rabbi's wives, such as "helpmate", "mother in Israel",
"woman of valor" in order to understand how these terms both prescribed and
described actual behavior.
She chooses to highlight the careers of rabbi's wives. The American
Heritage Dictionary defines the noun as "a chosen pursuit; a profession or
occupation" and "the general course or progression of one's working life or
one's professional achievements" and in its thesaurus as "an activity pursued
to gain one's livelihood". I find it interesting that Schwartz did not justify

586
Review of Shuly Rubin Schwartz, The Rabbi’s Wife: The Rebbitzen in
Jewish American Life, by Conservative Judaism, 59:1 (Fall, 2006): 109-111.
-449-
using this term, since it is usually associated with a paid position. She makes
the analogy with other first ladies such as Hilary Clinton and shows the
pitfalls that powerful women who are "wives of" face, yet at no point does
she directly discuss what career means. To be fair the book amply
demonstrates this, but to someone such as me who has been a rebbetzin with
a full-time career (and sometimes the primary earner) and who has also
experienced much of what Schwartz describes in her book, I found this to be
somewhat off-putting and offensive. Obviously one can argue that
rebbetzinhood was not a career and until women became rabbis, theirs were
not careers. Yet Schwartz goes to great pains to make the point that they were
a dual career couple, well before the present day meaning which implies that
both partners have separate paying careers. Only in the last chapter of the
book does she use the word "vocation" to describe what she also then refers
to as "hidden careers". But of course this is related to the thesis of the book,
which is that these Jewishly educated, motivated and ambitious women who
felt the calling of the rabbinate, married rabbis so that they could attain the
"position' of rebbetzin. Schwartz tells her story by used both extant records
and oral interviews to illuminate how the role of rebbetzin evolved over time
and how these shifts influenced the wives, their communities and American
Jewry. She starts by writing about the reputation of the old fashioned
rebbetzins who were pious, frugal, well-connected, wise, learned and totally
dedicated to and protective of their husbands. Included in this extensive list
are a slew of rebbetzins, dating back to Beruriah, Miriam, the wife of Jacob
Tam as well as the fictional wives of Chaim Grade.
Schwartz then discusses American minister's wives to show how the
clergy wife position of 19th century America with its notion that women were
innately religious and therefore suitable to serve both serve as moral
guardians and at the same time willing to remain subordinate to the men they
served and influenced. The role of rabbi's wife expanded with the ordination
of English speaking, American trained rabbis who settled all over the
country. Many Jewish women of the time became aware that they had a
special role to play in shaping American Judaism. Jewish women filled many
of the pews and their presence in the synagogues "influenced the evolution
of liturgy, music, congregational participation, and sacred space" especially
in the Reform movement. "[T]he 1890s ushered in a decade bursting with
possibility for women's independent leadership roles yet filled with
traditional rhetoric about the primacy of Jewish women's roles as wife and
mother." The rabbi's wives exemplified both of these trends. The book shows
how different patterns emerged in different eras and how the role of rebbetzin
changed over time. All the chapters show that each period is fluid and varied,
while at the same time illustrates how the role evolved. Thus the first chapter
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highlights the lives of Carrie Simon, Mathilde Schechter and Rebecca
Goldstein who were founders of the sisterhoods in the three denominations.
The second chapter described the emergence of the rebbetzin role in the
1920's, while the third chapter entitled "Mr. and Mrs. God" discusses larger-
than-life rebbetzins such as Mignon Rubenovitz (Conservative), Rebecca
Brickner (Reform), Tamar de Sola Pool (Orthodox/Sephardic) and Tehilla
Lichtenstein (Orthodox). Chapters 4 and 5 discusses the growing sense of
consciousness that rabbi's wives had during the postward period and the
changing role during the tumultuous years of the 60's and 70's.
The last chapter "They married what they Wanted to be" is
problematic, since it considers the rebbetzin in a time when women have been
ordained as rabbis, and there are male rabbinic spouses a well as rabbinic
dual career couples. An important point made is that the female rebbetzin
role has endured and even flourished despite the growing numbers of women
rabbis. Stories and novels continue to be written about them. There is also
new publicity about the "rebbitz" or rabbi's husbands. The word rabbinic
spouse has replaced rebbetzin and it is clear that congregations can no longer
expect two for the price of one. Only among the Orthodox does the rebbetzin
role continue to thrive, especially among the Lubavitcher Hasidim. Yet
Rubin uses this fact to support her thesis by writing: "Flourishing in the one
community that denies ordination to women, Orthodox rebbetzins today are
the exception that proves the rule. 'Marrying what they want to be' remains
an effective and satisfying strategy for those unable to attain such power or
position on their own." On the other hand Rubin warns us that we must
rethink the effects of gender stereotyping which might affect our perception
of the past roles of the rebbetzin and look at their role in a more nuanced way.
Although I don't think she has "proved" her thesis, Rubin certainly makes a
strong case for it and argues convincingly that the advantages gained by
rebbetzins far outstripped the disadvantages of her service role.

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-452-
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE: THE STATUS OF WOMEN IN
MASORTI JUDAISM: A PRESCRIPTIVE APPROACH (1992)

The situation of Masorti Judaism the world over is complex. Unlike Orthodoxy,
the Masorti movement affirms change in Jewish law. Unlike Reform, it
emphasizes fealty to tradition. Given its dual commitment, to tradition and to
change, the movement encompasses a great diversity of opinion about the
relative importance of tradition and change and how to move. The place of
women in religious life is one good example of this diversity. Many
congregations, as well as the national institutions of Masorti Judaism, in Israel
are still debating and arguing the issue.
What we are debating is the conflict between woman's just and fair
demands for equality in the synagogue, the rabbinical school and the Jewish
tradition's natural resistance to change.
It is fair to say that Conservative Judaism from its earliest years in America
has granted new and substantial rights to women. The movement grew in
numbers at the same time as it introduced mixed seating and the bat-mitzvah
ceremony on Friday evenings, and as it emphasized equal education for girls in
congregational schools.
In a recent official publication, the Masorti Movement in Israel reasserts
this principle which has its origins in the United States:
"The Masorti Movement believes that the Jewish woman's standing as
an individual in the family, and as a member of the community is of great
importance; the role she plays in each of these social units is a central
one. In matters of personal status in Jewish law, the Masorti Movement
advocates finding ways of assuring women's rights and equality. The role
traditionally delegated to the Jewish woman has been an expression of
certain historical and social realities in public and religious life. The
Masorti Movement promotes examining, within the framework of
halakha, ways of including women in areas which were previously
closed to them.
All Masorti congregations in Israel encourage 12-13-year-old girls to have
a Bat Mitzvah ceremony which includes the chanting of the Haftarah.
Masorti congregations span a wide range on the issue of women's
participation in ritual. However, each variation is based upon opinions
587
published by Masorti rabbis as responsa."

587
The Masorti Movement: History, Ideology, Principles, Challenges, Jerusalem, 1990,
p. 12
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 Despite the fact that "pluralism is officially cited as one of our movement's
defining characteristics.... women’s participation in both leadership and ritual
588
roles is very much" still an issue. This is the conclusion of the ad hoc
Committee on the Status of Women in the Masorti movement.
This ad hoc committee has been sitting for almost a year to investigate how
many women are actually filling lead gathered together by women concerned
about the slow pace of change in the Masorti movement in Israel. Some of us
were especially concerned about the fact that women are allowed to study in the
new rabbinical school in Jerusalem but are not allowed to be ordained as rabbis.
In addition, two of the Jerusalem members of the committee are members of
one of the most prominent congregations in Jerusalem which is not egalitarian
and have to put up with discrimination that they find insulting.
The first task that the ad hoc committee on the status of women in the
Masorti movement took upon itself to ask all of the movement's 38
congregations to fill out a questionnaire describing the roles women are now
fulfilling in the leadership and ritual life of each congregation. 33 kehillot, i.e.,
more than 87% of the congregations responded. After correlating the data, the
conclusion of the committee is that less women than would be expected are
filling these roles. Yet the findings are not all bad.
FINDINGS
Roughly a third of the Masorti congregations are completely egalitarian. This
means that they count women as equals in the minyan, allow women to lead
services, have an aliyah, read from the torah, do a haftarah, and give a d'var
torah. In many of these congregations women have served as presidents as well.
In other words, in these egalitarian congregation there is no difference between
men and women.
Another third can be categorized as right wing. They do not count women,
do not allow women to have aliyot and although a few allow women to read the
haftarah (usually for the bat mitzvah) they cannot read the blessings before and
after the haftarah. In one of these right wing congregations there is no mixed
seating.
The third group is still equivocating; it has not made up its mind where it
stands. Although this group allows aliyot, only about half count women in a
minyan. Not one congregation in this group allows women to lead the prayers.
As far as leadership is concerned less than half of the 30 congregations (13)
had women serving as presidents. Thus there seems to be no clear relationship
between ritual participation and women's leadership roles in the congregations.

588
Amy Lederhandler, "Women: Left, Right and Center: Women in the Masorti
Movement", Messer (Spring, 1990): 5.
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HALACHIC DECISIONS
Our committee found that the members of the Masorti movement has shown
interest in the Responsa of the Va'ad Halakha of the Rabbinical Assembly of
Israel. This Rabbinical committee has published three volumes of its Responsa
589
and in volumes two and three there are about ten responsa which are relevant
to those of us who are interested in the position of women in Masorti Judaism.
The topics in these two volumes are:
1) The Participation of Women in Funerals
2) Conscription of Women into the Israel Defense Forces
3) The Mehitzah in the Synagogue
4) The Participation of Women in the Priestly Blessing
5) Aliyot for Women
6) The First two Aliyot for a Bat Kohen and a Bat Levi
7) Women and the Mourner's Kaddish
8) Artificial Insemination for a Single Woman.
Although the responsa are written in Hebrew there are English abstracts for
all the responsa. The responsa of the Masorti rabbis in Israel unequivocally side
with change in halakha except for their answers concerning the first two aliyot,
the participation of women in the priestly blessing and the question of artificial
insemination for a single woman.
The Committee concludes that women can and should participate in
funerals, mourn their close relatives, be conscripted into the Israel Defense
Forces. They should not have to sit behind a mehitzah in the synagogue and they
should be allowed aliyot and to read the torah in the synagogue.
The responsum on aliyot for women stirred up the imagination of the Israel
public (both religious and secular) and therefore received a lot of publicity. In
the responsum it was pointed out that in the Amoraic period whoever went up
to the Torah read his/her own portion and recited the blessing and that the
custom of having a ba'al keriah read while the person who went up only recited
the blessings dated back to the Middle ages (when many could not read their
own aliyah). Halachically speaking, whoever can read from the Torah can recite
the blessings and vice versa. The question of whether women can read
appears in the Babylonian Talmud, where it says: "Everyone can go up for one
of the seven Aliyot to read the Torah, even a woman, even a minor. But the sages

589
Responsa of the Va'ad Halacha of the Rabbinical Assembly of Israel, The
Rabbinical Assembly of Israel and the Masorti Movement, POB 7559, Jerusalem
91074
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said: a woman may not read from the Torah in public because of k'vod hatzibur
590
(literally the honor of the congregation)."
Many authorities quote this without any explanation. Others feel that
women may not read from the Torah because women are exempt from reading
the Torah in public. The feeling of the committee is that the argument of k'vod
hatzibur is the real reason. What exactly is k'vod hatzibur? One modern
authority says that we do not know. Others say it is sexual or erotic distraction.
Another says "it is not in keeping with public policy". In fact, in the Talmud, it
means "a disgrace to the congregation."
The three proofs to this last explanation is that it is written that "one does
not bring a woman to read for the congregation" in a synagogue where only one
man knows how to read. In such a synagogue it is a disgrace to bring a woman
to read for the congregation because the men who cannot read will be
embarrassed. In such a case, it is better for one man to read all seven aliyot.
The question is whether the congregation can "relinquish its honor" and
allow a woman to read? The answer is that it may, however, since today both
men and women are taught equally the original reason for the ruling has
disappeared and we can return to the original law which if you recall is that all
read from the Torah, even a woman, even a minor.
The committee on halakha in Masorti Judaism discussed two side issues in
connection with this: 1) the fact that there are superstitions about women
touching the Torah during their menstrual periods (answer--the Torah is not
susceptible to ritual impurity) and 2) the belief that men are not allowed to hear
a women singing because "the voice of a woman is lewdness". (answer--R.
Samuel was talking about the speaking voice of a woman and that it is forbidden
to recite the Shema when a woman is singing nearby). Neither of these
interpretations is relevant to a woman reading the Torah in public.
Therefore, the committee concludes that it is halachically permitted for
women to read from the Torah or to have aliyot when the Torah is read in public.
DISCUSSION
Despite the clear answer about aliyot, as I said earlier, not every congregation
has chosen to follow this teshuva. Why? One reason is that some men are
reluctant to give up their monopoly on communal religious life, while some
women hesitate taking on new roles and obligations. A second reason is that
change is considered to be a threat to the social fabric and those who are familiar
with synagogue ritual have nostalgic recollections which include established
traditional gender roles.

590
Megillah 23a
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 In addition, since the Chief Rabbinate does not recognize the legitimacy of
the Masorti movement, some congregations perceive that to recognize women
as equals will further alienate the orthodox from our movement. This, despite
the fact that though egalitarianism in ritual is almost unknown to the secular
Israeli, when exposed to egalitarianism secular Israelis often do react very
favorably.
The issue of women's status in Masorti Judaism hasn't gotten the attention
it deserves. Perhaps part of it has to do with the fact that the Conservative
Movement in America is being threatened by a split between its right and left
wings. In addition, in Israel everyone looks at the right as a political frame of
reference.
It is my view that if the Masorti movement wants to break through the
preconceived notions of the traditionalist and the secular Israeli, it must openly
accept the ideology of egalitarianism. In the process, the Masorti movement will
exhibit intellectual integrity and present a modern, attractive alternative to the
familiar (and often despised) model of established religion.
Although we take pride in our halachic approach, sometimes this approach
slows down progress. I am of the belief that the Masorti movement should issue
a comprehensive resolution, a takkanah, (which I explain shortly) that would be
equivalent to the Equal Rights Amendment being advocated by feminists in
America. If this is not done it will give proof to the argument of several
prominent Jewish feminist theologians that halakha and feminism are
591
incompatible systems of thought.
Under the guise of halachic precedent rabbis have declared that a minhag
(custom) annuls a halakha and have gone backwards over the years as far as
women's issues are concerned. As women get the educational tools to criticize,
if we are not to opt out of the halachic process, it is necessary for us to re-educate
those who make decisions about women's rights and obligations. It is ironic that
in the States, people are looking beyond cosmetic or mere equality and are
questioning the patriarchal nature of Judaic culture and its impact on us today,
whereas we in Israel are still arguing about aliyot and minyanim--problems that
were resolved (for better or worse) in the U.S.A. in the 1950's and later in the
1970's.
I mentioned earlier that the Masorti Movement should make a
comprehensive resolution. There is a legal precedent for this in our halakha
which is called a takkanah. It is used when
"on account of changed circumstances, the law as it stands creates
difficulties of a social, economic, or moral nature, which the takkanah

591
Judith Plaskow, "Halakha as a Feminist Issue", Journal, Fall, 1987:3-5;25
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 592
seeks to rectify and resolve." "A law which has its creative source in
takkanah serves as the motivated addition of a new norm to the overall
halakhic system, whereas a law originating from the legal source of
midrash serves to reveal the concealed content of existing law within the
593
system."
The usual way to resolve problems is by the midrashic approach. However,
when it does not work than the rabbis can resort to takkanah, which is an
innovation in the world of halakhah. The justification for takkanot can be found
in maxims such as: "it is better that one letter of the Torah should be uprooted
594
than that the entire Torah become forgotten to Israel"; or "there are times
595
when the disregard of the Torah may be its foundation". The explanation for
many takkanot in the past have been for the sake of good order (tikkun olam) or
for the sake of peace (darkei shalom). When halachic scholars of the past "were
persuaded of the need of the hour they enacted and decreed accordingly, in order
that the Torah, its ways and precepts, should not become strange to the Jewish
596
people."
There were takkanot throughout Jewish history until the end of the 18th
century. In 1943 procedural takkanot were enacted in the Land of Israel and the
last takkanah was in 1950 when a takkanah was enacted prohibiting the
marriage of a girl below the age of 16. Since then there have been no takkanot,
which is regrettable, since solutions to cases involving hardship to women in
particular could be found by enacting takkanot.
You may correctly ask, why this long digression at the end of my
presentation. Since the issue of religious equality for women is one of justice,
we should favor change over the tradition which perpetuates injustice. The
classic primary reason for a takkanah in the history of halakha is to correct
injustices which came about because received traditions did not fit new
circumstances. We then would be in the great tradition of the sages who used
halakha creatively for the purpose of tikkun olam, in order to correct injustice
in the world.

592
Menahem Alon, "Takkanot", Encyclopedia Judaica, Volume 15, p.715
593
Ibid. p. 713
594
Berachot 9:5
595
Menachot 99a/b
596
Alon, op.cit., p.718

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CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR: A LITTLE TOO CLOSE TO GOD: THE
597
THRILLS AND PANIC OF A LIFE IN ISRAEL

David Horovitz is a British born journalist who has written this book to
justify his decision to live (and stay) in Israel, despite the thrills and panic
and roller coaster existence of life in Israel. Horovitz sets the tone of the book
by describing how he just missed being blown up by a bomb on Ben-Yehuda
street: “it really, really could have been me—and Sharon and Alvin. All we’d
had to do was eat lunch at the Village Green on Thursday instead of
Wednesday” (5). His goal in writing this book is not to change things but to
open some minds while clarifying his own thoughts about living in Israel.
The book is neither a comprehensive nor objective picture of Israel: “It is my
Israel, my Western immigrant’s Israel, my very politicized Israel—with my
mistakes, my prejudices” (21).
Horovitz enjoys the dulce vita of Jerusalem. He lives in the German
Colony, goes to Levi Kelman’s yuppie shul, sends his kids to liberal middle
class schools. He describes life the way it is and it is never boring. He has
fallen in love with the frantic pace of Israel, its noise, the rudeness, the
pushing. So much so that the politeness of his colleagues in London makes
him want to scream (50). He relishes the pace, “understands” why Israelis
are “maniacs behind the wheel” (54). His understanding stems from his
professional interest. He is at the hub—politics permeates every aspect of his
life—and he loves it.
Horovitz is concerned that his now young children will grow up to
be soldiers. As an oleh he can write that if the country genuinely tries to find
peace, he will stay here. But if the “Barak era proves a false dawn, if we do
slip back into hard-line, uncompromising policies that prompt more violence,
well, then I would have to reconsider” (95).
The most painful chapter in the book is about “Remembering Rabin”.
Here he introduces his sister Miriam and brother in law Nathan who live in
Ofra—to show his intimate acquaintance with the other side, the settlers. The
rhetoric device is unconvincing: it is akin to “since some of my best friends
are Jews, I cannot be accused of harboring prejudices.” He uses his family to
show that he knows that Rabin was abandoning the settlers, that Rabin was,
from their perspective, guilty of incitement. Yet despite this “knowledge”, he
writes:

597
Review of David Horovitz, A Little Too Close to God.” Conservative
Judaism 53:3 (Spring 2001): 92-94.

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 “After the assassination, I felt even less inclined to sympathize with
the settlers and the right, and no inclination to find fault with Rabin.
The bullets ended my apathy. Since the killing, I’ll admit, I have come
to mythologize Rabin—to use him, or his image, as my own shorthand
for the Israel I longed to live in, his murder as the puncturing of the
dream. It is my obsession. It shows no sign of passing with time” (124-
125).
I am alarmed when a journalist, the respected editor of the Jerusalem
Report (a magazine I read religiously), is obsessed. True he admits it, but can
we trust a journalist who demonizes Netanyahu by association:
“His supporters bayed for Rabin’s blood…I felt as if I were among
wild animals, vicious, angry predators craving flesh and scenting
blood…. The faces were pulled into grimaces of hatred….” (128).
By contrast, he has prettified Rabin after his death, into a saint: “In life, Rabin
projected honesty, hardheadedness, and strength. Only with his death did I
recognize his compassion” (130). He continues in this vein:
“I feel this extraordinary bitterness toward Netanyahu. Bitterness
because, if I have come to mythologize Rabin as the embodiment of
my Israel dream, then Netanyahu, demagogic, divisive, destructive,
has come to symbolize the nightmare” (150).
I have no argument with the substance of this, (I am no lover of Bibi), it is
the polemical tone that makes me shudder. Horovitz himself writes that,
Netanyahu is not the only leader “whose basic lack of consideration and
common sense led innocent people, his own people, getting killed” (153).
Side by side with this lack of objectivity, he depicts the “Shades of
Gray”. He uses his colleague, Yossi Klein Halevi, his brother in law Natan
and his cousin Shai, as his sparring partners. He gives them all a platform.
But since the platforms are in the form of dialogues, Horovitz gets the final
word and gets to undermine their viewpoints: “I hope I’m not so arrogant as
to be certain that all of my thinking is right and all of Natan’s wrong. He
certainly lives in more of an Arab environment than I do. But boy, do we see
the regions differently” (208). And after two hours of recorded dialogue with
his brother in law, he concludes that they both live in two distinct Israels. “I
don’t think his Israel can last. And he doesn’t think mine can last” (217).
Perhaps the most important chapter of the book is the one which
addresses “What Kind of Jewish State?” It is the chapter that I can
sympathize with most, since it is essentially an attack on ultra-Orthodox
Judaism:
“the Orthodox rabbinate has managed to exert a monopoly on birth,
marriage, and death in the Holy Land—only Orthodox rabbis, using

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 their unbending criteria, can determine whether one’s newborn is to be
considered Jewish…” (244-245).
Horovitz started out Orthodox, but replaced his skullcap for an
earring and outright apathy to the Orthodoxy of his youth. He reserves most
of his scorn for Shas, which he describes as a thoroughly modern ultra-
Orthodox party, which is opposed to democracy and pluralism. Yet his
description of the ultra-Orthodox lifestyle, honest as it is, is a form of
demonization:
“The ultra-Orthodox community is a world apart, a world I admit to
mistrusting because of the certainties it appears to offer, because of the
speed with which it is growing, because it appears to threaten my own”
(274).
He re-discovered religion, in the form of Reform Judaism, because
of the threat that his children might one day become victims of “Orthodox
‘pickup artists,’ those smooth-talking hucksters who peddle their faith like
contraband jewelry to the hapless secular Jewish innocents they chance upon
at the Western Wall….” (255). He is equally passionate about his right to
drive on Shabbat in religious neighborhoods to the local movie house, as he
is to daven in Kol Haneshama. Despite his support of pluralism, his idea of
Sabbath observance is to leave Jerusalem and to shop in one of the open malls
North of Tel Aviv.
In his concluding chapter, he discusses “A Certain Tension” which is
common to all of us who live in Israel: the existential tension of to stay or
not. He looks to Ehud Barak to solve all of our problems: to prove that the
Netanyahu years are best forgotten, to stop the trend of ultra-Orthodox
certainties from becoming a flood. The burden he puts on Barak is unfair: he
writes that if he cannot put us back together, nobody else can. He reminds
himself and us that he has the luxury of deciding whether to stay or not, he
and his wife have their English and American passports: “For us, America,
Britain, Canada, or Australia is just a flight away, and not much hassle at
immigration. My bona fide, genuine, born-here countryfolk, by contrast, are
stuck” (296). Despite this knowledge he doesn’t want to leave. He prefers the
roller coaster existence of Israel, because this is as close to home as it gets.
Yet he is wary. As he writes in his Afterword: “Life is good. Fragile, but
good. We, too, take each day as it comes” (303).
Do I recommend this book or not? Absolutely yes. It gives a picture of
the ambiguities of life in Israel from the perspective of a journalist, a husband
and a father. The writing is crystal clear and lucid. On the surface this book
is very polished and mild-mannered, even self-deprecating, as the British are
inclined to be, yet its vehement language is disturbing. It is not an objective
view of life in Israel, but it deserves a careful read. Yes, the book is a polemic
-461-
in favor of the peace process and against Netanyahu. It idolizes Rabin. It
punctures the myth of Israeli invincibility. It shows us the internal weakness
of Israeli society. It brings in opposing views, even though they are
demolished in the process of their being presented. He uses his family as
straw people: his wife, a brother in law, a cousin to show us that he is fair-
minded and aware of all opinions, yet despite the rhetorical device of the
dialogue with family, ultimately this book remains a liberal polemic.
Although I share most of his views, I do not find the liberal argument in it
convincing. I do not see a “happy” ending in site. I do not think that the
elusive peace agreement will solve anything—but on the other hand, I think
we must work towards one. When I read the book during the summer I was
inclined to be critical of the manner in which this was stated, but inclined to
agree with him. Today, when we might be on the brink of war, when his hero,
Prime Minister Barak, almost invited some of the demons into the
government, before going for new elections, when the stakes are higher for
us than ever before, I wonder if Horovitz still stands by his analysis. I for
one, am not confident that there is one, or any, solution.

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CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE: WE ARE WOMEN, LET US ROAR!598

Silencing women continues to be the “theme of the week.” There were two
demonstrations, one on Tuesday, protesting the inadequate representation of
women in the new government, and one on Thursday, protesting the brutal
killings by husbands of their wives.
They were protesting the dangerous message that women's voices should
not be heard, and that we are silenced with violence. The evidence that Jewish
wifebeating exists is strong. Statistics and headlines assail us: “One out of
six” or “one out of seven” Israeli women are regularly beaten at home. The
estimated minimum figure is 100,000 battered women in Israel (of whom
40,000 end up hospitalized); the maximum number is 200,000 (which include
the Arab population).
Where does it all start? Does it start in the home, in the school? Is it
supported by the rabbinate? What gives men the right to think that silencing
women is permissible? Does it stem from the patriarchal attitude that still
regards women as wives and mothers and not as beings with intrinsic worth?
Is it because our sages say that a woman would prefer any marriage to not
being married at all?
The talmudic sage Resh Lakish verbalized this assumption, saying “A
woman would always rather live with a husband than live alone” (Kiddushin
41a). There are rabbis today who would say that this is the manifestation of
an “existential difference” between men and women.
Women were socialized into staying in bad marriages because the
institutions of marriage and family were considered to be supreme. Divorce
was the last resort. There is evidence, however, that until the twelfth century,
rabbinic attitudes towards the woman who was unhappy in her marriage were
fairly lenient. The list of grounds for forced divorce was expanded to include
not only an abusive husband, but also one who was distasteful to the wife.
Yet there are sages, past and present, who choose to ignore the distress
of battered women, who rate the community's interest in family stability and
obedience to rabbinic law as being more important than the suffering of the
individual. These sages are guilty of silencing women's voices. The law of
the state of Israel gives jurisdiction in matters of personal status to Orthodox
rabbinical courts. That means that all matters of marriage and divorce are
adjudicated according to the strictest interpretations of Jewish law and that
the judges are all male. The Israeli rabbinate has in their power to decide
whether a man can be ordered to give his wife a get (a bill of divorce). In

598
This appeared in a slightly different version in The Jerusalem Post, July 30,
1999.
-463-
fact, this rarely occurs. And the basic inequality of women in matters of
divorce contributes heavily to the mindset that devalues women.
The history of today's rabbinical court system is anything but proud and
the main sufferers of this arrogance are women. The problem of mesorvei
get, women who are denied a divorce, and agunot, 'chained women' - whose
numbers vary from 1,000 to 10,000 depending on whom you ask - is very
real and painful. It is also a political problem. The Orthodox rabbinate has a
monopoly on providing religious services. Competing religious approaches
such as those of the Conservative and Reform movements are not recognized
by the state. So although there are ample precedents for interpreting halakha,
Jewish law, in a way that might favor women, rabbis who sit in today's
rabbinical courts have no incentives to do so.
Indeed, the present laws motivate them to interpret halakha in a way
that preserves their monopolistic control over people's lives. Women who
have been beaten and raped by their husbands, whose lives are in danger,
cannot get out of their marriages and the rabbinate conspires to keep them
there. It is a commonplace in Israel that rabbinical courts are sympathetic to
men, while the civil courts favors women. But the latter have no jurisdiction
in divorce.
How can women change things if we are silenced? If our prime minister
thinks his cabinet is “inclusive” when it includes five representatives of
Orthodox political parties but only one woman, what message is being passed
on to the potentially violent man out there? If the voice of women is perceived
as dangerous, isn't it legitimate to silence it at all costs?
It is imperative that women speak up: We have to encourage each other
to avoid getting married just for the sake of “being married.” We must
demand prenuptial agreements. We must learn our rights, ask hard questions
and demand answers. We must demand legislation that will dismantle the
Orthodox rabbinate's monopoly on divorce. This might change the face of
Israeli society and give us our voices back.

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CHAPTER FORTY-SIX: “CHOOSE LIFE”: YOUTH VIOLENCE599

Youth violence has plagued our civilization beginning with Adam and Eve’s
male children. The Book of Deuteronomy discusses the case of the wayward
and defiant son, who does not heed his father or mother and does not obey
them even after they discipline him. Our generation has more sophisticated
means available to rebellious youths who wish to vent frustrations:
Information on advanced weaponry and how to kill are easily downloaded
from the internet. Movies and music revere and extol acts of extreme
violence.
Jewish history is replete with incidents of violence. Jewish sources
include a wide spectrum of permissible violence, ranging from decisions of
some rabbis who permit wifebeating under specific circumstances, to
rabbinic opinions on the rodef, the pursuer, which was used by some to justify
the assassination of our Prime Minister.
Israel is number eight in the world when it comes to a culture of
violence: Shouting and pushing are a way of life. There is screaming in the
Knesset; teachers raise their voices to be heard; people honk their horns to
get the right of way. There are so many degrees of separation between us,
that all of us know at least one person whom we perceive as “other”, as alien,
as someone whom we do not respect, because they are not like us. Stir and
mix this into an intolerant religious brew that prides itself on inculcating
Torah to its male youths by any means available—even with a strap or a
sinew. The final straw in this incendiary situation is the geo-political facts of
our existence which ultimately get transmitted to our children—who have
plenty of matches in their hands and the means to light them.
The state of affairs is like being in a “perpetual war” in which “our
side”, that is, each one of us, thinks that it is in the right and the other is in
the wrong. People tend to think of violence as being a problem of certain
sectors of society. But it is really a problem of being human. The Torah
addresses self-control because violence accompanies us throughout life. We
see this in the carnage and the “war statistics” of casualties on the road. We
are not willing to hear other voices, and we are not educating to hear other
voices. One of the voices that we should heed is that of the Torah’s
admonition to choose life which in itself means to eschew violence. How do
we teach this message to our youth?
First of all, we must educate our youth to know that there is not only
one right way. We have to put the texts and ideas on the table, give our

599
This appeared in The Jerusalem Post (June 18, 1999) B9

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students the tools, and then be facilitators for them as they make their own
way. Process, responsible choice is what it is all about. This used to be the
“Jewish” way. Instead we prepare our students to pass tests, to learn the
“right” answers and then look the other way when they cheat as they compete
for grades. Rather than give students the ingredients and guidance in making
their own salad, we give them ready-made take out meals. Learning, even in
yeshivot, has become ritualized, rather than an experience that builds the
individual’s sense of truth and inner responsibility.
Societies such as ours, in which ‘real men’ are the kings of their
households, often perpetuate oppressive ideals of masculinity. When the
males are threatened, or are unable to fulfill the identities that they have been
taught were their birthright, they often behave aggressively toward their
friends, and when they grow up, behave abusively to their wives and children.
Societies that are relatively free of violence are characterized by an
approach in which its members share and communicate in decision-making
affecting them and are taught to resolve disputes with others peacefully. This
is the classic model in Jewish tradition, the Beit Midrash of Hazal.
Jewish tradition is not and has never has been monolithic. Although
some Jewish sources approve violent solutions, most support peaceful
resolutions of conflict. Thus we are not permitted to curse a deaf person,
because the goal of Torah is to teach us to control our violent impulses, and
to eschew even what might be considered “acceptable” verbal violence. Our
Masorti Youth Movement “Noar Masorti” is called Noam, to emphasize that
Torah is a path of pleasantness and peace. In fact, one might argue that the
spirit of Judaism, as expressed in many halakhic decisions, charges us to
choose options that aid people to live in harmony rather than abide by the
letter of the law.
Sanctions and punishment need to be applied to offenders swiftly and
seriously. However, emphasizing punishment is an external measure, which
is after the fact and does not get to the root of the problem. We need to
educate internally. Jewish tradition gives us tools which teach self-control
over impulses, inculcate respect for others, teach awareness of the dignity of
all men and women, limit permissiveness, and heighten the sense of personal
responsibility for the lives of others. Incorporating these tools into our
educational system and into our lives should engender a generation in which
violence will be less common than now.

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CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN: THE DAY THE SKY FELL IN600

"Student Hit by Motorcyclist: Seriously Wounded"

(as heard on the evening news, July 29, 1999)

At 9 p.m. you may have heard that a motorcyclist hit a pedestrian as she was
crossing the street in North Tel Aviv. That was our daughter, Avigail. We of
course did not hear the news flash. We were in the trauma unit at Ichilov
Hospital. I rarely pay attention to such headlines, except to note in passing
something like, "there goes another one", "that's life in Israel", "too bad". If
the accident is flashy enough to make the TV news and we see the crumpled
fenders and ambulances, then my attention span is caught for a longer period.
We all know that driving related accidents in Israel cause more deaths than
war related ones. But this is my daughter; this is no headline. For years, my
biggest fear was that my kids (or we) would be killed while driving. They
laugh and shrug when I say "drive carefully". But they do! I'm a nudnik when
it comes to being a passenger, and when I'm the driver I never try to make a
light-unless.
Yes, there are circumstances when we all feel the need to step on the gas,
rather than slow down at the intersection-in fact, sadly enough, given the
dynamics of Israeli drivers, it may even be safer to make the light, rather than
brake suddenly. This evening, I realized once again, how life is so short, how
it hangs by a thread, and how much violence bombards us during our short
duration in the conscious world. It is such a waste of our precious time here.
Don't be too impressed by the philosophical musings-I'm trying to keep
my hysteria under control-there's no point in my crying-and if I do, then my
eyes hurt me. I am always amazed at, what we rational people, call
coincidence. During the last two months in which I have suffered two
personal tragedies, the death of my mother, Charlotte Lebovics z"l and the
loss of my unborn, unnamed grand-daughter, I was asked twice to contribute
to the Op-Ed column in the Jerusalem Post on the subjects of violence among
youth and violence towards women.
On Thursday morning, while doing laps and feeling particularly good
about life, and myself, I did my usual writing in my head. (Some of my best
ideas have been lost in the pool). I jokingly thought that the next Op-Ed I'd
be asked to write (or else would volunteer to write) should be about violence

600
This appeared in a slightly different version in The Jerusalem Post (August
20, 1999).

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on Israeli roads, for then I could plug my husband's moving prayer for the
Israeli driver (see below). I even had the eye-catching opening lines ready.
At four thirty that afternoon, half an hour after my daughter, son-in-law
and toddler grandson dropped in on us, we received a phone call from my
son, Zvike, calling from camp that my twenty-four year old daughter,
Avigail, had just been hit by a motorcycle near the Arlosoroff Bus Station
Terminal: "Come immediately to Ichilov hospital, they won't tell me over the
phone how she is." He added, "I'm taking a driver from camp, don't worry,
we'll keep in touch while I come from the North and you come from the
South."
We frantically began to re-group and take this in and NOT panic. First
of all, my son-in-law Menash offered to drive. No way! He belonged with
my daughter and grandson. But we did reach out for help. We tried to find
some doctor who "knew someone who knew someone" in Ichilov who could
give us information. We were not going up to the hospital without knowing
what Avigail's condition was. Finally, we remembered that we did know
someone-the brother-in-law of one of our closest friends. Amazingly, we still
had his home phone number and called the one doctor we knew in Ichilov.
His kid gave us his beeper number and amazingly he responded within five
minutes. He "just happened" to be on call in the emergency room and he was
the doctor in the Trauma Unit attending Avigail. While talking to us she was
in front of him. He was tending to her and describing what he saw. He
reassured us, "although Avigail is seriously injured, the preliminary tests look
good and she is not in immediate danger of her life; things look relatively
good as far as long term prognosis." He told us that it was routine to sedate
trauma patients and not to worry about what we would see when we got there.
She was in good hands.
Once we knew that, we were on the way from Omer to Tel Aviv-- if
lucky, about a two-hour drive during rush hour-- driving more slowly and
carefully than usual. No need to be a back seat driver this time. And though
I have been the lone hold out in the family who does not own or want a
cellular phone, I blessed every single one of them as we went up to the
hospital--my son's, coming from the Ramah/Noam camp where he was the
camp director, my oldest daughter Ariella's, fielding the calls and serving as
central operator for us--she too keeping her panic under control. Friends'
phones calling us as the word got out. We were in touch-just like the
advertisements say.
Another amazing coincidence was that Elad, a friend of my daughter
from camp, her assistant from the mini camp she was responsible for at
Ramah/Noam, was on a bus that had just dropped off her campers at the bus
terminal near where Avigail was hit. Elad saw "an" accident happen from the
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vantage point of their bus. He looked out the window, recognized her bag,
yelled "that's Avigail", and jumped out. We were reassured to know that
Avigail had a friend with her on the ambulance, in the emergency trauma
room, and throughout the long night until we arrived. He was our lifeline for
he knew where she kept her cellular phone. He identified her, called my son
at camp and kept him (and us) informed until we got there. By the time we
arrived the CAT scan was done, vital organs and limbs checked.
Five minutes before we got off the Ayalon Highway, Zvike called us and
said, "Ima, you've got to be strong-don't panic when you see her." That was
when I almost broke down-but I had to focus, because we needed to know
where to turn into the hospital and I had to watch for the signs, I was the
navigator. Zvike's friend took our car and parked it for us and then we went
into the emergency room. What we saw looked very impressive and new.
The nurses were very kind and told us we could see her. We saw her for a
minute in the trauma room--this was definitely not my vibrant daughter! This
was my mother, after her first heart attack, attached to machines, in danger
of life. Nothing prepared me for this!
When I touched her hands and talked to her and tried to comfort her, she
starting thrashing about. She screamed silently (she was on a breathing
machine) and kicked and tried to get up. We were told to leave. It was best
for her. This became our operative word--what is best for her! We were
frightened and had to be reassured that this was normal--she was coming out
of sedation and had a breathing tube inserted into her throat and didn't have
a clue why she was there. We were told to wait until she was moved to the
intensive care of the neuro-surgery ward. No, she did not need surgery, but
she did have a serious head injury and had to be under observation. A social
worker spoke to us. I asked her questions, she said "too soon". "Later you'll
be told everything. Be patient and strong, it's going to be a long night, they
have a lot of experience, they know what we are going through, not to worry."
More blah blah, but it had its function, its calming effect. I even asked her
where she was from, and when she told me from Mexico, I told her a bit
about the "real Avigail" who had been on shelichut in Guadalajara a few
years back.
At the neuro-surger ward, Eric, the young doctor on call was less
reassuring. He told us to go home, there was nothing we could do--go and
pray. The next 72 hours are crucial. I told him that he was making me
nervous; the social worker had been more reassuring. "She's a social worker,"
he said patronizingly, "I'm a doctor and have a different story to tell." Once
again, I asked questions. Again the answers were: you have to be patient, it's
"too soon", ask them in the proper sequence. During the course of time he
was on duty, Doctor Eric turned out to be the only doctor on the ward who
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talked to us and explained things to us. This, despite the fact that my daughter
thrashed out and attacked him when he tended her during the night. He tells
me the next day, she is a very hostile patient; she isn't cooperating. I find
myself being the intermediary between Avigail and the doctors and nurses. I
explain her to them and tell her to be less snappy-it will work against her. It
reminds me of when she was in school and we had to take sides-but this time
it is more serious-we're not talking about grades.
Zvike could not bear to leave her and found a replacement to direct the
camp over Shabbat-all of the campers and counselors prayed for her welfare.
Ariella, who insisted that she had to see Avigail for herself and my husband,
went up on Friday. I babysat and tried to keep the home fires burning.
Actually my son-in-law Menash cooked! I made salads, frantically chopping
away. We spent a relatively peaceful Shabbat, marred only by the fact that
the phone was on--my son who doesn't normally use the phone on Shabbat
kept calling from her bedside to keep us informed of her progress. Avigail’s
friends came and took over for a while so that he could go to the synagogue.
We thus stayed intouch with the hospital throughout the ordeal and the
minute Shabbat was over, we made havdalah and went up to Tel Aviv
prepared for a long siege.
Before we left, I shared my fears with my close friend Sheila and Ariella:
"what would I find, how could I care for and relate to Avigail who might be
brain damaged and might not recognize us!" Ariella wanted to come --but we
convinced her that she had to take care of her toddler and that we needed her
more the next day.
Saturday night. It was heartwarming how improved she was physically.
She was sleeping so I couldn't talk to her--but I could look, see her breathe
peacefully without tubes in her mouth or an I.V. attached to her arm. Her
friends regaled me with Avigail stories--about her day and theirs. I treasured
every story--I needed to hear it all--even what frightened me--the lack of
clarity, her falling off to sleep in mid-sentence--her memory loss. We had
been told that she could not be left alone, once she moved into the ward--that
she could be a danger to herself; that she could wander off and never return.
I expected to be busy taking care of her all night, since the previous night she
was hallucinating and gave the watchers--two close friends-- a difficult time.
However, she slept soundly for me as I watched three movies while trying to
simultaneously doze off and keep alert (on guard for the slightest noise) in
the uncomfortable hospital armchair. I kept waiting for her to need me. The
following night we brought in a cot for me since at age 56, I need my sleep
and need to be strong. This is not the time for my back to go out again. Finally
she woke up and seemed to think it very natural that I was there--less natural
than her being there.
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 From Thursday night until Monday afternoon, we watched her progress
from a flat personality with no memory to someone interested in her
surroundings and friends; from refusing to eat or drink, to seeing her appetite
return. She asked for pizza and ate three slices and for supper asked for sushi
and ate it all. Her major complaint was and is headache. She wants to take
her tests at the university, and doesn't really understand that her head injury
will prevent her from functioning. We turned our living room into a bedroom,
so that she doesn't have to go upstairs. When friends come to visit, she perks
up but tires easily. She apologizes to them and dozes off. She keeps on asking
why I can't give her more medicine. Like a drug addict, she keep asking for
more pills and asks my friend Ed, who is a physician, "can't you give me a
stronger pill to make it go away." We explain to her again and again that she
has to be patient--that she had an accident. She doesn't really remember it.
We see her looking at her hands (the fingernails are all bloody) and the
scratches on her arms, and the black eye and bruises on her face with
wonderment--how did they get there? Why does she have the headache?
Fortunately, she sleeps a lot. We don't know if that is good or bad--we'll have
to find out. Our neurologist friend from our congregation in Omer tells us
that if she's not back to "normal" by Thursday (that's today), he'll come look
at her. But what's normal? He comes, gives her a more thorough exam than
she got at the hospital and tells us that he'll come back in five days-meanwhile
continue to do what we are doing. "It takes time, have patience."
We are learning a lot about the system. Kupat Holim does not cover
accidents in Israel. Avner, an insurance company creation, insures accident
victims and pays for hospital and related costs along with the insurance
company of the motorcyclist whose vehicle hit my daughter on her way back
to camp. We have to go the police to get the report to bring to the hospital,
so that we do not have to lay out the money from our pocket for the hospital
stay. She will have to testify to the police; they may have to prosecute the
driver. Mercifully, she can testify in Beersheba. In fact, through the daughter
of one of our congregants who works in the police, we arrange for the police
representative to come to our home. She tells us that if he doesn't come by
the end of the week, to call, and she will follow up on it.
We speak to the secretary of her department at the university; we tell her
that Avigail was in an accident and will be unable to take her exams. They
say they have to have documentation--too many students take advantage of
the system! We don't want her to lose the semester--it will be hard enough
for her to get back into the routine--and we don't know what kind of memory
loss she has sustained. As of now, she cannot focus on the printed word and
shows no interest in watching TV or movies. And this is someone who is
majoring in film and television! We have been told to get a lawyer--get a
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second opinion from a neurologist; her vision has to be watched (the area of
brain that is injured can affect vision). We get a lawyer-he tells us of our
rights; what to watch out for-explains his fees (none) and tells us all we have
to lay out is money for stamps for the court fees (less than 500 shekels). He
will take a percentage of whatever costs and he will include his fees as part
of those costs. A big weight is off our mind-now we can focus only on
Avigail's welfare.
Most important of all we are home--we know many of the doctors in
Soroka--many of them are personal friends--and if not, we have access to all
the specialists. We will, without shame, avail ourselves of all the proteksia
we can use. She may need eye therapy-she may have cognitive problems.
Whatever we need we will get and we will not hesitate to ask questions and
get the answers. We have a support system here after 25 years of active
involvement in the community. In addition, Avigail has all of Kibbutz
Hatzerim (her second home) ready to help out. The whole Conservative
Movement both here and abroad is literally praying for Avigail's health
(thanks to the power of the World Wide Web). We are very impressed by her
friends (and our friend's children) who were (and are) there for her around
the clock. They re-assure us and comfort themselves and each other.
We ask for your prayers and please drive carefully. Don't try to make the
light--wait until it turns green and look before you start--pedestrians should
not be hit, even if the light ahead of you is green--you don't have to be the
first one out. Remember, this time it was our daughter who was hit--she was
not killed, but she could have been; she could have been severely brain
damaged. We know it is hot; yes, you have had a hard day--you want to be
the first to get to wherever you are going. It's a violent country and you have
a "cultural" excuse for driving faster than you should--yes, we know, that's
how Israelis let off steam. We know it all--we have read the articles. We
know what road rage is. We have been there. We have crossed streets
carelessly. We have been lucky until now.
I never thought that anything could happen to MY family--but this year
it did. I will never take anything for granted again. 601

A DRIVER'S PRAYER

601
I am happy to report that Avigail has written a prize winning book, A Rabbi's
Daughter, which has been translated into English and is available from the author.
She has also writted plays, Ona'at Dvarim (Wrong Words) and La-Mikreh Sheloh
Ehyeh Baseviva (When I Won’t Be Around). She teaches Mindfulness all over the
country and works as a volunteer with cancer patients.

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Rabbi Michael Graetz
Our God and God of our ancestors, God of Abraham and Sarah,
God of Isaac and Rebecca, God of Jacob, Rachel and Leah
May we reach our destination in peace, and return in peace to our homes.
Imbue me with the will to discern that every human is created in your image,
and that saving one person is like saving an entire world.
Grant me the wisdom to understand that nothing is more precious
than human life, neither time nor money, neither honor nor revenge.
Help me drive with care, to keep a proper distance;
with manners, to yield the right of way;
with awareness, to stop in time.
Give me the courage to control my impulses of jealousy, competition, anger
and greed.
Let there be no accident because of me, and let me not encounter disaster.
So that we may serve You in truth; increasing the sanctity of life in the world.
So may it be Your will. Amen.

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 602
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT: KEEPING OUR KIDS JEWISH

We are often asked, “How did you raise such fine children, who are clearly
positive products of the masorti movement in Israel--and you don't even live
in Jerusalem?” Perhaps one of our proudest moments, was visiting our three
children in the masorti Ramah-Noam camp a couple of years ago. Our son-
in-law, Menash bar Tuv, with administrative help from our daughter Ariella,
was in charge of special projects, Tzvi Graetz, our son (who is studying to be
a masorti Rabbi at Shechter in Jerusalem) was running the camp and also the
director of Noam, the Israeli equivalent of U.S.Y. and our youngest daughter,
Avigail was serving as a counselor, in charge of special groups for the second
year). Visiting them on parent's day was a great source of nachos (pride) for
us. Our grandson Itamar was also the camp mascot at age one and a half and
clearly enjoyed the attention and the singing and the spirit of the camp.
Omer, not too far from Beersheva, is a totally secular community. When
we came down, there were no shuls at all. Michael was the first conservative
rabbi to come down to the Beersheva area and at the beginning it was a
quarter position. We had about 15 member families in the beginning and our
children did not have a hevrah from the shul when they were young. All three
of them tried the Scouts, but it was Avigail who became a fervent scout,
which meant meetings on Shabbat. In the early days, there was no masorti
movement and no national Noam groups. We did not have the infra-structure
for informal and formal masorti education and the three children attended the
local secular school. Yet they felt, like all PK's (preacher's kids) that they
were set apart. They “had” to observe Shabbat. They were encouraged to go
to shul. We kept kosher. We sang zmirot (songs) on Shabbat and we did
birkat hamazon (grace after meals). Sometimes they were embarrassed when
their friends came and had to wait, and were even invited to sit down with us
at the dinner table, until we finished. The only one of the three children who
actually liked praying was Tzvi. So much so that when he was six he learned
the Torah trop with a group of little boys who were older than him.
Our shul did not start out completely egalitarian. But out of necessity,
we put the cart before the horse and started to count women in the minyan,
so that we would have a quorum for prayers. So when the issues of women’s
aliyot and leading services came up, there was no problem. This was in the
early 70’s and we were not yet “infected” with feminism.

602
“Keeping Our Israeli Kids Jewish,” with Rabbi Michael Graetz, Women’s
League Outlook 72:1 (Fall, 2001): 32-33.
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 Yet I sensed that before Ariella's bat mitzvah, I would have to make a
conscious decision to serve as a role model for her and other girls, if they
would take their year of study seriously. So I began leading services, learning
to leyn and then ultimately read from the Torah. I followed enviously from
afar what was going on in the states as far as women's participation in
services and their becoming ordained as rabbis and was quite vocal about my
thoughts. Thus all three of my children (and my husband the rabbi), not only
had to contend with the fact that their father was a prominent rabbi who
founded the masorti movement (yet not a “real” rabbi from the Israeli point
of view), but that their mother was a feminist, who actually lead services and
spoke up on women's issues.
The result: Ariella worked for the masorti movement, started to be part
of the second army garin (nucleus) group of the movement and ultimately
met and married her husband while he was working for the movement.
Despite the fact that he is Modern Orthodox, he is totally at home in our shul
as well as the Sefardi shuls that he mostly frequents. Tzvi discovered Noam
in his teens, was in the garin of the army, and was a shaliach for USY in
California and the director of Noam. He is now in his second year of studying
for the rabbinate and is considered to be one of the finest products of the
masorti movement. Avigail at the moment is still a student, and has not made
decisions for her future, but she has tossed around the idea of becoming a
rabbi if the conditions are right and has taken courses given under the
auspices of the Israeli Reform and Conservative movement.
How did they (we) survive and thrive so successfully as masorti Jews?
I think part of our secret has always been our philosophy of tolerance
and respect for the three of them as individuals. The only hard and fast rule
we had was Friday night dinner, and even if there was a party afterwards,
they had to stick around for zmirot and birkat hamazon. We never forced any
of them to go to shul. Even though they were rabbi's kids, we did not stress
that they had to dress in a certain way. Many times, people's eyebrows were
raised when one of them would show up in jeans! We didn't care, we were
happy they came. Dinner was arguments and discussion around the table,
very often of a Jewish nature. They knew where to come when they needed
help in bible, literature, language etc. As they grew older, our friends'
children became their havurah and they are still friendly. Today, the
grandchildren of our friends play together and have Hanukah and Purim
parties together.
There is a strong tendency in our modern world to view identity as
primarily concerned with schooling, and yet it is more likely to be tied to
family and relationships within the family. Attitude and world outlook are
two essential ingredients that are heavily influenced by family and by the
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way children experience the world in their family unit. These ingredients are
as essential as specific knowledge, perhaps even more so, in the creation of
self-identity.
The upshot of this general truth is that more time and energy should be
spent by parents on developing their own relationships with their children,
particularly relationships that revolve around and spring from Torah and
Jewish practice. If these elements are strong, consistent and develop in a
mature fashion, keeping up with the development of the child’s maturity, they
will become the main factors in strong Jewish self identity in the child.
My sense is that parents today spend too much time and energy on
schooling, thinking that knowledge and socialization in the peer group is
crucial. My experience is that as far as Jewish identity goes, that schooling is
not the crucial factor, rather the home and relationships within the family.
There is good news and bad news. The good news is that it is possible to raise
strongly identified Jewish children; the bad news is that the parents are
directly responsible for it. This is not a job that can be left to schools, youth
groups etc. alone. Those are important factors, and I do not mean to belittle
them, but the primary factor is the home.
Naomi has written about our specific experience. I want to augment it
by saying that from the time our kids were infants I took them to the
synagogue. We always had fun at the Shabbat table, singing zemirot,
guessing the colors of jelly beans, and we always discussed Torah and ideas.
As the kids developed so did the discussions, and if they were interested in
some subject that wasn’t “Jewish”, i.e. poetry, a movie, pop songs, we always
found a way to relate that to Torah and Jewish life, so that our kids grew up
knowing that Jewish ideas, language, and discourse could apply to everything
in their lives.
We are very proud of the fact that our children are not “parochial”. What
we mean by this is they self identify themselves as Jewish, live their lives
according to the values and practices of Judaism, in their relationships with
others, and can blend Jewish texts and language with other cultures and texts.
I teach the Shema prayer as an educational treatise and in this lesson
there is one point that illustrates what I mean. In the first paragraph we are
told to: “instruct our children in and discuss Torah” all the time. We are the
initiators and the ones responsible for how our kids hear Torah. In the second
paragraph we are told to: “teach our children so that THEY will discuss
Torah”. The Shema points to a progression, namely, that our discussion will
lead to their own discussion. We have to reach a level in which we begin to
hear Torah from our children. Indeed, this is the way Ramban interprets the
second paragraph: “it seems that the words “so that they will discuss them”
adds the idea that we must teach our children to talk about them, and the
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different verbs “instruct” and “teach” mean that they are to talk to you about
them at all times” (on Deut. 11, 18). I can attest that there is no greater joy as
a parent than to have your children discuss Torah among themselves in your
presence, and have them teach you their new ideas.
While Michael was on sabbatical, our son Tzvi served as the substitute
rabbi in our congregation in Omer. I can attest to the fact that “great as the
joy as a parent is having your children discuss Torah among themselves” is
to hear your son preach in your own synagogue and get wonderful feedback
from friends. I am not one to “qvell”. I do not even like the word; however,
listening to our next generation having the requisite Jewish skills to lead the
community leaves me with much hope and a sense of satisfaction.

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CHAPTER FORTY-NINE: REFLECTIONS ON BEING MARRIED
603
TO A RABBI

I wrote in the prefaces to my first book as follows:

I wish to record the contribution and love of my immediate family…
my three children, Ariella, Zvi Yehuda, and Avigail now wonderful,
responsible, young adults who have always encouraged me to write;
finally, my partner and friend in marriage, Rabbi Michael Graetz, who
has lovingly enabled me to believe in myself… (1993)
I dedicated my first book to my mother and father. They both came from
a rabbinic line. My maternal grandfather, Herman (Tzvi) Katz Jaray was a
Satmar Hassid from Hungary and my paternal grandfather Yaakov Lebowitz
was a Rosh Yeshiva in Transylvania. I grew up with their portraits in our
dining room (my mother had commissioned a local artist to do oil paintings
from photographs) and these same portraits now grace our living room.
I was the product of modern Orthodoxy: thirteen years of Ramaz Day
School, New York City, and thirteen years of Massad Hebrew-speaking
summer camps. This was followed by six years at the Jewish Theological
Seminary (B.H.L. 1966 in Jewish History) and five years at Cejwin camps,
while doing my B.A. and M.A. at City College of the City University of New
York in English Literature. My husband and I came to live in Israel in August
1967 and our three children were born and raised here.
We had rabbinical students coming to our home in Manhattan for Shabbat
meals from the time I was in the eighth grade. When I was in JTSA I already
knew most of the rabbinical students, either because they had been in my
home, were friends of my sister or friends of my husband and his roommate.
It seems as if I’ve been among rabbis or aspiring rabbis all my life. Both my
sister and I thought of becoming rabbis and then for our own reasons decided
not to. My son is studying to be a masorti rabbi in Israel.
I never gave much thought to what it means to be a rabbi’s wife. In April
1967, the year of his ordination, I went out and bought two hats in
anticipation of becoming a rebbetzin. I wore these hats when we went to his
interview in Spokane Washington—I have a picture to prove their
existence—but I have never worn them since. We came to Israel instead.
Our beginnings were punctuated by moves. From the time we were newly
wed students in 1963 (I, a senior at CCNY and JTSA and he a third year
rabbinical student at JTSA) we changed apartments every year. This included

603
I was asked to write this for a collection on women married to rabbis; but the
project never got off the ground.
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spending our summers in Cejwin Camps and one year in Israel. Even after
we came to Israel, we kept moving. Our first year was in Alonei Yitzhak, our
second in Kiryat Shmuel, the third and fourth years in Beit Hakerem and the
fifth and sixth years in Bait Vegan.
One could say that we were vagabonds our first eleven years of marriage.
We did not pay too much attention to economic issues. Although we never
starved, we lived hand to mouth, never having enough money, always with a
huge overdraft. We probably were better off than most Israelis, because we
got “care packages” from abroad. Our children were well dressed and I
learned to do without. I learned how to sew maternity clothes. About once a
year our parents came to visit, took a good look at our economic state and
bailed us out. I well remember that during the Yom Kippur war, when we
were basically living only on my salary (since Mike was in the army), the
first piece of mail to make it through was a check from Mike’s Uncle Ben. I
immediately cashed it and that was translated into paying part of our grocery
bill.
The Yom Kippur War forced us to take stock of why we were in Israel.
Oddly enough we never thought of leaving. It was fiscally irresponsible to
stay, but I can only say that now, thirty years later, as we are planning our
retirement. Then our only thought was to stay in Jerusalem or move on. At
that time some individuals from the town of Omer approached the
Conservative movement. Once I had a firm job offer from Ben Gurion
University we decided to go to Omer.
Omer, not too far from Beersheva, is a totally secular community. When
we came down, there was a Moroccan minyan that prayed in a small hut.
Michael was the first conservative rabbi to come down to the Beersheva area
and it was only a quarter position. We had about 15 member families in the
beginning.
After 11 years of marriage, not once had I given any thought to what it
might mean to be a rabbi’s wife in Israel. Fortunately for me, the majority of
our congregants in Omer had no preconceptions of what rabbis’ wives were
expected to do either. The concept of a pulpit rabbi was foreign to them.
There were also quite a few middle-aged women from the U.S. who were
happy to take on the roles of home hospitality until I got my feet wet. Having
a baby born in the community also allowed me to postpone the role of
rebbetzin for quite a while. We did not have a proper synagogue in the early
years and many of the activities and most of the meetings took place in our
house.
Although the spotlight was on us as a family, I ignored it and became a
member of the community who “just happened” to be married to a rabbi. I
enjoyed the instant status and sense of belonging. I felt no real responsibility
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in the role. The fact that I had a full time teaching career meant that I always
had excuses for not playing the role. I had a life elsewhere and was very
involved in my career and the research I did. There was much overlap
between home and pulpit. All of our close friends in Omer were active
members of the kehillah. Our children played with theirs—Shabbat was
observed in our home—but we didn’t have control over what was going on
in other homes. The fact that we lived in a secular community meant that our
children’s hevrah was not religious. We knew who observed kashrut and we
were able to accept invitations in those homes and they became our closest
friends. Later on some of our friends koshered their kitchens so that we could
eat meat there.
Had we lived in Jerusalem, our children could have gone to masorti
schools. They would have had more friends who lived in kosher homes.
There would have been fewer restrictions. Yet despite this, they managed to
become committed religious and Zionist Jews.
My awareness that I could have some impact on the congregation and on
my husband came in the mid-seventies.
My daughter Ariella was nearing bat-mitzvah age and until then I had not
served as a role model for her. In Jerusalem my idea of synagogue attendance
had been to send the two kids off with Mike to the congregation he founded
there with other rabbis and friends. In Omer, it was to escape the
responsibilities of caring for our newborn daughter, Avigail. Ariella would
bring her in time for Adon Olam and Kiddush.
Our shul did not start out completely egalitarian. But out of necessity, we
put the cart before the horse and started to count women in the minyan, so
that we would have a quorum for prayers. Then one member asked about a
bat mitzvah for his daughter and then the issues of aliyot for women, leading
services etc. came up. But there was no problem. This was in the mid 70’s
and we were not yet “infected” with feminism. So although we were
officially egalitarian, except for a sprinkling of bat mitzvah girls, it was
mainly men running the shul.
About a year or two before Ariella's bat mitzvah, I made a conscious
decision to serve as a role model for her so that she (and hopefully her
friends) would take their year of study seriously. So I began leading services,
learning to leyn and then ultimately reading from the Torah. For a long time,
my major contribution to the kehillah was that I was the official (unpaid)
Torah reader. Only in the last couple of years has that job been shared and
now we rotate the job, except for the holidays when I take care of the Torah
reading.
While preparing the Torah reading, I would often have discussions with
my husband about problematic texts—often this was inspired by something
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he had said or preached and often the give and take lead to a sermon. Rather
than “steal” my ideas, he attributed them to me. Thus it became a rewarding
habit to educate each other. I influenced him with my radical feminist
leanings and he shared his scholarship and learning with me. This intensive
involvement with Torah preparation caused me to relate personally to many
of the characters in the bible. This resulted in an outpouring of short stories
or midrashim, most of which were published in journals, and eventually
collected and included in my first book S/He Created Them: Feminist
Retellings of Biblical Tales.
I grew into feminism through Judaism. I followed enviously from the
distance of Israel what was going on in the states as far as women's
participation in services and their becoming ordained as rabbis and was quite
vocal about my thoughts. Close women friends in the congregation pushed
me to become active in politicking in the Masorti movement in Israel for the
right of women to be ordained in Israel as rabbis—a campaign we won. In
return I pushed them to become very active in the southern branch I started
of the Israel Woman’s Network. At one point the women in both the
Beersheba and Omer congregations were quite active and on its board. The
IWN in the South was firmly linked with Masorti Judaism.
Thus my husband, our children and our congregation had to contend with
the fact that I was a feminist, who spoke up on women's issues. Perhaps the
greatest test of our marriage was the time and thought that I gave to my
second project, what would turn out to be about ten years work on my second
book Silence is Deadly: Judaism Confronts Wifebeating. It was not simply
the fact that it was time consuming; it was the nature of the topic.
People have often asked me why I did not include verbal, psychological
or sexual abuse in the book. I usually answered that it is easier to “quantify”
physical abuse—but it was also easier for me not to be forced to take an even
closer look at the institution of Jewish marriage than I was already doing.
The whole issue of Jewish male privilege, which is sanctioned by rabbinic
thought, is problematic enough. But here was I, married to a person, who
despite his open-mindedness and pro-feminist though, was clearly male,
Jewish and very much the owner and dispenser of rabbinic knowledge. Often
it appeared to me that he took an apologetic stance as defender of the faith. I
often considered him guilty when he didn’t agree with me. And he was a
MALE RABBI. I decided that I needed to get away for three months and took
a sabbatical at Mt. Holyoke, a women’s college so that I could be as feminist
and anti-rabbinic as I wanted, without feeling that I was also attacking my
husband the rabbi.
During this same time period that I started to take my wifebeating project
very seriously (I was already lecturing and giving workshops on the topic);
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he was working on getting the congregation to take him seriously by hiring
him as a full time rabbi. This is something that is not easy in Israel since the
masorti movement has to subsidize its congregations and each kehillah pays
half the amount of a salary. But after ten years of being quarter time, then
half time and finally three-quarters time, he felt that he should be devoting
all of his time to the rabbinate and should be paid for it. This affected our
relationship. Would I have to be a full-time rabbi’s wife? Over the years that
I have been grappling with who I am in relationship to my husband and “his”
and “our” congregation, I have been also keeping a journal in the form of a
604
novel that is called the Rabbi’s Wife Plays at Tennis. Although the novel
had been finished by the mid-eighties, I kept on adding touches and bringing
in Jewish material related to feminist issues and of course to wifebeating.
When I look back at what my personal accomplishments have been in the
kehillah I find that most of them involved women’s issues. I had always
wondered whether I had influenced any of my contemporaries in the
congregation, who are also my friends. I knew for a fact that I have been a
role model for the women in our neighboring congregation in Beersheba and
the younger generation. So it was a great moment for me when a group of
older women, who had not studied for bat mitzvah in their youth, started to
discuss doing it in the shul. We created a curriculum of study, which
culminated in a collective bat mitzvah on a Shabbat. As a result, some of
these women continue to read haftarot and act as prayer leaders all year round
including the High Holidays. My part in this was to be a mentor, a resource
person for them. After this we began a Rosh Hodesh group for women.
Lack of communication is a major problem for all married couples. If a
rabbinic couple does not communicate then it is a major tragedy. Rabbis
cannot talk to their congregants about personal issues. Nor can their wives.
In our particular small close-knit community one cannot even seek
professional help without the whole world knowing about it. In Israel it does
not help if you go out of town, everyone knows everyone else. On the one
hand this is nice and convenient. But the lack of privacy means you have to
keep your troubles to yourself or learn to work them out with your partner.
Our fishbowl existence has been a part of our lives. In our case it has enriched
us—we have been fortunate—we have inspired each other—we have grown.
Throughout the ups and downs of our marriage as a rabbinic couple, we have
stayed together, cheering each other on, cajoling one another when s/he is
down and proud of the other when s/he is up. I know that, although I have
spent much of my life avoiding being referred to by the diminutive term of

604
This was later published as The Rabbi’s Wife Plays at Murder.
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rebbetzin, I have gained as much from being identified as a rabbi’s wife as I
have lost. Looking back on thirty-five years of this status, I wouldn’t have it
any other way.
I dedicated the second book to my husband.
If one is fortunate, there is a significant person in one's life--one whose
life-goals are similar; one with whom learning and support are mutual
activities; a person who is respectful of one’s life work-- encouraging,
yet not intrusive of the privacy and identity of the other. I have been
blessed in that my life partner, Rabbi Michael Graetz, and I are
engaged in such a relationship. Without him, I doubt if the publication
of this book would have come to fruition…. (1998)

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CHAPTER FIFTY: “CAN THERE BE PEACE BETWEEN THE
605
HOUSE OF JACOB AND THE HOUSE OF SHECHEM?”

The text is the story in Genesis 34 of the rape of Dinah, daughter of Jacob,
by Shechem, son of Chamor, and the attempts at peace and reconciliation and
the subsequent revenge of Simeon and Levi, sons of Jacob on the house of
Shechem.

ABSTRACT:
The theme is peace between Jews and Palestinians. Modern and traditional
interpretations of the text will be studied in small groups which will then
represent each biblical character and their points of view. The techniques of
drasho-drama will be used to elicit an awareness that it is possible to derive
our own meanings from the text even if we learn a different lesson from that
which was traditionally taught. There will be six groups studying source
material pertaining to a particular character. There will be two groups who
are peace proponents: one represented by Chamor, who is likened to a senior
Arab statesman and the other by Jacob, the peace-maker in potentia. Two
groups who are proponents of war are introduced: the brothers, Simeon and
Levi and their Shechemite counterparts (drawn from midrashic sources). A
fifth group will deal with the implications of Jacob’s silence. Hopefully this
group will make clear that the stuff of tragedy is non-intervention and will
suggest alternative action. Finally, a sixth group is introduced which is one
of apocalypse—that is a group with a doomsday scenario.
What I plan to do is use the story of Dinah and have each group relate
to a character or scenario. Other texts which will help in the analysis is a
rabid nationalistic poem by Tchernichovski; another might be the text of 2
Samuel 13 with the Amnon and Tamar and David configuration; still another
text might be the poem by Mark Van Doren (and/or Anita Diamant’s, The
Red Tent—both of which consider the Dinah story as a love story). I will
present first the approach of Shechem [called Shalem in Diament’s book],
with his enthusiastic acceptance of peace and circumcision, then the counter-
reaction of Simeon and Levi with their gruesome acts of violence and murder,
then Jacob’s reaction which is fear of what the neighbors will think. Perhaps
we can supply a Greek style chorus of women consigned to the sidelines like
Dinah who might come up with some sort of resolution based on our

605
This is a work in progress that was originally given as a workshop in August,
1988 at the Thirteenth Conference on Alternatives in Jewish Education (CAJE),
Jerusalem. Over the years, I fiddled with it, but never published it.
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experience as those who are always raped and always suffer the
consequences of war. Although it is unrealistic to rewrite our past perhaps
the groups can learn enough from the texts and dialogue in order to redirect
the immediate future.
If we look at the moral of the story for our time it is obvious that
Chamor, father of the rapist Shechem, who spoke eloquently on behalf of his
son in favor of peace with the house of Jacob (or Israel) can be considered a
senior Arab statesman--Anwar Sadat perhaps. And Jacob, the father of
Dinah, the victim of rape and father also of Simeon and Levi (Kahana), can
be considered as a reluctant peace-maker who has to be dragged to the peace
table (Shimon Peres, Yitzchak Rabin, Ariel Sharon perhaps).
It bothers me when I think what would have happened had there been
a Simeon and Levi in our midst when peace overture was made by Sadat. But
then I remind myself that the peace probably worked and was not sabotaged
because it was precisely Menachem Begin, the former terrorist, the
representative of Simeon and Levi, who negotiated that peace. (There’s a
lesson in there somewhere which should be pursued another time). However,
Oslo was torpedoed by the Simeon and Levi character, Yigal Amir who
assassinated the Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin. The problem is that today
we have no strong models for peace. There is justifiable fear on both sides.
Who will make the first move? There is almost a childlike attitude which
prevails: “I won’t shake hands with him until after he shakes hands with me.”
Then things are also complicated by international politics with the war over
Iraq looming.
We had a Kissinger in the 1980’s. A Clinton who managed to get a
reluctant Rabin to shake Arafat’s hand in public. We need statesmen like
them today. Is there anyone in the biblical story that could have played that
role? An idealistic Jacob of vision perhaps could have stepped in and played
that role and averted the subsequent tragedy. It was a marvelous lost
opportunity for a spiritual leader. He could have made peace, lived side by
side with his neighbors and gained numerous converts to Abraham’s religion.
And it might have been a lasting, spiritual coup—one which would have
served as a model for succeeding generations.
Instead Jacob was silent. He wasn’t big enough to play the role of
statesman. He couldn’t even play the role of father. His cop-out resulted in
his sons’ coup. He allowed them to be his spokesmen and it resulted in ugly
tragedy, the vicious destruction of a town and its inhabitants. I wonder about
Ariel Sharon trying to put his government together. Who exactly will he co-
opt? Will it be the Simeon and Levi right-winger, or will he manage to
convince the more moderate members to join him.

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 In failing as an educator, Jacob is more to blame than his sons. His
punishments were bland and ineffectual. He cursed them in his blessing. He
cut them out of his will. Big deal! It’s an old weapon——the final weapon.
But from an educational point of view, Jacob missed the boat.
Every good educator knows that if it is to be effective, punishment
must be administered immediately, otherwise it doesn’t do any good. Worse
it encourages the perpetrators to continue in their evil path. In not playing the
father role Jacob encouraged his sons to continue to behave lawlessly. They
had no guide (god) lines. The sons were testing Jacob, to see how far they
could go (cf. selling of Joseph; Reuben’s hopping into bed with Bilhah) and
they discovered there were no limits. The sons started by killing Shechem
and Chamor. Then the killing escalated. Violence and vengeance led to more
violence and vengeance. It was an over-reaction. No one stepped in to douse
the flames of their anger, so the violence continued unabated
Part of the problem (and it is Jacob’s problem and ours) is that there
is no God in the story to help him. God is not mentioned at all; this “affair”
is between man and man. There is no divine intervention or guidance. It is
not as if God roots for either side: It is not clear if He is for peace or
vengeance. This was not the case in the story about Pinchas, son of Eleazar.
After his bloody act of vengeance God says in approval, “Phinchas. . .has
turned back My wrath from the Israelites by displaying among them his
passion for Me” (Numbers: 25:11).
But God is conspicuously silent in the story in Genesis 34. Does that
justify Jacob’s silence? Is this a case of in imitatio Dei? Not at all. God sat
back and expected Jacob to make a choice. God hoped it would be the right
one. Jacob was expected to react, not to imitate God’s silence. It was the
people’s first attempt to cope with peace overtures and Israel flubbed it.
Peace was offered to Israel, but in our pride (perhaps at our son's awesome
strength) we didn’t know what to do with these overtures. So we did nothing.
We sat back and let others do our acting for us and then too late kvetched
when things got out of hand.
Is there a lesson for our time? (Besides the obvious lesson of let’s
learn from the past to handle the next opportunity--if it comes--a little better.)
I think the lesson is that it’s our turn to make the overtures. And when we do,
we should take all the precautions and not allow the Simeons or Levis among
us to sabotage this effort. When I was a little kid, we used to say ‘two wrongs
do not make a right’. But the reverse is not true. Two rights do unfortunately
make a wrong. When there are conflicting claims, both of which are right,
there is no solution. In a situation like that, what is needed is someone to
make a leap for peace. Whoever makes this leap will be as much a hero as
Nachson ben Aminadav, who jumped into the Reed Sea before the waters
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quieted down. His was both an act of physical bravery and an act of faith in
God. For us to make a leap towards peace requires as much faith as does any
act of physical bravery. It is a leap of faith in man, faith that man is really
created in God’s image.
In light of what we know about man in the aftermath of the holocaust,
it is admittedly both a heroic leap of faith and a foolish one to believe in the
goodness of man’s intentions. The person who makes this leap of faith in
man’s ultimate goodness will be praised and/or castigated, assassinated
and/or deified.
I’ve heard many people say over the years (myself included), “sure
we want peace, but...” And top of the list of “buts”, is that it would be
committing national suicide to make peace. But unless someone does jump
in first to try and fight for peace, there is no end in sight (except war).
606
Perhaps we should introduce the term ‘peace-monger’ instead of
pacifist to make the concept of “fighting” for peace more respectable. The
Shoah today is used in the rhetoric against peace. “Never again” we say with
clenched fists. I know of no greater tragedy than that of someone who
survived the shoah only to be killed in Israel. Sure there’s a difference—
don’t we say “It is good to die for the cause of our country” (tov lamut be’ad
artzenu).
Clearly it is in our interest to foster familial and group loyalty. It is
known as patriotism. It is in society’s interest to teach us that there is a
difference in “losing” your life for no reason and “giving” it freely for a
cause. Jacob could have been a gibor, a statesman. He could have consulted
with his sons and daughter; and been prepared with a counter-offer to the
overtures for peace. Once the bargaining was over, it was his obligation to
see that neither side did not abrogate the terms of the treaty. One cannot sit
on the side hoping for the best, pretending that what is happening around us
is not really as bad as it is.
The problem with putting on the blinders and continuing to canter as
if the reins are taut, is that when the blinders are removed, the problem hasn’t
gone away. Life is pleasant when all the decisions are made for us. But we
are not horses. If we allow the wrong person to hold the reins and make
decisions for society, we may find that when the blinders are removed, and
we can see again, that not only have the problems not gone away but they
have been exacerbated

606
It is interesting that in 2016 a new movement was formed is called “Women
Wage Peace” at http://womenwagepeace.org.il/en/
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 With this in mind, I think we should take with us from this gathering
of minds and confrontation with the sources two things:
1) a sense of faith that it is possible to start grappling actively with the
issues and 2) that our tradition obliges us to do so.

BIBLICAL SOURCES FOR THE WORKSHOP

Read Genesis 34, divided into four parts:
vs 1-3 violation
vs 4-24 negotiations
vs 25-29 attack
vs 30-31 reaction of Jacob (and last word of brothers)
Language and style
1. (re: Dinah, the daughter of Leah whom she had borne to Jacob...)
We were told in Gen 30:21 who she is and so the unnecessary and
unusual twofold identification of the girl accounts for Jacob’s
attitude to her (she is the daughter of his hated wife) and highlights
Jacob’s totally different reaction to the catastrophe that later befalls
Joseph, his child by his beloved Rachel. [Source: Meir Steinberg,
“Delicate Balance in the Rape of Dinah”).
2. Note the recurrence of two key words “to go out” and “to take” that
first appear in the rape scene. Consider the semantic fortunes of the
verb ‘take.’ The context of the rape having charged it with one
intimation of violence: “he took her”; “took each man his sword”;
“took Dinah out”; “plunder that Jacob’s sons took”. It is as if one
brutal ‘taking’ led to the rest, and what followed Shechem’s sexual
‘taking~ was not the legal ‘taking’ for which he came to yearn but
‘takings’ more analogous to that with which he launched the chain
of violence. This lexical wanderer finds a mate in the equally
unobtrusive and echoing verb ‘go out,’ It opens the account of the
first crime (Dinah went out), then opens the negotiation episode
where the second crime of insult was perpetrated (‘Hamor went out’)
and finally closes the narration of the punishment (‘and they went
out’). In language as well as geography, the plot ends where it
began.’ (Sternberg, 469)
3. Westermann considers the story of Dinah a midrash on Deut. 7: 2—
3.
1)When the Lord your God brings you to the land that you are about
to invade and Occupy, and He dislodges many nations before you--
the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites,
and Jebusites, seven nations much larger than you--2] and the Lord
your God delivers them to you and you defeat them, you must doom
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 them to destruction: grant them no terms and give them no quarter.
3] You shall not intermarry [Hebrew tithaten] with them: do not
give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your
sons. 4] For they will turn your children away from Me to worship
other gods, and the Lord’s anger will blaze forth against you and He
will promptly wipe you out. 5] Instead, this is what you shall do to
them: you shall tear down their altars; smash their pillars, cut down
their sacred posts, and consign their images to the fire. 6) For you are
a people consecrated to the Lord your God: of all the peoples on earth
the Lord your God chose you to be His treasured people.

Westerman says the redactor took the law and “built it into a
patriarchal story that had come down to him, and so adapted it into a
narrative exemplifying the execution of a command of the Torah.”
During this period (around the exile) intermarriage was again a
temptation for the Israelites. (p. 544-5) According to Claus
Westermann’s Commentary (1961) on this chapter, “Jacob would
have accepted Shechem’s offer and regarded it as adequate
compensation to the family for what he had done.” (p. 544) “The
answer of Simeon and Levi... shows a break not only between two
generations but between two epochs. For Dinah’s brothers the
relationship... is determined by honor a disgrace. An outrage
perpetrated against them or their family must be avenged in blood
without regard for the consequences. “(p. 544)

If so, in the tribal story we have an episode of peaceful immigration

against the purely military conquest of Joshua. The trickery in this
story is a treacherous deception which has killing as its goal. This act
of revenge is the beginning of the era of power, wars and killing for
the sake of survival.

APPENDIX OF OUTLINE FOR WORKSHOP WITH SOURCES

INCLUDED:

GROUP I: VENGEANCE AND NATIONALISM

A. "Kach" or worse: SIMON AND LEVI
1. Numbers 25:6-8;14-18: 1) While Israel was staying at Shittim, the people
profaned themselves by whoring with the Moabite women, 2) who invited
the people to the sacrifices for their god. The people partook of them and
worshiped that god. 3) Thus Israel attached itself to Baal peor, and the Lord
was incensed with Israel....6) Just then one of the Israelites came and brought
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a Midianite woman over to his companions, in the sight of Moses and of the
whole Israelite community who were weeping at the entrance of the Tent of
Meeting. 7) When Phinehas, son of Eleazar son of Aaron the priest, saw this,
he left the assembly and, taking a spear in his hand, 8) he followed the
Israelite into the chamber and stabbed both of them, the Israelite and the
woman, through the belly. Then the plague against the Israelites was
checked.... 10) The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 11) Phinehas, son of
Eleazar son of Aaron the priest, has turned back My wrath from the Israelites
by displaying among them his passion for Me, so that I did not wipe out the
Israelite people in My passion....13) It shall be for him and his descendants
after him a pact of priesthood for all time, because he took impassioned
action for his God, thus making expiation for the Israelites." 14) The name
of the Israelite who was killed, the one who was killed with the Midianite
woman, was Zimri son of Salu, chieftain of a Simeonite ancestral house. 15)
The name of the Midianite woman who was killed was Cozbi daughter of
Zur; he was the tribal head of the ancestral house in Midian. 16) The Lord
spoke to Moses, saying, 17) Assail the Midianites and defeat them--18) for
they assailed you by the trickery they practiced against you--because of the
affair of Peor and because of the affair of their kinswoman Cozbi, daughter
of the Midianite chieftain who was killed at the time of the plague on account
of Peor."
B. Sources in Praise of Phinehas:
1. Psalms 106: 30-31: 30) Then up stood Phinehas to intervene, and the
plague was checked; 31) hence his reputation for virtue through successive
generations for ever.
2. I Maccabees 2:26-27, 54: 26) In his zeal for the Law, Mattahias acted as
Phinehas did against Zimri son of Salu. 27) Then Mattathias went through
the town, shouting at the top of his voice, "Let everyone who has a fervor for
the Law and takes his stand on the covenant come out and follow me".
54) Phinehas, our father, in return for his burning fervor received a covenant
of everlasting priesthood.
3. Ecclesiasticus 45: 23-24:
23) Phinehas son of Eleasar is third in glory because of his zeal in the fear of
the Lord, because he stood firm when the people revolted, with a staunch and
courageous heart; and in this way atoned for Israel. 24) Hence a covenant of
peace was sealed with him, making him governor of both sanctuary and
people, and securing to him and his descendants the high priestly dignity
forever.
4. Anthropological commentary:
Pitt-Rivers considers the story of Midianite Cozbi, daughter of Zur (Numbers
25, vv.6-8, 14-18) to be the "exact counterpart of the story of Shechem and
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Dinah save in the distribution of the blame and the moral lesson drawn.
Pinchas later (chap.31) leads an expedition against Midianites and Moses
subsequently (chap. 31, 35) decrees that all the adult women be massacred as
well. Simon & Levi were blamed, but Pinchas (25.13) was rewarded with a
hereditary high-priesthood (p.167). It is ironic that the Israelites "accepted
the predatory premises regarding women of which they had themselves been
the victims." (p. 170)
5. The Book of Judith, IX, 2-4
6. Sternberg, p. 475
“He who twiddles his thumbs about the rape and deems the gifts fair
compensation is as guilty of making a whore of Dinah as the rapist and giver
himself.”
7. The Midrash comments:
a. midrash on Numbers (Naso XIII.19 p. 545-6): Shelumiel the descendant
of Simeon gets to bring his offering immediately after Reuben. Why?
Because of his praiseworthy zealousness in punishing immorality. "The
Tabernacle likewise used to slay adulterers and faithless wives..."
b. AND THE SONS OF JACOB ANSWERED SHECHEM...WITH
GUILE
c. AND AS TROOPS OF ROBBERS

C. The Original Inhabitants: Shechem's grandfather

The Book of Yashar
Haddakum, the grandfather of Shechem, and his six brothers would not be
circumcised, and they were greatly incensed against the people of the city for
submitting to the wishes of the sons of Jacob. They sprang at the messengers
of Shechem when they came to circumcise them and sought to slay them, and
sought to slay also Shechem and his father. They chided Shechem and his
father for doing a thing that their fathers had never done, which would raise
the ire of the inhabitants of the land of Canaan against them, as well as the
ire of all the children of Ham, and that on account of a Hebrew woman.
Haddakum and his brothers finished by saying "Behold, to-morrow we will
go and assemble our Cannaanitish brethren, and we will come and smite you
and all in whom you trust, that there shall not be a remnant left of you or
them." When Hamor and his son Shechem and all the people of the city heard
this, they were afraid, and they repented what they had done, and Shechem
and his father answered Haddakum and his brothers: "Because we saw that
the Hebrews would not accede to our wishes concerning their daughter, we
did this thing, but when we shall have obtained our request from them, we
will then do unto them that which is in your hearts and in ours, as soon as we
shall become strong." Dinah who heard their words, hastened and dispatched
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one of her maidens whom her father had sent to take care of her in Shechem's
house, and informed Jacob and his sons of the conspiracy plotted against
them. When the sons of Jacob heard this, they were filled with wrath, and
Simon and Levi swore, and said, "As the Lord liveth, by tomorrow there shall
not be a remnant left in the whole city." (source The Book of Yashar as
summarized in Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews, Vol. I: p. 398-399).

GROUP II: PEACE CONFERENCE: THE PACIFISTS

A. ARABS FOR PEACE: Shechem and Hamor

1. The text speaks for itself (Genesis 34: 8-12; 18-24)
2. Compare it with Avimelech's attitude to Isaac (Gen. 26): Although there
was a famine in the land Isaac stayed in the land in Gerar where Abimelech
was King. The men of the place asked him about his wife and he said "she
is my sister" for he was afraid they might kill him, because she was beautiful.
One day Abimelech saw Isaac fondling Rebecca and sent for him. He said
"why did you say she is your sister? What have you done to us! One of the
people might have lain with your wife, and you would have brought guilt
upon us." Abimelech then commanded his people, saying "Anyone who
molests this man or his wife shall be put to death."
Isaac grew richer and richer and the Philstines envied him and stopped
up all his wells. Finally, Abimelech said to Isaac, "Go away from us, for you
have become far too big for us." The Philistines stopped up every well he
dug. Finally, he went to Beer-sheba and dug a well and was able to live there
in peace.
Then Abimelech came to him from Gerar. Isaac said to him, "Why have
you come to me, seeing that you have been hostile to me and have driven me
away from you?" He answered, "We now see plainly that the Lord has been
with you, and we thought there should be a sworn treaty between our two
parties, between you and us. Let us make a pact with you that you will not
harm us; just as we have not molested you but have always dealt kindly with
you and sent you away in peace. From now on, be you blessed of the Lord!"
[thus canceling the previous decree of expulsion]

3. The Midrash Speaks:

a. Pro-proselyte Position: Midrash Rabbah (vayechi) XCVIII.5 (P. 953)
FOR IN THEIR ANGER THEY SLEW A MAN--this alludes to Hamor the
father of Shechem. AND IN THEIR SELF-WILL THEY RASED A
WALL1; ye have razed the wall of proselytes2. R. Hunia and R. Jeremiah
said in the name of R. Hiyya b. Abba: In order to give rein to your own

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passions, ye razed the wall of proselytes3. They destroyed a crib: this is one
of the changes made for King Ptolemy.4
NOTES:
1Reading shur, "a wall, instead of shor, "an ox."
2Intending proselytes might have taken an example from the men of
Shechem, who all became circumcised. But when you massacred them, you
razed their wall--destroyed their confidence.
3The same comment, with an additional observation on THEIR SELF WILL.
4V. supra, VIII, II. Th. suggests that the whole verse was emended thus: For
in their anger they slew an ox, and in their self-will they destroyed a crib.
This may have been done because of the libel that the Jews captured a Greek
every year for a sacrifice, which might conceivably have been supported by
the present verse: FOR IN THEIR ANGER THEY SLEW A MAN.

b. Intermarriage, trade and peace

1). "THE THISTLE THAT WAS IN LEBANON"
CONTEXT FOR THE MIDRASH ON THISTLE: (2 Kings 14: 8-14)
Amaziah, King of Judah stupidly challenged Jehoash, King of Israel.
Jehoash sent him a message in answer: 9) "The thistle of Lebanon sent a
message to the cedar of Lebanon, "Give my son your daughter in marriage",
but the wild animals of Lebanon trampled down the thistle as they passed.
10) You have conquered Edom, and now hold your head in the air. Boast
on, but stay at home. Why challenge disaster, to your own ruin and the ruin
of Judah?" 11) But Amaziah would not listen, and Jehoash king of Israel
marched to the attack.... [and defeated him and took him prisoner]
2). "AND HAMOR SPOKE WITH THEM, SAYING"

Anthropological Commentary on the tragedy of Shechem:

The fate of Shechem was determined by his failure to appreciate that such
nomads are liable to change their minds about the necessity to offer their
women once they are strong enough to refuse them. Hamor's offer of direct
marital exchange implements a conception of marriage that is no longer
acceptable to the Israelites, who have learned through the hard experience of
political subordination to keep their women to themselves, once they
can."(Pitt-Rivers p.161)

B. ISRAELITES FOR PEACE

It’s hard to be a Jew: Jacob is a complicated person

Self-Justification:

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 1. Genesis 34: 30: "Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, 'You have brought
trouble on me, making me odious among the inhabitants of the land, the
Canaanites and Perizzites; my men are few in number, so that if they unite
against me and attack me, I and my house will be destroyed."
2. Genesis 49: 3-7: Simeon and Levi are a pair; their weapons are tools of
lawlessness. Let not my person be included in their council, let not my being
be counted in their assembly. For when angry they slay men and when
pleased they maim oxen. Cursed be their anger so fierce, and their wrath so
relentless. I will divide them in Jacob, Scatter them in Israel.
3. Carmichael Commentary:
“Jacob's reaction to his daughter's seduction by Shechem is far removed from
the impassioned and angry condemnation of her brothers. His attitude is a
calm and cautious one: he looks at the offence in light of the total situation
(cf. wisdom circles: "good sense makes a man slow to anger...": Proverbs
16.32) Jacob held his peace and Hamor, the head of the Hivites discuss the
matter amicably. The sons, Simon & Levi concentrate on the specific offense
and they are outraged. The sons come to terms with Hamor, but do so only
in order to deceive and render them vulnerable to attack. Jacob is disturbed
by Simon & Levi's vengeance. He looks at the matter as a whole, and fears
for the continued safety of his house: the other Canaanites will hear etc... The
last word lies with Simon & Levi: "Should he treat our sister as a harlot?"
But Jacob really has the last word because when he dies he condemns Simon
& Levi. (Carmichael, Calum N. Women, Law, and the Genesis Traditions.
Edinburgh, Univ. Press, 1979. (pp. 33-48))

GROUP III: IT'S HARD TO BE A JEW: JACOB, A COMPLICATED

PERSON

A. SELF-RIGHTEOUS CRITICISM: Jacob's position

1. Blessing of brothers: Genesis 49
2. SIMEON AND LEVI ARE BRETHREN ETC.
3. Sternberg Commentary criticizes Jacob:
“Jacob breaks his long silence only to reveal himself as the tale's least
sympathetic character. The cowardice betrayed (not for the first time, but
never so perceptibly as vis a vis the boldest of his sons) is less damning than
the immorality. If Jacob reproached the pair for the massacre or the abuse of
the rite of circumcision or even the breach of contract, he would gain a
measure of understanding and support from the reader. But he does not even
remotely protest against any of these offenses. A moral note appears only as
late as his deathbed dissociation...from the men of violence, whose rage he
curses. But Jacob makes this diatribe many years later, in Egypt, when the
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dangers of the Hivite affair are long past and he can afford to play the
moralist." (Meir Sternberg p.473)

B. JACOB THE HALF-HEARTED FIGHTER

1. AND CAME UPON THE CITY CONFIDENTLY
2. WITH MY WORD AND WITH MY BOW

C. JACOB THE UNCOMMITTED (Liberal)

Thomas Mann on Jacob's foreboding (p.116):
“[Jacob shivered] at the look on their faces when the message came...that the
condition was readily accepted....More than once he almost lifted his hands
to implore [Simon and Levi]. But he was afraid of their outraged fraternal
feeling, their just right to revenge. He saw that conduct which once he might
have with overwhelming solemnity interdicted now received from
circumstances strong elements of justification. He was even, he discovered,
conscious of a little private gratitude towards them for not bringing him into
their plot, for keeping him aloof and innocent, so that he need know or
suspect nothing unless he liked, but could simply let happen what was to
happen. Had not God the Lord, at Beth-el, cried out to the sound of the harps
that he, Jacob, would possess gates, even the gates of his enemies; and might
that not mean that regardless of his own personal love of peace, it was written
in the stars that conquests, wars and plunderings should accompany his
course? Horror, unrest, and a secret pride in the craft and virility of his own
seed, kept him from slumber. Nor did he sleep at all in that night of terrors,
the third night after the expiry of the given term, when he lay in his tent
wrapped in his mantle, and his horror-struck ear caught from afar the noise
of armed conflict.”

GROUP IV: CONCERNED CITIZENS: WOMEN FOR PEACE: Dinah

A. Van Doren poem
B. Thirteenth tribe

GROUP V: THE LAWMAKERS

A. Exodus
B. Deut. 22:10
C. Deut. 22
D. 2 Samuel 13: Another Rape, Another Reaction

GROUP VI: SUMMING UP: WHO SHOULD BE TRIED?

A. Defense of Simeon and Levi: The people of Shechem deserved to die,
for they had neglected to judge their prince in their courts. Even then, it was
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known that the morality of a people is dependent on the morality of its
leaders. Shechem did not only violate Dinah; he violated his responsibility
to his own people. Therefore, Simeon and Levi did not murder the people of
Shechem; they merely executed them for their crimes.
B. In Defense of Shechem: Shechem has been too stringently judged.... The
tradition will not endorse rape...it must condemn intermarriage. But it is also
clear that Shechem loved Dinah. He spoke to her heart; he comforted her;
his soul longed for her. He was ready to make amends.
C. Against Simeon and Levi: The sack of Shechem is the archetype of
violence, "an outrageous escalation in that it goes beyond all bounds of
morality." (Neher) The plain truth is that Simeon and Levi are guilty of an
atrocity. By implication, it is our atrocity. The hands of the Jewish people
are stained by blood. Simeon and Levi have committed a hillul ha-shem.
They have slaughtered people who had just been circumcised. They have
committed a hillul ha-brit. (Salkin, Jeffrey. "Dinah, The Torah's Forgotten
Woman," Judaism, 1986 pp. 286-87)
D. CONCLUSION: Dinah story is a reflection of corporate personalities;
it represents ethnic concerns. It is paradigmatic for what could happen in
ANY community. The problem with revenge is that is not useful. It does
not reduce fear and anxiety; rather it creates more. (Reid, Stephen B.
"Violence and Vengeance: Ingredients for Tragedy" in Buss pp.153-158)

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-498-
 607
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE: WOMEN AND RELIGION IN ISRAEL
st
In the 21 century it is worthwhile examining what if any have been the
effects of feminism on Jewish religious life. It is most interesting to see what
has happened in Israeli society as more and more women are redefining their
relationship to God, to official expressions of religion, and to the patriarchal
customs and laws of traditional Judaism.
Patriarchy was not invented by the Israelite religion. The creation
story of Genesis 2-3, in which Eve is created from Adam's rib after Adam
himself has been created, and in which Eve is eventually blamed for having
tempted Adam to sin, seems to express patriarchy. However, in Genesis 1
there is an equally famous passage which is that God created man (kind) in
his (our) image to rule over the earth. “God created man in his image, male
and female he created them” (Gen. 1:27).608 Clearly the Bible is not
monolithic. There is an egalitarian tradition as well as a tradition that
emphasizes man's pre-eminence and justifies his rule over women.
Not only was patriarchy not invented by the Israelite religion, it was
also not invented by the Jewish religion.609 The fact is that all religions of
Western society are rooted in patriarchalism, not just the Jewish one.

607
“Women and Religion in Israel” in Kalpana Misra and Melanie Rich (eds.)
Jewish Feminism in Israel: Some Contemporary Perspectives (Hanover, NH:
University Press of New England: 2003): 17-56.
608
See Phyllis A. Bird, “Male and Female He Created Them,” Harvard Theological
Review 74: 2 (1981): 129-159. See also Phyllis Trible, “Depatriarchalizing in
Biblical Interpretation,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion (March
1973): 30-48.
609
Israelite religion refers exclusively to the Biblical period. The Jewish religion (or
Judaism) is a more general term which stems from the Bible, but also includes the
interpretive traditions of the Mishnah, Talmud, Codes etc. Both Judith Plaskow and
Susannah Heschel, whose sense of their Judaism is as strong as their feminist
beliefs, caution Christian feminists not to blame Judaism for the introduction of
patriarchy to Western civilization. In their articles, they attempt to warn Christian
feminists against falling into the trap of sloppy scholarship, anti-Semitism (under
the guise of anti-patriarchalism), and of avoiding a confrontation with the darker
side of their own religion. Unfortunately, examples abound of Christian feminists
who have adopted a theology that claims that Christianity represents liberation for
women, whereas Judaism represents oppression for women. According to the
Jewish historian Shaye Cohen, this is an example of “the old Christian animosity
toward Judaism [resurfacing] in a new form.” See Plaskow, “Blaming the Jews for
the Birth of Patriarchy,” in Nice Jewish Girls: A Lesbian Anthology, Editor Evelyn
Beck (Watertown, MA: Persephone Press, 1982): 250-254, and Heschel,
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 Even though, Jewish law is often protective of women, it
discriminates against and patronizes them. Together with other cultures of its
time, it emphasizes the role of women as wives and mothers. Thus a
patriarchal stance has been dominant in Judaism. In Israel, Judaism is
influenced by other patriarchal systems of Israeli society, notably that of
Islam. The critique of patriarchy which has become widely accepted among
religious Jewish feminists in the United States has taken its time penetrating
the religious milieu of Israeli society. This is partially because feminist
concerns have mostly focused on political and social change rather than on
religious change and partially because of the traditional nature of Israeli
society as a whole. Whereas Jews are often in the vanguard of activism in the
West, in Israel, Jews often fight each other over these issues, for religion in
Israel is closely connected with politics.
Israel is neither a theocracy nor a completely secular state. For instance,
under the Rabbinical Courts Jurisdiction (Marriage and Divorce) Law, 1953,
the rabbinical courts have exclusive jurisdiction in matters of marriage and
divorce of Jews in Israel, who are nationals or residents of the state. There is
no separation between church and state in Israel; rather there are state-
recognized religions. The state recognizes that there are religious
communities in addition to the Jewish one, such as Muslim, Druze, Bahai
and the many Christian communities; and there are authorized clergy for each
of these communities. An example of this is the Druze Religious Courts Law,
1962, established, for the first time in Israel, a Druze Religious Court which
has exclusive jurisdiction in matters of marriage and divorce of Druze in
Israel who are nationals or residents of the state. Thus Judaism is one of many
religions. Despite its de jure recognition of other religions, the government
has not given state recognition to Conservative, Reform and Liberal Judaism,

“Anti-Judaism in Christian Feminist Theology,” Tikkun 5: 3 (1990): 25-28, 95-97.

See too example, Marla Selvidge's comparison of Mark's liberation message with
the oppressive message of the “androcentric” book of Leviticus about the
restrictive purity laws concerning menstruation. “Mark 5:25-34 and Leviticus
15:19-20,” Journal of Biblical Literature 103: 4 (1984): 623. See Cohen, “The
Modern Study of Ancient Judaism,” in The State of Jewish Studies, Editor Shaye
Cohen and Edward L. Greenstein (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1990):
57. See also Susannah Heschel, who writes that German feminists consider
“negative depictions of Judaism” to be “accepted as legitimate evaluations of it,
rather than as part of a systemic misrepresentation endemic to Occidental culture.”
In
“Configurations of Patriarch, Judaism, and Nazism in German Feminist Thought,”
in Gender and Judaism, editor T.M. Rudavsky (New York: New York University
Press, 1995): 146.
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recognizing only the Orthodox branch of Judaism as the official state religion
of Israel. 610
The education system consists of four main tracks: State Education
(mamlachti), State Religious Education (mamlachti dati) , Independent
Religious Education (chinuch atzma'i) , and Independent Schools (zerem
atzma'i). Although in mamlachti schools, Jewish studies are given a national,
cultural interpretation, without any emphasis on religious observance or
belief there is the 'Tali' schools system that devotes more time to Jewish
sources and traditions than is required in a state school.
The atmosphere in mamlachti dati schools is one of Torah
observance, and teachers, principals and supervisors are themselves
observant. Students are expected to dress and behave according to Jewish
law, and daily prayers are part of the school day. At the elementary level are
schools in which boys and girls study together, and those in which classes
are separate. Chinuch Atzma'i schools place a greater emphasis on religious
studies and observance than the state religious schools. General studies are
offered as well. Zerem atzma' i schools include schools which are recognized
by the Ministry of Education and those that are unofficial and unrecognized.
Almost all high schools have the legal status of independent, recognized
schools. Schools that are unofficial and not recognized by the Ministry of
Education include the Cheder and Talmudei Torah run by various religious
groups. These schools do not adhere to the basic state curricula, but follow
their own curricula and use their own pedagogical methods, with no Ministry
supervision.
According to the regulations of the Knesset, the religious courts and
communal rabbis are appointed by a local community and sanctioned by the
Chief Rabbinate. They are recognized as official rabbis and serve as the
religious representatives of the community in its relations with the
governmental district authorities. The local rabbinates serve as courts of first
instance and their offices work with the committees of the local communities.
Local rabbis are very often appointed on the basis of political connections,
with no regard to their abilities nor to the needs of the neighborhoods they
serve. They do not reflect the popular will of the inhabitants they serve, yet
these rabbis completely control the religious affairs of the community
concerning synagogues, mikvas, marriage, supervision of burials, and
kashrut, and the Jewish dietary laws. Every local authority is required to
appoint a religious council consisting of religious individuals that will
provide all public religious facilities for the local population. Forty-five

610
See Encyclopedia Judaica entry in CD Rom entitled “Israel, State of, Legal and
Judicial System” for more details about state recognition of religion.
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percent of the members are nominated by the minister, 45% by the local
authority, and 10% by the local rabbinate. Fortunately, there are some
communities who are blessed with rabbis who have talents and abilities and
genuinely care for the entire community, not only its religious members.
Often the local population is in conflict with the local rabbi and rabbinical
council. 611
Local religious councils have refused, with impunity, to honor the
High Court rulings to seat Reform and Conservative representatives who
were elected to the council. Women’s advancement internally within the
Orthodox movement is also considered threatening and has to be slowed
down or eliminated. These women recognize that “it is a failure of
understanding for religious leadership to base their own legitimacy and
authority on the claim that no alternative practice has the right to exist.” 612
They understand that these leaders are using political leverage in order to
advance their goals, one of which is not to allow women to have equal rights.
st
In the 21 century it is clear that change does not take place in a
vacuum. The particular context of change in the religious world as it impacts
on women and Judaism in Israel is the cross-fertilization of ideas and
practices between Israeli and American Jewish women. From the very
beginning there has been international and inter-denominational cooperation
on such issues as seeking solutions to the problems of agunot (pl. of aguna,
the woman chained to her husband). According to Rochelle Furstenberg, a
well known journalist who writes about women and Judaism on the Israeli
scene and herself an Orthodox woman, with a son-in-law who is a masorti
(Conservative) rabbi:
“The contribution of American immigrants to Israeli feminism is
reflected in the high percentage of Americans in Reform, Con-
servative, and Reconstructionist synagogues, which promote
egalitarian modes of worship for Israelis. The first Israeli Reform
woman rabbi, Na'ama Kelman, is of American background. In the
Orthodox world, synagogues like the predominantly English-speaking
Yedidya have attempted to create more feminist-friendly services. The
young American women who began flooding into Israel for Jewish

611
See Encyclopedia Judaica entry in CD Rom entitled “ISRAEL, STATE OF:
RELIGIOUS LIFE AND COMMUNITIES” for more details about local rabbis.
612
The quote is from an ad that appeared in the Jewish Week (June 16, 2000).
“JOFA (Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance) deplores the actions of those Knesset
members who would seek to undo the Israeli Supreme Court decision by imposing
a seven-year prison sentence on women who choose to read from the Torah and
engage in other ritual acts at the Kotel (the Western Wall).”
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 study in the early '70s contributed to the flourishing of high-level
Jewish education for both Israeli and American women. Women's
prayer groups are another instance of cross-fertilization.”613
In this article, I have chosen to focus on three major areas to show
how religion in Israel affects women. The first area concerns the Orthodox
Rabbinate. The second area concerns prayer, theology and ritual. The third
has to do with women’s religious learning and study. Obviously there will be
some overlap. Fortunately, or unfortunately, (depending on the vantage
point) the status of women vis-à-vis religion in Israel is in constant flux.
Hopefully the following will serve as an overview of the problems and the
progress.

The Rabbinate and Rabbinic Courts

With the establishment of the State, the role of the Jewish law, which is
perceived as national law, even for the secular majority, was strengthened.
Israel does not have a constitution, and the rights of its citizens are often in a
state of flux. For instance, the relationship between religion and state is solely
in the hands of the politicians, with no real legal protection for secular and
other streams of religion from coercion and violations of civil liberties. In
effect, the state of Israel compels Israeli couples to marry at the rabbinate. It
forces couples who prefer an alternative form of wedding (civil, Reform,
Conservative) to marry abroad. Religious coercion has alienated many
Israelis from any form of Jewish expression.
Unique to Israel is the frequent reliance of the Supreme Court on, and its
sympathy to, sources based in Jewish law. The formal dominance of
Orthodoxy in Israel’s political system was established by the Law of
Rabbinic Courts of 1953. That law handed all matters of marriage and
divorces over to the jurisdiction of the Orthodox (and State funded)
establishment and closed the doors to other official non-Orthodox
jurisdiction. One of the reasons for this law was that a previous law, the
Women’s Equal Rights Law of 1951, specifically did not mention marriage
and divorce614. The newer law means that women are significantly
handicapped in domestic matters such as marriage and divorce. For instance,

613
Rochelle, Furstenberg, “Israeli Feminism Takes Account,” The Jerusalem Post
(May 24, 2000).
614
In Joseph v. Joseph: “The rabbinical courts…entirely ignore the laws of the
State…. The Women’s Equal Rights Law, for example, simply does not exist for
them” (Justice Cohen). The quotation is to be found in Izhak Englard, Religious
Law in the Israel Legal System (Jerusalem: Alpha Press, 1975): footnote no 70, p.
155.
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a married woman who is considered to be adulterous is unable to marry her
lover (whereas the adulterous married man can wed his unmarried lover).
Another example of this abuse, is that of a woman whose husband
has died without having a child. She has to get her husband’s brother’s
permission to remarry. This often leads to extortion of money from the
widow. Since a Jewish woman cannot receive a decree of divorce (get)
without the consent of her husband, she is at the mercy of the religious court.
Even if he beats her, or is mentally ill, she cannot divorce him. On the other
hand a woman can refuse to accept the get, but a hundred rabbis can overrule
this refusal by allowing a man to marry a second wife in special
circumstances.
Religious judges (dayanim) are all male rabbis who rule with laws
that are biased against women. In these courts, women are not given an
opportunity to be judged by women judges. Furthermore the rabbi probably
knows the husband through contacts in the synagogue or study halls. Rabbis
do not usually excuse themselves (as judges do) from cases where they know
the parties. Many Orthodox women have lost respect for rabbis in the
religious courts because, even if they do not directly participate in the
injustice and corruption, they ignore it and permit it to continue. The rabbis
are perceived to be uncaring, detached, an old boys club. Because of this, the
rabbinic courts are the target of rising criticism, particularly from women’s
groups.
Witnesses
To understand the difficulties that women face in rabbinic courts, we must
understand that woman cannot give testimony directly, only through the back
door. That is why the importance of the auxiliary person, the toanit, the
rabbinic pleader, is so important, for she can speak on the women’s behalf.
Because women in the Conservative615 and Reform movements, particularly,
women rabbis are beginning to serve in the formal capacity as witnesses,
there is bound to be some spill over during this new century.
Weddings
One would think that a wedding would be a fairly simple matter. You set a
date, go in to register, choose a rabbi and then get married. In Israel, when
you register to get married, you go to the Jewish court of law, the beit din
and have to prove that your parents are Jewish. Depending on who the rabbi
is, you may have to bring letters or a copy of your parents wedding contract,

615
For the controversy over whether women can serve as witnesses in the masorti
movement, see the responses of Rabbis Michael Graetz, Gila Dror in David
Golinkin (ed.) Responsa of the Va’ad Halakha of the Rabbinical Assembly of Israel
5 (Jerusalem, 1994).
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the ketubah. In order to set the date, you have to meet a rabbi’s wife, the
rabbanit, who sets the date on which the marriage can take place, based on
the women’s menstrual cycle (no earlier than twelve days after the onset of
menses). The majority of women lie, because they want to choose the date.
Most of the procedure seems fairly clear cut, but can turn into a
nightmare for all concerned, if someone has the misfortune to be born abroad.
Often a local witness attesting to the Jewishness of the couple is not enough
evidence for the rabbinate. Many secular Jews are fed up with the system.
Modern Orthodox Jews are not enamored of this system either, but they have
more connections.
Consequently, the Reform and Conservative Movements in Israel are
performing more and more weddings. These movements estimate that 30
percent of couples bypass the rabbinate. Although these weddings are not
recognized, they are not considered to be illegal. Since civil weddings
performed outside of Israel are legal, the couple goes abroad, has a civil
marriage and then comes back for the religious ceremony performed by the
rabbi of their choice. Both movements keep a registry of marriages in the
hope that one-day they will be recognized by the State.
Divorce
The interference of the rabbinate in marriage is merely a nuisance in
comparison to the problems with divorce. If a woman tries to bypass the
rabbinate, remarries and has children with her new partner, without having
been divorced by a rabbinical court, the children can be considered
mamzerim (illegitimate under Jewish law), because the rabbis do not
recognize civil divorce (or divorce performed by Conservative and Reform
religious courts). Thus from their point of view, the woman is still married to
someone else.
In the past forty years there has been a rise in the rate of divorce
initiated by women. This has created a problem for Jewish women since
Jewish law, unlike most other law, states that only the husband can give the
women the Jewish divorce decree, the get. If the divorce is consensual, there
are usually no problems in the husband’s having the exclusive power to
deliver a get to his wife. However, if the divorce is disputed, then the burden
falls on the woman. In the last few years a substantial number of Orthodox
men have been withholding the get out of spite and/or have begun
blackmailing their wives, demanding concessions like property and money
as a ransom for the get.
The Aguna, the anchored wife
The Jewish community claims that Jewish divorce law was designed to
protect women, and in the past, the community managed to do so by ensuring
compliance by excommunication or economic sanctions. But these sanctions
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have lost their power and slowly the community is recognizing that these
same laws can work against Jewish women. Husbands’ intractability can go
on for many years and a new category of women have been created, the
aguna. Traditionally agunot (pl of aguna) were created when a husband
deserted his wife or disappeared or died without witnesses to his death. From
the middle ages on, the responsa literature indicate that, as a result of
increased mobility—husbands going off to trade, or to the Holy land, leaving
their wives behind them—there are many cases of agunot. However, today,
most cases of agunot are caused by husbands who refuse to divorce their
wives, despite threats and punitive measures or when the husband is legally
incompetent to grant a divorce.
There have always been recalcitrant husbands, but in the past there
was a tendency on the rabbis to be as lenient as possible. Many rabbis felt
that: “One must investigate all possible avenues in order to release an
aguna”616 and not be too strict in finding reasons to prevent her remarriage.
Because it was so important to the sages to resolve the problem quickly, they
even accepted the testimony of one witness (rather than the required two), a
woman, a minor or even a non-Jew to ascertain the whereabouts of a deserter
or the death of a husband. The leniency was possibly because it was though
that this would enable the wife to remarry.
However, today the approach is more stringent, especially in the case
of husbands who refuse to grant their wives a divorce of their own free will.
Consequently, there is a worldwide phenomenon of international
organizations whose major goal is to see that women get equal treatment
under Jewish law in divorce proceedings. ICAR, the International Coalition
for Agunot embraces such diverse organizations in Israel as Assoication of
Agunot and Women Denied Divorce; Association of Immigrant Women;
Association of University Women; B’not Brith; Emunah; Hadassah Israel;
Israel Feminist Movement; Israel women’s Network; Na’amat; Woman to
Woman, Haifa; Woman in Halakha; Wizo. It also has similar coalition
groups in Canda, the U.S. and the U.K. These groups use the tools of public
protests, sanctions, publication of unfair treatment by courts. In individual
communities, the rabbis often will denounce the divorce-refusing husband
(mesorev get) from the pulpit. In 1993-1994, ICAR sponsored study days all
over the country in honor of “The Year of the Agunh” to bring the problem
to the attention of the general public and to offer support and an outlet for
victims of rabbinical indifference. An example of such a session was at Ben
Gurion University and the speakers, who travelled all over the country, were
Professor Michael Corinaldi, who spoke about the legal solutions to the

616
Rabbenu Asher ben Yehiel, Responsa of Rosh 51:2.
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problem; Advocat Susan Weiss, who surveyed actual cases in the religious
courts, Rabbi Abergil, who as chief rabbi of the rabbinic court of Beersheba
and Eilat had his own halakhic solutions for the aguna.617 Other participants
in other cities were Judith Huebner, the chair of Emunah, Rabbi Emanuael
Rackman, then Chancellor of Bar Ilan University, Rabbi Shiloh Raphael, the
Chief Rabbi of the Religious Court of Jerusalem and Sharon Shenhav, then
the legal adviser to Na’amat.
Susan Aranoff, co-director of Aguna Inc., which advocates on behalf
of agunot, says that “the recalcitrant spouse has to be susceptible to that kind
of pressure from a religious or social point of view.” Too many are not.
Traditionally, Judaism discourages divorce, but has always permitted it.
Once a marriage is over, Jewish law, or halakha, requires a man to give his
wife a document setting her free.
The problem, however, is not just a matter of an escalating number
of men who leave their wives but will not divorce them. For many agunot, it
is also a matter of the escalating cruelty of their husbands, some of whom are
aided by rabbis. Often, these rabbis disapprove of the women involved, either
because the wives have relied on civil courts for aid or because they see the
women as undermining shalom bayit or family unity.
Em Al Banim (“mother of children”) is a popular support system for
ultra-Orthodox women who are trying to get a divorce and are estranged from
their communities as a result of the stigma that divorcees have in this sector.
It is a Jerusalem nonprofit organization funded by the New Israel Fund. Its
aim is to empower ultra-Orthodox women. They are stretching the limits of
the community, but don’t want to leave it. The founder of this group is Bluma
Holzman, who is a divorced ultra-Orthodox social welfare worker. Besides
serving as a support system, Holzman is trying to get the rabbis to reduce the
stigma of such women in the religious media. Besides the social isolation of
these women they are often abandoned and can have as many as 10 children
to care for. The group does not meet in one place, since it fears a backlash
from male community members.618
Why have Orthodox rabbis been unwilling or unable to win for
agunot their divorces? The rabbis explain that some areas of halakha are
immutable, and that this is one of them. Rabbi Moshe Tendler, a professor of

617
January 10, 1994. I had the honor of chairing this session, as the local feminist
versed in women and halakha, and made sure that the voices of the many agunot in
the audience had a chance to be heard. The rabbi promised that anyone in the
audience could come to him and he would solve their problems.
618
See Tamar Hausman, “A Secret Society of ultra-Orthodox Women Fight the
Stigma of Aguna,” Ha’aretz Anglo File. Friday, July 21, 2000.
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Talmudic law at the centrist Yeshiva University, says, “the idea that the
halakha is available to us to modify is false. The problem here is not the
halakha, but the evil in men's hearts. Do we have the authority to prevent evil
from being perpetrated in our communities? Yes. But not by changing God's
law.”
To the outsider, the law is somewhat strange. A male has more
freedom than does a woman in ex-marital affairs. A man may leave his wife
and live with an unmarried woman and even have halakhically legitimate
children while still being married to the first wife. The wife, on the other
hand, cannot live with another man and have a child by him, because the
child will be a mamzer. To be a mamzer is to be an outcast—he or she, can
only marry another mamzer for ten generations. As if this decree on the child
were not bad enough, the wife is considered to be an adulteress and as such
she is unable to either return to her husband (assuming he wants her back) or
to marry her lover. Thus to be a woman who cannot obtain a get is a tragedy.
One would think that rabbis would be doing everything in their power to
alleviate this situation. However, there seems to be intransigence, an overall
shift toward greater religious and cultural conservatism in the Orthodox
world. The rabbis are afraid of anything that smacks of innovation.
Challenges to official rabbinical authority
The most problematic issue for the Reform and Conservative streams in
Israel is the fact that they are not recognized by the State. Thus their rabbis
cannot perform weddings or issue decrees of divorce. There is an additional
problem having to do with the validity of conversions performed by these
rabbis. There are less than 5,000 families who belong to the Reform and
Conservative congregations and they are a minority in the total Jewish
population of Israel. The attitude of the chief rabbinate to these movements
has bearing on the issue of women’s rights and status in Israel, since these
movements are most sympathetic to women.
The Supreme Court of Israel (bagatz) has come to represent for
Israelis the only government agency that will give them justice in areas
pertaining to religious affairs and woman’s rights. Great political and social
tension has been created by the existence of Rabbinical Courts. Israel is a
secular state and the final decisions over legal norms lies in the jurisdiction
of the secular court. Theoretically, the rabbinical court is a state court, and
its judges are state judges. Thus the state court has final jurisdiction over the
rabbinic court. But it chooses its cases carefully and very often the decisions
that are made are inflammatory—a case in point being the issue of the
Women of the Wall.
WoW has been trying for more than ten years to get government
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permission to pray at the wall. In the first Supreme Court decision on WoW,
Menachem Elon, one of the justices, came close to justifying haredi, ultra-
Orthodox violence against WoW, when he said that the violence came from
a deep deep place in the heart. Rather than condemning the violence he said
that it was provoked by WoW and so even though he had no problems with
the halakhic aspects of women tefillah groups, his decision was that they
could not take place at the Wall because they might provoke violence.
In May, 2000 the Supreme Court ruled that WoW must be allowed
to pray at the wall in accordance with their custom and could read from the
Torah scroll, don tallitot (prayer shawls) and tefillin (phylacteries). This
decision upset the Orthodox applecart and one haredi Knesset member
immediately proposed a law that would impose a seven-year prison sentence
on any women caught wearing a tallit or tefillin or who read from the Torah
at the wall. Strangely enough the bill passed its first reading in a 29-17 vote.
The bill must pass a further two readings before it becomes law. The
government filed for a request for an appeal, arguing that the present court
did not understand the significance of its own ruling. The Supreme Court
granted the State’s request for an appeal on this victory and it is not clear
when the WoW will be able to pray there.
The WoW are not taking this sitting down and are fighting a battle
on three fronts: the courts, the Knesset and the cabinet to have them fulfill
their duty to provide security arrangements as ordered by the court. Orthodox
women activists are acting as a united front in deploring the actions of those
knesset members who are trying to undo the Israeli Supreme Court decision.
They consider it to be a failure of understanding on the part of religious
leaders who base their legitimacy on not accepting the right of alternative
practices to exist. Furthermore, the Orthodox women activists maintain that
it is a desecration of God’s name to exploit political leverage in this
manner.619
The rabbinical court tends to be rigid in its interpretation of the
halakha and the non-Orthodox majority is resentful of the power of these
courts. As a result, the Orthodox communities have launched a campaign
against all of the Supreme Court’s rulings that impinge on religious
questions. The deputy minister of religious affairs tried to get legislation that
would prevent the Supreme Court from interfering in religious matters which
were covered by the status quo. The judges were referred to as being wicked
and responsible for all of the world’s problems. In addition, extremists made
threats and the chief justice had to get police protection.

619
JOFA Watch, an ad that appeared in the June 16,2000 issue of the Jewish Week.
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What are some of the promising avenues in the political arena of religion in
Israel?
The ideal would be if the rabbinical authorities of Israel would wake
up and show some halakhic leadership. If it would impose sanctions on
recalcitrant husbands, perhaps the aguna problem could be solved. It could
make prenuptial agreements a policy for all weddings. In these legal
documents, husbands who refuse to divorce their wives have to pay them a
heavy financial fine. However, its enforcement becomes problematic. All
rabbis in the Conservative and Reform movements in Israel who perform
weddings insist on them as a condition of marriage. Rabbi Shlomo Riskin of
Efrat recommends that couples sign one, and most of them agree. According
to Rabbi Eliahu Bakshi-Doron and Rabbi Eli Ben Dahan, the Jerusalem
Rabbinate is working on a version of a prenuptial agreement. If the agreement
becomes routine and accepted, there will be no stigma to having one. In
addition, most women don’t know that pre-nuptial agreements are an option
for them and even when they do, feel uncomfortable asking for one.
Despite the fact that prenuptial agreements are fast becoming an
increasingly phenomenon at Orthodox weddings one of the major stalling
points is the need for a halakhically valid document. Since the husband must
give the get without coercion, the prenup has to be formulated in a way that
does not illegally coerce the husband to participate in the get procedure. Since
the prenup often states that the husband will pay a certain sum of money to
his wife on a daily basis until he gives her the get, the prenuptial agreement
can be interpreted as a form of coercion. The only way out of this might be
to give the power over to the religious court, to let the couple have an
arbitration agreement in which they agree to accept the jursidiction of the
religious court. Thus there is no coercion since it is the court that rules and
the couple agrees to accept the ruling. Another possibility is that the husband
agrees to pay a certain amount per diem to support his wife if they do not
maintain the same residence. The obligation remains in effect throught the
halakhic marriage. Once there is an official divorce, the husband is no longer
legally bound to support his wife and thus there is no direct linkage between
support payments and his giving her a get. Thus there are many possibilities
for a halakhic prenuptial agreement being part of the traditional marriage
ceremony.
Sharon Shenhav, an international woman’s rights lawyer, has been
recognized as an expert on marriage and divorce in Jewish law. She has
represented hundreds of women in rabbinical courts in Israel. She is director
of the International Jewish Women’s Human Rights Watch that documents
the human rights violations of Jewish women. They hope to create a central

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database that will include cases of women who are agunot in their community
and publicize these cases as infringements of Jewish women’s rights.
Because of Shenhav’s pessimism about Orthodox women effecting
change, she has formed a coalition with Rabbi David Golinkin, the head of
the Conservative Movement’s Center for Women in Jewish Law at the
Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies. The Center opened in October 1999
with the support of a grant from the Ford Foundation. Its purpose is to
“formulate alternative halakhic decisions regarding the legal rights of Jewish
women, monitor rabbinical court decisions, and publish academic works on
women in Jewish law.” 620 The Center will present solutions to the problem
by publishing a book about halakhic solutions to the aguna dilemma in the
20th century which plans to review all the halakhic solutions that have been
suggested as well as the bi-annual pamphlet which will examine actual cases
in the courts which have not been resolved.621
One might ask why there is a need for a conservative solution, now
that there are Orthodox women who serve as rabbinical advocates in the
religious court system. The justification for a Conservative center is that the
new cadre of Orthodox Rabbinical Advocates is at danger of being exploited
by the rabbinical courts, since they do not want to rock the boat. Shenhav
feels that it is best to work in opposition to the establishment, rather than
from within the system and that the solution is to create alternatives to the
rabbinical courts in the areas of divorce. The center is somewhat
interdenominational, since it includes Dr. Ruth Halperin-Kadari of Bar Ilan
University and Rabbi, Prof. Emanuael Rackman on its national board.
A recently ordained rabbi, Monique Susskind Goldberg and
rabbinical students Diana Vila are two of the research fellows involved in the
research. They are hoping to influence decision makers in the legal
community, the lay public and the Orthodox hierarchy in Israel and its first
publication, The Jewish Law Watch, The Aguna Dilemma (January 2000) has
already been sent out and received negatively by the ultra-Orthodox. The
goal of the publication is to “pressure the rabbinical courts to publish their
decisions in a timely and orderly fashion, much as civil court decisions are

620
Diane, Friedgut. “Major Chance for Change: Jewish Women and the Law,”
Women’s League Outlook 70:4 (Summer 2000): 30.
621
From David Golinkin’s introduction to “The Agunah Dilemma: Case Study
Number one” Jewish Law Watch, The Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies
(Jerusalem: January 2000): 3.
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published, and to encourage rabbinical courts to use the halakhic tools which
are at their disposal in order to free modern-day agunot.”622
At the end of 1999, a coalition of social organizations got together to
challenge the structural discrimination in the outlook of Jewish law. Hemdat,
an Organization for the Freedom of Science, Religion and Culture), the New
Israel fund, the Women’s Network, the Center for Jewish Pluralism, the
Masorti Movement, and Shatil among others, decided to work together to see
if they could explore avenues for freedom of choice with respect to marriage.
One way of educating the public is through marriage fairs which showcase
alternative types of marriages. Shulamit Aloni, a leader in the struggle to
legitimatize civil marriage performed a marriage ceremony for a secular
couple in public. The hope of this group is to promote legislation for a new
marriage track. Thus people who marry at the rabbinate, get divorced at the
rabbinate. If a masorti or Reform rabbi performs the ceremony, the Reform
or masorti religious court grants the divorce decree. And if you get married
civilly, a lawyer will help you dissolve the marriage in a civil court.
The problem is that this does not solve the problem of the aguna.
According to Pinhas Shifman, an Orthodox Jew623 civil marriage should be a
requirement in Israel for both religious and nonreligious people, since he
thinks the government should not be in the business of deciding who is a
rabbi. If everyone gets married civilly, individuals can decide which rabbi, if
any, they should go to. His suggestion to take the monopoly on marriage
away from the chief rabbinate and open the marketplace to competition may
have the effect of widening the gap between the various religious and secular
populations. But at least it does away with the need for all kinds of
manipulations and ways to bypass Jewish law.
The “yoke” of the law is a popular expression. One could certainly
say that the average Israeli suffers under the yoke of religious law. But this
is not as religion should be. There is a prophetic tradition which encourages
us to promote reform, not to institutionalize repression. The Jewish tradition
teaches us that we have the moral responsibility to remove the feet of the
oppressors from the necks of those who are powerless, not to institutionalize
abuse. We must fix, amend, and alter our tradition so that it accommodates

622
“The Agunah Dilemma: Case Study Number one” Jewish Law Watch, The
Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies (Jerusalem: January 2000), p.4.
623
All references to Shifman are from a talk he gave in Hebrew on April 16, 1996
for the Forum at Ben-Gurion University on “Marriage and Divorce in Israel: The
Citizen and the Establishment” [sessions were videotaped]. See his book: Civil
Marriage in Israel: The Case for Reform, Series #62 (Jerusalem: Jerusalem
Institute for Israel Studies Research, 1995).
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the modern world and we should not be fearful that in doing so, we will
destroy tradition. A living tradition does not have to make its modus vivendi
one of preserving the status quo.624
Prayer, theology, rituals
Prayer is a major activity for Jews. It is first of all the major way of
connecting with God and as such is required of both men and women.
However, women’s role in prayer is secondary. They are exempt from prayer
at specific times, to which men are obligated. The role model for women’s
prayer is Hannah, the mother of Samuel (1 Sam: 2) who prayed silently, with
only her lips moving.625 Although women are obligated to pray because they
need God’s mercy and have an obligation to give thanks, in practice their
prayer is different from men’s and performed at different times. There is the
concept of a time-bound positive mitzvah (commandment). In Maimonides’
commentary on the Shulkhan Arukh [literally “the prepared table”, name of
the most authoritative code of Jewish law written by Joseph Caro (1488–
1575)]626, he writes: “…women have been accustomed not to pray in a set
manner since immediately in the morning, around the time of washing, they
say some kind of request [as a prayer] and according to scriptural law that is
sufficient. And it is possible that the rabbis also did not obligate them for
more than that.627 The ramifications of women’s not being obligated are
many. Since they are not obligated to pray, they are not counted in a minyan
(ten adults). This immediately leads to a sense of second class citizenship in
the Orthodox world.628
In addition to prayers, there are public weekly readings of the Torah,
the sacred scriptures of the Jews in the synagogue. On the one hand, since it
has to be read at specific times, one would think that women do not have to
hear it. On the other hand, in the Bible it states that everyone, men, women
and children, even the strangers in the communities are obligated to hear the
word of God (Deut. 31: 9-12). Thus we have a conflict between a biblical

624
See Naomi Graetz, Silence is Deadly.
625
In point of fact, Hannah serves a role model for all Jewish prayers, since the
Amidah, the silent prayer is the major prayer in the service and it is said silently by
all while standing.
626
First printed in Venice in 1565, it is the most important code of Jewish law.
627
Abraham Gumbiner: Magen Avraham—Commentary on the Shulkan Arukh,
Orah Hayyim 106:2. Cited by Rachel Biale, Women and Jewish Law (New York:
Schocken Books, 1984) p. 19.
628
To be fair, this issue has not been entirely resolved in the Conservative world
and there are still synagogues in Israel (e.g. Ra’anana) where women are not
counted and are not allowed to lead prayers.
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source and a rabbinic source. It is obvious that if they are not required to hear
the reading of the Torah, they will not be allowed to read the Torah for the
entire congregation. This issue of women getting an aliyah (going up to the
Torah to read, or recite a blessing over the Torah) is a major source of
controversy in the Orthodox world. It has mostly been resolved in the
Conservative synagogues in Israel and is not an issue among the Reform who
allow women the right to read Torah.
Conservative and Reform Judaism believe in the equality of men and
women and have produced responsa and rituals to address religious needs in
this area. In a study done by the ad-hoc Committee on the Status of Women
in the masorti movement, Amy Lederhendler pointed to the significance of
pluralism as a guiding principle within the masorti movement. This study
showed that at the time 41 percent of congregations in Israel had women
serving as presidents and 59 percent had women on the ritual committees. In
most masorti synagogues woman are allowed to publicly read the Torah, be
counted as part of the minyan, and sit together with men629. They are called
to the Torah to recite a blessing (aliya, pl. aliyot), recite kiddush (the prayer
over wine), serve as a cantor, or leader of services. They serve as a rabbi and
halakhic authority (posek, fem. pl. poskot). In addition, they are encouraged
to wear a tallit (prayer shawl) and tefillin (phylacteries). Since Conservative
women and men pray together, they have not been part of the struggle of the
“Women of the Wall.” The Conservative movement has won its struggle to
have their own space there, achieving a court ruling that gives them their own
official area of prayer at Robinson’s Arch, near the Southern Wall.
The idea of men and women praying together is foreign to religious
and to many secular Israelis. The ultra-Orthodox consider this to be an
abominable act. To them, there is no equal role for women in Judaism and
anyone who grants it cannot, according to them, be accepted as a religious
Jew.
The Orthodox view is that since women are not obligated to pray,
they cannot publicly lead the services. There are sources that show that
women are permitted to do so, and show that some women have done so in
history. Still, the prevalent custom forbids this, because of women’s physical
presence and her voice that has the potential to be sexually distracting.
Women are seated separately in the synagogue so that they cannot be seen,
but there is the problem of a woman’s voice being provocative: kol be-ishah
ervah. Women’s voice is to be silenced. Her voice is better not heard.
Women’s opinions are silenced or considered worthless. Women are

Amy Lederhendler, “Left, Right and Center: Women in the Masorti

629

Movement,” The Messer of the Masorti Movement (Spring 1990): 5.

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seductresses or temptresses and their voices can cause men to sin. A woman
whose voice is heard is considered to be immodest. An example of this
attitude is to be found in the Ethics of the Fathers (1:5) where it is said,
“Anyone who converses excessively with a woman causes evil to himself.”
Perhaps this negative attitude towards women is behind the offensive prayer
that men recite every morning, shelo asani ishah (who did not make me a
woman).
K’vod hatzibbur (the honor of the community has come to be the
excuse behind why women should not be doing things such as reading from
the Torah in public. When a woman reads publicly, it implies that there are
no men capable of reading—thus casting aspersions on the community’s
(men’s) honor. This was the mindset for many years until recently.
Possibly because of the influence of feminism and the progress on
these issues in the other movements, and because of a deep felt spiritual need
to express themselves as Jews in prayer, many women in the Orthodox
community are beginning to pray in groups of women only. They do not call
themselves a minyan, but rather a tefillah group, despite the fact that there
have been responsa permitting women to act as a minyan if it is a woman
only group.630 They are internationally affiliated into the Women’s Tefillah
Network and have a very active e-mail support group. The model that was
set up with the help of American rabbis was that of permitting some prayers,
but not permitting prayers which require a minyan.
In theory, these issues are not problematic in the Reform and
Conservative communities. Tabory found in 1980 that the members of both
movements in Israel had liberal attitudes toward what women could and
could not do in the synagogues. He found that Reform members were more
liberal than the Conservative, but found that despite the fact that men and
women felt that women should be entitled to perform functions reserved for
men in Orthodox congregations, a large number of women were not
implementing these rights.631

630
In an e-mail communication of the women’s tefillah network, there was a
reference to Rabbi Goren’s teshuva who wrote on the stationary of the Chief
Rabbinate. Although he never retracted it, he claimed that he was writing about a
theoretical case and not with real women. It was a private communication and the
Baltimore WTG publicized it (Rivka Haut, June 25, 2000). In another e-mail
communication there is a reference to Rabbi Yoel Bin-Nun that ten women who
take upon themselves all the mitzvot can constitute a minyan. (Deborah Weissman,
June 26, 2000)
631
Some modern Orthodox rabbis are willing to mention the mother’s name in
naming the child in the synagogue and allowing women to say the prayer of birkhat
ha-gomel (said after an accident or childbirth) out loud in the synagogue. Ephraim
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 Another issue that is problematic for women in Israel is the Orthodox
exclusion of women from public recitation of kaddish, the mourner’s prayer
for a deceased relative during a funeral, wreaking much emotional havoc.
“To have the right to mourn as an adult member of the Jewish community is
to have the right to acknowledge personal loss as communal loss. It is to see
oneself as a full participant of the Jewish community and by extension, of the
whole Jewish people. But there is something more. Being “allowed” to
mourn is not just the other side of being allowed to celebrate. Being allowed
to mourn publicly is being allowed to be vulnerable in community. When
Jews stand up to say kaddish and are then answered with the community's
“Amen,” they are being given the message that there is room in the
community – indeed sacred space – for their pain and loss as well as for their
joys and victories.”632
The problem of gendered god language
There is another problem concerning prayer for women. This has to do with
both the nature of the Hebrew language, and the traditional metaphors
referring to God as male. The default gender in Hebrew is male. There are no
neutral forms of gender in Hebrew. From the traditional Orthodox standpoint,
there are halakhic limits on changing liturgy. There is what is called the
matbeia she-tav’u chachamim, which is the fixed template (or formulas) of
prayer set by the sages. There are some offensive blessings in Orthodox
prayer books, as we saw above. It is difficult to filter out gender bias in
prayers. Finally, Jewish men and women, steeped in tradition, no matter how
liberal their orientation, find it hard to alter our hallowed liturgy.
Jewish feminists very often ask “Can a traditional liturgy, created
exclusively by men and replete with masculine imagery for God, express the
religious sensibilities of women?” The answer seems to be, at best, only
partially.
Jews with strong feminist inclinations, have a problem relating to
anthropomorphic descriptions of God, supernaturalism, hierarchy, the issue
of the chosen people, gender inequalities, class discrimination and animal

Tabory, A Sociological Study of the Reform and Conservative Movements in Israel

(Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan Doctoral Dissertation, 1980): 351.
632
Quote found at
http://www.mayan.org/journey/99_winter/valor_w99/bbatw99.html. See also,
Esther M. Broner, Mornings and Mourning: A Kaddish Journal. New York: Harper
Collins, 1994. For an Orthodox feminist discussion of the halachic (Jewish law)
issues regarding women and the recitation of kaddish, see Rochelle L. Millen, “The
Female Voice of Kaddish,” in Jewish Legal Writings by Women. Jerusalem: Urim
Publications, 1998.
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sacrifice. Their awareness of feminist prayer texts and their solutions to many
of these problematic issues complicates their uneasiness with traditional
prayer.633 The answer given by Dr. Tamar Ross of Bar Ilan University at the
second JOFA conference in 1999 is not very satisfactory to the feminist
addressing gender inequities of prayer. She said that women should accept
the fact that the language used to describe God is “experiential, not
ontological”. The attempt to describe God with male imagery is not the
reality of God who is genderless.
The average Israeli man or woman, who reads Hebrew, is often
illiterate when it comes to the language of prayer. Most secular Israelis who
come to worship are uncomfortable in synagogues in Israel and women, in
particular, have been made to feel unwelcome or irrelevant in the “normal”
Israeli synagogue. Part of the problem, of course, has to do with the gendered
nature of the Hebrew language.
There have been attempts to deal with this problem in Israel. In
America, many of the changes that were introduced were via translation and
not real emendations of the sacred language of Hebrew. One example of an
Orthodox prayer book created specially for women is Siddur Or va-Derekh
le-bat Yisrael put out by Rabbi Ovadia Yosef.634 An example of a siddur that
attempts to deal with some of these problems is the new masorti siddur. The
ideology of the new Conservative prayer book, Va’ani Tefillati is egalitarian
with regard to religious practice. Yet one can argue that only “cosmetic”
changes such as adding the names of the Matriarchs are tolerated and not
more serious ones such as the metaphors for the Godhead.635 Tikva Frymer-
Kensky has pointed out the problem:

633
Marcia Falk, in Book of Blessings (San Francisco: Harper 1996) has “solved”
the problem of addressing our prayers to a masculine God (Barukh ata adonai)
who is ruler of the world (melekh ha‘olam) by introducing the formula “Let us
bless the source of life” (nevarekh et ein ha-hayyim). This has ironically become
the standard gender-inclusive blessing formula, though Falk has never referred to
her work as a siddur. For more on this topic, see Paula Hyman, “Looking to the
Future: Conclusions,” in Susan Grossman and Rivka Haut (eds.), Daughters of the
King: Women and the Synagogue (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society 1992):
303.
634
Jerusalem: Yeshivat Or va-Derekh, 1988.
635
In a review I wrote about this siddur, I point out that “It is serious to me, as a
feminist, that the God-language of the siddur is exclusively male, that God is
addressed only in the masculine, and that the prayers often reflect male
perspectives masquerading perspectives masquerading as universal concerns.” See
Naomi Graetz, “Review Essay: Siddur Va’ani Tefillati.” NASHIM: A Journal of
Jewish Women’s Studies and Gender Issues 2 (March 1999): 161-172.
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 The God of Biblical Israel is grammatically male: all the verbal
forms, adjectives and pronouns are masculine. God in the Bible is also
sociologically male: the husband, the father, the king.... This cumulative
impact of male-centered language and imagery is profoundly alienating
to women .... The fact that these images are used for God ... reinvests these
male images with ... status and power. Women are completely left out of
both the imagery and the power loop.636
There is a need to introduce female or gender-neutral God-language into
the siddur. God’s name is not the only problem. What about the marriage
imagery: the all-powerful, loving God who protects the weak (female) people
of Israel?637
Not only the language but also the content of the siddur is
problematic for feminists. In the daily Amidah, for example, most of the
topics addressed reflect men’s concerns as if they were the universal norm.
From this point of view, it might be easier to write an alternative prayer than
to change the God-language, because a new prayer would fill in what is
missing, rather than replace a hallowed existing form. Many prayers have
already been composed to address women's concerns, which are often related
to biology and may not necessarily mesh with “universal” or “human”
concerns.638
Rachel Adler points out that although Judaism and its prayer books
have changed, women are still required to “temporarily abandon the selves
they really are in order to pray in the words of the community, [to]

636
We could use Shekhinah, Malkat Ha‘olam (The Queen of the World), Malkat
Hashamayim (The Queen of Heaven), or Rahamema (the Merciful One). But are
these really solutions? Frymer-Kensky points out that although their “resonance is
indeed biblical; [they are] quite negative. The historical use of these terms to refer
to pagan gods gives them connotations far beyond the normal meanings of the
words” (Frymer-Kensky, “On Feminine God-Talk,” The Reconstructionist 59:1
(Spring 1994): 48-49.
637
I have written extensively about this is my book Silence is Deadly: Judaism
Confronts Wifebeating (Jason Aronson, 1998).
638
Susan Grossman has suggested a “Meditation after a Miscarriage” and Tikva
Frymer-Kensky a “Ritual for Affirming and Accepting Pregnancy.” See Grossman
and Haut, Daughters (above, note 2). The Israeli poet Esther Raab wrote “A
Woman's Song,” a poem that is very much a prayer, using the formula barukh she-
asani isha (“Blessed are You for making me a woman”). See Ellen M. Umansky
and Diane Ashton (eds.), Four Centuries of Jewish Women’s Spirituality: A
Sourcebook (Boston: Beacon Press 1992).
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fundamentally disorient themselves in order to orient their hearts.”639 She
proposes new texts and modes of prayer that may break the rules or
undermine the texts we use.
Much has already been done and is being done in the creation of new
prayers and poetry which address women’s concerns about menstruation, the
onset of menarche, breast cancer, abortion, childbirth, sending sons off to
war. To be sure, some issues of men are not addressed either, like prostate
cancer or problems of premature ejaculation. But the authors of the
traditional prayer book assume that males are the ones who will be doing the
praying.
More perhaps has been done in creating new midrash or retellings of
biblical stories. Some of this has been done by secular Israelis and has been
incorporated into the liturgy. The most common additions have to do with
adding on the mothers (imahot) to the forefathers (avot) in order to create
parity. Thus, we see in the new siddur of the masorti movement, the adding
on of Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah. Or the Reform blessing after the
meal which, includes women in the blessing (haverai ve haverotai ne-
varech—friends (masc.) and friends (fem.), let us pray; and includes the four
mothers as well with an explanation. The masorti siddur is “user friendly”
and includes women and recognizes their contributions to Jewish life and
history, but it does so in a manner that expresses the dispute around this
position. For example, the word ve-imoteinu (and our foremothers), wherever
it appears next to avoteinu (our forefathers) in the obligatory prayers (and it
does not always appear), is placed in brackets, making it evident that this is
an optional alternative to the male norm. Because of the controversy in the
Conservative movement on these issues, some masorti rabbis refuse to allow
prayer leaders to use this siddur in their services.640 Because of its variances
with the traditional language, they felt that the siddur is not halakhically
acceptable as a vehicle to fulfill the mitzvah of prayer.
The inclusion of women in religious life, on the other hand, is much
less in dispute. This is exemplified in the masorti siddur by the ceremony for
the birth of a daughter (Zeved habat), the assignment of significant roles to
women in the circumcision ceremony, the revision of the customary prayer

639
Rachel Adler, Engendering Judaism: An Inclusive Theology and Ethics
(Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society 1998, p. 65.
640
It is ironic that in the Beit Midrash of Shechter Institute, whose President is
Rabbi David Golinkin, that the shaliach ztibbur (the one who leads services) is
forbidden to use the masorti siddur. At the Women’s Study Day sponsored by the
Institute, women were told to bring this siddur and it was used—but Golinkin was
not present (at the time Alice Shalvi was Rector and acting president).
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for rain to include mention of both forefathers and foremothers, and the
equivalent prayers for benot and benei mitzvah. The picture used to show the
correct placement of the head phylactery is of a woman.641 And despite the
controversy about the insertion of imahot (foremothers) in the central Amidah
prayer, the imahot are inserted before the avot (forefathers) in the Grace after
Meals.
Leah Shakdiel of Yeruham has a bank of creative prayers that she
uses in her women’s tefillah group, including variants for the kaddish, the
mourner’s prayer that side steps the problem of a minyan for women.
Karni Goldsmith has created a new feminist haggadah (1999) for use
in the Conservative movement. This haggadah was sent out to all the
Conservative synagogues in Israel. Much of its content was translations and
adaptations from American haggadot, and its pictures were very provocative
to the intended audience because of its overtly feminist message. The
haggadah was supposed to be co-sponsored by Schechter Institute and other
masorti institutions, but because of its controversial nature, some of these
organizations removed its name from the sponsorship.
Life Cycle Ceremonies
When we come to the issue of ritual and ceremonies, there seems to be less
controversy. Ceremonies honoring the birth of girls are becoming more
common in all denominations. However, there are those who argue that by
creating new rituals we are desecrating God’s name. Thus all the new
ceremonies, in the Orthodox world, are looked upon as threatening.642

641
I would like to thank David Ellenson for sharing with me in manuscript his then
forthcoming article, “A New Rite from Israel: Reflections on Siddur Va’ani
Tefillati of the masorti (Conservative) Movement,” which later appeared in Studies
in Contemporary Jewry: An Annual XV.” New York, Published for the Avraham
Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem by
Oxford University Press, 1999. He wrote on pp. 29–30 (manuscript) that the “move
towards gender-inclusivity that marks the ethos of Va’ani Tefillati is most fully and
obviously expressed ... by a woman, garbed in a kippah (head-covering), wearing
the head tefillin (p.10). This picture delivers a powerful statement. It indicates that
the masorti Movement has internalized a feminist critique contends that patriarchal
cultures posit the male as normative .... The icon of the female wearing tefillin
presents the argument that the female is no longer ‘other.’ From the standpoint of
semiotics, this is the single most powerful example of innovation contained in the
siddur.”
642
According to Wolowelsky, the importance of the “welcoming ceremony” for
daughters is not its ceremonial aspect, but the public attention. Joel Wolowelsky,
Women, Jewish Law and Modernity: New Opportunities in a Post-Feminist Age
(New York: K’tav Publishing House, 1997): 44-45.
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In the days of the Mishnah and Talmud, trees were occasionally planted in
honor of a child’s birth (erez for a boy; oren for a girl).643. In 1954, the
ceremony of zebed habat began to be popular. The mizrahi groups use the
expression zeved habat. The meaning of the word zeved might signify
plentitude, goodness, and gift. In this ceremony, which includes a festive
dinner, a name is given for girl; and a blessing for the mother’s health is
offered. The Ashkenazi groups call this event, simchat habat (the happiness
of having a girl). Some even call it a brita—which is a misnomer.
Traditionally, the first Sabbath after the daughter is born, the father goes up
to the Torah and recites a blessing over the Torah. In Conservative and
Reform synagogues, both parents often go up together and there is a ritual
reading in honor of both parents.
More recently, there are “covenant” ceremonies for girls (without
circumcision) done at home or in a hall. The assumption is that everyone is a
member of the covenant (man, woman, child) and therefore has to be
accepted into the people through a ceremony. Since this is a quasi-religious
ceremony, it has resulted in much creativity on the part of those who do it.
The sources, which the creators of these ceremonies use, have to do with the
four Mothers and Miriam, Deborah, Hanna. Sometimes a new midrash is
created specially for the daughter’s name.644
New rituals have been created for the bat mitzvah645. In the
Conservative and Reform movements, boys and girls do the same things and
have the same responsibilities. In the Orthodox communities, the celebration
of the bat-mitzvah is more of a private affair. Occasionally it is celebrated in
the late afternoon service on Shabbat in the synagogue. However, in the
women’s tefillah groups, the bat mitzvah girl might do everything that the
boy does, including reading her portion of the Torah, reading the haftorah,
leading the prayers, giving a speech.
Since so many women have not had a bat mitzvah experience as part
of their growing up, more and more women are celebrating their bat mitzvah
as an adult.646 It consists of group or individual study experience followed by
643
B. Gittin 57a
644
Maya Lebowitz and Yoram Mazor, “Women’s Participation in Life Cycle
Events,” in Ariel, David Joel, Maya Lebowitz and Yoram Mazor (eds.) Barukh
Sheasani Isha? (Blessed the One who made me a Woman?: The Woman in
Judaism—From the Bible Unto Today). Tel Aviv: Yediyot Achronot, 1999. Put out
by the Reform Movement in Israel, p. 169-177 (Hebrew).
645
Bar mitzvah is for a boy when he becomes an adult member of the congregation.
The Bat mitzvah is for a girl who does the same.
646
For more on this topic see, Stuart Schoenfeld, “Ritual and Role Transition:
Adult Bat Mitzvah as a Successful Rite of Passage,” in Jack Wertheimer (ed.) The
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a group or individual bat mitzvah in the synagogue. An example of such an
experience was reported on in the local newspaper in Beersheba. There was
a picture on the front page with a woman holding the Torah and it was entitled
“Women in Omer go up to the Torah.” The subtitles referred to this
happening as a revolution when ten women had a mass bat mitzvah and went
up to the Torah for the first time. The response of the Orthodox rabbi was
scorn: “tomorrow they will ask to be circumcised.” 647
Other rituals are connected with marriage. For instance, women are no
longer passive under the huppah (the marriage canopy). Today, women hold
up the poles, not only men. Females often read the ketubah, the marriage
contract, during the ceremony. Often the bride recites a verse to express her
words of love, or gives the groom a ring. While these activities are totally
accepted in the Reform and Conservative movements, when they are done in
a wedding performed by an Orthodox rabbi, even if the couple is secular, he
makes it clear that these acts are not part of the ritual—and can only be done
at the conclusion of the ceremony. Often, the Orthodox rabbi leaves once his
part is over and then the couples can do the creative things they want.
Other rituals have to do with death. A major area of controversy in
Israel is the woman’s right to say kaddish, the mourner’s prayer, for an
immediate member of her family. In the Orthodox tradition, it is the men who
recite kaddish and women are often shunted aside. Part of the problem is that
women are not counted as one of the ten men who are needed for a religious
quorum (minyan). Today, many women (of all denominations) have taken
upon themselves to say kaddish. They find that it helps them move on with
their grief in the framework of their community. Many women have
described their experiences saying kaddish, both in their own homes, the
local synagogues and also the day of the funeral, at the cemetery. Often the
first time a woman attends a synagogue is to say kaddish for a relative.
When we go into the actual synagogue in Israel, the first thing that a
non-Israeli will notice is that all prayers are in Hebrew. Obvious as this may
seem, it undercuts one of the important contributions of the Modern
Orthodox, Conservative and Reform Movements innovations, namely to
speak and even have prayers or readings in the language of the home country.
So what are the differences? The liturgies on the surface seem very similar.
What is obviously different has to do with where the men and women sit and
if there is a mehitzah, and how high it is. Most of the Conservative and
Reform congregations are egalitarian in their seating. As noted earlier, in the

Uses of Tradition: Jewish Community in the Modern Era (New York: Jewish
Theological Seminary, 1992): 349-376.
647
Kol bi, June 8, 1995 issue.
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Orthodox synagogue, the range is from women in an upstairs’ balcony,
behind a curtain (some of which are not see through), side by side aisles with
no room divider and side by side aisles with a room divider of varying
heights. It is ironic the absence of a mehitzah in an Orthodox synagogue
would be a sign to women that they are not welcome. The type of mehitzah
sends a message (albeit unconscious) as to women’s place in the synagogue.
One could speculate that the existence of women’s prayer groups is a reaction
to this message.

Innovation in prayer
A particularly well-known Orthodox egalitarian model of prayer is Kehilat
Yedidya synagogue in Jerusalem, founded by Dr. Deborah Weissman, who
tries to integrate halakha and feminism. Yedidyah has a pluralistic policy in
regards to women reciting blessings. The Torah is either taken out or returned
to the ark by women, little girls lead the congregation in post-prayer hymns
(e.g. yigdal), women make kiddush, men are called up to the Torah with the
names of both their father and mother, and some women wear talit and
tefillin. They learn to carry the Torah and read from it. Women give sermons
that men hear. The mehitzah in both places is a room divider that does not
totally block vision. 648
nd
At the 2 JOFA conference in 1999 in NYC, Weissman expounded
the synagogue’s stance in four points: man and woman were created equal;
that halakha is a dynamic process which is subject to history and sociology;
feminism is a value in itself, and halakha will catch up with religious
pioneers. A unique and controversial factor in this congregation is its
decision making process. They do not have one rabbinic authority. When
there is a halakhic question, they ask questions to a group of ten rabbis, and
then decide what to incorporate.
One of the more established facts of Orthodox woman’s synagogue
life is the assembly of a minyan of women for the reading of the Scroll of
Esther (the megillah) on the holiday of Purim. Although there are debates
among the Orthodox world, as to whether women can constitute a minyan
for this purpose, it is clear from the sources that “all—including women—
are required in the reading of the megillah.” Even though there are opinions

648
For more about the Yedidya congregation go to their site at
http://yedidya.tripod.com/news.htm. There are other innovative Orthodox
congregations. One is the Lieder Minyan and another is Shirah Hadashah recently
created by Tova Hartman Halbertal in which a minyan of 10 men and 10 women is
necessary for prayers to begin. The ten men being the traditional quorum, and the
10 women, the practice in that synagogue. Women can read aloud from the Torah.
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that a man may not fulfill his OWN obligation to read the megillah by hearing
a women read it.649 Although the issue of a woman’s voice (kol ishah) is
sometimes heard as an objection to women reading publicly, in this case this
objection is usually not heard. Those who object usually do not give soundly
based halakhic reasons for this, but rather state it is “custom” or the fear of
embarrassing men. Thus women gather together to communally read the
megillah in all settings.650
The most interesting innovation for women has been the Rosh
Hodesh study groups and the prayer groups that meet on this first day of the
month, most notably the Women of the Wall Group. Sered describes how the
Middle Eastern women observe Rosh Hodesh. The festival of the new moon
is a woman’s holiday. On the day before the holiday, they visit cemeteries of
their families and shrines such as Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem. They do not
launder or sew on this day and the older women light special candles for the
dead, if possible, one for each relative.
This innovation seems to cut across all groups: Conservative,
Orthodox, Reform. This celebration is an adaptation of Jewish tradition, since
traditionally, Rosh Hodesh was a Jewish woman’s day of rest. These
celebrations are sometimes ritualistic, social and often scholarly. In Israel the
groups tend to meet for study sessions. There is one in my community in
Omer, Leah Shakdiel has been leading a Rosh Hodesh prayer service in
Yeruham for many years, often with an invited speaker. In Jerusalem there is
a group of women who have been meeting regularly to study texts and
exchange personal comments around a theme.
Many of these women are part of the WoW group that goes to the
Western Wall and has gained much notoriety in the process. Women’s
halakhic prayer groups were what gave the impetus to the women of the wall.
During a 1988 conference entitled “The Empowerment of Jewish Women,”
sponsored jointly by the American Jewish Congress, the World Jewish
Congress and Israel Women’s Network, a pre-organized group prepared for
a women’s service with a Torah reading at the Western Wall. This idea of
Jewish women praying together at the Wall excited the group and after hours
of consensus-seeking, about seventy women walked with a Torah Scroll to
the wall where they were pounced upon by reporters and hostile ultra-
Orthodox women. The service itself was very moving, but the political
ramifications of such a group, which recently had its 12th anniversary, are

649
Shulhan Arukh, Orah Hayyim 669:1.
650
Joel Wolowelsky, Women, Jewish Law and Modernity: New Opportunities in a
Post-Feminist Age (New York: K’tav Publishing House, 1997): 94-98.
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also very interesting.
What is most noteworthy is that even from the beginning, the group’s
leaders were inter-denominational, consisting of Reconstructionist (Rabbi
Deborah Brin and Shulamit Magnes), Reform (Rabbi Helene Ferris),
Orthodox (Marion Krug, Rivkah Haut) and Conservative (Francine
Klagsbrun). The service itself was halakhic, in accordance with Orthodox
practice. This meant that certain prayers were not said, the kaddish, in
particular. Although the Israeli women were less interested in praying at the
wall at the time, today the WoW group is truly international and many Israeli
religious women are regular supporters of the group and pray together once
a month on Rosh Hodesh. They sing at the Wall and then climb up to an area
hidden from view and read the Torah.
Shulamit Magnus points out that this group, “comprises women from
every conceivable strand of Jewish life, radical feminists to Orthodox and
everything in between, have bonded around a shared experience of
affirmation: women’s group prayer, with Torah reading, at the Western
Wall.” She points out that this bonding was not the original intention of the
group, but that it is the most important aspect of the group’s existence and
has enabled them to take on the Israeli religious establishment.651
Women’s learning and study
Before beginning a discussion of women’s study, it is necessary to point out
that literacy should not be taken for granted. The anthropologist, Susan
Sered, in her many studies of Middle Eastern Women has noted that very
often these women are unable to read in any language. Ashkenazi Jewish
women were unable to pray, learn or read in the holy language, Hebrew, but
able only to read in Yiddish. Jewish women in Yemen were forbidden to read
because it was against the religion.652 Yet, they are in awe of the Hebrew
alphabet which represents learning for them. Often they will kiss and bless
the holy letters or objects, like the mezuzah, which contain Hebrew letters.
In the non-Orthodox religious communities, women’s education was
usually not problematic. Boys and girls, as well as men and women studying
651
Shulamit S. Magnus, “Re-Inventing Miriam’s Well: Feminist Jewish
Ceremonials,” in Jack Wertheimer (ed.) The Uses of Tradition: Jewish Community
in the Modern Era (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1992):347. See new
book by Phyllis Chesler and Rivka Haut (co-eds) Women of the Wall: Claiming
Sacred Ground (The University Press of New England and Brandeis University
Press, 2001).
652
Lisa Gilad, Ginger and Salt: Yemini Jewish Women in an Israeli Town (Boulder,
COL: Westview Press, 1989) and Rhonda Berger-Sofer, “Pious Women: A Study
of Women’s Roles in a Hassidic and Pious Community: Mea She’arim” (Ph.D.
dissertation, Rutgers University, 1979).
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together have long been the norm, just as it is in secular communities. Thus,
the content of women’s learning was usually no different than men’s,
although often boys were more advantaged in terms of length of learning
time. Since the non-Orthodox streams in Israel are mostly influenced by
Western norms, egalitarianism is a sine qua non of the Reform and
Conservative movements, except on the thorny issues of women as rabbis,
which has now been resolved. On the elementary school level there are the
network of TALI schools, set up in different parts of the country. Immigrants,
who were associated with the masorti movement, feeling that secular Israeli
education did not provide their children with a sufficiently Jewish
environment, originally created the first school. These schools offer a non-
Orthodox education option that is less hostile to the Jewish tradition than the
standard schools. These schools are coed and completely egalitarian and offer
the entire secular curriculum with an added emphasis on Judaic studies.
There are two coed batei midrash (pl. of beit midrash, religious
school which teaches Jewish texts) in Jerusalem run by the Conservative
movement. One is that of the Conservative yeshiva on Agron Street which is
mostly for Americans and is run by the United Synagogue. Here students
study for the sake of learning as there are no tests or requirements. The other
is Shechter Institute, connected with both the masorti movement of Israel and
the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, which offers master's and
doctoral programs in Jewish studies, rabbinics and Jewish education. It is
also possible to get the master’s degree in Judaic studies with a specialty in
gender studies. Its school attracts a spectrum of Jews of differing
backgrounds, a majority of whom are Israelis involved in Jewish education.
The Beit Midrash also operates the TALI Education Fund, which provides
Jewish studies enrichment material to Israel's public schools, educational
outreach programs in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union and
absorption programs for new immigrants to Israel.
The Reform movement has its own schools, a Beit midrash: a liberal
yeshiva in Beit Shmuel in Jerusalem and Beit Daniel, which is the Reform
synagogue and community center in Tel Aviv.
Another egalitarian institution is Pardes, directed by Rabbi Danny
Landes, and located in Talpiot in Jerusalem. It offers a classic education in
texts for men and women and is open to all students. It considers itself a
halakhic institution and manages to diplomatically avoid controversy in
addressing egalitarian concerns. There are no tests or grades at Pardes and
students study 40 hours a week. There are part and full-time programs and
studies may start in English, but then move on to Hebrew.
Another Orthodox institute is Yakar, located in Katamon in
Jerusalem and founded by Rabbi Michael Rosen from England in 1992.
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There is a women’s beit midrash program here, run by Mimi Feigelson, who
is an expert in Hassidut and studied with Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach for many
years. Yakar’s philosophy is tradition and creativity and they explore texts
thematically on topics such as death and dying. Women who study there are
from all ages and backgrounds and there is no dress code—which means
women do not have to cover their hair, and can wear pants.
Recently there has been a great change in the concept of Orthodox
women studying sacred texts. It is not only that they are studying more but
that they are studying texts that were previously off limits to them, either
because it was not the custom for women to study these texts or because they
did not have the requisite skills to do so653. Until recently the perception was
that women were lightheaded and therefore unable to study and understands
the breadth and depth of a page of Talmud. There were even those who said
that women should not study sacred texts: that “whoever teaches his daughter
to study Torah, it is as if he is teaching her tiflut (vanity, foolishness,
slyness).654 Despite this negative attitude towards teaching women sacred
texts, it was clear that she needed to know the laws applying to women.655 In
addition it was always understood that there were exceptions to this rule as
in the case of Beruriah of Talmudic fame and many others. Already in the
19th century, the dangers of women being ignorant of their own sacred texts
was becoming apparent and the Hafetz Hayyim 656 wrote that women who
only got a secular education and remained ignorant of the oral law and laws
were alienated from Judaism and in danger of being lost to the Jewish
community.657 Thus it became incumbent on parents to see that their
daughters got a Jewish education. The question then became “what kind of
education?” Should it be watered down for their needs? Were they capable
of acquiring the sophisticated skills necessary for studying Talmud? There
are whole categories of sources that discuss whether a woman is obligated to
study or whether she is exempt.
Women’s study of sacred texts, in the ultra-Orthodox world, was
only institutionalized eighty years ago in 1917 when the first Beit Ya’akov
school was established in Poland by Sarah Schenirer (d. 1935). The first Beit

653
Maimonides, Talmud Torah, Chapter One: 13.
654
M. Sotah 3:4 or Sotah 20a
655
Moses Isserless, commenting on the Shulkan Arukh (Yoreh Deah 246:6)
656
Israel Meir Ha-Kohen (known as Hafetz Hayyim after the title of his first work.;
Radun, Poland, 1838–1933). His best-known work is the six-volume Mishnah
Berurah (1894–1907), a commentary on Shulhan Arukh (Orah Hayyim) which is a
reference book on halakhic matters.
657
Likkutei Halakhot, Sotah 20b.
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Ya’akov in Palestine was established in 1936 by Rabbi Meir Sharanksy. The
graduates of this school system do not serve in the army, nor do they even do
voluntary non-military national service (sherut leumi). In general, the values
of Beit Ya’akov girls are that modern culture is best avoided.658
The ambivalence towards women’s study is perhaps best expressed
in the haredi (ultra-Orthodox) community that Tamar El-Or has extensively
covered.659 In general the haredi communities in Israel (and the West)
respond to values of modernism by retreating into tighter groups, by
segregating themselves physically and by building walls of custom to defend
their existing practices. They have their own institutions, yet are involved in
politics in order to get their (some would argue, disproportionate) share of
funding. The role of women in such communities is essentialist; they marry
young, do not practice birth control, have large families and see their role as
wife to support their husband in learning. Despite the elevated status of
learning and prayer in the haredi community, Debra Kaufman has shown in
her study of American returnees to Orthodoxy (ba’alot teshuva), these
women are taught that they have better qualities than those of men, namely a
capacity for nurturing and a higher level of spirituality. These qualities justify
their segregation by sex and their exemption from the mitzvot
(commandments) to study and prayer. Ironically this attitude leads to a belief
that women’s culture is the source for transformation of humanity, a view
shared by radical feminists. Yet the Orthodox women accept the rules set up
by patriarchy, unlike feminists who want autonomy.660
Women’s study is inimical to the haredi community, since girls and
women should be doing housework chores, yet the community has to deal
with it. Today it is a very important part of their lives. It is very often justified
by giving the women “practical”661 knowledge that helps them perform their
daily roles as women, wives and mothers. El-Or describes the importance of

658
For more about the haredi women's school system, see Deborah Weissman,
“Bais Yaakov: A Historical Model for Jewish Feminists,” in The Jewish Woman.
Elizabeth Koltun, editor (New York: Schocken Books, 1976): 139-148. See too
Eetta Prince-Gibson “Haredi girls can now study for cutting-edge careers and be
traditional” in Jewish Bulletin Online at http://
www.jewishsf.com/bk000811/supharedigirls.shtml
659
Tamar El-Or, Educated and Ignorant: Ultraorthodox Jewish Women and Their
World (Boulder, Co: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1994).
660
Debra Kaufman, Rachel’s Daughters: Newly Orthodox Women (New
Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1991): 149-154.
661
El Or distinguishes between practical classes and substance classes, which can
only be taken with a rabbi’s prescription.
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women going to classes to study Jewish law, the Bible or Jewish philosophy.
She says this is not a marginal activity, but very important. They do not study
Talmudic texts, but they do value it, insofar as they very often support their
husbands who study all day. As for themselves they study in makeshift places
with the rabbi’s wife. Study is a paradoxical activity for these women. On the
one hand, they live their lives in a way that upholds their community; on the
other hand, they refashion their community’s definition of their status. El-Or
quotes one of the women as saying, “’We are learning in order to know what
to ask and not to know what to answer’: (1) to emphasize …that in this place,
in this class, everyone subscribes to the reality in which it is not women’s
role to think, and (2) to approach the world of thinking and inquiry,
notwithstanding reason 1.”662
There are those who feel that it is a mistake to allow women to study and that
doors have been opened, which were better left shut.
Despite this ambivalent attitude toward women’s study, more and
more institutions are opening that give women a chance to study “torah le-
shma” (study for the sake of learning, not necessarily to obtain a degree) and
it is no longer strange that women want to and can study Talmud as
intensively as men. As religious women gain degrees in higher secular
education and become equal members of the work force they are also
entering the halls of higher Jewish education. The fact that women are
doctors and lawyers makes it obvious that they have the same ability as men
to study. In addition, it has become clear to women that there is a direct
correlation between knowledge of sacred texts and empowerment. What will
be interesting is if women choose to study text in the same way that men do,
or if they choose their own way of knowing and owning the text.
Even in the modern Orthodox world there are discussions about
whether there should be different methodologies for teaching girls and
women. There is the sourcebook method as opposed to the primary text
method. The former method is popularly used for girls, but is not considered
to be the “real thing”. It is considered to be superficial and limited.
Traditional Talmud study consists of studying whole books, not a
compendium. Rather than study snippets, the student studies the text in an
unabridged form. Using the sourcebook method is almost unheard of in the
yeshiva world. Rabbis consider this to be a debasement of Torah study and
by allowing girls to study this way, the Orthodox world is making a statement
that it is only girls studying, and their study does not count. Thus much of

662
Tamar El-Or, “Ultraorthodox Jewish Women,” in Shlomo Deshen, Charles S.
Liebman and Moshe Shokeid (eds.) Israeli Judaism (New Brunswick NJ:
Transaction Publishers, 1995): 149-169. [p. 166]
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the more modern schools emphasize equality of study. The problem with this
method is that it is slower and by concentrating on one book, one may miss
out on a critical mass of knowledge.
Perhaps the best known teacher who used the sourcebook method in
teaching bible was Nechama Leibowitz, who was born in 1905. She was the
first to use a unique method of literary analysis of biblical text by creating
bible sheets—a form of juxtaposition of texts and commentaries, that were
meant to provoke thought. She would ask questions on these sheets and
suggest that the answer could be found by looking at another commentary on
the sheet. By showing students the contradictions in the different texts, she
hoped that they would see that there is a totality to the Bible. She was a gifted
teacher who taught and influenced generations of educators. She was known
for her modest Orthodox life style and her avoidance of the women’s
movement. Despite her total acceptance in the “men’s world”, Rabbi Shlomo
Riskin, who invited her to teach students in his yeshiva in 1987, was scolded
by ultra-orthodox rabbis for inviting a woman to teach in a yeshiva. It was
even proposed by them that she should teach the class behind a curtain.663
One of the first institutes that made sources in Bible, Midrash and
Talmud, available to contemporary women was the Judith Lieberman
Institute, founded in 1980 and headed by Chana Safrai. In 1985 the institute
branched out into a new area: namely enabling women from outlying cities
to take advantage of the Judith Lieberman Institute. Classes were held
weekly, four on Tuesdays and two on Wednesdays. Some women slept
overnight to take advantage of all six courses, while others commuted. The
purpose was for the teacher to ‘self-destruct’, i.e. to enable the student to
reach a level, so that she would no longer need a teacher. High level
instructors, both male and female gave the classes. The women came from
religious kibbutzim, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Beersheba. Safrai started the
institute with three students at Ramot Shapiro outside of Jerusalem and saw
it branch into study groups all over the country. This institute which no longer
exists served as a model for subsequent study institutions.
The first academic course to be taught about “Jewish Women:
Traditions and Transitions” was offered at the School for Overseas Students
at Hebrew University in 1985 and taught by Deborah Weissman, who is now
heading Kerem, a teacher training institute for Jewish education. Her
philosophy of teaching is that despite the fact that rabbinic leaders are
sometimes guilty of misogyny (e.g. Rabbi Eliezer, Maimonides, Abarbanel
and Rabbi Kook) it would be a mistake to reject the entirety of what they

Naomi Ragen, “The Boulders in the River: A Thousand Years of Women’s

663

Achievements,” her website of September 23, 1999.

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taught. Weissman is an example of an independent Orthodox feminist who
moves comfortably between the different streams of Judaism in Israel and
between academia and para-academic settings, such as Kerem.
In the Orthodox world, the desire to study stems from the
commandment “ve-shinnantem bam”664 (you should study the sacred texts
and make them yours and pass them on to your children). Much of the
learning goes on in what is called a beit midrash. The function of the beit
midrash is to enable the participants to study texts without the “interference”
of intermediaries such as teachers or secondary sources. It is hands on study,
often in pairs (hevruta), of authentic primary sources. The result is to
empower the learners, who in this case, are women. Some of the learning
consists of liturgical skills, like reading from the scroll of Esther on the
holiday of Purim. Women are also curious about all the laws that apply to
them, specifically those that determine what they have to do, and those laws
that restrict them.
About 20 yeas ago, Midreshet Lindenbaum was founded as a post
high school program for women from abroad. It evolved from the Bruria Beit
Midrash, which was founded by Rabbi Chaim Brovender in 1976 and was
later integrated into the Ohr Torah Institution, founded by Rabbi Shlomo
Riskin in 1986. Since then it has evolved into a college for Jewish studies
that includes a women’s beit midrash program, teacher training program. It
plans to develop into an accredited woman’s college and graduate school
which would focus on schools of secular law, psychiatric social work,
conflict mediation and Jewish law among others. In 1990, Rabbi Riskin,
created the Monica Dennis Goldberg Program for Women’s Advocates
(To’anot Batei Din—literally pleaders) in the Rabbinical Courts, the first and
only school preparing candidates to pass the Advocate test. The Advocates
program, directed by Nurit Fried, is a three-year intensive course and some
of their sixty women graduates are already working within the court system.
Their students often hold degrees in law, education and social work; have to
study Jewish law texts in depth, focusing on laws of personal status. They are
also trained in marriage and personal counseling. Until this program, the

664
Deuteronomy 6:4-9 is part of the text of the S’hma which is recited twice daily:
“
Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD alone. You shall love the LORD
your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. Take to
heart these instructions with which I charge you this day. Impress them upon your
children. Recite them when you stay at home and when you are away, when you lie
down and when you get up. Bind them as a sign on your hand and let them serve as
a symbol on your forehead; inscribe them on the doorposts of your house and on
your gates.
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rabbinical courts were totally male-dominated and only secular female
lawyers could plead for their clients. The courses empower women to
understand the halakhic texts they need to advise and protect their clients
before the rabbinic courts, specifically in the case of divorce. Three female
graduates of the course have been chosen to sit on the newly-formed Council
of Rabbinical Court Advocates.
Another outgrowth of this program was the Ohr Torah Stone's, Yad
La Ishah, the Max Morrison Legal Aid Center and Hotline for Women in
Jerusalem, established in 1997 and directed by the Jerusalem lawyer, Susan
Weiss, who lectures at the Advocate Program. This center gives legal aid to
Israeli women who need help in obtaining a religious divorce decree. In their
first year of operation, the center succeeded in getting religious divorces for
many women who previously could not afford legal representation. The
attitude of the director is that there is more freedom of movement within
halakha than is generally acknowledged and that it is necessary to push
halakha to its limits in order to pressure rabbis to interpret the laws more
broadly and alleviate the problems encountered by women in Jewish law.
The advocates goal is not to change halakha, but to seek creative solutions
within halakha.
The first graduate of the course to gain prominence is Rachel
Levmore. She is the first woman to serve on the directorate of Israel’s
rabbinical courts. She received her license as a rabbinic pleader in 1995, after
a two year course in which she had to show mastery of Jewish texts
concerning marriage and divorce. Levmore is the assistant director in the
administration of the rabbinical courts and is reviewing the files of
problematic divorce cases and in particular those having to do with agunot,
women whose husband’s refuse to give their wives a get, a religious divorce.
Another program is Nishmat, the Jerusalem Center for Advanced
Jewish Study for Women, founded by its dean, Chana Henkin in 1989.
Henkin was previously the assistant principal of the State religious high
school in Beit She’an and received the Agrest Prize of the Israel Ministry of
Education and the Samuel Belkin Award of Yeshiva University. Nishmat is
located in the religious section of Bayit Vagan in Jerusalem and rents space
from a synagogue. It has a beit midrash atmosphere, which means that there
are tables for partnership study (hevruta) and emphasizes independent study.
There are also classes in Bible, philosophy and prayer. Its focus is not only
excellence in textual skills, but also on spiritual growth. Most of the students
are in their early mid-twenties, between college and prior to graduate school.
In 1997, Nishmat established the Keren Ariel Women's Halachic
Institute to train Yoatzot Halakha, Women Halachic Consultants, under the
direction of Rabbi Yaacov Varhaftig, Dean of the Institute, and Rabbi
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Yehuda Herzl Henkin. Yoatzot Halakha are women certified by a panel of
Orthodox rabbis to be a resource for women with questions regarding
Taharat Hamishpacha (an area of Jewish Law that relates to marriage,
sexuality and women's health). This role was devised to assist women who
are more comfortable discussing very personal issues with another woman.
One of the woman who has taken the course, Deena Zimmerman is a
pediatrician and certified lactation consultant. Zimmerman was an assistant
professor of clinical pediatrics and studied family purity issues (niddah). It is
necessary to have women medical doctors with halakhic expertise so that
religious women can feel free to come to them for intimate advice on
gynecological problems such as in vitro conception and amniocentesis.
The graduates are careful not to call themselves poskot (feminine
plural of posek). A posek is one who has halakhic authority, one who earns
the respect of colleagues over a long period and is known for his erudition.
Not only do these yoatzot not replace rabbis, but they coordinate their
decisions with them. They are halakhic experts but not halakhic decisors.
They do not make final decisions and in complicated cases will consult with
male rabbis. Their Hotline is under the supervision of Nishmat rabbis Rabbi
Yaakov Varhaftig and Rabbi Yehuda Henkin, with whom the yoazot consult
for rabbinic ruling (psikah).
Chana Henkin, who created the course, claims that this is not a
feminist enterprise, since feminism is perceived both as anti-family and anti-
religious. The graduates are being accepted with very little fanfare and even
the ultra-Orthodox rabbinic community seems to welcome them. They have
opened a hotline for halakhic questions, and a web site which allows one to
“ask the yoetzet”.665 As of the year 2000 there were about 16 women enrolled
in the 2-year program. In the year 2001 they opened another two-year
program. The plan is to open a full class ever two years, with 5-7 pairs of
study partners. All applicants go through a very rigorous screening process.
Only those who fit the very high criteria are accepted. The classes are kept
deliberately small because of the intensity of the study and the supervision
that each individual student receives.666
Another example of women studying Jewish texts intensively is MaTaN,
the Sadie Rennert Women’s Institute for Torah Studies directed by Malka
Bina. She was a co-founder of Michlelet Bruria and founded MaTaN in 1988

665
To ask a question of one of the advisers and get an answer, authored by Dr.
Zimmerman, see the site at http://www.yoatzot.org/about.php
666
Chana Henkin, “Symposium on Women and Jewish Education,” Tradition 28:3
(Spring, 1994): 33. For more information about Nishmat see their site at
http://www.nishmat.net/
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with a group of students who became the board of directors and backbone of
the institute. Among the notable teachers at the institute is Dr. Avivah
Gottlieb Zornberg, who teaches the weekly portion and is the author of the
widely acclaimed book about Genesis. Among MaTaN’s outreach programs
are programs for Ethiopian and Russian immigrants. It has branches in
Raanana, Hasharon, Beersheva, Caesarea and Tel Aviv. Its graduates teach
in high schools and post high school programs in Israel and the U.S. MaTaN
considers itself to be a catalyst, which encourages women from all walk of
life to advance their Judaic studies and considers this to be one of the factors
that will contribute to the quality of Jewish learning and living.
In a discussion such as this, it is easy to overlook Pelech, an
experimental high school where observant girls are encouraged to ask
question and are taught tolerance, Zionism, Democracy and evolution. It was
founded by Alice Shalvi in 1975 who, together with other Orthodox feminists
at the time, felt that there was no quality education for girls. At the time of
its founding, it was the exception to mediocre Jewish education for girls. Its
first principal was Dr. Beverly Gribetz667, a Talmud scholar, and that in itself
was a statement, for the message was clear: no watered down texts for Pelech
girls. Malka Puterkovski has been the head instructor and program
coordinator of Talmud and Halakha for the past ten years. Her great interest
is introducing women with no previous learning experience to the world of
Talmud. It is too soon to tell what the impact of such feminist Orthodox
education will have on Israeli society, but some of the graduates are already
making their impact in the professional world, by offering alternative role
models of what it means to be religious.
In contrast to Pelech, which is a totally Israeli institution, there is the
feminist yeshiva in Jerusalem, Bat Kol which runs a six-week program in the
summer, bringing together women from all over the world and from all
denominations to study Talmud and Torah. Its rabbis are Rochelle Robins
and Sarra Levine. The students are only women, but there are some male
lecturers. All classes are held in English and the students are mostly Canadian
and American, many of whom are lawyer, academics, cantors and artists. The
purpose of the yeshiva is to combine intensive six to ten hour a day study
with artistic evening activities. The atmosphere is extremely open and the
texts studied have a wide range of subject matter, including taboo like topics
of sexuality, homosexuality and rape. It is difficult to imagine that such a

667
Gribetz is now a principal at Evelina De Rothschild high school in Jerusalem, a
school whose entrance requirements are less rigorous than Pelech’s It is this
school’s policy to be as inclusive as possible and to raise as many religious women
as possible to a high level of education rather than be an elitist institution.
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yeshiva, despite its location in Jerusalem, will impact Israelis, since at the
moment its target audience is English speakers.
Alternative Army Service for religious girls
Religious women do not have to serve in the Israeli Defense Force. All they
have to do is declare that they are religious by bringing proof from their
school or rabbi. Many religious women, however, do national service (sherut
leumi), for one or two years, which has nothing to do with the army. These
women work in schools, educational projects, hospitals and mental
institutions. It is a real educational experience for the religious woman who
serves in the army or who does national service. Often it is the first time that
she is exposed to the outside world and to men on a collegial basis.
Many religious women wish to serve in the army and some of them
also wish to serve in a religious framework. The masorti (Conservative)
movement has its own nahal unit (army settlement group) which is for both
women and men. In a nahal group, the women undergo basic training and
then work on a border kibbutz. The men serve extra time in the army and also
work in the kibbutz. Orthodox women usually choose one of two options.
One of these programs is tarbut toranit, which works primarily in
disadvantaged communities, and with immigrants. They also have a tour
guide program which is called Eretz Moreshet. There is some overlap
between sherut leumi and tarbut toranit. There are women who are in special
hesder yeshiva programs, which are essentially Nachal groups that go to
study instead of going to work on a kibbutz. They are groups that combine
study of texts and national army service. There are two institutes which offer
these hesder programs for Torah studying. One is at the midrasha of the
religious kibbutz of Ein HaNatziv, which is located in the Beit Shean valley.
In this program the women teach new immigrants, dropouts and soldiers with
adjustment problems or run the gadna bases for high school kids (a week in
a para-military setting for 11th-12th graders). The other program is located at
midreshet Bruriah (Lindenbaum) and their students are confined to teaching
jobs. Their army service too consists of teaching disadvantaged soldiers and
the women are issued special ankle-length uniform skirts, so that there will
be no violation of their modesty
Women Rabbis and Role Models
Starting in 1989, women in the masorti (Conservative) movement in Israel
started to put pressure on its home institution, the Beit Hamidrash to allow
women to be rabbis. Some of the women on this committee went to the
United States to study and/or be ordained. Some of them waited it out and
were ordained as Conservative rabbis in Israel. Each such happening was a
cause for great fanfare, which should be strange to the outsider, since the
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Conservative movement in the U.S. had been ordaining rabbis since 1985. In
contrast, the Reform movement was already ordaining rabbis in Israel and so
some of the women lost patience and went to the Reform rabbinical school
in Israel and became Reform rabbis.
From a handful of women rabbis, there are now almost 20 rabbis, some
of whom are serving in pulpits, others in educational positions. All of them
serve as role models, both in their own communities and also as
representatives to the outside community, both secular and religious. There
are also religious role models who are neither rabbis nor rabbi’s wives.
It is important to note that we do not find rabbis or Judaic scholars among
Middle Eastern Jewish women. But as Susan Sered has pointed out, these
women are “extraordinarily religiously active.”668 She discusses the
importance of old women who visit cemeteries and holy tombs to pray and
ask for mercy, who give money for holy cause and purchase blessings and
who intercede with saints. They are the spiritual guardians of their
descendants and the unborn. In Sered’s words, they have domesticated
religion. Since they cannot read, their religious participation consists of
seeing the Torah ceremoniously lifted after the conclusion of the Torah
reading, lighting candles, planting trees, and observing the Festival of the
New Moon. In addition, much of the feminist cross-fertilization in Israel with
American Jewish women has been through conferences and publications
both in Israel and abroad.
To list just a few of the Conservative rabbis: Rabbi Einat Ramon, who
served as the spokesperson of the Masorti Movement, Rabbi Monique
Susskind Goldberg, who is doing research on the aguna dilemma at Shechter
Institute, and Rabbi Gilah Dror, who was a pulpit rabbi in Beersheba for ten
years, was president of the rabbinical assembly in Israel, was elected the
international secretary and the first woman officer of the World Organization
of the Rabbinical Assembly.
The first woman rabbi in Israel is Reform Rabbi Kinneret Shiryon who
received her rabbinical degree in 1981 from the Hebrew Union College. She
is founder and director of Kehillat Yozma, a Progressive Jewish community
center and congregation in Modi’in and teaches for the Israel Union for
Progressive Judaism. Yozma emphasizes Jewish and Israeli identity,
tolerance, an appreciation of Jewish tradition in an egalitarian, pluralistic and
experiential manner. Shiryon is currently involved in creating an independent
school and already have an operating kindergarten that will be expanded in

668
Susan Sered, Women as Ritual Experts: The Religious Lives of Elderly Jewish
Women in Jerusalem (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992): 17-33.
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2000 to a first grade. The school will be housed in one of the local elementary
schools.
Also in the Reform movement is Rabbi Na'amah Kelman, the first
woman rabbi ordained at HUC-JIR in Jerusalem, and is involved in interfaith
and human right’s issues. Rabbi Maya Leibovich was the first Israeli woman
ordained as a rabbi at HUC-JIR in Jerusalem. She is the rabbi of Kehillat
Mevasseret Zion, a suburb of Jerusalem and co-edited a book on women in
Judaism from the biblical times until today. Prior to entering rabbinical
school, Leibovich was a secular Jew who felt empty jewishly and pursued a
teaching career. She decided to become a rabbi as a way of being an integral
part of a Jewish community. Her congregation supports a nursery school and
has a membership of 130 families.
In the Reconstructionist Movement there is Rabbi Amy Klein who
received her ordination in America, after serving as an American public
defender in Los Angeles. She currently serves as the Israel representative of
the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. The synagogue Mevakshei Derech
(seekers of the path), in keeping with its principles, does not have a rabbi.
Other religious role models who are not rabbis are often rabbi’s wives, the
most notorious of them being Rebbetizin Leah Kook who lectures to haredi
women, Billy Graham style and has a wide following. She is a somewhat
disheveled looking housewife and mother of twelve from Tiberias and for
thousands of Israeli women, she is a rebbe, a spiritual leader. Her message is
simple: pray and you can attain your own intimate relationship with God.
Women from all walks of life pass through her very modest home for her
advice and blessings. Her evangelical type talks are booked. Her weekly class
is standing room only. Her trademark is simplicity. Some feel even too much,
and after an appearance on Israeli television, which seemed to be for the
purpose of ridiculing her, she was referred to as Rebbetzin Kookoo. God is
very much a part of her life—she prays intensely from the book of Psalms.
She wishes to share the mystical power of prayer with her audience and she
fasts from sunrise to sunset every day. Her selflessness is legendary, to the
point of lending her children to childless friends.669
Another less well known rabbi’s wife, is Rabbanit Zohara, the wife
of a neighborhood rabbi in Jerusalem who is described in Susan Sered’s
book. The women in the day center rise when she enters the room and even
reach out to touch her, yet do not accord her the same respect they do the
male teacher. On a comparative basis to the illiterate women, she is a great
scholar. She knows each woman by name and “takes care of 1200 families.”

Rachel Ginsberg, “The Revival Rebbetzin,” Country Yossi Family Magazine

669

(November 1997), on-line countryyossi.com

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She sees it as her job to police women’s morality and dress. Her status derives
both from her being married to a rabbi and from her own strong personality
and commitment to ultra-Orthodox Judaism. This is despite her lack of any
formal education.670
There are also religious role models who are neither rabbis nor
rabbi’s wives. Five of them include Alice Shalvi, Leah Shakdiel, Anat
Hoffman, Naomi Ragen and Tova Ilan. Perhaps the best known women
activist in Israel, who is not a politician, is Professor Alice Shalvi, the founder
and just retired chair of the Israel Women’s Network. She was the first
woman rector and the interim president of Schecter Institute, the Seminary
of Judaic Studies in Jerusalem. It was the first time that a Jewish theological
institution had appointed a woman as its academic head. Shalvi is considered
Israel’s most outspoken and newly active Conservative Jewish feminist, and
she is known for persistently challenging Israel’s male-dominated
establishment in her quest for equal opportunity, equal reward and equal
status for women. As founder and principal of the Pelech Orthodox Religious
Experimental High School for Girls from 1975 to 1990, she created a highly
respected model for liberal religious education in Israel. She always
identified herself as Orthodox, although her philosophy of what halakha
should be was no different than that of the masorti stream in Israel. When
questioned, “Then why don’t you become masorti?” Shalvi answered,
“Because of a profound belief that what the Conservatives are doing could
equally well be done by enlightened Orthodox rabbis. I’m not sure there’s
really a need for a Conservative movement here if only we could inject a
greater awareness and responsiveness in a larger number of the Orthodox
rabbinate in Israel.”671
After almost twenty years of trying to fight from within the system,
thinking that her lobbying and incessant pressure on the Orthodox
establishment would result in change and reform, she switched her allegiance
and formally identified with the masorti movement. She joined the masorti
synagogue in Beit Hakerem where she lives and which at the time had a
female rabbi.
In the short time she has been involved in the Conservative
movement, she has strengthened the women in Judaism program at
Schechter, encouraged the formation of the new Center for Women in Jewish
Law, started the journal Nashim and was the force behind the first annual

670
Susan Sered, Women as Ritual Experts: The Religious Lives of Elderly Jewish
Women in Jerusalem (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992): 41-46.
671
Edward Grossman, “A Very Happy Woman,” The Jerusalem Post Magazine
(Friday, July 25, 1986): 6.
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Women’s Study Day. Even after her retirement from being the rector of
Schechter’s she will continue to be involved as the Chair of its board.
In contrast to Shalvi, Leah Shakdiel of Yeruham, who in many ways
is more radical in philosophy, remains staunchly Orthodox. Shakdiel first
gained national prominence in February, 1986 when she attempted to take
her rightful seat on the local religious council. The religious affairs minister,
Dr. Yosef Burg, was against her serving on the council, saying that rabbis
should not have to argue with women in this forum and that it is “not a
woman’s job to adjudicate on matters that a religious council deals with.”672
She vowed then that she would take it to the Supreme Court if necessary.
Shakdiel is a practical activist and innovative and independent
thinker. She is a master teacher who commands a vast breadth of knowledge
and is not bound by rules or loyalties. Her fight to stay in the religious council
turned her into a symbol of the feminist cause.
Every Jewish town in Israel has a religious council, financed by the
state. It is the administrative channel overseeing all of the areas in which laws
regulate personal status, on the basis of a person’s religious identity. Its duties
include paying the local rabbi’s salary, overseeing the cemetery, marriage
and ritual baths (mikva). Her case was debated in the Knesset, because the
old-line ultra-orthodox rabbis, and religious politicians, as well as Dr. Burg,
refused to recognize her nomination to the council and prevented Yeroham’s
religious council from meeting. Her backers included the Association for
Civil Rights in Israel, the New Israel Fund and women’s groups, all of which
helped to finance her legal fight. The rest is history. Shakdiel took her case
to the Israel Supreme Court and won. The reasoning behind their decision
was that the council is a government body that does not make halakhic
decisions, thus there is no reason why a woman cannot fill this position.
Like Shakdiel, Anat Hoffman, is the model of an activist. She is a
committed religious Jew who sits on the Jerusalem City Council and has
often behaved in what some consider to be a provocative manner. As a
politician she has taken on small-scale projects to make a point. For instance,
she is behind a move to have more streets named after women and got the
all-female staff of the municipality to change its answering message to a
female voice with a female verb.
Hoffman is an anomaly on the political scene since she is both a
member of the left-wing secular Meretz Party, a founder of the far-left
Women in Black, on the board of the Israel’s Woman’s Network, an active
member of the Women of the Wall and a staunch supporter of the Reform

672
Liora Moriel, “Lea Shakdiel—a Portrait of the Woman,” The Jerusalem Post
(September 19, 1986): 10.
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and Conservative Movements. In an in depth article about her, Yossi Klein
Halevi suggests that “Hoffman may well represent a new realignment in
Israel’s culture war. The coming debate, she implies, will be fought within
Judaism itself, between religious pluralists and fundamentalists, rather than
betwen ultra-Orthodox and ultra-secular.”673 She herself is frustrated that the
secular left has allowed Judaism to be usurped by the ultra-Orthodox and is
equally annoyed with her friends in Meretz who have little, if any,
understanding about the spiritual needs of women.
Naomi Ragen is a best selling novelist whose subject matter is ultra-
Orthodox women and the communities they live in. Her three novels Jephte’s
Daugher, Sotah and The Rape of Tamar have been translated into Hebrew
and have been on Israel’s best-seller list for almost two years. She is also a
journalist with a bi-weekly column in the Jerusalem Post and she appears
often on talk shows. She sees herself as a modern day prophet—whose job is
to castigate the “fat cats” of ultra-Orthodoxy. In many of her columns she
writes about the attempts to silence and the silencing of women. She writes,
“one cannot help but wonder at the fat-cat arrogance and lack of respect
shown by these men, party functionaries in saintly guise…. [who] show a
shocking disregard for the feelings not only of Women of the Wall, but of
Jewish women in general.”
Although it is not for her, she has sympathy for women who have
created new rituals for themselves, who don tefillin or wear a tallit. She
knows the rules have changed and wants the ultra-Orthodox community to
recognize it as well: “The rules have changed. When you mock women
daring to have their own opinions, or trying to enrich their religious
experience in ways that they find meaningful, look behind you: you’re not
leading anyone in the Jewish world but men like yourselves. Certainly no one
from the modern Orthodox world. In fact, we can’t even tell if your own
wives agree with you, voicelessness being a quality nurtured in your women
from early childhood through old age.”674
As an Orthodox woman, she is the first to look inside and do internal
housekeeping and acknowledge that there are serious problems in the ultra-
Orthodox community concerning marriage, divorce and the aguna problem.
She has her own website and many of her memorable columns appear on it.
There is no topic that she is afraid to tackle. She is not willing to be part of

673
Yossi Klein Halevi, “Up Against the Wall,” The Jerusalem Report (July 3,
2000): 18-19.
674
Naomi Ragen, “Those Subversive Women’s Voices,” naomiragen.com (June
30, 2000).
-540-
cover ups. This sometimes results in her works being banned, and in threats
being made to her or to those who organize her talks.675
Tova Ilan is one of the founders of Kibbutz Ein Zurim, of which she
is still a member. She studied education and rehabilitative teaching at the
Hebrew University, and has been very active in the field of education. She
was principal of a Regional High School, where she contributed greatly to
social integration. In 1988 she left the National Religious Party and was one
of the founders of Meimad. She works through philosophical, educational
and political channels in order to attempt to heal the breaches in Israeli
society and foster communication. Since 1987, Ilan has been the executive
director of Yaacov Herzog Center for Jewish Studies, located at Kibbutz Ein
Zurim, in the south of Israel. One of its projects is running classes for
minimally-educated women. This is in keeping with one of its goals to
support weaker sectors of the local population.
Initially, the Center focused on reducing alienation from the Jewish
heritage and healing the breach between the religious and secular. As it
developed, it came to see that mutual tolerance is not enough; the ideal of
pluralism needs to be inculcated in broad segments of Israeli society. Its
publications, curricula and scholarship demonstrate its philosophy of
halakha and transmit the culture of debate and the pluralistic resources that
are found in Jewish thought. Tova Ilan has won the Saul Lieberman Prize in
Jewish Education, and the Agrest Prize for Jewish Culture. In 1999 she
received the Avi Chai Award for her work in encouraging dialogue between
religious and secular groups in Israel. In 2000 she was the recipient of the
Israel Prize.
Another role model is Tzvia Greenfield, director of Mifne (Turning
Point) Institute and author of Heim M'fahadim (“Cosmic Fear: The Religious
Right in Israel”) (Yediot Ahronot, 2001), no-holds barred critique of
religious political parties and a Hebrew bestseller is a ultra-Orthodox (haredi)
woman who staunchly critiques the haredi collective and is a well know
peace activist. In her book she analyzes the last thirty years and in particular
the haredi and right wing Orthodox world prior to Rabin’s assassination.
Mifne is an organization that teaches democracy to haredim. She is a frequent
radio and television talk show guest.
It is important to note, before moving on, that we do not find rabbis
or Judaic scholars among Middle Eastern Jewish women. But as Susan Sered

Netty Gross, “A Tale of Two Naomis,” The Jerusalem Report (November 23,
675

1998).
-541-
has pointed out, these women are “extraordinarily religiously active.”676 She
discusses the importance of old women who visit cemeteries and holy tombs
to pray and ask for mercy, who give money for holy cause and purchase
blessings and who intercede with saints. They are the spiritual guardians of
their descendants and the unborn. In Sered’s words, they have domesticated
religion. Since they cannot read, their religious participation consists of
seeing the Torah ceremoniously lifted after the conclusion of the Torah
reading, lighting candles, planting trees, and observing the Festival of the
New Moon.
Conferences
Much of the feminist cross-fertilization in Israel with American Jewish
women began with the First International Conference on Halakha and the
Jewish woman, organized by Pnina Peli and Chana Safrai in December,
1986. This conference brought together rabbis, scholars and lay people from
all over the world. Its purpose was to raise people’s consciousness regarding
the importance of women’s issues in halakha. The speakers included a varied
and distinguished list of feminist, mostly male rabbis, lawyers, academics,
leaders of women’s organizations etc.
In 1999, the international conference on “A Woman and Her Jewish
Life”, held in Jerusalem was organized by Kolech, the religious women’s
forum, founded by Chana Kehat. Unlike the conference organized in 1986,
in which half the program and keynote speakers were male and not
necessarily Orthodox, this conference was meant primarily for Orthodox
women. There were mass learn-ins in which mostly Orthodox women
scholars taught sacred texts, unmediated by male rabbis. Many of the teachers
were the products of the modern Orthodox institutions described above. The
conference received much coverage in the media, in part due to the
organizing skills of Kolech. Kolech is perhaps the only Orthodox group that
openly describes itself as feminist and acknowledges that a revolution is
taking place in the women’s study community. The purpose of the forum is
to raise the status of women in the Jewish Religious-Israeli society and
enforce halakhic initiatives for solving women’s problems. Its two major
areas of activities in Israel are legal aid and social welfare. Kolech was
established in 1998 with the purpose of working with other women’s
organizations, recognizing that the religious woman has her own needs based
on the inferior position that she suffers in Jewish law. It also publishes a

676
Susan Sered, Women as Ritual Experts: The Religious Lives of Elderly Jewish
Women in Jerusalem (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992): 17-33.
-542-
newsletter on the weekly Torah portion, distributed to synagogues
throughout Israel.
In June 2000 the first Women’s Study Day in Shechter, sponsored by the
masorti stream and the Women’s League for Conservative Judaism in Israel
was held. About 200 women from masorti congregations from all over Israel
took off from work for a serious day of study. The women studied Bible,
Talmud, rituals and Torah skills. There was recognition of Women leaders in
all the congregations and two prayer services lead by women rabbis and
women cantorial students. Some of the topics focused on were the problems
of agunot and wifebeating. The languages of the Study sessions were
Hebrew, English, Spanish and Russian. The planning was done by an
extremely inclusive board from all over the country and another study day is
being planned for the Southern region of Israel.
Publications
In 1998, the first issue of Nashim appeared, co-sponsored by the Schechter
Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem and the International Research
Institute on Jewish Women at Brandeis University. Its theme was Women
and the Land of Israel. The theme of the second issue of Nashim had to do
with the effect of modernity on the relationships between Jewish women and
Jewish men. The third issue is a sophisticated analysis of motherhood in
Jewish life and culture and the fourth issue is devoted to feminist readings of
rabbinic literature. Guest editorship is alternated between Israeli and U.S.
scholars on a regular basis.
Three significant works came out in 1998-2000 that demonstrate
expertise in Jewish law. The first one is a collection of Jewish Legal Writings
by Women, edited by Micah D. Halpern and Chana Safrai. Safrai is currently
at the Department of Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem
and the Shalom Hartman Institute. She has written as well as edited numerous
books and articles in the areas of rabbinic literature and women’s studies.
The seventeen articles reflect a new era in which Jewish women display
expertise and knowledge of Jewish law. Three quarters of the articles are
about issues relating to women, although this does not mean that women
should only be discussing issues concerning women. The value of the book
is not only in the articles themselves, but in the fact that these women who
have written the articles have entered the portals of halakhic erudition. The
topics are varied, including the subjects of women donning tefillin, artificial
insemination, breast-feeding, marriage of minors, cosmetics, hair distractions
to men worshipping, menstruation and the pill, women saying kaddish, and
the bat mitzvah in Jewish law.
The second edited book, Barukh She’asani Ishah? (Bless God for
Creating me Woman?), sponsored by the Reform Movement in Israel and
-543-
published by a popular Israeli press in 1999, is another example of the
significant change taking place in Israeli religious society. The book is a
collection of articles containing personal stories, sociological studies, a
critique of women’s status in religion. It includes writers of all religious
streams and exposes its readers to different approaches to women and
religion in Israel.
Another recent book is that of Haviva Ner-David who wrote Life on
the Fringes: A Feminist Journey toward Traditional Rabbinic Ordination
(Needham, MA: JFL Books, 1999). She lives in Israel and is hoping to be the
first ordained Orthodox woman rabbi. She argues that the biggest obstacle is
not halakhic but social.
Two examples of women’s creative writing (both liturgical and
midrashic) are the books by Ruth Ravitzky and Yael Levine Katz Kaplan.
Ravitsky’s edited book Women Reading from Genesis,677 is the first
anthology of commentaries written by Israeli women in Hebrew, mostly
religious, about the Bible. The anthology is a mixed bag and includes both
comments and retellings of stories about women in the Bible from a woman’s
point of view.
Yael Levine Katz, an Orthodox researcher in Jerusalem, has written
an extra-liturgical text on Tisha b’Av (The Ninth Day of the Month of Av is
the date for the commemoration of the destruction of both temples). Tehinat
ha-Nashim le-Binyan haMikdash (Women’s Prayers for Rebuilding the
Temple)678, is a new midrash, based on hundreds of Talmudic and midrashic
sources. Though it is written in the form of traditional midrash-aggadah it is
a new creation and new elements have been introduced. She argues that the
building of the temple was based on the merit of biblical and post-biblical
women. In an article that Katz wrote describing this text, she asks if this text
is feminist,679 and doesn’t exactly answer the question. This text was sent out
to rabbis in Israel and was approved as an additional reading for Tisha b’Av services
in various Orthodox synagogues in Israel. It was used both in mixed learning
programs and in women’s only programs.
The most recent book to come out is a collection of essays by a variety of
women scholars in a book entitled, Torah of the Mothers: Contemporary Jewish
Women Read Classical Jewish Texts, edited by Ora Wiskind Elper and Susan
Handelman. The advertisements and blurbs about the book are very careful to say
that “the book is not designed to present topics that relate to women and Judaism or

677
Tel Aviv: Yediot Aharonot, 1999.
678
Yael Levine Katz, tehinat ha-nashim le-binyan hamikdash Tel Aviv: Aked,
1996.
679
An article delivered at the Kolech conference in 1999 in Jerusalem, copy given
to me by author [Hebrew].
-544-
to promote a feminist agenda, but rather to showcase the contribution of women to
contemporary Torah scholarship.”680 What is between the lines and not apparent to
the casual reader, is that the essays included in this book are all written by Orthodox
Jewish women. It is very interesting that the book begins by revering tradition and
in particular five influential teachers (almost rebbes with saint-like qualities) who
had major impact on all the authors. The works are all very powerful and worthwhile
reading, even to the non-Orthodox woman. The book also includes readings of
biblical texts, readings of rabbinic texts and texts which examine historical and
eschatological views of exile and redemption. All of the women are learned, not only
in Jewish texts, but also in other fields such as linguistics, psychology and
philosophy.
One of the most interesting publications to come out recently is the joint
venture of the International Jewish Women’s Human Rights Watch and the
Conservative Movement’s Center for Women in Jewish Law at the Schechter
Institute of Jewish Studies. Sharon Shenhav, an international woman’s rights lawyer,
has been recognized as an expert on marriage and divorce in Jewish law. She has
represented hundreds of women in rabbinical courts in Israel. She is director of the
International Jewish Women’s Human Rights Watch that documents the human
rights violations of Jewish women. They hope to create a central database that will
include cases of women who are agunot in their community and publicize these cases
as infringements of Jewish women’s rights.
Because of Shenhav’s pessimism about Orthodox women effecting change,
she has formed a coalition with Rabbi David Golinkin, the head of the Conservative
Movement’s Center for Women in Jewish Law at the Schechter Institute of Jewish
Studies. The Center opened in October 1999 with the support of a grant from the
Ford Foundation. Its purpose is to “formulate alternative halakhic decisions
regarding the legal rights of Jewish women, monitor rabbinical court decisions, and
publish academic works on women in Jewish law.” 681 The Center will present
solutions to the problem by publishing a book about halakhic solutions to the aguna
th
dilemma in the 20 century which plans to review all the halakhic solutions that have
been suggested as well as the bi-annual pamphlet which will examine actual cases in
the courts which have not been resolved.682 One might ask why is there a need for a
conservative solution, now that there are Orthodox women who serve as rabbinical
advocates in the religious court system. The justification for a Conservative center is
that the new cadre of Orthodox Rabbinical Advocates are at danger of being
exploited by the rabbinical courts, since they do not want to rock the boat. Shenhav

680
Book review in Torah Community Connections,
www.torahcc.org/bookreviews/5761/mothersbr.htm
681
Diane, Friedgut. “Major Chance for Change: Jewish Women and the Law,”
Women’s League Outlook 70:4 (Summer 2000): 30.
682
From David Golinkin’s introduction to “The Agunah Dilemma: Case Study
Number one” Jewish Law Watch, The Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies
(Jerusalem: January 2000): 3.
-545-
feels that it is best to work in opposition to the establishment, rather than from within
the system and that the solution is to create alternatives to the rabbinical courts in the
areas of divorce. The center is somewhat interdenominational, since it includes Dr.
Ruth Halperin-Kadari of Bar Ilan University and Rabbi, Prof. Emanuael Rackman
on its national board.
A recently ordained rabbi, Monique Susskind Goldberg and rabbinical
students Diana Vila are two of the research fellows involved in the research. They
are hoping to influence decision makers in the legal community, the lay public and
the Orthodox hierarchy in Israel and the first two editions of its publication, The
Jewish Law Watch, The Aguna Dilemma has already been sent out and received
negatively by the ultra-Orthodox. The goal of the publication is to “pressure the
rabbinical courts to publish their decisions in a timely and orderly fashion, much as
civil court decisions are published, and to encourage rabbinical courts to use the
halakhic tools which are at their disposal in order to free modern-day agunot.”683
Conclusion
We have seen how women are adversely affected by the monopoly of the Orthodox
establishment in Israel. In particular, we have looked at women's disabilities
concerning prayer, theology and ritual. We have also surveyed the resurgence and
blossoming of women's religious learning and study and participation in prayer.
Women's increased knowledge base has empowered us to innovate and continue,
following Jewish tradition, to reinterpret our ancient texts, while allowing us to fight
for legal change in women's status. We have benefited much from this adventure as
has the entire Jewish people. It is beyond the scope of this article to do more than
survey the changes taking place. More and more new works continue to come out
and I hope they continue to increase, since the status of women in relation to religion
in Israel is in constant flux. Hopefully, women's status vis à vis the religious
establishment will eventually ensure an end to the patriarchal order that could not
have been the intention of our Maker.

“The Agunah Dilemma: Case Study Number one” Jewish Law Watch, The
683

Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies (Jerusalem: January 2000), p.4.

-546-
Section Four: THE PEOPLE AND THE BOOK

This section includes drashot that I wrote for the Jerusalem Report. By
serendipity, I wrote a letter to the editor in 1997 referring to some abusive
passages in the Bible and the editor, then Ronnie Hope, asked if I would like
to contiribute an occasional commentary for the column on The People and
the Book. The first one I sent was on Hosea and I wrote for them on and off
for about 16 years. I decided to order these commentaries by their place in
the Bible and not by the year they were published. Some of them are exactly
as they appeared in the JR and others by the last version I had on my
computer. The only drasha that did not appear in JR is the one about the
daughters of Tzelophad. This is a sermon that I gave in two communities,
one in Teaneck, NJ and the other in Edgware, London.
It was a great pleasure for me to write these commentaries. Even though
I often reworked old material, I got to see it in a new light and had fun going
back and forth with the editors of the column. When on occasion I was asked
to write on an unfamiliar topic, I spent a lot of time getting the commentaries
in shape and looking for an “angle” that would be unique—something not so
easy, since when it comes to the bible, someone has usually said it before—
especially in the midrash. I also enjoyed having my commentaries illustrated
by the artist Avi Katz, who I occasionally contacted. Unfortunately, he no
longer does these illustrations.
Some of these drashot became articles or talks; and even became
chapters in books! Most recently I started writing the occasional piece for
thetorah.com and I include these “essays” in section one of this book (missed
opportunities for conversion following Dinah’s rape and the sack of
Shechem; and the demonization of Laban which is the opening of Ki Tavo.).
The commentaries that I like the most are about identity theft, the double
standard in the case of the sotah and Israel at 60, midpoint between 120. I
tried to give the one on Joseph at a conference, but did not get my abstract
accepted. However, I did a lot of research on Joseph Stalin for this one. So,
if you have gotten to this section, enjoy!

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-548-
 684
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO: CHOICE AND SACRIFICE

The Torah portion is Lekh Lekha (Genesis 12.1-17.27)

God chooses Abraham: He commands him to leave his fatherland and to

sacrifice his son. Abraham responds without hesitation to both of these
commands.
If our tangible “chosenness” is our inheritance through Abraham of
God’s land and of the willingness to sacrifice, it is clear that the Jewish
people have mixed feelings about this inheritance. For not all Jews choose to
live in Israel and make the sacrifices this entails.
What makes a people choose to live in one place over another?
Having spent a sabbatical in California, I wondered all year what is a
promised land? What confers holiness? What creates sacred space? Is its
God’s presence? In New Mexico, we visited the ancient pueblos at the
Bandelier National Monument. On the one side there are the sheer cliffs with
caves and pueblos and then on the other side of the river are the verdant hills.
Clearly the Indians felt God’s presence in North America, and that it was a
land worth fighting over. What made it that?
This is a visceral question to me, for when I returned it was the 40th
anniversary of our choosing to live in Israel. In 1967 I had no doubt that the
land was worth fighting over. Yet I’m not sure if fervor and patriotism would
be the motivation today behind a choice to make aliyah. And the sacrifice of
having left family behind looms large.
Abraham too was at the beginning of his career when he made aliyah;
his motivation was a sense of unquestioning belief in God’s promises, that
life would have meaning in a new country. Did he take into account that he
would never see his family again, in particular his mother, since according to
Genesis 11, Terah died before Abraham set out for Canaan? Did he take into
account the hardships, the necessity to learn a new language, the primitive
culture, the contrariness of the land, not to speak of the fact that his beloved
wife would be barren in this land of fecundity? Did he go with eyes wide
open, or was he blinded by his faith to what he would meet? There was
neither welcoming committee nor new immigrant benefits. Yet, he stayed.
Except for a few forays into Egypt his belief never diminished, despite the
abrupt death of his wife and his estrangement from his sons.
By the time you live out your life, there is less choice, one cannot go
back. In my poem, “Akedah Revisited” I wrote: “There are no returns, when

684
“Choice and Sacrifice,” Jerusalem Report (October 29, 2007): 42
-549-
destiny means choice.” Abraham’s destiny was that he chose to obey God
and never to see his family again and most commentators approve of this
choice. God told him: “Go forth (lekh lekha) from your land, where you were
born, and from your father’s house to the land that I will show you” (Genesis
12:1). The aliyah was for him – lekha, for you, not your father, who you are
leaving behind.
The midrash is also aware of this dilemma, in the commentary on
lekh lekha. It says that Abraham was afraid he would be setting a bad example
to posterity and be committing a desecration of God’s name (hilul hashem),
since people would say “He left his elderly father alone and departed”.
Therefore, God reassured him by saying “I exempt YOU (lekha) from the
duty of honoring your parents; however, I will exempt no one else from this
duty” (Genesis Rabbah 39:7). Going to Israel freed him from the
commandment of honoring one’s parents. Worse, the midrash has God
killing Terah so no one will be able to claim that Abraham disobeyed this
commandment by leaving him behind. Justifying Abraham’s actions makes
it clear that there is moral ambiguity about following God’s commands when
it involves breaking up families.
Perhaps the binding of Isaac WAS partial atonement for Abraham’s
previous self-centeredness; just as he sacrificed his past (his parents), he was
now ready to sacrifice his future (his son). Fortunately for Abraham, God
decides he has made enough choices and been involved in too many moral
dilemmas and sends the sacrificial ram in place of the son.
Today, new olim can easily return when the going gets rough or there
are too many moral dilemmas. Part of Abraham’s inability to return may have
been connected with the slow pace of life in ancient times, when lekh meant
literally to travel by foot. Having spent too much time on the freeways of
California, I can only envy those for whom there were less choices, and
perhaps less regret at the choice of the road not taken.

-550-
 685
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE: A LEGACY OF HURT

The Torah portion is Hayei Sarah (Genesis 23.1-25.18)

Hayei Sarah is the only portion of the Torah to be named after a woman. This
is fitting for the mother of the nation. But what kind of a woman was she?
She died, it is said, at the age of one hundred years and twenty years and
seven years old; these were the years of the life of Sarah (Gen. 23:1). Yet her
only son was not present at her funeral and she was buried without fanfare
(Gen. 23:19). Rashi associates her sudden death with the shock of the
attempted sacrifice of Isaac. Why wasn’t Isaac at his mother’s funeral? Were
there family issues that kept him away? He did show up at his father’s
funeral, together with his long-lost brother. Given past history, one would
think that Isaac would hold a grudge against his father, not his mother?
Let’s imagine that Isaac’s earliest memories were happy: the sounds
of his mother's and Hagar's gossip; the freedom allowed him and his older
brother Ishmael. Isaac adored his older brother and would do anything for
him. Since his mother Sarah was very old and set in her way, Hagar's tent
served as a place of refuge for him and he spent as much time in Hagar's tent
as he could. He loved her cooking and Ishmael would regale them with
descriptions of the animals he hunted. His mother Sarah noticed that he
preferred them to her. She and Abraham sent Hagar and her son away.
For the rest of his life the little boy in Isaac longed for their return.
Abraham may have explained that Ishmael and Hagar did something bad and
couldn't be allow them to stay anymore. He was told that he would
“understand” when he grew up, that it was God’s will. Isaac asked: "Will you
send me away if I am bad?"
Isaac often dreamed that he was dying and going to God and Ishmael
would appear to him saying, "Your parents are going to send you away too!
Come to me now! Don't wait! Leave while you can!" When Abraham took
him to a place called Moriah, Isaac allowed Abraham to tie him down. This
is just like what Ishmael warned me about in the dream. Soon I will be with
Ishmael. We will be re-united.
After his near death experience Isaac needed time to gather his thoughts.
He remained on the mountain top for many days. On his return, he discovered
his mother had died of grief and had been buried.

685
“A Legacy of Hurt,” Jerusalem Report (November 28, 2005): 42. The words in
italics are based on a midrash I wrote that appears in S/He Created Them.
-551-
 His mother’s death brought back memories of his loss of Hagar and
Ishmael. What kind of a son does not mourn the loss of his mother? One
could argue that Abraham was an abusive father who chose to sacrifice his
son, but what do we know about Sarah. We know she was an old mother,
bitter against Hagar, even abusive to her: the rabbis blamed Sarah for the
physical and mental violence inflicted upon Hagar. She slapped her face with
a slipper…and... bade her carry her water buckets and bath towels to the baths
(Genesis Rabbah XLV:6). Was she abusive to her son as well?
Perhaps Isaac conceived of Hagar’s expulsion as a threat to himself.
Hanging over him for the rest of his life was the thought that if he would
misbehave he would suffer as well. He understood that Ishmael suffered
physically and spiritually as well. He knew that his beloved brother and step-
mother were abused by those close to them.
Isaac never forgave his mother for sending them away. He never got
over his loss; he invested all of his memories in his son Esau who reminded
him of his brother. When Esau was born he thought, He is so tiny, so hairy
and wild-looking, just like Ishmael must have looked. Isaac would often invite
Esau to his tent and show him how to prepare his favorite foods, the ones
Hagar used to make. Often he would dream he was talking to Ishmael. You
would be happy to see this son of mine. I have raised him to be like you. He
is quick, impulsive, a good hunter, afraid of no one. You would be proud of
him. His mother doesn't like him, just like my mother didn't like you. We must
protect him; make sure that he gets the inheritance; see that what happened
to you doesn't happen to him. When Esau married Mahlat, the daughter of
Ishmael, Rebecca hounded Isaac until he had to cut his ties with his beloved
son. His favorite was no longer his companion. He had no one to laugh with.
Once again his life was one of waiting. He wondered if laughter would ever
come back to his life.

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CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR: IDENTITY THEFT AND ELDER
686
ABUSE

The Torah portion is Toldot (Genesis 25.19-28.9) and the Haftarah is Malachi
1

One of the advantages of being over 55 is that I have a subscription to the

AARP magazine. Over and over again it warns readers of telemarketing
fraud. Why are elderly people so easily taken in, so often victimized by those
close to them? Their children, spouses and just plain ole scam artists want to
take advantage of their age to “get something from them”—usually their
property. We all know of cases where someone poses as someone else and
then convinces that person to hand over his or her life’s savings. Identity
fraud is equally common: you get a hold of someone’s social security number
and or bank account, via the internet or garbage cans and one day you wake
up and your credit rating is suspect.
As shocked as we might be by this, as Solomon said, there is nothing
new under the sun and if we look at this week’s portion, we see both types of
fraud at work, one the stealing of identity and the other of taking advantage
of other’s weakness for selfish gain.
Toldot begins ironically by stating that this is the story of Isaac.
However, what the reader remember most about Isaac’s story is his wife’s
difficult pregnancy with twins, God’s oracle to her that “the older shall serve
the younger” and then the struggle for the birthright. Isaac is old and blind,
and decides to put his affairs in order. Since he had not arranged for an
advanced directive for health care, he invokes the ritual of food gathering,
preparation and eating before passing on the blessing to his Esau, his older
son and favorite son. His infirmity is taken advantage of by his wife Rebecca
and younger son, Jacob. Jacob had already engaged in identity theft when
taking advantage of his brother’s hunger as a child by getting Esau to sell his
birthright to him. It is interesting that the Bible and most commentators
criticize Esau for “spurning” his birthright.
Jacob does it again, and more seriously this time, when his mother
gets wind of Isaac’s plan to bless Esau and give him everything. He steals his
identity, dresses like him, prepares his favorite meal and even talks like him.
It is true that Isaac suspects something, for he says that the voice is the voice
of Jacob, yet the hands are the hands of Esau.” But Jacob has gotten every

686
“Identity Theft, Biblical Style,” Jerusalem Report (December 8, 2008):44.

-553-
nuance down pat, including his brother’s hairy hands. One can argue that
Isaac is setting himself for deception, but that does not excuse the act of Jacob
who steals his brother’s identity in order to get monetary gain and the
blessing.
Is the haftarah of Toldot being ironic and commenting on this when
it writes “That a son should honor his father, and a slave his master” (Malachi
1:6)? Although Malachi is alluding to the divine-human relationship, it is
clear that this verse can be applied to Jacob in his lack of honor to Isaac. The
Torah also addresses this issue in the 10 commandments, saying honor your
father and mother and in Leviticus 19: 32 it says "Rise in the presence of the
aged. Show respect for the elderly and revere your God. I am the Lord." And
one can add an ironic interpretation to the text which states clearly that you
should not put a stumbling block before the blind (Leviticus 19.14): read
Jacob and Rebecca before the elderly dim-eyed Isaac (Gen 27:1-2). Finally,
in Deuteronomy 21:16 it states clearly that the older son’s privileges cannot
be usurped by a younger son
When the natural order is switched around, there is a price to pay.
Identity theft has consequences, the weak and elderly are taken advantage of,
the thief runs away, never to see his parents again. When he returns he has to
contend with his brother’s anger.
How can one make amends for such abuse of trust? Is this what
makes us a distinctive people? Deuteronomy states it simply: honor you
father and mother so that your days will be lengthened. True, this is a
pragmatic statement—a reward for what we think should be second nature.
But perhaps the lesson of Genesis is that respect for our elders, for the infirm,
the blind has to be taught, since it is natural to push out the older generation
and to disrespect them in their infirmity. Elder abuse cannot be tolerated and
clearly the bible rebukes Jacob for engaging in it.

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 687
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE: THE UNWILLING FATHER-IN-LAW

The Torah portion is Vayetze (Genesis 28.10-32.3)

Laban was a good father, but he was not a good father-in-law! When we think
of in-laws, we usually think of the hated mother-in-law, the one who never
lets go of her son, who bad-mouths the new bride to the young man, who
strikes fear in her daughter-in-law. She is the evil stepmother from fairy tales.
Yet, in the Bible the fathers-in-law hold center stage and they can be
divided into two groups: those who have their sons-in-law's interests at heart
like Jethro and those who thwart them at every turn, like Saul. No prizes for
guessing in which group Laban belongs: he cheats Jacob of his intended bride
and puts him to harsh, physical labor.
In Hebrew, a htn is "a relative by marriage" depending on the
context. It is a relationship of "affinity" rather than "blood". It is fascinating
that neither Jacob nor Laban refer to each other as a hatan or hoten. Is it that
their relationship is so acrimonious: the master as opposed to the servant, the
cheater vs. the cheater?
For all that, Laban acts as one who has his daughters’ interests in
mind: in our town, he says, we don’t let the younger marry first. He threatens
Jacob that if he lays a hand on either of his daughters he will come after him.
Laban respects his older daughter’s right to marriage. Despite this he is
depicted as a villain in the Bible and demonized in rabbinic tradition.
In truth in the biblical text Laban is not a hoten, a father-in-law or
any kind of relation to Jacob. I believe that this is Laban's choice. His ongoing
tragedy is the loss of his beloved sister Rebecca. He unsuccessfully tried to
delay her leaving with Eliezer decades ago.
Now he fears that he is going to lose his daughters. Ever since he
heard that Isaac and Rebecca had twin sons, he knew that both of them had
first rights to his daughters (BT Baba Batra 123a). When Jacob came – and
to Laban it was a replay of the scene at the well – and fell for his daughter
Rachel, just as Rebecca fell off her camel when she saw Isaac – it was love
at first sight. All Laban wanted to do was postpone the inevitable.
He stalled for seven years, and then he tricked Jacob by switching
his daughters. After both were married, the medieval commentator Rashi
tells us that Laban cheated by removing healthy animals from the flock with
the intent of leaving only the sickly and the old for Jacob to take as payment

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"The Unwilling Father-in-Law," Jerusalem Report (November 18, 2013):47

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for his work. Other commentators report that Laban constantly toyed with
Jacob in their negotiations, changing his mind 10 times before finalizing any
agreements.
As with much of Genesis, this is a foundational narrative for Jewish
perspectives and values, with Jacob seen as an ideal worker and Laban's
behavior as an example to be avoided. The Shulchan Aruch cites this story
in laying out the obligations of employers to act fairly.
Despite the chicanery, Laban could not keep his daughters: they
conspired with Jacob to flee. In desperation, he ran after Jacob, but it didn't
do any good – and then he realized that he would have to back down and
come to terms.
For some reason, tradition relates to Laban as a would-be destroyer
of the Jewish people. Rashi writes that "Laban wanted to uproot everything".
I always wondered why Laban has been demonized. I believe it is connected
to the original loss of his sister Rebecca. Had he succeeded in keeping her
with him, there would have been no marriage between her and Isaac and there
would have been no Jacob, the progenitor of Israel.
This is why Laban is never referred to as hoten, because he was never
able to face up to the relationship by marriage. There was no formal marriage
agreement. What we have, and what Laban saw, is a prior relationship of
blood, not marriage. If we look closely at the text, we see that he regards
Jacob as his sister's son or his "brother", not his son-in-law! He refers to him
as his own flesh and blood and not as a relation by marriage. Admitting to
the marriage relationship would mean accepting he had lost his daughters,
just as he had lost his sister.
Laban saw himself as the paterfamilias and was unwilling to
relinquish this status to transfer his ownership of his daughters to Jacob and
allow this usurper to establish his own family unit.
Laban was a good father, and had his daughters' interests in mind,
hence his final words, "If you ill-treat my daughters or take other wives
besides my daughters—though no one else be about, remember, God Himself
will be witness between you and me” (Genesis 31:50). But he was not a good
father-in-law. He wanted to hold on to his daughters, the women who
replaced his loss of his beloved sister Rebecca. He tried, but ultimately lost
and he let go with dignity.

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 688
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX: FROM JOSEPH TO JOSEPH
The Torah portion is Va-Yigash (Genesis 44.18-47.27)

Once upon a time, and once not so long ago, there were two stories of famine
and two Josephs. The recent one was artificially created by Joseph Stalin.
The other was in the days of the Pharaoh who was fortunate to have the
Israelite Joseph as his economic adviser. In the biblical story, the famine was
averted by quick thinking on the part of Joseph. He stored grains during seven
years of plentitude and was able to dole it out to the hungry people during
seven years of famine. This Joseph is the hero of the story. Not so, the story
of the other Joseph. Joseph Stalin instituted economic and trade policies that
resulted in millions of people starving to death in the famine of 1932-33 in
the Ukraine. Unlike our hero Joseph, he appropriated the grains of the
peasants to feed the rest of Russia and this act resulted in what was then called
Holodomor (Ukrainian for death by starvation). So in comparing the two we
have a clear cut contrast and no comparisons: one an act of villainy and the
other an act of far-sightedness.
Yet if we take a closer look at our story, in particular, Genesis 47: 11-
27, we will find the bible to be more nuanced. The over-arching frame of this
story is that Joseph takes care of the needs of his immediate family first by
putting them in the fruitful land of Goshen (47: 11 and 47:27). Inside this
frame we see that the Egyptians came to Joseph saying, ‘“Give us bread, lest
we die before your very eyes; for the money is gone!” And Joseph said,
“Bring your livestock, and I will sell to you against your livestock, if the
money is gone.”’ The next year they came again and said, “We cannot hide
from my lord that, with all the money and animal stocks consigned to my
lord, nothing is left at my lord’s disposal save our persons and our farmland.
Let us not perish before your eyes, both we and our land. Take us and
our land in exchange for bread, and we with our land will be serfs to
Pharaoh; provide the seed, that we may live and not die, and that the
land may not become a waste.” And that is how Joseph gained possession
of all the farm land of Egypt for Pharaoh. And Joseph “removed the
population town by town, from one end of Egypt’s border to the other.”
Joseph is often referred to as Joseph the Tzaddik. In Toldot Yitzchak, R.
Isaac ben R. Joseph Caro (1458-1535) writes that the people trusted Joseph
so much that they gave him all their money, letting him keep the accounts
(he was their banker). So when they said to him “if all our money is gone”
(since we don’t know if it is gone or not, since you keep the accounts), all

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“From Joseph to Joseph,” Jerusalem Report (January 4, 2010):45
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that’s left is our bodies. Hunger is a strange thing; people will do anything to
survive. Joseph, in “doing his job” took advantage of people’s misery. Hiding
behind his position, he exchanged in a very cold blooded fashion, food for
land, money, souls and bodies.
Here we find a real disconnect between his actions and his reputation.
Where did he learn to be so cold-blooded and take advantage of people’s
desperate hunger? One would think that he would have sympathy for others,
given his suffering as a youth sold into slavery? But perhaps, because the
unthinkable had happened to him, he was capable of inflicting it on others.
The abused person often becomes the abuser! If his brothers could sell him
into slavery, why not dispossess his new countrymen, the Egyptians and force
them into serfdom or slavery.
Where was his moral compass? Did something happen in his early
history that made this odious deed possible? Surely our Joseph was a good
guy, not an evil Stalin. Our actions are often predicated by our past. Did
something happen in his family history that gave this government bureaucrat
the idea that hungry desperate people will sell valuables in exchange for
food? I suggest that this is family lore that he learned on the knees of his
beloved father Jacob, who told him stories on which to model his future
behavior. One story sticks out: In Genesis 25, a famished Esau came in from
fields and said to his brother “Give me some of that red red stuff to gulp
down, for I am famished”. To which Jacob answered that he should first sell
him his birthright. “And Esau said, “I am at the point of death, so of what
use is my birthright to me?” So Jacob made him swear an oath and in
exchange Jacob bought the birthright for some bread and lentils. For good
measure, the text adds: “Thus did Esau spurn the birthright.” (Genesis 25:29-
34). The language of both the Egyptians and Esau is strikingly similar. The
Egyptians said: “Give us bread, lest we die before your very eyes”. So when
Joseph got the chance to act out a scenario that was so familiar to Joseph
from his father, he knew exactly what to do—accept the offer and dictate the
terms. It was almost like enacting a scene in one of his dreams.
But this is where it gets complex. At the same time that Joseph is
enslaving Egyptians, he is looking out for his own family. He settled his
father and his brothers, “giving them holdings in the choicest part of the land
of Egypt…. He sustained his father and his brothers” at the same time when
“there was no bread in all the world, for the famine was very severe; both the
land of Egypt and the land of Canaan languished because of the famine.” At
the very same time that the serfs are thanking him for saving them and
“willingly” becoming slaves in exchange for food, he is looking out for his
family. This is the frame around the story. It seems to me that the biblical
author is being ironic. S/he wants us to “out” Joseph and see what he is doing.
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 Most commentaries see this as praiseworthy—but here and there a
commentator sees that there is a moral problem. Both R. Shmuel b. Meir (c.
1080-1160) and R. David Kimchi (1160-1235) say that his action is similar
to that of Sennacherib. Rashbam writes: This is what Sennacherib did, so that
there wouldn’t be people left behind who were a strong force in the land after
it was sold. Whereas Radak commenting on 2 Kings 18:32, writes that is
what Sennacherib did with all the nations that he conquered. He exiled them
from their countries and put others in their place so that all would be under
him. Joseph saw to it that Egyptians were transferred [from the countryside]
to cities, so what may have started out as an implausible analogy between
two Josephs, seems more possible. The motivation for both was similar:
dispossessed Egyptians staying on the land could cause revolution;
Ukrainians refusing to give up their food could also threaten the stability of
Russia. Still, in the end, whereas Joseph Stalin reduced people to starvation;
the biblical Joseph saved people from starvation.

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CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN: WHO'S AFRAID OF THE GOLDEN
689
CALF?

The Torah portion is Ki Tissa (Exodus 30.11-34.35)

In the Ten Commandments we are forbidden to depict God in a physical

representation and if we do (break down and) make images we should not
worship them. Those who reject God will feel His vengeance and those who
keep His commandments and love Him will be favored (Exodus 20:4-5).
Clearly people’s need for an image of the deity has been around since
time immemorial, but only the monotheistic faiths have decided to do
something about it. One can argue that this is carried to the extreme by fanatics.
Where does this sensitivity come from? And is it good? Why does God have to
worry about being depicted? Is there some primitive residue of fear that the
captured image is real? Is it that images "partake of what they represent," as
David Freedberg, has suggested in The Power of Images: Studies in the
History and Theory of Response (1989).
Killing off images began with Abraham. According to the well known
midrash, he smashed Terach’s idols which qualified him for becoming a
religious leader (Gen. Rab. 38.13). His grandson Jacob destroyed the alien gods
in his midst at Bethel and was rewarded with God’s blessing and a name change
(Gen. 35 2-15): Jacob became Israel, a nation with only one God. Moses
destroyed the Golden Calf, in this week’s portion, after the rescue the Reed Sea
and receipt of the Ten Commandments, which started off by the injunction to
have no other God(s). Yet images have permeated the monotheistic faiths: The
Temple, Baba Sali, Lubavitch; statues of Mary and icons of Jesus; not to speak
of pictures of religious leaders such as Osama bin Laden. Non portrayal of
images is connected with the idea that there is only One God and all these
religions have been characterized by zealots, fighting off their ideological
opponents in the name of monotheism. And the battle continues.
What’s wrong with the worship of “other” gods and goddesses? Does
our not allowing other ideas/ideologies into our midst stem from a fear of the
other? Does our choice of only one God tell us something about our own
character?
Clearly it was fear of the unknown and the loss of the comforting
Moses, their primary attachment figure, that lead the people to gather around
Aaron, the next attachment figure in command, and order him to make them

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“Who’s Afraid of the Golden Calf,” Jerusalem Report (April 3 2006):20.

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a god, to compensate for Moses’s forty-day disappearance (Ex. 31:1). But
was it not that the people needed something concrete to worship, and with
Moses (ish ha-elohim, their stand in for the Deity) gone, they had nothing
visible to worship. And why was Aaron so willing to do his best to
accommodate the people? Did he think it uncalled for God to command
mankind not to make any graven images of Him? After all Aaron was pretty
quick in acquiescing to their will: “Take off the gold rings that are on the ears
of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me,” from
which he produced the golden calf which the people worshiped, “This is your
god, O Israel, who brought you out of the land of Egypt!” On his own
initiative, Aaron built an altar before the golden calf and announced that the
following day would be a feast in honor of the Lord (Exodus 32:2-6). Was
Aaron more attuned to the people’s needs than the distant Moses who was
talking to God face to face? After all, it was Aaron who is known as the
bringer of peace, not Moses. It was God who forced Moses to do a reality
check: “Hurry down, for your people, whom you brought out of the land of
Egypt, have acted basely.” When Moses left the aeries, came down to earth,
and saw the Calf, it was he who furiously shattered the tablets and told the
Levites to slaughter those who had built the Calf.
In the name of monotheism, 3,000 people were killed for their need of
a concretized version of God that they could see, feel and touch. The people
were punished because they were not ready to accede to the commandment that
they accept an elusive essence and call it God. Was it because of a fatal flaw in
the people who had not left the mental state of slavery? If so, then perhaps a
lesson needed to be taught. The message was that they had to relinquish the
comforting visible token of God’s existence, and were instead showered with
zealous rage in the name of defending God’s reputation. Moses' motto was: Let
the law pierce the mountain. He believed in strict justice and went ahead and
slew his brethren. Aaron, however, loved peace and pursued peace and made
peace between people (B. Sanhedrin 6b), he was a mediator. Strangely
enough, Aaron, the appeaser was not punished. Is there a message in that?
Perhaps God understood that the people needed a physical presence and that
representatives of God should descend from the mountain more often!

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 690
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT: HALFWAY TO 120

The Torah portion is Kedoshim (Leviticus 19.1-20.27)

What do you do when you are midway into a journey? One from which there
is no return? Do you look forward in anticipation, or do you look back
nostalgically? That is what we must do when we contemplate Kedoshim,
which is located midway in the Torah in the Book of Leviticus. The table of
contents includes sacrifices, laws of purity, and descriptions of priesthood
garments--difficult things for a post-modern person to identify with. We are
in a place where we can look forward to the responsibilities of a promised
holy land or reminisce about the good old days when we all our needs were
taken care of as slaves in Egypt. Alternatively, we can ponder the meaning
of this journey, which should be not only for a physical land, but a search for
holiness.
What does it mean to be a holy? Holiness is an ongoing process
through which we sanctify ourselves by doing, observing commandments,
committing to a way of life. Does it mean we separate ourselves from the rest
of the world and live the contemplative life? Or does it mean that we
thoroughly involve ourselves with the world and observe God’s
commandments.
To serve as a guideline, in our quest for holiness in the middle of our
journey, there are ethical rules in Leviticus 19. There are ‘positive’
commandments to leave gleanings from the harvest for the poor (v 9), keep
the Sabbath (v 29) love your fellow as yourself (v 18), show respect for senior
citizens (v 32), treat the stranger who resides with us as one of our citizens
(v 33); and ‘negative’ commandments not to deal falsely with one another (v
11), insult the deaf, place a stumbling block before the blind (v 14), degrade
one’s daughter (v 29), take advantage of the foreign residents (v 33), be
dishonest in business dealings (v 35).
I am not the first to wonder why these commandments are situated
here. The midrash notices that the wording is similar to the ten
commandments. “R. Hiyya taught: This section was spoken in the presence
of a gathering of the whole assembly, because most of the essential principles
of the Torah are attached to it. R. Levi said: Because the Ten Commandments
are included therein” (Lev. Rabbah 24.5). This is interesting because it means
that there are remnants of three decalogues, one in Exodus and the other in

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"Halfway to 120,” Jerusalem Report (May 12, 2008): 64.

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Deuteronomy. The first set was given before entry into the land, before the
laws were known, before the golden calf, directly by God, whereas the
second set was given by Moses as a second take, after the laws were known.
Do we need a second set of commandments? Wasn’t the first one
enough? Perhaps midway in our journey from being coddled ex-slaves with
all of our needs taken care of, to becoming independent in our land, when
many sacrifices are being made, both by the people and of innocent animals,
it is necessary to be reminded that the primary commandments are those
between fellow men (beyn adam lehavero). And if we wish to be holy and
worthy of God’s attention we must have a different understanding of what it
means to be God’s people. The first set of commandments begin with, “I am
the Lord your God.” The commandments in Kedoshim begin with the words:
“You shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy.” In other words, if
you want to be my people you have to grow up and behave in a holy manner.
When people act on vengeful thoughts, often after a massacre of
innocents, or to avenge the honor of one’s woman, it is worth our while to
study well the pithy saying in Kedoshim, "You shall not take vengeance or
bear a grudge against your countrymen. Love your fellow as yourself; I am
the Lord" (Lev. 19:18). The Sages wondered how a person could be
commanded to "love your fellow as yourself." So Hillel the Elder interpreted
these statement so that it would be more palatable and practical and said,
"'What is hateful to yourself do not do to your fellow,' - this sums up the
entire Torah" (Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 31a). The stated reason we have
to respect our fellows is because “I am the Lord”. But what do when there is
no agreed definition of God’s will? When there are too many claims to
authority and being bearers of the truth. The secular person might even argue
that one is a “better person” because of intrinsic morality and not because of
extrinsic reasons like “God commands me”. The person who situates herself
in the secular world might even point to so many examples of desecration of
God’s name (hilul hashem), when we distort the intentions of holiness. In the
words of the prophet, “when the House of Israel dwelt on their own soil, they
defiled it with their ways and their deeds; their ways were in My sight like
the uncleanness of a menstruous woman” (Ezekiel 36: 16). Without delving
into the negative feminine metaphor, it is clear that midway in our journey
towards 120 years, it is time to look around and see where we are and make
choices about what we want our future in this land to look like.

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 691
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE: GOD, THE ABUSIVE HUSBAND

The Torah portion is Bamidbar (Numbers 1.1-4.20), the Haftarah is from

Hosea 2.1-22

"Batter my heart… take me to you, imprison me...ravish me..." is what John

Donne tells God to do to him in his Holy Sonnet 14. The prophet Hosea
expresses similar sentiments in the haftarah that accompanies the portion of
Bemmidbar ("In the wilderness").
Hosea's message is that the people of Israel no longer listens to God's
word [d'var YHWH] (Hosea 1:1) and, if it continues to ignore Him, it will
enter a spiritual wilderness [midbar]. However, when and if the people of
Israel becomes faithful again to God --as it was during the period of the
wilderness after leaving Egypt--God will renew His covenant with it. Hosea
speaks for God when he says: “I will speak coaxingly to her, and lead her
through the wilderness, and speak [dibbarti] to her tenderly” (Hosea 2:16).
To dramatize this message in public, God orders Hosea to marry a
promiscuous woman, who metaphorically represents an Israel who is also
"promiscuous" in its relations with other gods (Hosea 2:7).
In this haftarah, the marriage metaphor gets pushed to dangerous limits
as the threats against the wife escalate: the children are abused as punishment
for the mother's shamelessness; the wife is isolated from her lovers; food is
withheld from her; and her nakedness is uncovered so that she is publicly
humiliated. {in answer to query, it should NOT read 'will be'}
Pay attention to the poignant picture of marriage: God loved his young,
eager, naive Israel. Now, when He decides again to espouse Israel forever
with faithfulness, it is so that she will "know" only God. If Israel wants to
know more than just God—if, repeating Eve's error, she wants to take fruit
from the tree again-- she will be expelled once more from the Garden of
Eden, stripped naked and left as on the day "she" was created--with nothing
(Hosea 2:5).
Are these threats about love, concern, forgiveness, reconciliation? In
fact, these passages portray marital loyalty as something that can be achieved
by violent punishment, or at least threats.
God's declaration of love for "His" people is a monogamous one. The
assumption of total faithfulness on God's part and the demand of faithfulness
to a single God on the people's part was revolutionary in the context of its

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"God, the Abusive Husband," The Jerusalem Report (June 9, 1997): 31.

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time. The prophet's use of the marriage metaphor, "You will call [Me] ishi
[my man/husband]" (Hosea 2:18), reflected a new vision of a God who would
not tolerate a "polygamous" theological association.
But the "poignant" relationship between husband (God) and wife (Israel)
is achieved at a price. The possibility of violence in an intimate relationship
is made explicit in a midrash in Shemot Rabbah that states that after Israel
was driven from Jerusalem, its enemies said that God had no desire for His
people. The prophet Jeremiah then asked God if it was true that He had
rejected His children, and compared Him to a husband who beat his wife.
"How long will you go on beating her?” asks a friend. “If your desire is to
drive her out [of life], then keep on beating her till she dies; but if you do not
wish her [to die], then why do you keep on beating her?" The husband’s
(God’s) reply: "I will not divorce my wife even if my entire palace becomes
a ruin". Thus it would seem that He would prefer to beat her to death, rather
than release her from the marriage.
Not only do the ancient metaphors represent God's punishment of Israel
as justice, we are asked to pity the God of Israel for having to play such a
violent role.
There are problems in monogamy when one side controls the other. The
premise in Hosea is that the woman has no other choice but to remain in such
a marriage--you cannot "divorce" God. True, God is generous to Israel,
promising to espouse her forever with righteousness, goodness, and
faithfulness (Hosea 2:21-22). Yet the relationship between God and Israel is
based on suffering and the assumption that Israel will submit to God's will.
The reader who is caught up in this new betrothal overlooks that this is the
pattern of abusive relationships that battered wives know so well: Israel is
treated violently, then seduced with beautiful religious images into remaining
in the covenant.
Subordination of women is part of Biblical metaphor. Today, it is
essential to recognize that love is not compatible with punishment and
subservience.

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 692
CHAPTER SIXTY: THE NOT SO DOUBLE STANDARD

The Torah portion is Naso (Numbers 4.21-7.89) and the Haftarah is Judges
13:2-25)

In Numbers 5, we read the rule of the Sota, the case of the suspected
adulteress who is tested with an oath and an ordeal. This is because a fit of
jealousy comes over her husband who is “wrought up about his wife even if
she has not defiled herself, and the man shall bring his wife to the priest”
(Num. 5:12-15), who will test her with the bitter waters. If she is guilty, the
waters will work their effect within her causing "her belly to distend and her
thigh shall sag; and the woman shall become a curse among her people"
(Num. 5:27). If she is innocent, she passes the test and is cleared: "she shall
be unharmed and able to retain seed" (Num. 5:28).
In a postscript to this section it states that "the man shall be clear of
guilt; but that the woman shall suffer for her guilt" (Num. 5:31).
Since according to Biblical law only a wife can commit adultery, not
the husband, it is a clear case of a double standard in action. The husband is
protected by the law and has nothing to lose, only something to gain, by
subjecting his wife to the ordeal. Either his suspicions will be proved and she
will be punished, or his suspicions will prove to be false and then they can
live happily ever after and she will have his children. No matter what, the
woman will suffer for her alleged guilt. No thought, however, is given to her
physical and mental anguish from the aftereffects of the ordeal and her
husband's mistrust of her, and the "ganging up" on her by the community,
priests, and God.
The Mishna, in cognizance of a double standard, attempts to soften
the effect of this law. Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai suspended the sota ordeal
because adulterers became too numerous to control (B. Sota 27b, M. Sota
5:1). Whatever the reason, the practice certainly fell into disuse after 70 C.E.
when the Temple was destroyed, if not before. The rabbis in the first three
chapters of Tractate Sotah argue that an accused woman should not have to
drink the bitter waters, and even if she does have to drink them, she may have
some merits that make the waters inoperative. Thus a woman who educates
her children, supports her husband in his studies or who herself studies Torah
might be able to ward off the effects (M. Sota 3:4 and B. Sota 20a).
The haftarah of Naso is the story of the announcement by a divine
angel to his mother of Samson’s forthcoming birth. The angel tells the mother

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“The Not So Double Standard,” Jerusalem Report (June 8, 2009): 45.
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that she is “going to conceive and bear a son: let no razor touch his head, for
the boy is to be a nazirite to God…He shall be the first to deliver Israel from
the Philistines.” Unfortunately, when the boy grows up he lusts after many
women. The usual explanation of the choice of this haftarah is that in the
parasha there is a discussion about the laws pertaining to a nazirite (Numbers
6: 1-21) which segues naturally into the story of Samson the nazirite.
However, it is possible to connect the story of Samson with the
affairs he has with three different women. The first one was a Philistine
woman from Timna whom he married; the second was a brief affair with a
prostitute from Gaza; and the last is the famous one with Delilah from Wadi
Sorek, with whom he “fell in love,” who shears his locks and weakens him.
The Bible has no problems with these relationships. In fact, they are
justified as a means of getting even with the Philistines: “His father and
mother did not realize that this was God’s doing: He was seeking a pretext
against the Philistines, for the Philistines were ruling over Israel at that time.”
(Judges 14:4) However, the rabbis view his liaisons in a serious light and
imply that he was punished for his adultery. This is unusual since technically
the double standard in practice means that a man is guilty of adultery only
when he fornicates with a married woman, which Samson does not. The
rabbis write that Samson went after what his eyes desired, therefore the
Philistines put out his eyes measure for measure. They write that the
beginning of Samson’s degeneration was in Gaza when he saw the harlot and
that is why he was brought down to Gaza for his punishment (Numbers
Rabbah IX:24).
It would seem that Samson was set up for unfair punishment, since
it was the Lord’s doing. The same midrash, however writes that Samson did
not marry the woman from Timna because God told him, but because of his
own evil inclination and love of foreign women. It would seem that an
additional message of the haftarah is that although usually it is only women
who are subject to punishment for straying into adulterous relationships (or
even have their jealous husbands suspect them of adultery), men are warned
that if they allow their erotic urges to dominate, they too will be subject to
punishment.
Since the double standard still reigns in today’s society, the current
rabbinic establishment of the State of Israel can certainly learn a thing or two
about gender justice and equity from their ancestors.

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 693
CHAPTER SIXTY ONE: THE SILENCING OF WOMEN

The Torah portion is Be-ha-alotcha (Numbers 8.1-12.16)

At the beginning of Numbers 12 we read: 'Miriam and Aaron spoke against

Moses because of the Cushite woman he had married...'(Num.12.1). The
rabbis wonder why the Hebrew word used for spoke, vatedaber, is in the
singular form, rather than vayedabru, in the plural form, since the text says
that both Miriam and Aaron spoke. The rabbis explicate the passage, “Miriam
and Aaron spoke against Moses..” in such a way that Aaron is a passive
accessory rather than an active co-agent.
Miriam was punished with leprosy because women in the biblical
world were not supposed to be leaders of men. She was reproved when she
asserted herself with the only weapon she had, her power of language—a
power which was often called lashon hara, when associated with women.
She was a woman whom the rabbis chose to see as a positive role model-- a
prophet, someone to be reckoned with. Yet, they explicated the text, where it
is clearly written that the PEOPLE did not journey until Miriam was returned
to them (v 15), as the LORD who waited for her. They added: the “Holy One,
blessed be He, said: 'I am a priest, I shut her up, and I shall declare her clean’”
(Deut. Rabba 6.9). Why did God feel the need to “shut her up”?
Anyone who speaks badly of God or his chosen is guilty of slander.
According to the midrash, Miriam finds out from Zipporah about the high
price of being married to a public figure through casual gossip. There were
others besides Miriam who prophesied together with Moses or were critical
of him. Some of them were punished (like the spies in chapter 13) but others
were rewarded with praise (like Eldad and Medad in chapter 11). The rabbis
tried to understand why Miriam was punished. One answer by R. Judah b.
Levi is: “Anyone who is so arrogant as to speak against one greater than
himself causes the plagues to attack him. And if you do not believe this, look
to the pious Miriam as a warning to all slanderers” ( Deut. Rabba 6.9).
The rabbis associate malicious gossip with women who have nothing
better to do with their time. In a very revealing midrash R. Isaac writes:
“Gossip is like the snake that bites everyone who passes by and it is surprising
that anyone is willing to associate with it. So Moses said: 'Miriam spoke
slander against me, that I can understand since women as a rule are
talkative....”(Deut. Rabba 6.11 ) Another example of this bias against women,

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“The Silencing of Miriam,” Jerusalem Report (June 12, 2006): 43.

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is the saying of R. Levi: 'Women possess the four following characteristics:
they are greedy, inquisitive, envious and indolent....The Rabbis add two more
characteristics; they are querulous and gossips. Whence do we know that they
are gossips? For it is written, 'And Miriam spoke.'(Deut Rabba 6.11 ).
What is so terrible about lashon hara? The sin was so egregious that
the rabbis inserted two prayers into the Shmoneh Eshreh, the Silent Prayer:
one at the conclusion (“Keep my tongue from evil and my lips from speaking
guile”) and one a curse (“there shall be no hope for those who slander”). The
rabbis recognized the power of the spoken word to build or ruin human
relationships, and considered the tongue the elixir of life and the primary
source of good and evil.
The effects of slander (or what we might want to call today, character
assassination) are deadly. Its effect is like that of the “serpent who bites into
one limb and whose poison travels to all the limbs. Lashon hara slays teller,
listener and subject” (Lev. Rabba 26.2 ).
In opposition to Miriam’s slanderous mouth, is silence, “as is written
in the Ethics of the Fathers: All my days I grew up among the Sages, and I
have found nothing better for a person than silence” ( Eccl. Rabba 5.1). In
Kiddushin 49b, it is said that of the 10 measures of conversation that were
given to the world, 9 were given to women. If women are naturally talkative,
then silence, in contrast, will naturally be considered to be golden. If silence
is the supreme virtue, surely the nine measures of conversation are a dubious
gift at best! The punishment for lashon hara does not distinguish between
men and women. Yet the rabbis predict that 90 percent of the time women
will be doing the talking. The rabbis expected the worst from women—even
to assume that when the Bible says that Miriam and Aaron spoke, it was
principally Miriam who was at fault! Women's talk was viewed at best, as
worthless, at worse, as dangerous. Her dangerous voice had to be shut out,
excluded.
Silencing of women continues today when women’s voice is
disparaged or discounted. Sadly there is a rabbinic tradition that allows and
encourages this attitude.

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CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO: THE DAUGHTERS OF TZELOPHAD

The Torah portion is Pinchas (Numbers 25.10-30.1)

D’var Torah given in Teaneck and Edgeware

At the end of the portion we read how the daughters of Tzelophad came
forward and stood before Moses, Eleazar the priest, before the chieftains and
the whole assembly, at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting, and presented
their petition before the dignitaries of the people. The main substance of their
request was: why should our father's name be lost to his clan just because
he had no sons? So they asked for a holding (ahuza) to be given them among
their father's kinsmen. Moses then presented their petition before the supreme
judge.
The story of the daughters of Tzelophad, which gives inheritance to
women, raises a simple question: what would have happened if these five
sisters had not had the courage to petition for their right to inherit?
Conceivably this injustice would have remained in place, had the daughters
of Tzelophad not spoken up, since until they opened their mouths to protest,
it was clear that women had no share in the land at all.
I can just hear the men in the board room of the ancient tent of the
meeting complaining. “What right do these women have to complain and
challenge God’s law? If God had meant them to inherit, God would have
issued this command in the first place?” There’s a good theological question
inherent in this. On the one hand, there is God’s directive that only men are
to inherit, on the other hand, there is the just claim of the women that had to
be taken into account. Can a Deity change its mind? What does that say about
the Deity?
Sifre on Numbers (§ 133) attempts to answer this question by saying:
The passage on inheritance deserved to be said by Moses, except that
The daughters of Tzelophad were awarded the honor of it being said
by them. Thus privilege devolves upon the meritorious, and blame
on the culpable.
This leaves God with an opening, for the original intention of God was not
to deny the possibility that a daughter might inherit.
What was the good deed for which these five women were deemed
worthy and privileged to have the passage about inheritance attributed to
them? And what was the bad deed committed by Moses?
The answer to the first question comes from the Sifre which gives a
somewhat feminist explanation. In its commentary on "Now there came-near
the daughters of Zelopehad," it says: When Zelopehad's daughters heard that
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the land would be divided amongst the tribes based on the males and not on
the females, they all gathered together to take counsel. They said, "The
compassion of flesh and blood [i.e. Moses] is not like God's compassion.
Flesh and blood's compassion is greater towards the males than the females.
But, He who spoke and the world came to be, is not like that. Rather, His
compassion is on the males and the females. His compassion is upon all. As
it is said: "He gives food to all life" (Psalms 136, 25), He gives the beast his
meal" (Psalms 146:9); God is good to all, and His compassion is upon all His
handiwork. (Psalms 145:9). (Sifre 133)
Apparently Zelopehad's daughters preferred the fair compassion of
God and therefore decided to bring their question to Moses. The Sages
commented on this (Bava Batra 119b): "The daughters of Tzelophad were
clever, knew how to interpret, and were righteous. Clever, in that they spoke
out at the proper time." In other words, they waited for an opportune moment,
and then they made a reasonable request.
In contrast to God who immediately picked up on the injustice,
Moses, had more regard for men than for women. Therefore, he himself did
not bring up the issue. In contrast,the virtue of the daughters of Tzelophad
lay in their not accepting their fate.
What motivated the daughters to speak up? Perhaps the daughters of
Tzelophad were influenced by their ancesstresses Rachel and Leah. When
Jacob addressed them, to obtain their consent to leave the homestead of their
father Laban and return to Canaan, these two sisters responded, "Have we
still a share (heleq ve-nahla) in the inheritance of our father's house? Surely,
he regards us as outsiders, now that he has sold us and has used up our
purchase price" (Gen. 31:14-15). Rachel and Leah expressed their
disappointment at having been disinherited by their father, at no longer
having a share in the inheritance of his household. When the daughters of
Laban saw themselves being taken advantage of and exploited, they spoke
up.
We see the wisdom of the daughters of Tzelophad, presenting their
request at the proper time and giving well-founded reasons to prevent being
deprived of their rights, like Rachel and Leah. Therefore Rabbi Nathan
commented in Sifre on the verse, "Give us a holding among our father's
kinsmen" (Num. 27:4): "Better the might of women than the might of men.
Men say, 'Let us head back for Egypt' (Num. 14:4), and women say, 'Give us
a holding among our father's kinsmen.'"
I spoke of the theological problem earlier. One of the unique and
disturbing aspects of the case of Zelopehad's daughters is that the law was in
a sense given "incomplete". This is surprising because the law does seem to
take into account many details. But when we look at the next text, that of
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Numbers 36, we see that the detail that bothers the other clans of the tribe of
Menasheh was not mentioned earlier.
Here we see that the family heads of the descendants of Gile'ad the
son of Machir, Zelopehad's kin, come to Moses with a hypothetical injustice
that could occur, should one of Zelopehad's daughters marry outside the
family. The portion given to that daughter would be appended to the tribe
into which she married and would be forever lost to the tribe of Menasheh.
This possibility appears to have been overlooked in the original
explication of the laws as recorded by the Torah. As a result of their question
an amendment or qualification of the earlier law is legislated: So Moses, at
the Lord's bidding, instructed the Israelites saying: The plea of the Josephites
is just. This is what the Lord has commanded concerning the daughters of
Zelopehad: They may marry anyone they wish provided that they marry into
a clan of their father's tribe. (36:6) This is also made into a general law as is
stated: Every daughter among the Israelite tribes who inherits a share must
marry someone from a clan of her father's tribe. (36:8)
The fact that Moses cited this law as commanded by God gives us
pause. Was this law originally told to Moses and only revealed after the
people raised the problem, or was it the result of a "flash session" type of
query and response from God, which is not reported? Perhaps the same kind
of procedure occurred when the original question was asked by Zelopehad's
daughters.
As a feminist, I have always been unhappy with the constricting of
the daughters’ original right to inherit, into a new one that they must marry
within the tribe. But here too, the sages have found a resolution: In Bava
Batra 121a, it says that the instruction to marry members of the same tribe
only applied to that generation . Once the restriction on inheritance passing
from one tribe to another had been removed, apparently after the settlement
period, a clear trend towards enacting legislation for the daughter's welfare
emerged among the Sages.
One important regulation in this regard was the "takkanah of male sons"
whose purpose, according to the Jerusalem Talmud, was "to make a person
inclined to give generously to his daughter" (Ketubbot 4.12, 29a), or as the
Babylonian Talmud put it, "So that a person would wish to leave [his
possessions] to his daughter as he does for his son" (Ketubbot 52b).
Since it was the law that sons and not daughters inherit from the
father, the Tannaim established a regulation that in a case where the son
inherits, it is his duty to provide for the livelihood of the daughters from the
father's estate and even to allot them a dowry from the father's possessions
when they get married. This regulation became law, as is written in the
Mishnah, Tractate Ketubbot (4.10; 13.3), and on this basis Maimonides ruled
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as follows in Hilkhot Ishut (20.3): "If the father dies, one should estimate
how much he would have wished to give his daughter to support her, and
give her accordingly."
There is much to be learned from the story of the daughters of
Zelopehad. I believe it was included in the way it was, with the law being
given and then qualified as a response to a problem, in order to teach us the
halachic process, in addition to the specific law. It is a process that must
continue to adjust itself to life’s contingencies and that must be flexible for
as long as life presents us with new situations.

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 694
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE: THE THREE MOSESES

The Torah portion is D’varim (Deuteronomy 1:1-3:22)

The Book of Deuteronomy (Heb. d’varim or words) contains Moses’ last

words to the people of Israel. The book is often called Mishne Torah (the
second telling) since it consists of his first person retelling of the exodus story
and Israel’s travels through the wilderness. R. Moses ben Maimon (Rambam
or Maimonides 1135-1204) renamed his magnum opus, Yad Hazaka, the
codification of Jewish law, as the Mishne Torah—perhaps because of his
identification with Moses. On Rambam’s tombstone, the epitaph was the
famous line, "from Moses to Moses there was none like Moses." This second
Moses was not only a codifier, but also a physician, judge, philosopher and
leader. Perhaps no leader of the Jewish people in the medieval period was as
influential in his own and later generations. The third Moses in Jewish
history, who was elevated to this position by Jewish artists in their portrayal
of him, was Theodore Herzl (1860-1904). He was considered to be the new
source of hope and inspiration for his people scattered all over the diaspora
in the modern period. There are many points of commonality between the
three men.
In Deuteronomy, Moses refers to his intended audience, the people who
are on the threshold of the Promised Land of Canaan as atem [you in plural.
Moses’ rewrite of history differs from that of Exodus and Numbers especially
in regard to ideology. It is difficult not to notice Moses’ anger and violence
toward the wayward people who did not listen to him and God throughout
the last 40 years. He mostly recalls the people’s sins, their ugly and difficult
moments, the wars and their lack of faith.
Obviously some of Moses’ anger/despair comes from the fact that he
will not accompany them to the Promised Land. Does the book also reflect
Moses’ ambivalence about his role of preparing them to enter the new land?
Moses locates the blame for his not entering Canaan on the sin of the spies
whereas in Numbers it is clear that he himself was to blame for hitting the
rock for water, instead of following God’s orders (Numbers 20: 8-13).
It is ironic that the second Moses (Rambam) was force to leave Spain for
Egypt, via the promised land, a reversal of the exodus. His father named him
after the biblical Moses. Other common bonds of comparison and contrast,

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“From Moses to Moses There was None Like…” Jerusalem Report (July 19,
2010):45

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besides a sense of being persecuted, being exiled from their country of origin
was having a close relationship with Egyptian royalty (al-Fadil, the Vizier
and virtual ruler of Egypt and Pharoah). Rambam endured personal tragedies:
his beloved brother David died and he had only one son (who, unlike Moses’
and Herzl’s did follow in his footsteps). In Rambam’s reading of Moses’
character he overlooks the Moses of Deuteronomy and focuses on Moses’
meekness as the highest level a person. He considers anger to be an extremely
bad character trait, so much so, that if he is an angry person, all of his
prophecy is taken away from him. (Hilchot Deot: 2.3). Finally, like Herzl
who died abroad, and unlike Moses, his remains were taken to Tiberias for
burial, and his grave is an object of pilgrimage.
th
Since this is the year of the 150 anniversary of the birthday of the
modern Moses, Theodore Herzl, it is worth speculating over which biblical
Moses figure Herzl identified with. Unlike Moses, who was 120 years old
and never entered the Promised Land, Herzl entered Palestine once, but died
very young at the age of 44. Many have pointed out that Herzl modeled
himself on Moses. According to Herzl’s biographer, Reuben Breinin, he had
a dream at age twelve in which he encountered Moses as a Messiah figure on
a shining cloud. “The Messiah called to Moses: “It is for this child that I have
prayed!” And to me he said: “Go and declare to the Jews that I shall come
soon and perform great wonders and great deeds for my people and for the
whole world!” Robert S. Wistrich suggests in “Theodore Herzl Between
Messianism and Politics” that Herzl may have identified with “the aging
Moses who had to face the constant murmurings and discontent of the people,
fight against their slavish characteristics, confront the challenge of the
Golden Calf, and overcome the revolt of Korah.” But he also points out that
most of Herzl’s contemporaries preferred to see him as the prophet, who
because he was raised in an assimilated environment had his moment of truth
in a moment of crisis and thus became the symbol of hope for generations of
people. It is this Moses that transfixed the art nouveau painter Ephraim Moses
Lilien (1874-1925) who famously portrayed Herzl as a modern day Moses.
Herzl himself wrote in an early draft of The Jewish State that “there exists only one
solution [to the Jewish problem] …the exodus from Egypt." Yet in a letter that he
wrote he said that “If someone showed them [the Jews] the Promised Land, they
would scoff at him. For they are demoralized…We are not yet desperate enough, so
a rescuer would be greeted with laughter." So the question as to which Moses he
identified with is not an easy one to answer. Perhaps to have his life end of a more
positive note, he decided to cast his fate in the promised land for unlike Moses we
know where Herzl is buried! In 1949, according to his wishes, Herzl's remains were
reinterred on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem.

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CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR: TRAFFICKING, CONVERSION AND
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THE CAPTIVE WOMAN

The Torah portion is Ki Tetzei (Deuteronomy 21.10-25.19)

One of the worse scenarios envisioned by the bible is that “Your sons and
daughters shall be delivered to another people…The LORD will send you
back to Egypt in galleys…. There you shall offer yourselves for sale to your
enemies as male and female slaves, but none will buy.” (Deuteronomy 28:
32, 68). How ironic that four years ago the Knesset discussed the trafficking
of women into Israel via Egypt who were then sold into sexual slavery for
thousands of dollars. Unlike the bible, where “none will buy”, global
trafficking is big business and the profits are great. Many gender-specific
atrocities are committed against women during wartime as well.
Deuteronomy 21:10-14 presents a law that seems to regulate rape on
the battlefield. Michael Walzer in his book Just and Unjust Wars (1977)
stated that it was “the first legislation in human history to protect women
prisoners of war.” But one can also view it as condoning rape, for the soldier
is free to “desire” and “take” an enemy woman in combat. However, the law
surrounding the beautiful captive woman forces the warrior to be mindfully
aware of his responsibility for his action.
Though the Torah permits the soldier to return home with an enemy
woman as booty, he is limited, in that he cannot do with her as he will. He
has to allow her a mourning period in his home and according to the
midrash, this is to see her at her physical worst (Sifrei Deut 216). Rashi
states that the Torah is against the evil inclination of the man who
presumably raped her in the battlefield, but then has to marry her outright
once she is in his home. The Torah stresses that one cannot leave behavior
in war on the battlefield, it must be taken “home”. Both the Torah and the
Rabbis recognize that humanity is weak, but tries to direct us to proper
behavior. Thus even for the captive woman there is institutionalized
behavior and if for some reason, the soldier does not want her after
marriage, he cannot treat her like a slave, but must release her
unconditionally as a free person.
There is a source in the Jerusalem Talmud which discusses the plight
of Jewish women captives who might be forbidden by Jewish law to marry
priests. The Talmud suggests that they be sent back to Eretz Yisrael, from

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“Trafficking, Conversion and the Captive Woman,” Jerusalem Report (August
31, 2009): 45.
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where they had evidently been abducted, escorted by two men to prevent
their being left alone, for that would disqualify them from marrying
Kohanim. One of the rabbis asks: 'How about the fact that they had been
left alone after their abduction?' Shouldn't that be enough to disqualify them
from marrying Kohanim? R' Abba bar Ba replied: 'Had these been your
daughters, would you have said the same thing?' (Jer. Ketubot 2: 26c: Hal
6). Catherine Mackinnon defines prostitution as “a social institution which
grants men personality, but denies it to women". These rabbis have assigned
personality to the victims by identifying them as their daughters and not
just as some object of man’s lust.
Is rabbinic literature equally sympathetic to non-Jewish women?
Maimonides writes that soldiers are permitted to eat food that is normally
forbidden to Jews if no other food is available, the analogy being that the
captive woman is permitted only because no other woman is available
(Hilkhot Melakhim 8: 1-2). Clearly he disapproves of an Israelite's marriage
with a captive woman. He also rules that in the case of a priest who wishes
to marry a beautiful woman taken captive in battle, he “may have
intercourse with a captive woman, since the Torah’s injunction was with
reference to restraining one’s lust. However, he cannot marry her later,
because she is a convert” (Hilkhot Melakhim 8.4) and converts are
forbidden to priests. Rabbinic attitudes towards converts, Ruth
notwithstanding, are very often one of suspicion.
The rabbis routinely refer to the women of the nations as impure so
that they can regard the gentile woman not as a victim but as an evil
temptress. Thus in the commentary on “she removed her captive’s garb”
the rabbis teach us that “she transfers her beautiful clothing and puts on
widow’s garb, for the nations are cursed and their daughters decorate
themselves during wartime in order to tempt others into whoring after
them” (Midrash tanaim on Deut. 21).
It is true that the biblical text differentiates in the treatment of
Israelite and non-Israelite slaves. “Such male and female slaves as you may
have—it is from the nations round about you that you may acquire male
and female slaves. You may also buy them from among the children of
foreigners’ resident among you, or from their families that are among you,
whom they begot in your land. These shall become your property; you may
keep them as a possession for your children after you, for them to inherit as
property for all time. Such you may treat as slaves. But as for your Israelite
kinsmen, no one shall rule ruthlessly over the other” (Leviticus 25:44-46a).
It appears that there is a case for non-Jews being treated less humanely than
Jews.

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 Similarly, there is a famous oft quoted saying, “Converts are as
difficult for the Jews as a scab”? (B. Yebamot 47b). Does this reflect the
tension and fear of theological and genetic pollution brought on by
intermarriage? When we reflect on attitudes toward trafficking in foreign
women and obstacles put by rabbis in the way of today’s converts, we
should be mindful of this ambivalence toward the strangers in our midst.

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 696
CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE: OUR PREGNANT WORLD

The Torah portion for Rosh Hashanah is Genesis 21.1-34 and the haftarah is 1
Samuel 1.1-2.10

Rosh Hashanah celebrates conception, pregnancy and birth. These are central
motifs of the Bible readings of the first day and the liturgy which follows the
blowing of the shofar, when the custom is to recite the liturgical poem, “ha-
yom harat olam”. “Today is the conception and/or creation of the world." But
the phrase literally means that today is a pregnant world, one full of meaning
and possibilities which we will not know until after the birth.
The Torah and Haftarah reading of the first day is preoccupied with
two barren women, Sarah and Hannah, and how God remembers them. How
did they become pregnant? Genesis 21:1 states “God took note
of/visited/kept his word to/came to/dealt with/was gracious to Sarah and did
for her what he promised.” Note the many possible translations of the
problematic word pakad. The sages say that pakad means zachar
(remembered), and the word zachar is used in Hannah's case as well. God’s
visitations are life changing events, resulting in the conceptions and births
Sarah and Hannah desperately want.
The word pakad appears many places in the bible, and one of its
meanings is to deposit. Using this, one can even translate the text, ‘God
deposited the seed in Sarah.' Why does scripture allow for this interpretation?
Why not use the word zachar (remembered)?
In the preceding chapter, we read about Abimelech king of Gerar
who “took” Sarah, and may or may not have touched her. In his argument to
God he said, "O Lord, will You slay people even though innocent? He
[Abraham] himself said to me, 'She is my sister!' And she also said, 'He is
my brother'" (Gen. 20:1-7). Despite this claim of innocence, God had closed
fast (atzor atzar) all the wombs of Abimelech’s household (of which Sarah
was temporarily a part) – all this because of Sarah, the wife of Abraham (Gen.
20:15-18). Abraham then prayed to God, and God healed Abimelech and his
wife and his slave girls, so that they bore children
And right after this episode, “And God took note of [pakad]
Sarah....and Sarah conceived and bore a son to Abraham..." (Gen. 21:1-2). I
think scripture wants us to understand in no uncertain terms that Abimelech
could not have impregnated Sarah.

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“Our Pregnant World,” Jerusalem Report (September 26, 2016):47.

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 In a subversive midrash (Genesis Rabbah 53:6) the sages connect
Sarah to a woman suspected of adultery (a sotah) who successfully passes
the bitter waters test. R. Isaac implies that Sarah, who entered Abimelech’s
house and emerged undefiled deserved to be remembered, just like the sotah:
“If the woman not be defiled, but be clean: then shall she be cleared, and shall
conceive seed” (Numbers 5: 28). The midrash adds that the fact that the Lord
remembered Sarah means that she did not “steal seed” from Abimelech. And
lest we have any doubts, the midrash makes clear that Isaac's features were
like Abraham’s and that “he was born at nine months [of pregnancy], so that
it might not be said that he was a scion of Abimelech's house.”
What’s bothering the sages? Perhaps they sense that in the biblical
text Abimelech protests too much about not approaching or even touching
Sarah. Perhaps they suspected that Sarah could have been impregnated by
Abimelech and thus stress that the Biblical phrase 'closed fast' means she was
untouched. And now Sarah’s womb is ready to conceive seed, which God
deposits.
Hannah’s story begs for comparison with Sarah’s, so it is especially
interesting that in the Babylonian Talmud (BT Berachot 31a-b) Hannah, the
heroine of the Haftarah, uses her knowledge of the Sotah text to get herself
impregnated. Hannah said to God, if You don’t solve my barrenness “I will
go and shut myself up with someone else in the knowledge of my husband
Elkanah, and as I shall have been alone they will make me drink the water of
the suspected wife” and since I am innocent, according to the law, “I shall be
cleared and shall conceive seed.”
All this desperation is expressed in her prayer for a son, and the
Amidah, the Silent Prayer, is associated with Hannah who prayed so silently
by moving her lips that Eli the priest thought she was drunk. Thus it is fitting
that today many Jewish feminists invoke Abraham’s spouse in the Amidah,
the formerly barren Sarah, and add to the ending of magen Avraham (who
shields Abraham), poked (or pakad) Sarah (who remembers/ed Sarah) i.e.,
by enabling her to conceive). Their justification is that without God's
visitation to Sarah, there would be no Jewish people.

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CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX: HOME FOR PURIM: THE MISSING
697
MOTHERS
The Scroll of Esther is read on Purim

Why are there no Jewish mothers in the Scroll of Esther? Would things have
been different if there had been some. Can you imagine what her mother
might have told Esther when she went off to the King: put on a little more (or
less) lipstick. Your bra is showing; not too much cleavage (or perhaps show
some more). Did you remember to put $10 in your purse for emergency
money in case he doesn’t like you and you have to take a cab home. What
about Vashti’s mother: would she have been proud of her, for sticking up for
her rights? Or would she have said something like, it’s all your fault for not
giving in to him—he’s your husband after all and men will be men and you
just have to put up with their little shticklach—grin and bear!
But there are no Jewish mothers present! There is Mordecai who
seems to be pimping Esther to save the Jewish people, shades of his ancestors
Abraahm and Isaac who used their wives to hide behind them and gave them
to Avimelech and Pharoah to save their own skins. Then there is the
interesting bit that Esther doesn’t have children. Can you hear her mother?
You have to relax, don’t be so uptight, so what if Haman is hanging around
all the time spying on you and Ahashverous. Maybe he’s gay! So what if A
is not Jewish. Just think, if you have a kid, he’ll be a prince and then you’ll
really be secure as Queen. And the kid will be Jewish, because you are his
mom. And I’ll finally be a grandmother, and the Queen’s mother, just like
Elizabeth.
But there are no Jewish mothers present. It is interesting that in the
movie, “For Your Consideration”, there is a Jewish mother called Esther in
the play within the play entitled, Home for Purim. She is very controlling and
her renegade daughter comes home with a lesbian partner. Hollywood
apparently felt the need to put in a Jewish mother into the Purim story. And
this Jewish mother hammed it up, accent and all.
The bible never shows us the relationships between mother and
daughters. There is one midrash, which connects a daughter’s behavior to her
mother’s. “Like mother, like daughter” the midrash writes about Dinah and
her mother Leah, and implies that just like Leah prostituted herself by “going
out” to greet Jacob, so Dinah was guilty when she “went out” to the daughters
of the land and brought her rape upon herself. But there are no “Jewish

697
“The Missing Mothers,” Jerusalem Report (March 5 2007): 45.

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mothers” to give advice to their daughters when they go off on their long
journeys. They are on their own, vulnerable, yet responsible for their own
mistakes.
So Vashti, acts in a way that should make any mother proud of her:
she is brave, defiant, strong, and self-determined. Vashti is a proud,
unbending woman, who refuses to obey the drunken husband who sees her
as his possession to command and perform for him at will. Rabbinic tradition
could have been supportive of Vashti for her stance of independence and
personal dignity. Yet in the Midrash Ha-gadol on Eshet Hayil, they use her
grace and beauty as swords against her. “Grace is deceptive, Beauty is
illusory,” they say refers to Vashti.
Esther, who goes out and flaunts her beauty to attract the king (and
save the Jewish people), and whose mother would probably have told her to
tone it down—is looked upon as a heroine by rabbinic tradition. The phrase
in Eshet Hayil, “It is for her fear of the Lord that a woman is to be praised,”
they say refers to Esther. Whereas Vashti’s grace and beauty are deceptive,
Esther is praiseworthy and God-fearing. In the midrash, Vashti is identified
with sheker (deception). Logic tells us otherwise, Esther (together with her
uncle Mordecai) in true biblical trickster tradition (shades of Jacob) trick their
way onto the throne (true for a good purpose, to save the Jewish people),
whereas Vashti is unbending and loses her throne for her principles.
Most aggadot (stories and legends) are so negative about Vashti that
it is almost impossible to identify with her. The sages deviated from the literal
or contextual reading of the text when they turned Vashti into a witch-like,
demonic being with no redeeming characteristics. They gave examples about
of how she stripped the daughters of Israel and made them work naked on
Shabbat, no less. They wrote that her husband sent for her on the seventh day
after she gave birth, in great joy, since he knew that she was no longer
unclean. Yet she was still bleeding and refused to appear before him naked.
No wonder she was punished in a similar manner, and sentenced to die on
Shabbat. The rabbis said she refused to obey the king because Daniel was
present at the banquet, and she hated him for his terrible prophecies about her
ancestor, Nebuchadnezzar. They claimed that she too loved debauchery and
that she secluded the women, not because of her chastity, but so that they
could also “party” and she could control and blackmail them. Some say the
angel Gabriel punished her for her sins with leprosy or, alternatively, with
having a tail appended to her, which is the real reason why she was
embarrassed to obey the kings command, not because of any innate modesty.
Vashti’s potential for haughtiness was forestalled since she was reviled for
having animal characteristics.

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 Since women who appear in public are considered wanton, why did
our sages find it necessary to demonize Vashti, who behaved modestly? One
reason could be that in the aggadah, Vashti was the great-granddaughter of
King Nebuchadnezzar and she would not allow Ahasuerus to give permission
for the building of the Temple, and saying to him, “Do you seek to build what
my ancestors destroyed?” (Esther Rabbah 5: 2). Thus it would seem that by
demonizing her the Rabbis are getting back at this last descendant of
Nebuchadnezzar.

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 698
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN: THE NOT SO MERRY WIDOW

The Book of Lamentations is read on Tisha B'av

"Lonely sits the city once great with people! She that was great among
nations is become like a widow.... Bitterly she weeps in the night.... There is
none to comfort her of all her lovers..." Thus the Book of Lamentations
describes Jerusalem after the destruction of the Temple. Jewish theology
tends to blame the victim for what happened: "Because of our sins, we have
been exiled from our land," goes the refrain in our prayers.
What are the implications of Jerusalem, being described in feminine
terms? And why blame the metaphorical widow - the victim of God's anger
– whose only sin is that she has lost her husband? Modern sensibility suggests
that we should blame the angry God who has caused the destruction.
The rabbis sense that it is unjust to blame Jerusalem the widow as a
sinner, so they emphasize the word “like” to point out that she is not a real
widow; she is just a woman whose husband has gone off for a while (midrash
on Psalms 68). Surely there can be no real widows in God's relationship to
his people - because that would imply that God is dead! She is "as a widow,"
not a total widow, who can marry another man. Her status is that of the
agunah: One whose husband is unaccounted for, yet who is not free to marry
again.
In Lamentations, Jerusalem is described in additional,
uncomplimentary, female metaphoric terms such as the menstruant and
battered woman. Using these female symbols makes women by association
symbolically responsible for the destruction of the city. The depiction of
Jerusalem as an unprotected widow abandoned by her husband, destroyed by
God (her supposed protector), has the potential to be used as a justification
for abuse of women by men who want to be “god-like.” There are danger and
power that derive from using such negative feminine metaphors, as a midrash
on Genesis spells out, when the prophet Jeremiah likens God to a wife-beater
who keeps on hitting his wife (Jerusalem) until she can barely stand. That she
does not die from the blows shows that God really must love her. Moreover,
her suffering results in a spiritual rebirth.
Why do we need such myths and metaphors to depict our
relationships with God? What is gained by associating being female with
weakness and then blaming the people for this weaknesses? The prophets

698
“The Not So Merry Widow,” Jerusalem Report (August 22, 2005): 27.

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condemn men and use female sexuality to represent male sin, with the
purpose of humiliating them, by placing them in the inferior female position
whose “uncleanness clings to her skirts” as she sinks appallingly
(Lamentations 1:9). That may be the function of these metaphors. But what
are we, the people, blaming ourselves for? For being menstruants, for being
widows, for being beaten? Why should the victim have to atone for the
perpetrators' sins?
It is not the people who need to re-victimize themselves, it is God
who must atone for what He has done to his people and who must assure His
people that He will not do it again. In an article called “Who is Battering
Whom?” in Conservative Judaism (Spring 1993), David Blumenthal, a
theologian at Emory College, has suggested a theology of protest in response
to the possibility that abusiveness is an attribute of God. He writes that one
definition of abuse can be when the punishment is out of proportion to the
sin. In his mind, God is sometimes abusive and, in wrestling with this truth,
one must acknowledge and respond to it. God, the abuser, must do teshuvah
(repentance) and commit Himself never to abuse again. Although the abused
person may choose to accept the commitment and accept reconciliation, it is
difficult to maintain a relationship of mutual trust with God. Included in a
theology of protest must be a feeling of sustained suspicions as a proper
response to God's abuse.
Since much of the Book of Lamentations describes God's role in
Jerusalem’s destruction, her loneliness, suffering, abandonment and guilt, the
book can be understood as a possible response and reaction to God's specific
abuse of the Jewish people during the First Temple period. Or as another
theologian, Walter Brueggemann put it in “The Costly Loss of Lament,” in
JSOT 1986, lament has to occur when God's dysfunction reaches an
unacceptable level, when injustice is intolerable and when there is a demand
for change. And thus we can use lament as the starting point of a renewed
covenant between ourselves and God.

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Section Five: ENCYCLOPEDIA ENTRIES

After much deliberation I decided to include these five encyclopedia entries.

I had a lot of fun writing them and learned new things about Judaism and
women rabbis in the process. I also enjoyed the give and take with the various
editors and although I had experienced writing a major article on the Jewish
sources of Wifebeating (of which I guess I’m an expert) this was a new
challenge to go out of my feminist comfort zone.
699
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT: RABBIS, FEMALE

In the last three decades, hundreds of women have chosen to become rabbis. This
growth parallels and follows demands for change in women's role in public ritual life
and family laws and is due to the profound impact of feminism, especially in North
America. In English speaking countries women call themselves rabbis, but in
countries such as Germany the woman rabbi is referred to as rabbina and in Israel
often as rabba. The orthodox ABR (all but rabbis in name) refer to themselves as
maharat, a newly coined term. Women rabbis’ contribution has broadened the
concept of Judaism and the image of women in general by providing female models
of leadership.
In 1890, Ray Frank the “girl rabbi of the golden west” who was born in San
Francisco in 1861, arranged services for the community in Spokane, Washington on
Yom Kippur of 1890. Since there was no rabbi, Frank was invited to preach. She
studied at the Hebrew Union College, receiving a Bachelor of Hebrew Letters. In the
1920’s there were several women who entered seminaries with the intention of
becoming Rabbis, but all were refused ordination, including Helen Levinthal (1910
-1989) who became the first woman to complete the rabbinical course at Rabbi Isaac
Meyer Wise’s Jewish Institute of Religion in 1939.
The first known woman rabbi ordained privately in 1935 was Regina Jonas of
Germany who died in Auschwitz. The first woman to be ordained by a theological
seminary in the United States in 1972 was Sally Preisand of the Reform movement.
In 1968 women were accepted into the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and
Sandy Eisenberg Sasso was its first woman rabbi to be ordained in 1974. Amy
Eilberg was already studying at JTSA when women's ordination was approved and
in 1985 became the first woman ordained as a rabbi by the Conservative movement.
The Orthodox movement in America does not ordain women, but in 2009, Sara
Hurwitz received the title maharat (leader in halachic, spiritual, pastoral counseling
and teaching Torah.), after completing a rabbi’s full curriculum of study.

699
Naomi Graetz, “Rabbis, Female” in Carol K Oyster, Jane E. Sloan and Mary
Zeiss Stange (editors). The Multimedia Encyclopedia of Women in Today's World.
SAGE Publications, Inc, 2011
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 In Israel, the rabbinical seminaries began ordaining women after much debate.
Some felt that Israeli society was too traditional to stomach female leadership. The
first conservative woman to be ordained by the Shechter Institute in 1993 was Valerie
Stessin. At least four women served in pulpits in the masorti (Conservative)
movement (in Beersheba, Omer, and two in Jerusalem). Yalta is a forum which
works as a support group for Conservative female rabbis and students and advocates
for greater recognition. There are more Reform rabbis in Israel since they began
admitting women in 1986 and Naamah Kelman made history as the first woman in
Israel to be ordained as a rabbi in 1992. Mimi Feigelson, Eveline Goodman-Thau
and Haviva Ner- David, were privately ordained with Orthodox semicha (rabbinic
ordination). Ner-David documented her journey in Life on the Fringes: A Feminist
Journey Toward Traditional Rabbinic Ordination and identifies herself as a “post-
denominational rabbi.” In 2008, the modern Orthodox Shalom Hartman Institute of
Jerusalem started a non-denominational program to prepare women and men for
rabbinic ordination in order to train them as Jewish educators, not for pulpit
positions. Jacqueline Tabick was the first woman rabbi in Britain. She enrolled at the
Progressive (Reform) Leo Baeck College where she completed her rabbinical
training in 1975. The Leo Baeck College has ordained more than 25 female students
in 24 years. It trains rabbis to serve in Europe.
In the Reform movement, the discussion for decades revolved around whether
or not it was seemly for a woman to preach from the pulpit. In the Conservative
movement, the issues of a woman serving as prayer leader, or conducting weddings
where she might serve as a witness, were taken into account. One of the biggest
arguments against women serving as rabbis in non-Orthodox settings was that of
kevod ha-tzibbur (the honor of the community). This argument suggests that
women’s participation casts shame on the males in the congregation by
demonstrating superiority in knowledge over the ignorant males. Others interpret the
term "kevod ha-zibbur" as an allusion to the sexual distraction posed by women to
men. This sociological argument has been swept over by the new reality. Women are
now actively participating in and leading religious activities: such as daily prayer,
the weekly public readings of the Torah, teaching and studying Torah. Women’s role
is no longer peripheral in communal life. Even in the modern Orthodox world women
are separate but equal. There are still some halakhic objections to women rabbis,
such as women serving as witnesses but the major obstacles are social convention
and "the weight of tradition." The relationship between the Rabbi and the congregant
has changed with the coming of women to a relationship of greater closeness and
greater informality. Women tend to stay in smaller communities, they are less
interested in climbing the ladder from small to bigger congregations, they are
forming close relationships with the congregants they have. Many women rabbis
prefer not to take pulpit positions and serve as educators, chaplains in hospitals,
rabbis of day schools, college campus rabbis. Some of them have senior positions in
non-profit organizations. The fact that women are redefining the pulpit impacts
positively on their male colleagues who often choose less competitive ways of life
as well.

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 700
CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE: JUDAISM

Judaism is a religious civilization of the Jewish people. The term Judaism

(heb. Yahadut) was first used among Greek speaking Jews in the 1st century
of the common era (see II Mac. 2:21). The language spoken and/or read by
Jews is Hebrew (heb. Ivrit), but Aramaic is also an ancient Jewish language
which has found its way into the Talmud and other sacred books. Another
language associated with Jewish people is Yiddish, which is still the common
language among ultra-Orthodox Jews.
Jewish law is called halakha. Jewish society was governed by halakha,
which is a legal system that pervaded all aspects of life. It is also a "religious"
system and, as such, its influence is much more pervasive than an ordinary
legal system, for it is responsible for legal and ethical behavior. It has molded
the major institutions of Jewish life, including marriage and the family.
Judaism is based on the doctrine that there are two sacred Torahs—the
Written Torah (the Bible) and the Oral Torah (the traditions, including the
rabbinic ones)—out of which the halakha develops. Eventually the Oral
Torah was written down and became part of Jewish Sacred literature. But
since the Oral Torah was based on learning and discussion among sages who
devoted their life to study and clarification, it was never monolithic in its
decisions.
Halakha has shown amazing flexibility and staying power by being able
to accommodate disagreement. The earliest codifications and interpretations
of halakha—the Mishnah (c. 200 C.E.), the Tosefta (240 C.E.), and the
Talmud (Jerusalem c. 400 C.E. and Babylonian c. 500 C.E.)—preserve
minority as well as majority opinions. Later attempts were made to codify
preceding material, and Codes appeared, such as the Yad he-Hazakah, also
known as Mishneh Torah, of Maimonides, the Tur of Jacob ben Asher (14th
century), and the Shulhan Arukh by Joseph Caro (16th century). Finally, there
is a vast collection of Responsa literature which includes rabbinical rulings
(responses) on specific questions. These responsa date back to the 750’s and
continue to be written today. Less frequent are takkanot, which are
ordinances or rulings promulgated to meet a specific need and which, in
effect, change the halakha by creating legislation. Some rulings had to do
with instituting marriage contracts, outlawing polygamy, prohibition of
giving too much money to charity, child support, etc. These takkanot were
700
Naomi Graetz, “Judaism” in Carol K Oyster, Jane E. Sloan and Mary Zeiss
Stange (editors). The Multimedia Encyclopedia of Women in Today's World.
SAGE Publications, Inc, 2011

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ordained by sages to regulate life and to radically alter, or amend an existing
law. Although these takkanot have great potential, they are rarely used today
since they can be described as revolutionary rather than evolutionary.
Jewish descent is on the one hand patrilineal, a Jew is referred to as X
son (or daughter) of a father—yet, the determination of who is a Jew, is
matrilineal, except in the Reform movement. In Israel anyone who can show
Jewish ancestry, converts and their spouses are entitled under the Law of
Return (1950) to immigrate to Israel. However, since the Israeli Rabbinate is
controlled by the Orthodox, many immigrants who are eligible for citizenship
are not able to be married in Israel. Jews number about 13.5 million
worldwide and about 80% of Jews live either in Israel or in North America.
Both the Conservative and Reform movements take a historical
approach to traditional sources and have progressive understandings of
religious practice. The Orthodox movement is more diverse. The modern
Orthodox in which a few women are ABR’s (all but rabbis in name) and
which have separate but equal participation in services. The haredi world has
their own divisions (often to be seen in their dress) and even the Hassidic
missionary movement of the Chabad, have their divisions with those
believing that the Lubavitcher Rebbe is the Messiah and those who don’t.
None of the movements live in a vacuum and almost all are aware of, even if
not always adapting to, the modern "human rights" agenda. On this agenda
are changes regarding women’s status, patrilineal descent, homosexual rights
and intermarriage between Jew and non-Jews.
The following institutions train clergy and offer degrees in Jewish
subjects like the Bible, Jewish History, Philosophical Thought, Talmud,
Midrash education etc. The Orthodox, Yeshiva University, which traces its
origins to Yeshiva Eitz Chaim, was founded in 1886 on New York's Lower
East Side. In 1896, the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary (RIETS)
was founded. YU was granted university status in 1945 and today includes
a college of liberal arts and sciences for women and graduate schools of
medicine, law, social work and psychology. The Reform Hebrew Union
College-Jewish Institute of Religion is the oldest Jewish seminary in the
Americas and the main seminary for training rabbis, cantors, educators and
communal workers in Reform Judaism. It has campuses in Cincinnati, New
York, Los Angeles and Jerusalem. The Reconstructionist Rabbinical College
is located near Philadelphia in Pennsylvania, and is the only seminary
affiliated with Reconstructionist Judaism, a liberal movement established by
Mordecai Kaplan that views Judaism as the “evolving religious civilization
of the Jewish people”. From its second year, 1969, RRC students included
women. Since 1984, RRC has admitted and ordained openly gay and lesbian
rabbis, the first major rabbinic seminary to do so. The Conservative
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institutions include the Jewish Theological Seminary in NYC and American
Jewish University in Los Angeles. Both of these are recognized universities
in addition to ordaining rabbis. In addition to the mainstream movements
there are the Jewish Renewal movement and the Society for Humanistic
Judaism.
The plurality of opinion and interpretation that constitutes halakha also
applies to its treatment of women. The attitude of halakha toward women can
be characterized as ambivalent rather than monolithic. Until recently, the
input of women into the halakhic process was rare, and it was almost always
men who had the authority to make halakhic decisions. In biblical law women
are perceived as chattel. In the tenth commandment in Exodus we are told
not to covet our neighbor's house, wife, slave, maid, ass, ox, or anything that
belongs to our neighbor (Ex. 20:17). In Deuteronomy 5:18, the wife precedes
the house, field, slave, maid-servant, ass, ox, and everything that belongs to
the man. Monetary transactions accompanied many changes of a woman's
status. A mohar [price of virginity] had to be paid by a rapist to the father of
the "bride" (see Gen. 34:12; Ex. 22:15-16). The husband is the master [ba'al],
whose permission to rule over his wife originates in Genesis 3:16, where God
tells the first woman that her husband shall rule over her. The word ba'al
implies ownership as well as lordship; as in the law about the ba'al of the ox
spelled out in Biblical law (Ex. 21:28). When a woman gets married, the
father's property rights are transferred to the husband. If the husband's
property is damaged, compensation is paid to him.
There are other biblical sources that support the view of woman as
chattel. The first has to do with the description of how a man comes to get a
wife. The verbs describing this act are lakach [to acquire] in Deut. 24:1. and
ba'al [to possess] in Deut. 22:13. It is written that: ‘a man acquires a wife and
possesses her. [If] she fails to please him because he finds something
obnoxious about her, [he can] write her a bill of divorcement, hand it to her
and send her away from his house” (Deut. 24:1).
Marriage in the post-biblical era reflects the transition of the
marriage "acquisition" or purchase from a private deal between two adults or
between two families to a social and religious institution administered by the
community and under rabbinic supervision. This change gives rise to rabbinic
control over marriage and divorce, matters which in the biblical period were
purely a family matter.
Carolyn G. Heilbrun, wrote that "men can be men only if women are
unambiguously women." Jewish tradition contains many statements
detrimental to women. This is because Judaism is a patriarchal religion, a
religion which, to use Kate Millet’s terminology was run by a male God and
whose theology was essentially "male supremacist, and one of whose central
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functions [was] to uphold and validate the patriarchal structure." However,
Jewish sources are not monolithic. Some Jewish texts studied by the
scholarly Jewish male portray women as lesser beings: stupid, talkative,
lewd. Others imply that she is spiritually higher than the male, and therefore
potentially capable of more than the man. Since Jewish learning took place
in a sex-segregated setting isolated from the presence of women, very often
the only things a man knew about women was learned second-hand from
books. The dual message he received (spiritual being vs. lewd being) led him
to both admire and look down on women.
In Jewish tradition, there were three commandments that were
reserved for women: lighting candles, separating a portion of dough, and
ritual immersion after the end of the menstrual period. However, today it is
commonly accepted that women are educated equally with men and that they
are allowed to pray either communally with other women in an Orthodox
setting or as equal partners to men in the other movements. Some of the roles
that women have taken upon themselves are publicly reading from the Torah
scroll, being counted as a part of the quorum of 10 (minyan), serving as a
cantor, rabbi and halakhic decisor. Many women also don prayer shawls and
phylacteries (less common) and head covering. The only area which remains
problematic is that of women serving as legal witnesses in cases where
Jewish law requires two witnesses. One way of getting around this is to
require four signatures, two men, and two women. Another interesting
innovation in Modern Orthodox settings is that of requiring 10 women and
10 men to form the necessary prayer quorum. It is too soon to tell what the
impact of modernity will be on the entire spectrum of Jewish practice, but
change is in the air.
The feminist movement, which goes back to the early 70’s, has
influenced all major branches of Judaism. Some of its achievements include,
women’s ordination as rabbis, use of feminine language and imagery to
describe God, use of prenuptials to protect women from becoming agunot
(chained women), being counted as equal in the quorum, equal rights in
marriage and assumption of positions of leadership in the synagogue and
within the general Jewish community.

See also: Women Rabbis, Chabad movement, Feminism, Homosexuality-

religious attitudes, Israel

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 701
CHAPTER SEVENTY: JUDAISM

Judaism is a religious civilization of the Jewish people. The term Judaism

(hebrew, Yahadut) was first used among Greek speaking Jews in the 1st
century of the Common Era (see II Macabees. 2:21) and is unknown in the
Bible and rabbinic literature. The word ‘Jew’ (Hebrew, Yehudi), is biblical
and refers to both someone who originates from the tribe of Judah, and one
who lived in the Southern Kingdom of Judah (in the Land of Israel), no matter
what their tribal origin. Today a Jew is considered to be one who is born to a
Jewish mother or has converted to Judaism and accepts the obligation to
observe its religious commandments. The written language of the Bible is
Hebrew (hebrew, ivrit), but Aramaic is also an ancient Jewish language
which has found its way into the Talmud and other sacred books. Modern
Hebrew is spoken by Jews in Israel. Another language associated with Jewish
people is Yiddish, which is spoken by many Jews of European origin is still
a common language among ultra-Orthodox Jews.
JEWISH LAW, which has continued to develop and change since biblical
times, is called halakha. Jewish society is fashioned and ruled by halakha, a
legal system that pervades all aspects of life, with judicial and legislative
functions, both of which are performed by rabbis whose authority is
recognized by the Jewish community. Halakha is also a religious system and,
as such, its influence is much more pervasive than an ordinary legal system,
for it prescribes norms not only of legal behavior, but also of ethical behavior
and standards. It has molded the major institutions of Jewish life, including
marriage and the family. It is based not only on interpretation of the words
of the Biblical texts according to rabbinic religious tradition, but also on the
understanding of its intentions and values as transmitted throughout Jewish
history.
Judaism is based on the doctrine that there are two sacred Torahs—
the Written Torah (the Bible) and the Oral Torah (the traditions, including
the rabbinic ones)—out of which the halakha develops. Eventually the Oral
Torah was written down as part of Jewish Sacred literature. But it was never
monolithic in its decisions. Just as in any legal system there can be different
legal decisions based on similar cases, so it is in halakha. Halakha has shown

701
Naomi Graetz, “Judaism,” International Encyclopedia of Men and
Masculinities, 1 vol., eds. M. Flood, J.K. Gardiner, B. Pease, and K. Pringle.
London & New York: Routledge, 2007.

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amazing flexibility and staying power by being able to accommodate
disagreement.
Treatment of women in halakha: The plurality of opinion and interpretation
that constitutes halakha also applies to its treatment of women. The attitude
of halakha toward women can be characterized as ambivalent rather than
monolithic. The input of women into the halakhic process is rare, and it is
almost always men who have the authority to make halakhic decisions. In
addition, social and cultural needs are major factors in determining the stance
of halakha. The status of women is caused in part by the worldview of the
males who have created halakha, whose modes of thought have led to a
mind-set which is unfavorable to women. This may stem from the fact that
the deity is usually expressed in masculine terms, with God often described
metaphorically as a husband or male parent.
Place of men in Judaism: The husband has control over his wife, and Jewish
law objectifies that control in legislation. In biblical law man is master over
woman and women are perceived as chattel. The husband is the master
[ba'al], whose permission to rule over his wife originates in Genesis 3:16,
where God tells the first woman that her husband shall rule over her. The
word ba'al implies ownership as well as lordship. A man gets his wife by
taking and possessing her and if she fails to please him, he can divorce her
(Deut. 24:1). In post-biblical times, a woman is acquired in three ways: with
money or something of nominal value, with a marriage contract, or by sexual
intercourse (Mishnah. Kiddushin. 1:1). In marriage, the man is responsible
for his wife’s physical (food, clothing and housing) and emotional needs. It
is the man, not the woman who is commanded to pro-create. He is the agent,
and she the receiver.
Often the referent of person and personhood is Man (adam or ish).
Since Hebrew is a gendered language, the plural men (anashim) can be
construed to include women, but very often is not. A man daily recites in the
Morning Prayer (shaharit), “We thank you for not being created a woman,”
whereas a woman says, “we thank you for creating us in your will.”
Masculinity in Judaism: “The heroic man (gibor) is the one who conquers
his urges (kovesh et yitzro)” (Ethics of the Fathers 4:1). This repudiation of
brute strength can be applied to the classic role model of the husband who
spends years of studying in the academy (beit midrash or yeshiva). Sacrifice
of family life for the sake of learning is normative. Intellectual and spiritual
pursuits, not physical prowess are the cultural ideals.
See also: Jewish Masculinities; Mensch.

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 702
CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE: DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE, behavior used by one partner to control the

other; it can include verbal, emotional, sexual, and physical abuse and cuts
across social strata. Although men can be abused, most victims are women.
Children in abusive households are likely to have been abused or to have
witnessed abuse. In recent decades, the term "domestic violence" has
replaced "wife beating" or "wife battering"; such behavior is also referred to
as "relationship violence," "domestic abuse," and "violence against a
spouse."
Domestic violence is not a new issue among Jews. Although the
word ‫( מכה‬strike, blow, hit, beat) appears in the Bible, it is not associated with
wife beating until talmudic times and even then it is not overtly discussed.
The most useful source in the study of wife beating is responsa literature
(ranging from geonic times to the present). There are a variety of attitudes
towards domestic violence found in these texts, with some decisors who
declare it unlawful while others justify it under certain circumstances.
Gratuitous abuse, striking a wife without a reason, is unlawful and forbidden
by all. However, the attitude of rabbinic sources toward perceived "bad
wives" is ambivalent, and wife beating is occasionally sanctioned if it is for
the purpose of chastisement or education.
Medieval Attitudes in the Muslim World
*Zemah ben Paltoi, gaon of Pumbedita (872–90), allowed a man to flog his
wife if she was guilty of assault. Rabbi *Yehudai b. Nahman (Yehudai Gaon,
757–61) wrote that: "…when her husband enters the house, she must rise and
cannot sit down until he sits, and she should never raise her voice against her
husband. Even if he hits her she has to remain silent, because that is how
chaste women behave" (Ozar ha-Ge'onim, Ket. 169–70). The ninth-century
gaon of Sura, *Sar Shalom b. Boaz (d. c. 859 or 864), distinguished between
an assault on a woman by her husband and an assault on her by a stranger.
The gaon of Sura's opinion was that the husband's assault on his wife should
be judged less severely, since the husband had authority over his wife (Ozar
ha-Ge'onim, BK 62:198).
In his Mishneh Torah, Moses *Maimonides (1135–1204)
recommended beating a bad wife as an acceptable form of discipline: "A wife
who refuses to perform any kind of work that she is obligated to do, may be

702
Graetz, Naomi. "Domestic Violence." Encyclopaedia Judaica. Eds. Michael
Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik. Vol. 5. 2nd ed. Detroit: Macmillan Reference
USA, 2007. 739-741. 22 vols. Gale Virtual Reference Library
-597-
compelled to perform it, even by scourging her with a rod" (Ishut 21:10). The
responsa of R. Solomon b. Abraham *Adret (Rashba, 1235–1310) include
examples of husbands who occasionally or habitually use force; few of these
men are brought to court for beating a wife in a moment of anger. However,
there are instances in Rashba's responsa of wives who considered the rabbis
as allies against violent husbands (Adret, vol. 5, no. 264; vol. 7, no. 477; vol.
8, no. 102; vol. 4, no. 113).
Medieval Attitudes in Ashkenaz
Responsa from 12th- and 13th-century France and Germany express a
rejection of wife beating without any qualifications in a Jewish society in
which women held high social and economic status. This attitude is reflected
in a proposed takkanah (regulation supplementing the talmudic halakha) of
R. Perez b. Elijah, who believed that "one who beats his wife is in the same
category as one who beats a stranger"; he decreed that "any Jew may be
compelled on application of his wife or one of her near relatives to undertake
by a herem not to beat his wife in anger or cruelty so as to disgrace her, for
that is against Jewish practice." If the husband refused to obey, the court
could assign her maintenance according to her station and according to the
custom of the place where she dwelled. It is not clear whether this takkanah
ever received serious consideration.
Some Ashkenazi rabbis considered battering as grounds for forcing
a man to give a get. Rabbi *Meir b. Baruch of Rothenburg (Maharam, c.
1215–1293) and R. *Simhah b. Samuel of Speyer (d. 1225–1230) wrote that
a man has to honor his wife more than himself and that is why his wife and
not his fellow man should be his greater concern. R. Simhah argued that like
Eve, "the mother of all living" (Gen. 3:20), a wife is given to a man for living,
not for suffering. She trusts him and thus it is worse if he hits her than if he
hits a stranger. R. Simhah lists all the possible sanctions. If these are of no
avail, he not only recommends a compelled divorce, but allows one that is
forced on the husband by gentile authorities. This is highly unusual since
rabbis rarely endorse forcing a man to divorce his wife and it is even rarer to
suggest that the non-Jewish community adjudicate internal Jewish affairs.
Although many Ashkenazi rabbis quoted his opinions with approval, they
were overturned by most authorities in later generations, starting with R.
Israel b. Pethahiah *Isserlein (1390–1460) and R. *David b. Solomon Ibn
Abi Zimra (Radbaz, 1479–1573). In his responsum, Radbaz wrote that R.
Simhah "exaggerated on the measures to be taken when writing that [the
wifebeater] should be forced by non-Jews (akum) to divorce his wife …
because [if she remarries] this could result in the offspring [of the illegal
marriage, according to Radbaz] being declared illegitimate (mamzer)" (part
4, 157). Sixteenth-century responsa seem to acknowledge that wife beating
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is wrong, yet they avoid releasing the woman from the bad marriage. These
evasive positions vis-à-vis relief for a beaten wife are part of halakha and
rest on the husband's dominant position in marriage.
Contemporary Perspectives
For many years there was a myth that domestic violence among Jewish
families was infrequent. However, there is much data demonstrating that
domestic abuse is a significant and under-recognized behavior in Jewish
communities in Israel and the Diaspora. Jewish women typically take twice
as long to leave battering relationships than other women for fear that they
will lose their children and because they are aware of the difficulties in
obtaining a get, the Jewish divorce decree which is dependent on the abusive
husband's consent. The major halakhic stance in the early 21st century
continues to support the central role and authority of the husband and
domestic abuse is not automatic grounds for Jewish divorce. Rabbinic courts
tend to favor men who promise to reform their behavior (shelom bayit) and
often force women to return to their vicious husbands or lose their rights to
maintenance and property and custody of children. An abused woman whose
husband refuses to give her a divorce is considered an *agunah, a chained or
anchored woman.
The problem of domestic violence in Israel surfaced in the media during the
first Gulf War in 1991 when soldiers were not mobilized and husbands and
wives (and their children) were forced to be together in sealed rooms.
Beginning in the 1990s the rate of husbands murdering wives spiraled
upwards in Israel and this trend has continued, with over 200 spousal murders
reported by 2002.
Jewish Women International (JWI) is among contemporary
organizations addressing the plight of victims of domestic abuse. It has
developed resources for Jewish women and an information guide for rabbis.
JWI coordinated international conferences on Jewish domestic violence
(2003 and 2005) addressing this behavior in the U.S., Israel, South America,
and the FSU. An inter-denominational group, the Jewish Institute Supporting
an Abuse-Free Environment (J-SAFE), promotes a Jewish community in
which all institutions and organizations conduct themselves responsibly and
effectively in addressing the wrongs of domestic violence. Its goal is to
promote universal standards for training and policies that prevent abuse, that
ensure that victims are treated supportively and appropriately, and that
perpetrators are held accountable, thereby promoting a safer environment for
all children and adults. In recent years, some rabbinic authorities, shocked by
the growing murder rate, have made initial efforts to address the situation of
women in abusive marriages.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
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D. Gardsbane (ed.), Healing and Wholeness: A Resource Guide on Domestic
Abuse in the Jewish Community (2002); N. Graetz, Silence is Deadly:
Judaism Confronts Wifebeating (1998); A. Grossman, Pious and Rebellious:
Jewish Women in Europe in the Middle Ages (Heb., 2001; Eng., 2004); C.G.
Kaufman, Sins of Omission (2003); M. Scarf, Battered Jewish Wives: Case
Studies in the Response to Rage (1988); J.R. Spitzer and Julie Ringold, When
Love in Not Enough: Spousal Abuse in Rabbinic and Contemporary Judaism
(1985, 1991, 1995); M.A. Straus and Richard J. Gelles, "Societal Change and
Change in Family Violence from 1975 to 1985 as Revealed by Two National
Surveys," in: Journal of Marriage and the Family, 48 (1986), 465–479; A.
Twerski, The Shame Born of Silence: Spouse Abuse in the Jewish Community
(1996).

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Section Six: AN INTERVIEW AND 9 REVIEWS

I decided to include this section for posterity. Seriously, I never felt that my
books got the serious attention it deserved and I think that some of these
reviews explain it. The most egregious review is of course Joel
Wolowelsky’s and I guess I should not have been as surprised or so shocked
by it—when he sent me an advance copy and said “it wasn’t personal”. In
going through my files, I found what an anonymous reviewer wrote about a
review essay by Aharon Feldman entitled: “Halakhic Feminism or Feminist
703
Halakha” . It related to Michah Halpern and Chana Safrai’s Jewish Legal
Writings by Women, an edited book which I own and respect for its high level
of scholarship. All of the essays in the book are by prominent Orthodox
women. The author in his/her anonymous “Review Essay: Reviewing
Critically or Critical Reviewing” writes:
“The ideological base for such reviews bears the unmistakable imprint
of contemporary right-wing Orthodox ideology, whose overarching
principle is that virtually all aspects of modern society constitute an
existential threat to Torah and the Jewish community. It is the matrix
in which secular education has been converted from enlightenment to
avodah zarah; religious Zionism from idealistic love of Eretz Yisrael
to perikat ol; and fellowship with non-Orthodox Jews from ahavat
Yisrael to legitimization of heterodoxy. So deeply has the principle of
anti-modernity been imbedded in the fabric of contemporary right-
wing Orthodox life that anyone who dares challenge these principles
invites upon himself or herself a reaction that does not exclude
obloquy, ridicule or charges of apikorsut.”[bold mine]
The anonymous reviewer suggests that the author has not presented us with
genuine criticism” but used his review as “a tool to denigrate women's
learning”. S/He writes that the author is “clearly antagonistic to the fact of
the book.”
Once I read this, I was better able to understand the animus behind
Wolowelsky’s review, who belittles my book by writing: “The wife-beating
‘study’ is, then, but a bit of unproductive sensationalism designed to set the
stage for Graetz's discussion of divorce.” One thing that he got right was my
agenda: which was to connect the rabbinic attitude toward wifebeating with
the plight of the agunah. But note the word study in quotes!

703
Tradition: A Journal of Orthodox Jewish Thought Vol. 33, No. 2 (Winter 1999),
pp. 61-79.
-601-
 I guess I should not get overly upset about this, but if the interested
reader wants to see that this is still a problematic issue, they should go read
704
the popular blog Hirhurim and see the discussion of my work and see how
controversial it still was 7 years ago.
Now having vented, I should point out that the rest of the reviews are
really fine and make good critical points. I have not printed them all, but they
give the reader a good sense of my book and the problematics of dealing with
such a touchy subject as wifebeating in the Jewish tradition. I have included
a review essay of my books Unlocking the Garden and S/He Created them
by Fran Snyder. It was the only review, but it really “got” the subject.
Finally, since I self-published my novel, it wasn’t sent out to reviewers, but
Jack Riemer asked for a review copy and sent me his review by email. It must
have helped to sell the books for I have very few copies left.

704
I see that the Hirhurim blog has now moved to a different site, namely
http://www.torahmusings.com/2012/06/wife-beating-in-jewish-law/ AND
http://www.torahmusings.com/2012/06/wife-beating-in-jewish-law-ii/
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CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO: COPY OF AN E-MAIL INTERVIEW
WITH NAOMI GRAETZ
705
Questions by Marlena Thompson (Thu, 15 Apr 1999)

1. What prompted you to embark on this project, this, your "fourth child," as
your children call it. Do you have personal acquaintances who have been
affected by the problem, or was your interest primarily academic?

MY INTEREST WAS PRIMARILY ACADEMIC--HOWEVER, IT WAS

TRIGGERED BY THE REQUEST OF THE MASLAN GROUP. SEE THE
PREFACE TO MY BOOK.

2. In what way, if any, has the writing of this book changed you or your
attitudes toward others in the community?

I NOW VIEW RELATIONSHIPS WITH MUCH MORE SUSPICION

THAN I DID BEFORE. I AM MORE SENSITIVE TO HUSBANDS WHO
'PUT DOWN' THEIR WIVES; WHO MAKE JOKES AT OTHER
WOMEN'S EXPENSE--WHO CONTROL THE PURSE STRINGS OR
WHO DOMINATE DISCUSSIONS AND DON'T LET OTHERS
(ESPECIALLY WOMEN) INTO THE CONVERSATION--OR WHO
WINK OR BELITTLE THEM WHEN THEY DO. I HAVE LESS
PATIENCE WITH THOSE WHO CLAIM THAT THERE ARE NO
PROBLEMS IN THE COMMUNITY AND THAT THIS IS ONLY IN
"OTHER" COMMUNITIES.

3. While working on this book, did you gain any unexpected insights?

THAT'S A PRETTY BROAD QUESTION--BUT OF COURSE I DID.

DON'T FORGET I WAS WORKING ON IT FOR A TEN YEAR PERIOD-
-AND I DID A LOT OF GROWING (UNFORTUNATELY WEIGHT
WISE AS WELL) UP, MOVING FROM MY MID FORTIES TO MY MID
FIFTIES. I THINK MY MAJOR INSIGHT IS HOW HUMAN NATURE
HAS NOT CHANGED--WE MAY CLAIM TO BE MORE
ENLIGHTENED (AND PERHAPS SOME OF US ARE, OR THINK WE

705
This interview was for the article she wrote, entitled: “Author Explodes the
Myth About Wifebeating,” for the Washington Jewish Week (June 3, 1999), p. 23.
Unfortunately, I do not have a copy available, nor is it on-line.
-603-
ARE) --BUT BASICALLY WE ARE ALL JUST VARIATIONS ON A
THEME. I THINK MANY PEOPLE WANT TO FORGET THAT THERE
ARE PROBLEMS OUT THERE--THAT THERE IS A LOT OF
MISOGYNY IN THE WORLD--AND IN THE JEWISH WORLD AS
WELL (THOUGHT NOT NECESSARILY MORE) AND THAT RABBIS
ARE NO BETTER THAN OTHER PEOPLE--NOR ARE JEWS--WE ARE
ALL HUMAN UNDER THE SKIN. THIS DOES NOT MAKE ME SAD--
IT'S JUST A FACT!

4. In your book, you propose a takkanah, i.e., a halachic amendment to

redress the imbalance in Jewish marriages. How likely is it that such an
halachic amendment will ever be realized?

I DON'T THINK IT IS LIKELY--AND THAT IS BECAUSE THE JEWISH

(AND REST OF THE) WORLD IS MOVING TOWARDS THE RIGHT--
THIS MEANS THAT THERE WILL BE MORE STRICTURES ON
WOMEN TO MOVE BACK INTO THE HOME--AND I THINK THE
BACKLASH IS JUST STARTING. AT THE SAME TIME, THERE ARE
MANY MODERN ORTHODOX WOMEN--WHO ARE ABR’s (ALL
BUT....); WHO CANNOT TAKE IT ANYMORE--AND I WONDER
WHERE THEY WILL GO, WHEN THEY REALIZE THAT THEIR
RABBIS PREFER TO LOOK AT THE "BIG PICTURE"--THE TOTALITY
OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE--RATHER THAN WORRY ABOUT A FEW
INDIVIDUAL WOMEN'S CONCERNS.

Are there conditions under which it is more likely for such an amendment to
be realized?

PERHAPS THE CONSERVATIVE MOVEMENT MIGHT DO

SOMETHING ABOUT IT AND IF THE MODERN ORTHODOX BREAK
AWAY ON WOMEN'S ISSUES--PERHAPS.

5. In your opinion, to what extent do models of biblical patriarchs

endangering their women to further their own ends, or save their own skins -
- (such as Abraham and Isaac on their respective sojourns through Egypt with
their wives, or Lot, who, I was taught, behaved as a "Baal Tsaddik" when he
offered up his daughters because it showed to what extent he valued
"hachnasat orchim") influence modern Jewish thought?

I DON'T HAVE IN FRONT OF ME, HAYIM NACHMAN BIALIK'S

FAMOUS POEM ABOUT THE KISHINEV POGROM IN WHICH
-604-
WOMEN WERE RAPED WHILE THEIR HUSBAND'S WERE HIDING--
-YOU MIGHT WANT TO LOOK FOR IT--BECAUSE YOU CAN MAKE
YOUR OWN ANALOGIES FROM THAT--I'M JUST HINTING. I THINK
THAT THE IDEAL OF "WOMEN AND CHILDREN FIRST" WHEN THE
BOAT IS SINKING IS NOT NECESSARILY THE JEWISH IDEAL--AND
THAT MAY STEM FROM THE FACT THAT THEY ARE REGARDED
AS PROPERTY--BUT THEN, DON'T FORGET THE TITANIC IN
WHICH THE PRIVILEGED MALES PUSHED THEIR WAY ONTO THE
BOATS, WHILE THE JEWISH ELDERLY COUPLE STAYED BEHIND
IN THEIR STATEROOM HOLDING HANDS. (I'M TALKING MOVIE,
NOT REALITY). I HAVEN'T REALLY ANSWERED THE QUESTION--
I THINK THAT THERE IS AN ATTITUDE THAT STILL REGARDS
WOMEN AS WIVES AND MOTHERS AND NOT AS OF INTRINSIC
WORTH--WHEN PUSH COMES TO SHOVE, IT'S VERY OFTEN THE
WIFE/MOTHER WHO IS BLAMED WHEN THINGS GO WRONG IN
THE HOME.

6. What have some of the reactions to your book been thus far? Have some
rabbis reacted as if your discussion is "bich'lal" a hilul Hashem? [my
translation, even a desecration of God’s name.] Have there been different
rabbinical reactions in Israel than in the US?

WHEN I SPEAK ABOUT THE BOOK THE REACTIONS ARE QUITE

GOOD. THE BOOK REVIEWS OUT NOW (SOME I'VE SEEN PRIOR TO
PUBLICATION) SEEM TO RECOGNIZE THE BOOK'S WORTH AND
UNDERSTAND THE POINTS I'M TRYING TO GET ACROSS.
HOWEVER--THERE ARE SOME RABBIS WHO WILL NOT BE IN A
FORUM WITH ME (FOR INSTANCE NONE OF THE ORTHODOX
RABBIS IN VANCOUVER AGREED TO BE ON A PANEL WITH ME--
SO IT WILL CONSIST OF ME, THE REFORM AND THE
CONSERVATIVE RABBIS.) THERE HAS BEEN NO RABBINICAL
REACTION IN ISRAEL YET, BECAUSE THE BOOK IS NOT IN
HEBREW--AND EVEN IF IT WERE THE RABBIS WOULD NOT READ
IT--I AM WILLING TO BET ON THAT.

7. What have been some of the reactions of women who have read this book?

VERY FAVORABLE--ESPECIALLY THOSE WHO ARE IN SOCIAL

WORK, IN JEWISH STUDIES, OR WHO HAVE AN ACQUAINTANCE
WITH THE TOPIC. I HAVE GOTTEN SOME VERY NICE FEEDBACK

-605-
WHICH I TREASURE FROM WOMEN WHO HAVE BEEN ABUSED BY
THEIR HUSBANDS, MENTALLY AND PHYSICALLY.

8. How relevant is this topic to the "modern, secular Jewish woman" living
in the US today?

VERY. IF SHE DECIDES TO MARRY IN THE JEWISH COMMUNITY

AND HAS A JEWISH HUSBAND AND HAS JEWISH KIDS (THEY ARE
JEWISH IF SHE IS), SHE CANNOT AVOID THE PROBLEMS
CONCERNED WITH THE RABBINATE--YOU NEVER KNOW. THE
FACT THAT THERE IS CIVIL DIVORCE OR CIVIL MARRIAGE, DOES
NOT MEAN THAT IT WILL NEVER BE A CONCERN--WHAT IF SHE,
OR HER CHILDREN MOVE TO ISRAEL--HER JEWISHNESS; HER
DIVORCE ETC. MIGHT BE CHALLENGED.

9. Jewish spousal abuse has been addressed more frequently lately than
before, reflecting the heightened concerned about domestic violence in
general. What measurable changes do you predict will take place in the near
future? -- What do you predict might happen if halachic changed are not
implemented?

I HOPE THAT THERE WILL BE MORE SHELTERS FOR JEWISH

WOMEN--THEN IT WILL BE HARD FOR THE RABBIS TO SAY THAT
THIS DOES NOT HAPPEN IN OUR COMMUNITY. I THINK THAT
THERE IS A FUSE BOX. IF THERE IS NO CHANGE, THERE ARE
GOING TO BE A LOT OF DISAFFECTED JEWISH WOMEN--NOT A
VERY HEALTHY SITUATION WHEN 50% OF OUR POPULATION IS
FEMALE. PERHAPS WOMEN WILL AVOID GETTING MARRIED--OR
WILL DEMAND PRE-NUPTIAL AGREEMENTS--OR START
LEARNING ABOUT THEIR RIGHTS AND THEN START ASKING
QUESTIONS AND DEMANDING ANSWERS--WHO KNOWS? THAT
MIGHT CHANGE THE FACE OF THE RABBINCATE--I'M JUST
SPECULATING "OUT LOUD".
10. In your opinion, did the fact that you're living in Israel make the writing
of this book more urgent, because there is no separation of religion and state?

ABSOLUTELY!

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CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE: “SOURCE FOR THE GOOSE,”
706
REVIEW BY LESLIE COHEN

Naomi Graetz has researched and written about a highly problematic aspect
of Jewish law. In Silence is Deadly she presents the controversial data clearly,
exposing many unpalatable facts.
It may be shocking to those who were previously unaware of
halachic tradition concerning wifebeating, or disconcerting to those already
familiar with it, to read that many rabbis who condoned wifebeating "were
among the most central and influential of all rabbinic authorities." But,
fortunately - as Graetz repeatedly stresses - Halakha is not monolithic and
there have been amendments in every generation. Her book discusses the
varieties of rabbinic attitudes towards a man's physical abuse of his wife, and
proposes an urgently needed amendment with respect to domestic violence.
A basic premise of Graetz's carefully constructed text is that
metaphor shapes thought and behavior. Specifically, the metaphor of Israel
as a woman, with God as "her" husband, underlies the relationships between
Jewish husbands and wives. Graetz traces how the marriage metaphor has
persisted from the ancient prophets and commentators into the present, citing
prophets, rabbis and lawmakers as diverse as Hosea, the Gaonim, the
Tosafists, Maimonides, Solomon Luria, and Israeli rabbis Shlomo Riskin and
Ovadia Joseph. She demonstrates how the philosophical underpinnings of
Judaism have determined Jewish cultural norms, and how they can be
witnessed in everyday behavior. The marriage metaphor's implicitly
patriarchal to bias is seen in the connection between metaphor and Halakha.
Graetz describes Halakha as "much more pervasive than an ordinary
legal system, for it prescribed norms not only of legal behavior, but also of
ethical behavior and standards. It molded the major institutions of Jewish life,
including marriage and the family." She writes that, behind the marriage
metaphor is the implicit and shared "assumption that God is an aggressive,
domineering being who is master over His passive, female, adoring people,"
and that "the ancient metaphors of marriage...take for granted the patriarchal
view of women's subservient role." This attitude is certainly inconsistent with
contemporary concepts of sexual equality.
Graetz reveals that there is a great deal of ambivalence and ambiguity
in Halakha with respect to wifebeating. Although a man is not allowed to
embarrass or harm his wife, some very prominent rabbis have advocated

706
Leslie Cohen, “Source for the Goose,” The Jerusalem Post (December 24,
1999): B12
-607-
physically punishing a wife who has violated Jewish law. It is appalling for
a contemporary reader to discover what some of the most revered and
influential rabbis and scholars have written about wifebeating.
For example, Maimonides -possibly the greatest talmudic interpreter
of all time - held that "a woman who does not do her work may be forced to
do so with a stick." Solomon Luria writes that a man may beat his wife - even
to death, if "she transgresses the laws of the Torah...even for transgressing a
minor negative prohibition." And Samuel ha-Nagid - "one of the most
admired figures of Spanish Jewry" - suggests that a husband should "hit [his]
wife without hesitation, if she attempts to dominate [him] like a man and
raises her head (too high)." Graetz describes the development of rabbinic
opinion, presenting the responsa concerning violence towards women in
three categories: acceptance, rejection, and evasion of the question.
To be fair, the cultural milieu in which Halakha developed must be
taken into consideration. The rabbis quoted above were living in Diaspora
communities in which physical violence was widespread, and wifebeating
was common. Additionally, during the Middle Ages, husbands were often
"much older than their wives and acted toward their child-brides as if they
were children and had to be educated." And "education," in those days,
included physical punishment.
But despite whatever historical and sociocultural considerations may
aid in understanding the "inherent lack of symmetry in the status of husbands
and wives," the problem of domestic violence in contemporary society calls
for a fresh approach. Graetz examines the data through the filter of feminism,
as well as "the norms of halakha and the metaphors of Jewish society."
Declaring that wifebeating "is inseparable from woman's status in marriage,"
Graetz proposes solutions that are consistent with Halakha. She cites
alternatives ranging from conservative measures - including prenuptial
agreements, obligatory divorce, and rabbinic annulment of marriage - to
more radical actions, such as civil sanctions, vigilante punishment of abusive
husbands, and civil disobedience by women.
Graetz concludes her book with a proposed amendment, namely, that
"the husband no longer have the sole power to end the marriage." Instead,
she proposes that the husband and wife should come to "a mutual agreement
in which an authorized beit din will sit down with the couple and arbitrate
terms, which will be mutually agreed upon."
The introduction by Elliot N. Dorff - professor of philosophy at the
University of Judaism in Los Angeles, vice-chair of the Conservative
Movement's Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, and author of its
rabbinic ruling on family violence -stresses the urgency of grappling with the
problem of wifebeating. He writes that Silence is Deadly "should be on the
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shelf of every rabbi and, indeed, every Jew pre-pared to confront this
situation and remedy it."
In an era when domestic violence has, regrettabl, become a
household phrase, Graetz's presentation of the facts could facilitate a much-
needed amendment that would be acceptable to all. Contemporary Jewish
scholars, social workers, and lay people of all religious streams will benefit
from reading this carefully researched and lucidly written volume.

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-610-
 707
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR: REVIEW BY TOBY MYERS

Letty Cottin Pogrebin, when her book, Deborah, Golda, and Me (1991) was
published, talked about melding her feminism and her Judaism at the Jewish
Book Fair in Houston. I felt the same when I was invited to be on the Jewish
Advisory Committee of the Center for the Prevention of Sexual and Domestic
Violence. After our first meeting in 1994, some of us stayed on for the Jewish
Caucus of the American Psychological Association. At that meeting, I had
requested a roommate and I had the good fortune of sharing a room with
Naomi Graetz. She told me that she was writing a book about Judaism and
domestic violence. I happily anticipated the book's publication. At that time,
there was very little on the topic. Scarf's (1988) rather primitive initial foray
came early. Spitzer’s (1985) treatise, originally her master's thesis for
rabbinic ordination, was the best known and most widely circulated. Spitzer’s
was certainly the most comprehensive work theretofore.
When I was asked to review the Graetz book for Violence Against
Women, I was honored. The honor turned to dismay because I found myself
having a hard time trying to slog my way through the book. I found myself,
like many women when things are not as they should be, thinking the fault,
dear Brutus, is not in the stars, but in ourselves. Here, Graetz has written this
important book, and my background is deficient in being able fully to
appreciate it. Then I thought to myself, "Wait a minute, here. You are not a
rabbi, but you are a Jew, albeit from Amarillo, Texas. You have a long history
in domestic violence work, so some of your credentials are in order. What is
the book's merit?"
The book is filled with information and history. It is so well
researched that Graetz corrects colleagues who have made erroneous
statements in earlier works. The book has sections on formative laws and
principles in support of wifebeating and opposed to wifebeating. Graetz
presents examples of rabbinic acceptance of lawful--that is, justifiable--
wifebeating by those who condone its being done for good reason. She also
presents arguments she found on the rejection of wifebeating. She further
discusses modern attitudes toward wifebeating. In her section on denial and
apologetics, she shows how difficult it is for Jews to come to terms that
wifebeating exists in the Jewish community.
Graetz, in stories from the Bible, lays groundwork for how it is easy
to be violent to women in a society in which women have little power or
value. As she analyzed the responses of the rabbis, those responses had a ring

707
Toby Myers, Violence Against Women 6:3 (March, 2000): 332-334
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so similar to men who come to a batterer's program that it was unsettling. If
Jews do it, we do not do it as bad or as often as others. If Jews do it, we
learned it from non-Jews. If Jews do it, we do it for good reason--she may
need to be corrected or she was disrespectful and rebellious. Some deny the
problem outright and depict Jewish families in a romanticized version. Why,
after all, do Jewish men not make the best husbands and non-Jewish women
want to marry them? When we Jews look critically at ourselves, we are
accused of internalized oppression.
Graetz discusses the problem of the law. The law of the State of Israel
gives jurisdiction in matters of personal status to Orthodox rabbinical courts.
All matters of marriage and divorce are adjudicated according to halakha
(Jewish law). The judges are male Orthodox rabbis. Sometimes, men, as the
ones who can initiate divorce, will not do so, and the Israeli rabbinate rarely
exercises the power to order them to do so. This is not as much a problem in
the United States because church and state are separate, but in Israel there is
a great problem of what is called Agunot or chained women whose husbands
will not give them a divorce. Rating the community's interest in family
stability and obedience to rabbinic law as more important than the suffering
of an individual has allowed men who beat their wives to also keep them
under their control. In her suggestions for solutions to the problem of Jewish
divorce, Graetz wants decision-makers to change Jewish law (halakha) so
that battering is forbidden in an unambiguous way. At the end of her book,
Graetz proposes a takkanah (a halakhic amendment) that alleviates the
problems of the Agunot by allowing women the power to initiate divorce,
and she redresses the power imbalance found in traditional Jewish marriages.
Tolerating inequity hampers the message of the Torah and promotes
injustice.
I heard Graetz speak about the book when she was in Houston. She
was the scholar-in-residence at Congregation Brith Shalom in Houston, and
she gave a talk and a book signing at a local bookstore under the sponsorship
of Shalom Bayit, Houston's Jewish Network Against Domestic Abuse whose
membership is primarily female. When she talked about the book, she was
organized, knowledgeable, interesting, passionate, and spellbinding. The
Shalom Bayit audience was supportive and grateful. At the congregation, she
was challenged vigorously by a sociology professor congregant and others in
the audience. It was exactly what happens to many of us who work on behalf
of battered women when we go to speak to general audiences. She had all the
information, but it was happening to her.
So when all is said and done, where does this book belong? For me,
it was a lot easier to hear Graetz than read her. I found myself wandering
through references with which I was not familiar. If a reader wants
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information to study the chronology and etiology of wifebeating in Judaism,
this is the book. However, I think the best audience for the book is in the
curriculum in rabbinical schools, Jewish religious programs, and Jewish
studies programs. Many rabbis have limited knowledge about wifebeating
insofar as it exists in the Jewish community. A Houston rabbi reported to one
of our Shalom Bayit members that he knew a lot about domestic abuse: He
had gone on ride-alongs with the police. The evidence that wifebeating exists
in the Jewish community is incontrovertible. When rabbis have
comprehensive information such as Graetz provides, they can become more
effective in assisting congregant victims and helping to hold accountable and
change congregant perpetrators, developing protocols and establishing
policies and procedures for the synagogues and the Jewish community.
Graetz's book is evidence of an avalanche of change beginning to take place.
In recent feminist conferences in Israel, one radical proposal was to expunge
the element of kinyan, acquisition of the woman. Two female Orthodox
experts attacked the halakhic assumption that women prefer having an
abusive marriage rather than no marriage. Prenuptial agreements providing a
basis for court-ordered divorce at the woman's initiative were called for.
Feminist analysis of Jewish texts is penetrating Israeli teacher education.
Religious women (Graetz, formerly from New York and a resident of Israel,
is the wife of a rabbi) are part of this revolution. Religious women who can
provide spiritual leadership and also decide matters of law by organizing can
bring the changes along.
What has Graetz's book inspired me to do? Our synagogue is having
a course on Rabbi Nachman of Bratislav taught, incidentally, by the new,
young, conservative female assistant rabbi at our synagogue. Maybe I will
take it. To Graetz, we can say, "Yasher koach!"

Toby Myers
Aid to Victims of Domestic Abuse—
The PIVOT Project
Houston, Texas

REFERENCES

Pogrebin, L. C. (1991). Deborah, Golda, and me. Being female and Jewish
in America. New York: Crown.
Scarf, M. (1988). Battered Jewish wives: Case studies in the response to
rage. Lewiston, Queenston: Edwin Mellen Press.

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Spitzer, J. (1985). When love is not enough: Spousal abuse in rabbinic and
contemporary Judaism. New York: National Federation of Temple
Sisterhoods.

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 708
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE: REVIEW BY RABBI JACK RIEMER
Naomi Graetz says that when she first became interested in the topic of
wifebeating amongst Jews ten years or so ago, she read all three of the books
on the subject that were available in her university library. Today, there are
many many more. A subject that we all denied and pretended to ourselves
did not exist has now become an open topic. In many cities in Israel and in
America there are now shelters for abused women and organizations that are
concerned with alleviating their plight. And so, this book by Naomi Graetz
will find a more receptive audience that it would have some years ago.
The thesis of this book is shocking. We assume that Judaism is
against wifebeating-period. We have all grown up on the cliché that Jewish
men make better husbands because they don't drink and they don't beat their
wives. And even if individual Jews may do these things, we are sure that
Judaism doesn't countenance such behavior. And yet, Naomi Graetz makes
the case that there is wifebeating in the tradition, that there is even legal
support for it in the tradition, and that there is a metaphor within the tradition
that is at least in part the source for such behavior. The metaphor is that
marriage is a property relationship, that the husbands owns his wife. With
meticulous care and with extraordinary bikiyut-familiarity-with the Talmudic
sources and the responsa literature, Ms. Graetz shows that the tradition is not
so clear and simple on this subject as we thought. There are authorities,
including such distinguished ones as Rabbi Yehudai Gaon, Rabbi Shmuel
Hanagid and Maimonides who permit husbands to beat their wives.
However, the majority of the Sages have declared that wifebeating is
unconditionally forbidden. The three medieval sages who are the most
articulate spokesmen of this view are Rabbi Simhah ben Samuel of Speyer,
Rabbi Meir of Rothenburg and Rabbi Peretz ben Elijah of Corbell. They each
condemn wifebeating in the strongest of terms.
Ms. Graetz analyses the teachings of those scholars who permitted
and who forbade, and then she considers those who responded with denial or
with apologetics. These are the authorities who hid their heads in the sand
and said that such things simply don't happen by Jews. And who, when they
were confronted with undeniable facts, wrung their hands and said that they
wished that something could be done.
As Rabbi Elliot Dorff puts it in his introduction to this book,
wringing one's hands and wishing something could be done is a copout. It is

708
Rabbi Jack Riemer, Jewish Journal, Boca Ratan: 53-54 (April 2000). He is the
spiritual leader of Congregation Beth Tikvah in Boca Raton, and the founder of the
National Rabbinic Network.
-615-
worse than that, it is a sin. For if the Torah is meant to be a guide to decent
living, then to tolerate evil behavior and do nothing is to bring disgrace on
the name of God and on the Torah.
Therefore, Naomi Graetz ends her book with a call for action. She
proposes nothing less than a Takkanah, the enactment of a new law, that
would make wifebeating immediate grounds for divorce. She calls for an
abrogation, once and for all, of the system in which only the husband can
issue a Jewish divorce, a system that has caused untold anguish to agunot and
to victims of mistreatment for centuries. She does so in the name of justice
and in the name of Judaism itself, for a system that has such inequity built
into it is a Hillul Hashem, a desecration of God's name.
This book which for the first ten chapters has been scholarly and
dispassionate, listing the various positions that are found within the tradition,
explaining them in the light of their historical background, and evaluating
them with erudition and objectivity, rises to a new tone of moral indignation
and insistence on justice in its last chapter. It is an embarrassment to the
Halachic community that this book has been almost dismissed out of hand,
709
ignored simply because it is written by a scholar who is not Orthodox , as
if its cry for justice and for preventing the continued disgrace of the Torah,
required no response.
Perhaps the most significant thing about this book is that it is
written from within the tradition, that it is written by someone who cares
enough about Halakha to study the sources in detail and who wants to right
a grievous wrong, not only for the sake of the women who are the victims,
but for the sake of the integrity of the Torah itself. And perhaps the saddest
thing about this book is the 'deadly silence' with which it has been met. There
have been few, if any, reviews of it published within the Orthodox
community. It is as if these people believe that, just as wifebeating can be
ignored and denied, and that if you do that, it will go away, so the cry for
attention which this book utters on behalf of women and on behalf of kvod
hatorah can also be ignored and that if you do that, it too will go away.
What is more likely to happen is that Jews will go away-from a
system that they feel is indifferent to their pain and unconcerned with their
plight. The test of how serious the Halachic authorities of our time are about
the moral issues of our time will be reflected in whether the challenge in this
book will be taken up and dealt with or simply ignored. Judging by the
reaction to this book so far, those who are hopeful that the Halakha is capable
of responding to the moral issues of our time have little reason to be

709
I assume Riemer is referring to Wolowelsky’s review, see below.
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optimistic. But if there are people out there who are not merely secularists
who care about the plight of women and not merely Halakhists who wish that
something could be done but who are too paralyzed by fear or rigidity to go
beyond wishing, if there is a community out there that cares about the pain
of women and that believes that the Halakha cares too, then this is a book
that will find its audience. At least we hope so.

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-618-
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX: A DEADLY SILENCE BY NAOMI
710
RAGEN

(March 10) Many halachic authorities have actually condoned wife beating,
spelling out conditions in which it is not only permissible, but a mitzva .
A few months ago, I attended a prayer meeting at Jerusalem's Yeshurun
Synagogue to mark the annual international day protesting violence against
women. Attendance was sparse. The men's section was empty. A young rabbi
got up and said this embarrassed him. He said that if the meeting had been
about Israel's special mission in the world, the shul would have been packed.
He went on to say what a terrible thing domestic abuse was, etc. etc., making
all the right noises. At the end of his - I have no doubt heartfelt - lecture, a
lone woman raised her hand timidly. What does the halakha say about wife-
beating? she asked him. It's a non-issue," he replied, insulted. "I won't dignify
it by getting into a halachic discussion". The woman, mortified, sat down .
It was a valid question," I comforted her afterwards . But only
after reading Prof. Naomi Graetz's compelling book Silence is Deadly:
Judaism Confronts Wifebeating, did I realize how valid .
The case Graetz makes, based on sources in the Talmud, the Mishna and
centuries of responsa of rabbinic authorities, is that, indeed ,many halachic
authorities have not only done nothing to punish wife-beaters, but have
actually condoned it, spelling out conditions in which it is not only
permissible, but a mitzva. Moreover, in our own day, halachic thinking makes
it extremely difficult for an abused wife to get out of her husband's clutches
if he refuses her a divorce .
The pioneering rabbi who opened the first battered women's shelters for
haredi women in Jerusalem once told me of a conversation he had with a
well-respected Sephardi rabbi: "What are you Ashkenazim making a big deal
about?" the rabbi complained to him, "Almost every Sephardi husband beats
his wife". I have no idea if this is true. But what can't be denied is that
Maimonides has said in his colossal work, the Mishna Torah: "A woman who
refuses to perform any kind of work that she is obligated to do ,may be
compelled to perform it, even by scourging her with a rod. (Ishut 21:1).
While this is certainly not halakha, the religious atmosphere created by
such an unchallenged statement may explain the callous attitude exhibited by
many religious authorities towards domestic abuse. Whenever I am asked if
710
Naomi Ragen, “The Deadliness of Silence” The Jerusalem Post (March 10,
2000) B9. I sent Ragen a review copy after meeting her at a conference, hoping she
would write a review; instead she wrote this powerful piece in her column FROM
A DISTANCE.
-619-
there is more domestic abuse in the religious world, I answer no. I think there
is exactly the same as in every other society. What is worse is that the
religious world finds it difficult to acknowledge the problem and deal
effectively with it .
OVER A decade ago, upon the publication of my first novel, Jepthe's
Daughter, in which I depicted a Talmud scholar as a wife-beater, many in the
religious world were ready to tar and feather me. I was called a liar during
lectures, usually by bewigged matrons. I was vilified in haredi publications,
denounced by friends, and snubbed by former rabbinical mentors. I couldn't
understand why. After all, the story was based on that of my neighbor, a
haredi woman who committed suicide following severe sexual and physical
abuse from her Talmud-scholar husband .
For many years I assumed that the underlying cause of this response was simple
embarrassment. After reading Naomi Graetz's book, though, I'm not so sure. As an
Orthodox woman, committed to Jewish law, I have always believed that the halakha
was the closest thing we were going to get to God's own word. As such, despite
appearances, halakha had to be absolutely just, wise, compassionate, and most of all,
unbiased, based on a true interpretation of biblical law. In that light, I found it
shocking - and it would not be an exaggeration to say heartbreaking - to read the
many almost heartless, anti-feminine decrees by some of the most respected halachic
authorities of all time .
What is one to make of the Hatam Sofer's responsa, that we do not force a wife-
beater to grant a divorce because "it is better to live as two (tan du) than to dwell
alone (armalu)"? And how can we accept that it is this ruling that is the basis for
rulings in our rabbinical courts, and not the liberal one of Maimonides, who states:
"Woman is not captive. She should get a divorce if her husband is not pleasing to
her ?"
Thankfully, Graetz points out other rabbinic voices, such as Rabbi Meir of
Rotenberg, who wrote concerning a habitual wife-beater: "If he persists in striking
her, he should be excommunicated, lashed- even to the extent of amputating his arm.
If his wife is willing to accept a divorce, he must divorce her and pay her ketuba".
Silence is Deadly is an important book, the kind that insists we examine the sources
for some of the most blatant of social problems and why, until now, there has been
no outcry from the rabbinical establishment .
Its cumulative evidence cries out for just change within the halachic framework
that today gives abusive husbands almost absolute power over their wives.

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CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN: REVIEW BY SUSAN J. LANDAU-
711
CHARK

This book is on the mandatory list for anyone who wants in on the dirty little
secret of modem Judaism: wife-beating. This was not a book I rushed to read.
But once I began reading, I read it through to its bitter end.
There are perhaps 20,000 Israeli women who are agunot: "anchored" to
their husbands. These women are unable to move on with their lives, because
their husbands will not give them a Jewish divorce. Many agunot are battered
wives. This book addresses how Jewish law (halakha) affects the lives of
Jewish women around the world, and most especially in Israel, where
religious law is national law in matters such as marriage, divorce, and burial.
Naomi Graetz states that it took her ten years to write this book. She
writes, "The topic of wife beating is very difficult for me as a strongly
identified Jewish woman. Although feminist issues appear to conflict with
my Judaism, a solid traditional background enabled me to hold my ground in
studying Jewish texts." As an activist for women's rights in Israel, Naomi
Graetz did not initially recognize the incidence of wifebeating as a significant
problem in the Jewish corn- munity. Through her research on responsa
literature during these ten years, Graetz learned what the Jewish tradition had
to say about wifebeating. Responsa is the body of rabbinic answers to
questions on halakha. Graetz's research led her to conclude that spousal
abuse is a social phenomenon maintained and reinforced by Jewish tradition.
She describes and analyses the responsa of rabbis, ancient and modern, to
demonstrate how a tolerant environment for wife-battering evolved within
Jewish society.
The first few chapters show how the founding stories of our tradition
contribute to the negative attitudes and behaviors displayed toward women
in Jewish society. These texts have "created a metaphor for viewing women
as objects of violence." These stories are examples of "metaphoric battering,"
712
a phrase Graetz uses to describe the tacit approval of Bible and Midrash
toward the mistreatment of women generally. while these texts do not depict
actual battering, Naomi charges that the descriptions of how women are
treated in the narratives has led to a social climate which tolerates actual
battering. The women in these stories are perceived as sex objects, as
property, and as tools of the men with whom they live.

711
Susan J. Landau-Chark, Outlook: Canada’s Progressive Jewish Magazine 37:2
(Feb 15-Mar 3 1999): 22; 28
712
Finding a new meaning in addition to the literal one in Hebrew scripture.
-621-
 These same metaphors of abuse are then given concrete expression in
Jewish law. Marriage, for example, in halakha, is fundamentally an act of
acquisition (kinyan). Even today, the wife as chattel or possession remains a
fundamental principle in halakha. The rabbinic courts in Israel use this
principle to evade treating women as persons. Through the act of marriage,
the wife becomes a possession, sub- servient to her husband. If the wife rebels
against her husband is he permitted to beat her? Naomi Graetz notes that
rabbinic sources agree that "good" wives do not deserve beating. These same
sources are ambivalent toward "bad" wives. In cases where a wife "requires"
chastisement or education, beating is permissible, according to some rabbinic
authorities.
Moses Maimonides (known also as Rambam, 1135-1204) and Solomon
Luria (1510-1574) allowed wifebeating in specific situations. Although in
the minority, they are influential halachic authorities. Rambam states, "A
wife who refuses to perform... (obligatory) work... may be compelled to
perform it, even by scourging her with a rod." A modem rabbi, in denial over
the sexually aberrant behavior of a congregant, quoted Rambam's ruling that
there is nothing wrong with a father sleeping in the same room with his
daughter, and in the same bed, if both are fully clothed. Luria is also quoted
in contemporary Orthodox circles. In one of his responsa, he takes a strong
stand against wifebeating, but in a later responsum he just as strongly opposes
forcing the husband who beats his wife to give her a divorce. Unfortunately,
it is this latter responsum that continues to be a reference point for rabbinical
decisions surrounding divorce. In Jewish law the husband is responsible for
his wife's actions. If her husband feels that her behavior warrants verbal or
physical instruction, intervention by the rabbi would be perceived as
undermining that husband's authority.
There were also rabbis who rejected all manner of spousal abuse. Rabbi
Meir of Rothenburg (1220-1293) advocated that if the husband did not cease
abusing his wife, not only should he be excommunicated, but the gentile civil
court should become involved to force the Issue. In this century Rabbi
Paperna of Poland (1840- 1919) railed against those rabbis who would not
use halakha creatively to force abusive husbands to divorce their wives.
Despite the positive responsa of these and other rabbis, the prevailing attitude
remains that of Solomon Luria.
Graetz also focuses on rabbis who are in denial, who are apologists for
halakha, and who are evasive about the existence of wifebeating. This is not
limited to Orthodox rabbis. Naomi Graetz mentions a modern Conservative
rabbi who commented that "in all his years in the rabbinate he had never had
a case of wifebeating". Three of his congregants were attending a domestic
violence support group when he made this remark.
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 Rabbis claim that despite the "unjust" treatment of women by the
halakha they "cannot" force the wifebeater to divorce his wife. This attitude
is viewed by some as preserving the order and hierarchy that exists in Jewish
society. Naomi Graetz notes that halachic rules offering relief to women are
"evaded", conveniently forgotten when the principle of the husband's sole
control of divorce is at stake. She comments that a halakha that includes
"ingrained inequity which can be used to trap [a woman] in a marriage that
is dangerous to herself and to her children" runs the risk of perpetuating a
hilul hashem - using God's name for an unjust cause. For example, the major
opinion followed in rabbinic courts in Israel today is that of the Hatam Sofer
(1763-1839). In his responsum on wifebeating he said that we do not force a
man to divorce his wife, because of the principle that "it is better to live in
two than to dwell alone." To whom was the rabbi referring - the wifebeater
or the wife? For that matter, was any woman ever queried regarding her
perception of this statement?
Since there are a number of interpretations concerning "forced" divorce,
the question arises if some of these interpretations can be re- visited and
revised in order to ease the situation of the aguna. Naomi Graetz suggests
that so far, many suggestions about the situation maintain a "reactive"
approach to halakha. She concludes that a "proactive" approach is needed,
and recommends a takkanah, a binding decree, that will address the inequities
in Jewish law and correct the present imbalance.
Secular Jews who believe that they have sidestepped the halakha are still
affected by these laws. Take the instance of a secular or humanist Jewish
couple who marry with a religious ceremony (as many do). If this couple
divorces and believes that religious divorce is an anachronism that does not
affect them, they may be correct - or very wrong. Only the woman is affected
by not receiving a religious divorce. In halakha the man can remarry, have
children and get on with his life. If the wife wishes to do the same, and
decides to remarry with- out the benefit of a religious divorce, her children
from the second marriage are considered by Jewish law to be the illegitimate
product of an adulterous relationship - mamzerim.
Almost all Jews outside Israel have alternatives to religious marriage and
divorce. But the problem does not lie in the conflict, if any, between secular
and religious legal systems. It lies in the monopoly that Orthodox rabbis in
Israel have on what many diaspora Jews regard as civil matters - and then it
only affects the woman. If a civilly divorced woman's children become
involved in the Jewish community, travel to Israel and fall in love with
someone from the religious com- munity and the rabbi asks, "Who is the
mother? Was it a kosher divorce? Is the bride or groom a mamzer?" the adult

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child must now live out the consequences of his or her parents' disregard for
Jewish law. This is by no means uncommon.
Naomi Graetz has written an engaging, challenging and well researched
book. She Is to be commended for tackling this difficult issue. Anyone who
cares about religious Judaism and its influence in modern Jewish society
must read this book.

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CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT: BOOK REVIEW BY ROBYN
713
SASSEN

A perception has been held and nurtured that domestic violence in the Jewish
family is something of a contradiction in terms. The concept of Shalom Bayit
and the ways in which Jewish home life is structured around a calendar that
lends itself to family togetherness and sharing seems to support this view. In
reality, however, the perception that a level of aberrant behaviour is
completely absent is impossible. For one thing, it uniformly describes a set
of people as impervious to the realities that constitute being human; put
another way, like any other social grouping, Jews are and have been victims
and perpetrators of terrible domestic realities that compound contemporary
existence. Jews are a diverse people, some of whom may be prone to
domestic violence and the need to assert power. The Jewish religion, like any
other, is one filled with both significant and beautiful ideals but it also
comprises practices, customs and beliefs which may be open to subjective
opinion and interpretation.
Silence is Deadly serves a socially cleansing role as it exposes and
evaluates the realities of wife abuse in an orthodox Jewish framework in an
objective and hard-hitting manner. In this respect, it begs comparison with
Abraham J. Twerski's 1996 The Shame Born in Silence: Spouse Abuse in the
Jewish Community (Pittsburgh: Mirkov Publications). Unlike the Twerski
publication, however, rather than citing case histories, Graetz's work presents
a more abstract argument. Designed to be read on different levels, it considers
halachic and contextual interpretations and practices in a way that is both
well documented with reference to the primary texts, and accessible to the
lay reader. Naomi Graetz, an observant Jew, demonstrates an astute
understanding of the mechanisms of biblical interpretation and commentary,
as well as an ability to eloquently convey complex biblical assertions and
problematics in lay terms, which would be acceptable for the academic reader
as well. She became aware of the prevalence of wifebeating among the very
orthodox in Israel, which served as an impetus for her to begin what became
a ten-year project, researching and exposing this phenomenon, which has
come to fruition through this book.
This tract will be deeply significant to a variety of readers. It is
important for one who wants to make sense of the contradictions inherent in

713
http://wjudaism.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/wjudaism/article/view/219/171
First published by H-Judaic (August, 2000). URL: http://www.h-
net.msu.edu/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=26034966636573
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being an observant Jew in contemporary times. It holds value as it presents
an inroad into how Jewish exegesis and commentary works. It would also be
of account to readers within fields relating to addressing domestic abuse.
Above all, this book is vital for readers who are wives, daughters and mothers
who have been heir to a set of values that have been twisted by its misled
practitioners. As Graetz points out and contemporary realities reveal, these
are the women who have for centuries been emotionally hurt, materially
deprived, raped, beaten or killed in spirit if not in body by their husbands in
the name of interpretations of practical religion.
Simply designed, this small book is bold, aggressive and intelligently
assembled. It is divided into eleven chapters that constitute three primary
sections, which in toto present a sequential narrative of the realities and
history of wifebeating. Its multi-witness approach records solutions and
realities from a Jewish as well as humanitarian perspective. In entirety it is a
devastating piece of work describing the impetus and justification behind
Jewish orthodox battery behind closed doors. Because of its sequential
structure, it is the kind of book that can prove dangerous if "dipped into,"
because comments, criticism and sources may easily be understood out of
context, particularly in the chapters that examine the body of commentary
condoning wifebeating in a community.
Graetz begins with an overview and definition. She comments on the
unseen nature of the problem, robustly defending how it can be manifest and
explaining how wife abuse is not restricted to physical pain but can be
asserted verbally, economically, emotionally or sexually. Counterpoised with
this reality, is halakha, the constructed legal injunction which governs Jewish
behaviour and upon which so much commentary and criticism rests.
These premises are extended beyond the abstract. Graetz focuses
first on the ways in which Biblical tracts seem to condone battery and
denigration of women in its original narrative and commentaries. Three
examples of this are the passages relating to Lot's virgin daughters (Gen.
19:7-8), offered to impostors to appease the impostors who are attacking
(angelic) guests in Sodom; the narratives surrounding Hagar, Abram's
handmaid (Gen. 16 : 4-6) in which she is not only mistreated but willfully
and publicly humiliated; and aspects of Abraham's relationship with Sarah
(Gen. 12:12), which compromise and objectify her when she is compelled to
pretend she is Abram's sister in order to save his life, but not necessarily her
own dignity. In addition, Graetz looks at other textual references, allusions,
and commentaries, including complex issues like that of the sotah or woman
accused of adultery and subject to public humiliation and indignity, even if
she is innocent and her husband guilty or merely jealous.

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 This level of interpretation continues with an examination of
prophetic literature, in particular that articulated in the Book of Hosea, which
may quite distinctly align the relationship between God and Israel to that of
husband and wife, which becomes all the more frightening when the
metaphorical image of Israel as miscreant woman and God as her overseeing
husband becomes interpreted literally. Here Graetz examines how this
metaphorical relationship of punishment and reward may be interpreted by
the proverbial man-in-the-street and echoed in his own conjugal relationship.
Throughout the firm line taken in these two crucial sections to the
text, Graetz does not lose sight of the fact that she is using the "official"
commentaries as reference. Graetz's text does not interplay with the
contemporary problematics of feminist theory in reading subliminal contexts
into previously established and accepted areas of commentary and thesis.
Rather, she presents her observations in a manner which is both clear and
realistic in terms of contemporary statistics and journalism, as well as the
direct factual evidence given in the original texts and their commentaries.
This leads Graetz to probe more deeply into the nature of metaphor
in relation to halakha and in turn to the different halakhic interpretations and
values which surround the reality of marriage. Examples of these revolve
around the understanding of the husband, (ba’al) in the context of lord,
master and owner of his wife; the rules of peace in the family home (Shalom
Bayit) and how it may be perceived that this ideal should be enforced, and
the rich contradictions inherent in such a set of misconstrued values. This
section of the book concludes with an explanation of the formative laws and
principles opposed to wifebeating that give the abused woman in a marriage
sanction to leave legally and with dignity.
The second section of the book concerns rabbinical response to
wifebeating. Graetz examines classic psychological steps in an
understanding of trauma through the responsa and writings of sages from the
time of the Geonim until the present day. This section of the book shows how
wifebeating in the early sources was dealt with implicitly, and how in more
modern times, it became acknowledged as aberrant from the norm. Here,
Graetz examines acceptance, denial, apologetics and evasion of
responsibility expressed by great Rabbis of the ilk of the Rambam, the
Rashbah, and the Gaon of Vilna, amongst others.
This section orients the standpoint of a rabbi of a community, be it
from Greece, Sarajevo, Egypt or wherever, in relation to the non-Jewish
ruling body of the time and the context of the situation. It also sheds light on
the enormous diversity of approaches to wifebeating in Jewish communities
through time -- from approval and justification to financial retribution,
coerced divorce or even forced amputation of a limb. This section juxtaposes
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opinion expressed by a great diversity of rabbinical leaders. The way in
which it has been assembled reveals the nature of Jewish commentary that
leads from one sage to another, enriched through the generations by the
currents of the time and the interpretations of its leaders. Here the reader is
presented with insight into the reality and problematics of a forced divorce
and the ways in which this can concantenate into the life of a woman and her
children. By the same token, this section explains how halakha can be
interpreted to give a woman in an abusive marriage legal sanction to leave
the relationship and get on with her own life. It also presents the loopholes to
which an abusing husband may turn in order to find support through the
power and influence of halakhic precepts and injunctions, not to mention
rabbinical opinion and perspective.
The section ends with the understanding that the statistics of
wifebeating in Israel, and by extension, the rest of the orthodox Jewish world,
remain unacceptably high, and to a large extent, unacknowledged. This is
attributable to fear on the part of the women themselves, as well as
recalcitrance on the part of members of the rabbinical fraternity to
acknowledge this problem and take action. Graetz writes, "Rabbis are
disinclined to interpret the halakha in such a way that men's rights over their
wives are diminished ... [t]he prevailing attitude today among the majority of
rabbis ... is one of conditional rejection, or evasion of responsibility" (150).
Graetz dovetails this section with the one which follows and which
brings her tract to closure. This final section of the book phrases her argument
under the aegis of a feminist approach that fits into rather than denigrates
Jewish values. While she cites feminist thinkers in her understanding and
explanation of complicity with regard to wife abuse, she takes their angles of
approach into the same consideration as she took that of the rabbis cited
earlier. The conclusion of her book gives the whole tract added cohesion and
direction, as it straddles opinions, truths and realities surrounding wife abuse.
Here she suggests that, as in the case of halakhic injunctions in the face of
post-Temple realities, a modern day takkanah be ratified by contemporary
Jewish leadership to reshape current Judaism as it has been through history,
redressing a need which has developed out of political bias and
misinterpretation. She suggests that in the face of recourse to the legal
structure of Judaism, contemporary leaders take the initiative to allow the
religion to meld into contemporary realities, yet retain its stability. In other
words, to acknowledge that "Judaism ... is not another word for legalism ...
The law is the means, not the end" (201: quoted from Rabbi A. J. Heschel).
The primary focus of this proposed takkanah is to introduce into the body of
halakha the reality that marriage is a contract between adults and not a tool
with which the male partner can manipulate his wife as one can a vessel or a
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piece of meat. The book ends with a further explanation of takkanah in the
contemporary halakhic process in the form of an appendix written by Rabbi
Michael Graetz. This is followed by a table documenting the chronology of
the responsa dealt within the text and a glossary of terms.
Graetz draws clearly expressed and objective attention to the
shocking realities of marital abuse which not only comprise our history, but
are blatantly present in contemporary times too. In doing so, she has phrased
an irrefutably strong argument that cries out on behalf of all the agunot and
women trapped in unhappy marriages, for the community at large to take
action. This is an important publication which should be indispensable for
any rabbi, rebbetzin, counsellor, or indeed anyone who may claim to be
shomer mitzvot.
This brilliantly conceived book presents a case which remains pro-
Jewish. In fact, it glorifies the beautiful practices that constitute this religion,
as it praises the structures of marriage, child raising and other observances
that are so intrinsic to it. Graetz's gesture of condemning the aberrations of
the religion and how it has been manifest through personal bias and blatant
legalism exposes contemporary Judaism, distinguishing it from the romantic
light in which it is often represented. This enhances the importance of the
book, giving Jews a chance at a credible position in contemporary thought
and realities and presenting the possibility of redressing an issue boldly,
broadly, with courage, and within the law.

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CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE: BOOK REVIEW BY JOEL
714
WOLOWELSKY

I picked up Naomi Graetz's book with great expectations. I had recently read
and reviewed Abraham J. Twerski's The Shame Borne in Silence: Spouse
715
Abuse in the Jewish Community, which focuses on Orthodox Jewry.
Twerski's book had great impact in the Orthodox social system, bringing the
problem of abuse into the open, inducing rabbinical leaders to speak out on
716
the subject and establish education programs in the yeshiva system. Graetz
writes from a non-Orthodox, feminist perspective, and I looked forward to
her helping galvanize the broader Jewish community to respond similarly to
this social pathology and mental health problem.
The tension between Orthodox and feminist perspectives can be
creative and productive. Orthodoxy, to be sure, is usually the better for such
intellectual challenges, as uncomfortable problems must be confronted and
unproductive solutions jettisoned. Indeed, much has improved in the halakhic
community as a result of having to respond to productive challenges. On the
717
other hand, as I pointed out previously in these pages, when Orthodoxy
cannot understand the fundamental challenge it faces and reacts instead with
ideological self-righteousness, the result is at best muddled and
unproductive, and at worst damaging to the fabric of the Orthodox
community itself.
Twerski is an Orthodox rabbi and psychiatrist who is founder and
medical director of a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center. He has taken the
lead in raising consciousness regarding abuse issues in the Orthodox
community, waking it up to the fact that no segment of society is immune
from these social plagues. Some segments of the Orthodox population are
isolated from the mass media, and many have not fully benefited from the

714
Tradition: A Journal of Orthodox Jewish Thought 35: 2 (Summer 2001): 79-85.
715
Pittsburgh, PA: Mirkov Publications, 1996. I reviewed the book in Tradition
32:1 (Fall 1997), pp. 87-91
716
See, for example, the description of Project SARAH (Stop Abusive
Relationships At Home) described in the Communications column of Tradition
32:2 (Winter 1998), pp. 173f.
717
Joel B. Wolowelsky, "Modern Orthodoxy and Women's Changing Self-
Perception," Tradition 22:1 (Spring 1986), pp. 65-81, and subsequently in my
Women, Jewish Law and Modernity: New Opportunities in a Post-Feminist Age
(Hoboken, NJ: KTAV, 1997).

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consciousness raising on these matters available to the general public.
Twerski therefore took great pains in his book to describe spouse abuse for
the disease that it is, impress upon the victim the fact that she is not
blameworthy or culpable, encourage her to seek help, and, at the same time,
effectively berate the Orthodox leadership for not providing shelters and
support services.
Graetz too has uncovered a pathology, but for her it is the halakhic
system which is unhealthy. She too has a program for confronting the issue,
but it is a program for amending halakhic divorce procedures. In substituting
an ideological program for a practical one, she represents the other side of
the ineffectual coin, forfeiting the opportunity to make a significant
contribution to addressing and solving a real and painful problem.
Graetz's ideological perspective is perhaps best exemplified by her
comment (p. 74) regarding the fact that there is almost no discussion of the
battered wife in early rabbinical sources. Given the Talmud's well-known
willingness to discuss just about any subject under the sun, one might
conclude that wife-beating was not very widespread at that time. Indeed, says
Graetz, some "apologists" make that point. But for her, a "better" alternative
explanation is that the phenomenon existed, and the rabbis knew about it but
chose to downplay it through a form of censorship. It is this type of
preinclination to see wife-beating as an integral part of the rabbinic
perspective that informs her chapter on the Bible laying "the groundwork for
domestic violence in (a) patriarchal society" (p. 15) and the rest of her book.
Graetz surveys those halakhic authorities who are willing to accept
some form of "lawful" wife-beating, that is, beatings done for the purpose of
chastising wives who do not perform the duties required of them by Jewish
law. Could she be suggesting that these opinions are somehow responsible
for the spousal abuse that takes place within the Orthodox community? The
general tone of her study implies it, and the introduction by Elliot Dorff, vice-
chair of the Conservative Movement's Committee of Jewish Law and
Standards, comes close to saying so explicitly. "Family violence," writes
Rabbi Dorff, "occurs among the Orthodox at least as much as it does among
Conservative, Reconstructionist and Reform Jews." (p. xvii) No statistical
studies are quoted to justify the conclusion that violence in the Orthodox
community is at least-rather then, say, at most -as much as that in other
communities.
Of course, few wife abusers in the Orthodox community, like their
counterparts in the more general Jewish-or non- Jewish-community, have
ever heard of any of these halakhic opinions. They abuse their wives because
they suffers [sic] from mental illness, as Twerski stresses. Suggesting that
rabbinic opinions are the root cause of this social pathology does nothing to
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encourage the non-Orthodox community, which is far removed from such
esoteric halakhic discussions, to launch a campaign against tolerating actions
which violate basic halakhic and secular ethics. And, of course, it also
discourages the Orthodox community, which is far from ready to disown its
posekim (halakhic authorities) as morally corrupt, from addressing the issue.
But the practical ineffectiveness of quoting these rulings is not the
main problem. It is rather the confusion of different issues melted together in
an ideological cauldron. To understand this, let us briefly note two related
but not-exactly parallel phenomenon: torturing prisoners and physically
disciplining children.
One can certainly make a good case for not allowing the abuse of
any prisoner, but surely we understand the difference between a dictatorship
which puts political opponents on the rack to find out who is leading the
opposition on the one hand, and a democracy applying severe physical
pressure under judicial review to find out in which bus locker a bomb has
been planted, on the other. Not all wrongs need carry the same label of human
rights criminality.
Similarly, while I myself cannot understand how a parent could
strike his or her child for any reason, I think we all understand that not all
those who do not spare the rod are necessarily child abusers. Indeed, one can
have very a strong principled objection to corporal punishment and still
understand the difference between a parent who slaps his or her children and
one who seriously abuses them. And a judge who refuses to put a child who
is regularly slapped into foster care does not deserve to be charged with
judicial tolerance of child abuse.
These examples are far from parallel to the issue of wife beating, as
we quite properly cannot imagine any justification for striking one's spouse.
But what of a society in which physical punishment is regularly handed out
to both men and women who do not live up to their religious and contractual
responsibilities? The issue then is not the striking but who is doing the
striking, and it is important to keep that distinction in mind. Of course, we
recoil at the notion that a man could be lashed only by a court while a woman
could be physically disciplined by her husband. Most posekim did too, and
certainly all contemporary authorities do.
Yet in a society in which women did not appear in court or the more
general public arena, having the punishment administered at home can make
a kind of sense-not that I would support it for a moment. And as strange or
repulsive such a society might seem, we should not lose sight of the fact that
the very sources Graetz brings are evidence of strict judicial review of such
punishments. Any battery that was against the norms of physical punishment

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for men. and women in that society was treated like any other criminal
beating, even though it was committed by a husband against his wife.
For Graetz, a contemporary posek like R. Ovadia Yosef is among
those who "evade responsibility" because he holds that one may not beat a
husband who has abused his wife in order to force him to give a get (p. 181).
Now, I think it would certainly strike most of us as odd that one would be
upset at the suggestion that courts not beat people in order to enforce their
decisions. And that should alert us to the problem at hand. One must read
sources with a sense of historical perspective. It is indeed embarrassing to
find halakhists who thought, in the context of their times, that there might be
an occasion when a man might legitimately strike his wife. We wonder what
they could have been thinking, just as, I would imagine, we wonder how
contemporary mothers or fathers could strike their children for any reason.
But this is far from endorsing or tolerating spousal abuse. Indeed, Graetz
counts Rabbi Meir of Rotenberg among those who will not tolerate any
violence against wives, yet is not concerned that he suggests lashing the
husband or amputating his arm (p. 26). And among her "feminist halakhic
solutions" for cases of a man who will not issue a get to his wife is organizing
a vigilante squad to beat the husband until he agrees to divorce his wife (p.
191). Would it be fair to charge her with tolerating torture and human rights
violations? I think not.
I would not want to suggest that all rabbinic leaders from any of the
denominations of contemporary American Judaism are blameless in allowing
women to suffer from spousal abuse. They become unwilling co-conspirators
in this phenomenon for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that
many simply cannot imagine that normal-looking congregants in their
synagogues are pathological abusers, and most of those who size up the
situation correctly simply do not know what to do. (Unfortunately, there are
also some rabbis-Orthodox and non- Orthodox-who are timorous and lack
the proper scruples to face up to powerful members of their shuls.) It is these
deficiencies, rather than a compilation of sources, that must be confronted if
abused spouses are really to be helped.
Graetz does discuss a genuine problem in the Orthodox community,
but here too she does so in a way that obscures the real issues. There has been
much discussion within the contemporary Orthodox community on
expanding the role of women in private and public religious life. People take
different opinions on specific suggestions, but they cannot escape one
constraining truth: halakhic Judaism is non-egalitarian. It is a frustrating and,
to many, a painful fact, but it is a fundamental and basic component of the
structure of halakha.

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 In contemporary Jewish society, the most distressing consequence of
this component of the halakhic system is in the area of divorce, as only the
husband may formally issue a get (a bill of divorce). If he refuses to do so,
his wife remains an aguna, a woman "chained" to her husband, unable to
remarry and get on with her life. This is a cruel reality, disturbing no less to
those who are constrained by halakhic legalisms as it is to those who are free
of them.
In general, if the husband is forced to give a get, say by threatening
him with a beating, the divorce is no more valid than if he had signed away
his home to someone under such circumstances. "In general," that is, because
there are a limited number of situations where a Jewish court is actually
empowered to force the husband to issue the get. However, if they use power
when it is not allowed under the rules of the system, the divorce is invalid.
The wife-beating "study" is, then, but a bit of unproductive
sensationalism designed to set the stage for Graetz's discussion of divorce.
Here, too, her ideological agenda has deflected her from making a positive
contribution to the discussion. The divorce issue is a very real problem, one
that weighs heavy on most members of the Orthodox community. There are
indeed hateful men who do withhold a get from their wives, and the rabbinic
courts-especially those in America-do not have many tools at hand to force
them to do so. This frustrating situation has led to many heated discussions
in the Orthodox community in America and the more general community in
Israel, where it is the rabbinic courts that must supervise the divorce process.
But a positive contribution to solving the problem for the halakhically-
committed community must assume the binding nature of halakha and work
from there. Any other proposal is already available to those who see halakha
as having a voice but not a veto.
Graetz's proposal for solving the aguna problem is a takkana
(amendment) to halakha that will empower the court to issue a divorce
against the husband's will. This takkana is supported in an appendix by
Graetz's husband, Rabbi Michael Graetz, who is a member of the Va’ad
Halakha of the Conservative Rabbinical Assembly of Israel. Rabbi Graetz
had already proposed a takkana allowing women to act as witnesses in
718
opposition to existing halakhic standards, provided 200 rabbis agree. Of
course, the Conservative Movement is free to accept any ruling that it wishes,
but it is hardly realistic to think that those in the Orthodox community who
feel bound by normative halakha would be willing to jettison centuries of

718
Responsa of the Va’ad Halakha of the Rabbinical Assembly of Israel, vol. 5, pp.
23f.
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normative halakhic practice based on a vote of 200 rabbis of any association,
be the issue witnesses, divorce, kashrut, Shabbat or any troubling restriction.
A pluralistic discussion demands respecting the theoretical
framework of the parties involved. The Reform Movement does not require
a get, and the Conservative Movement has no need for this takkana, as it
accepts hafka’at kiddushin, the right of a bet din to retroactively annul a
marriage in the case of a recalcitrant husband. (This is a valid theoretical
construct in halakha, one that almost all Orthodox authorities have viewed-
for reasons that demand their own discussion-as inoperative today.) Graetz's
proposal is therefore clearly directed toward the Orthodox community, but
her proposal has no real relevance there.
It is worth noting that there is a halakhic construct whose application
in the case of wife- beaters was regretfully not explored by either Graetz or
Twerski. Hafka’at kiddushin annuls a valid marriage. But not every marriage
that appears to be valid is in fact so. Sometimes it is possible to nullify a
marriage by finding that the original legal proceedings were in error.
A marriage is a legal contract that assumes trustworthiness between
the parties. For example, a person has the right to say that he or she would
not marry a diabetic. If one relies on the false representation that one's
putative partner did not have diabetes and then discovers the deception, the
partner who was misled can claim deceit and walk away without the necessity
of a get. Of course, this would not be applicable if one finds out that his or
her spouse is not Mr. or Ms. Perfect or if one develops diabetes into the
marriage. An underlying assumption of any marriage is that one's partner has
some flaws that will eventually become evident and that sickness is an ever-
present threat. Specific concerns generally have to be stipulated in advance,
and the representation must be false at the time of the marriage.
While something like freedom from diabetes as a prenuptial
condition would have to be spelled out before the wedding, there are certain
conditions that may legitimately be assumed, even absent a formal
declaration. For example, Rabbi Moshe Feinstein held that a reasonable
woman would not want to marry a practicing homosexual, and even if
nothing explicit had been mentioned in advance, if the husband were indeed
719
a practicing homosexual at the time of the marriage, the marriage is void.
But in such a case, the woman must walk out as soon as she finds out the
719
R. Moshe Feinstein, Iggerot Moshe, Even Ha-ezer, part 4, responsum 113, p.
175f On this issue, see Michael Broyde's article "Error in the Creation of Jewish
Marriages: Under what Circumstances Can Error in the Creation of a Marriage
Void the Marriage without Requiring a Get according to Halacha" on the Jewish
Law web site: ww.jlaw.com
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facts. Otherwise we may assume that she is reconciled to the fact of her
husband's condition, and when she changes her mind the marriage must be
dissolved with a get.
What then of the wife-beater? Does he have a mental condition that
could have been diagnosed at the time of the marriage? Is there a dynamic
here that prevents his wife from walking out as soon as she realizes he is an
abuser? Good social science research here might provide halakhists with the
opportunity to dissolve these marriages in accordance with regular halakhic
practice.
Until then, the most effective solution to these cases is a determined
campaign to make pariahs of every wife- beater and every person who
withholds a get from his wife. In the end, it is not the halakha that is at fault
here, but ourselves. It is, after all, within our power to institute proper
educational programs in our schools, deal with the issues publicly in our
synagogues and insist that marriages not be celebrated on our shul premises
without a halakhic pre-nuptial agreement in effect. Our community certainly
has the financial resources to create and staff a network of shelters. With
proper determination, we can change our community for the better. But our
focus must be on solving the practical problem, not in making ideological
points.

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 720
CHAPTER EIGHTY: REVIEW BY FRAN SNYDER

Naomi Graetz's midrashim and expansions of the biblical text are personal
and academic, and we must be grateful to her on both counts. Firstly, she
reminds us that midrash is a conversation between a fixed text and the
historical period in which it was written. When Graetz writes in the
introduction to S/He Created Them: Feminist Retellings of Biblical Stories
that her "midrashim …are not only exegetical, they are also eisogetical, i.e.
they reflect personal concerns which are read back into the biblical text,"
721
she underscores a truth well-remembered: the rabbis' 'oral Torah' is
human-made and man-made in real time, and it is constructed upon their
personal, contemporary reflections, Secondly Graetz sets before us an
exemplary model of midrash contemporaneous to our times. Her
722
remarkable midrash on Ki Tetzeh and its haftara in Unlocking the Garden
actually is midrash, in that it is derived from biblical verses. It is also a
scholarly exercise, prefaced by explanations of Graetz's intent and
methodology and supported by footnotes. Graetz teaches critical reading
skills in the English Department of Ben-Gurion University and she brings
the methods of the modern academy to her craft. She reminds us that the
authors of classical midrash were trained rhetors who used the exegetical
methods of analysis common to the Hellenistic scholastic standards of their
times.
The earlier of the two books, S/He Created Them: Feminist
Retellings of Biblical Stories, comprises just that—retellings. She labels the

720
Fran Snyder reviewed both my books, S/He Created Them: Feminist Retellings
of Biblical Stories (Gorgias Press, 2003) and Unlocking the Garden: A Feminist
Jewish look at the Bible, Midrash and God (Gorgias Press, 2005). The review
appeared in in Bridges: A Jewish Feminist Journal 13, 1 (Spring 2008): 82-87.
721
‘Oral Torah’ is the body of rabbinic opinion and interpretation derived from the
written Torah, which is the canonical Five Books of Moses (or Pentateuch),
Prophets, and Writings.
722
Synagogue readings of the Torah, the Five Books of Moses or Pentateuch, are
paired with a haftara, a reading from the Prophets. Ki Tetzeh corresponds to
Deuteronomy 21:10-25:19 and is read with Isaiah 54:1-10, which is the fifth of
seven Haftarot of Consolation recited after Tisha b’Av, a yearly observance of the
destruction of the first and second temples in 586 BCE and 70 CE, and prior to
Rosh Hashanah. Each Torah reading, or parasha, is referred to by its opening word
or words. So, for example, ki tetzeh translates as “When you take..., the opening of
the parasha.
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 writing in this book "contemporary Midrash” without defining rabbinic
midrash, the genre against which any writing that calls itself midrash should
be compared. Graetz's writing in this book is not centered on biblical verses,
as was the rabbinic original, and her concern is not with shattering the
verses, as did the early rabbis, and building exegetical structures on the
atomized pieces. Rather Graetz goes for story. She employs the novelist's
tools—characterization, extended dialogue, descriptive backgrounding,
interior monologues—and if her work resembles in form any ancient genre,
it is "rewritten Bible."
What she has in common with the ancient rabbis is, if I may speak
for them, intention. "For me the purpose of contemporary Midrash is
threefold," Graetz states in her introduction, "It addresses itself to the
biblical text, which cries out darsheni, interpret me! Secondly, it makes the
Bible relevant to an audience that does not overly care about its biblical
roots. Finally, it serves my need to relate to a text, which I perceive as
flowing over with hidden meanings. I feel that in writing midrash I am
continuing to contribute to the work of revelation." With the exception of
audience concerns—though who knows for certain what were the needs of
the ancient audience? –Graetz and the rabbis are intrigued by the same
strange, contradictory, elliptical text. And they stake out the same and work
the same problem—how to keep the canon open, how to renew the old and
make the static dynamic, and how to keep God current. That last is "the
work of revelation." The canon, to which one can't add or subtract one word,
may be closed but it must not remain shut to interpretation. Every
generation needs a way in.
Graetz wants to be "consciously feminist." She wants to "deal with the
typically feminine concerns of motherhood, barrenness, resentment about
polygamy, the aftereffects of being raped, the joys of shared gossip, the
tribulations of the aging process, and the unique relationship of siblings."
Genesis is her territory, and her characters are among its familiar population.
Lesser-knowns appear, like Elisheva, Aaron's wife, through whom Graetz
remarks on the deaths of Nadav and Avihu, Aaron's and Elisheva's sons.
"[T]hey offered before the Lord alien fire, which He had not enjoined upon
them, And fire came forth from the Lord and consumed them (Lev. 10:1-2)."
Whatever "alien fire" is has generated much commentary over the millennia
but Graetz doesn't speculate. She's interested in the mother, about whom the
midrash Leviticus Rabbah 20:2 says: “Elisheva the daughter of Amminadab
did not enjoy happiness in the world” despite the rising fortunes despite the
rising fortunes of five of her male relatives because "when her sons entered
to offer incense and were burnt, her joy was changed to mourning."

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 Graetz takes the midrash's grieving mother, gives her a daughter,
Batya, and invents a conversation between them in which Elisheva shows
keen maternal perception of her two sons: they were entitled brats, raised by
their father "to lord it over everyone" and encouraged by their Aunt Miriam
to equate Chosenness with "special privileges." Aaron and Miriam
"conveniently forgot that ‘chosenness’ means responsibility and obligation."
Other midrashim in Leviticus Rabbah 20 condemn the sons for their
arrogance and presumptuousness. By echoing these psychological insights
and attributing them to Elisheva, Graetz deepens a character who is rarely
noticed in the Bible. By including the condemnation of Aaron and Miriam,
Graetz throws into relief the family dynamic in biblical relationships.
Graetz's Elisheva knows Aaron the cohen (high priest) as husband and
Miriam the prophet as sister-in-law. Batya, their niece, gets a lesson in how
family operates, and we are reminded of the dynastic dramas of the Bible’s
founding families.
Unlocking The Garden: A Feminist Jewish look at the Bible, Midrash
and God, is comprised of scholarly work, much of which has appeared in
journals or essay collections. There are also two poems: “Akeda Revisited,"
which was written as Graetz’s son was inducted into the Israeli military; and
"Vashti Unrobed." "A Passover Triptych," the last piece in the book, begins
with a verse from the Passover Haggada and a verse from the prophet Micah
that introduces Moses, Aaron, and Miriam, followed by three poems in a
three columned layout, one for each sibling. In this book too, Graetz's eye
finds female characters—Miriam again, Dinah, Hagar, to name three whose
names appear in essay titles. Graetz also writes about prayer, about feminist
interpretation of the Bible, and midrash writing by contemporary women.
The book includes three essays on metaphor—"Metaphors Count," "Is
Kinyan Only a Metaphor," and "God Is to Israel as Husband Is To Wife: The
Metaphoric Battering Of Hosea's Wife." I mention this not only to underscore
Graetz's literary point-of-view but to emphasize what I think is her strongest
skill and most fruitful interest: the intersection of language with literary
meaning, the freight that a word carries within a narrative context. In her
723
essay on kinyan (purchase), for example, she explains the Mishnah’s
position on legal acquisition of a woman as wife, but she quickly turns to the
midrash Genesis Rabbah and takes kinyan as a metaphor for God's
possession of "Israel (the wife…[as] God's property to do with as He
723
The Mishnah is a compilation of religious law up to the time of its redaction c.
200 CE by Rabbi Judah the Prince. The Gemara is the commentary on the
Mishnah, and the two together comprise the two Talmuds, the Jerusalem (or
Palestinian) Talmud and the Babylonian Talmud.
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pleases." Her essay closes with a "free association of biblical and midrashic
texts" that connect Hebrew words that Graetz derives from kinyan and from
which she is able to suggestively include "nest" and "nursing,” “the male
child" Cain and "lamentations," and also "cleansing out of sin" and "tikkun"
(repair').
The book's most Interesting contribution is “The Barrenness of
Miriam: A Midrash on the Haftara of Ki Tetzeh (Isaiah 54).” I heard Graetz
present this midrash in March 2006 at a session of the Jewish Feminist
Research Group, A Project of the Women’s Studies Program at the Jewish
Theological Seminary, and I have prepared it for classroom use. It is notable
for its adherence to rabbinic midrashic form and for Graetz’s straightforward
self-consciousness in its creation and presentation. Hers is self-consciousness
in its most admirable expression: aware, deliberate, honest, and careful. She
knows the ancient midrash, how it’s constructed, the rhythm of its language,
the painstaking word play that juxtaposes disparate biblical verses in order to
yield meanings across texts. She is also quite aware that Miriam’s maternity
is a rabbinic invention. It is created by the midrash based on assumptions
724
and, shall we say, very determined readings of biblical verses. Graetz
approves the rabbinic portrait of Miriam’s maternity—as we’ll see, hers is a
very special lineage—and she is also aware of rabbinic opinion that holds a
punishing view of Miriam. Graetz composed her midrash in Hebrew (and
translated it into English), in the homiletical style of the ancient midrash,
imitating the petihta (opening) lead-in:
Naomi Tova bat Sara and Yehezkel opened: “Remember what the
LORD your God did to Miriam on the journey after you left
Egypt.” (Deut. 24:9) “Shout, O barren one, You who bore no child!
Shout aloud for joy, You who did not travail!” (Isa. 54:1). The
barren one is Miriam. And why was Miriam referred to as barren?
Didn’t we study [in the midrash] that “the house of the Kingdom is
descended from Miriam, because David was descended from
Miriam?” (Exodus Rabba 1:17). Furthermore, does it not say: “Enlarge
the site of your tent, Extend the size of your dwelling?” (Isa. 54:2).
Site (yeriot) is Miriam, for [according to the midrash] her face
resembled yeriot (Exodus Rabba 1:17).
This opening attribute brings a smile of recognition to anyone accustomed to
the standard introduction of the rabbi-interpreter, for example, “R. Tanhum
724
Devora Steinmetz, in her article “A Portrait of Miriam in Rabbinic Midrash,”
Prooftexts 8 (1988): 35-65, The Johns Hopkins University Press, presents a well-
documented synopsis of the midrashic and Talmudic stories on Miriam. See p. 43-
47 for her discussion of Miriam as the wife of Caleb.
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bar Hanalay petah,” as at the start of Leviticus Rabbah. If I could be certain
that “Naomi Tova bat Sara and Yehezkv kel” is Naomi Graetz herself, I’d
praise Graetz for creating her own midrashic persona. She writes in the
preface to the midrash that she is “convinced that the rabbis had chosen”
Isaiah as the haftara for Ki Tetzeh “because of its connection with Miriam,
and I set out to prove it.” She never does find a missing rabbinic manuscript
or comment as proof, so she argues from midrash—that is, she mines the
verses until they yield valuable clues. In exactly the same manner as the
ancient rabbis, she drashes it into rhetorical existence. And, like the rabbinic
editors, she “signs” the midrash—if, in fact, that’s what she has done— with
the introductory attribute.
Let me use Graetz’s opening paragraph to briefly explain how
midrash works. The two verses that follow Graetz’s attribution tell us which
biblical ground we’ll be covering. Like the ancient audience, we are to
understand those verses as prompts. We must anticipate a journey from that
verse to the context in which that verse appears or to a verse far afield though
still in the biblical park. The ancient rabbis understood the Bible as the word
of God, unified and infinite in meaning. Graetz shares their capacity for
creative juxtaposition within its boundary, and like them she possesses the
sheer will to find connections. A word or a verse in Deuteronomy can be
interpreted by Isaiah. Claims may be made for relationships between
characters’ hundreds of years apart in human chronology and separated by
literary distance from one book to another. Graetz, for example, will describe
Miriam through verses from the book of Esther, from Numbers, from the
prophets Jeremiah and Zechariah; altogether she works with six main
intertexts—intertext being our word for the proof texts employed by the
rabbis to show the essential unity of the entire Torah. To the midrashic
imagination, anonymity is always an invitation to invent. Isaiah’s apostrophe,
“O barren one,” begs for identification, and Graetz obliges: it is Miriam.
Her midrash continues by asking, how can the barren one be Miriam
when we know already, from the midrash Exodus Rabbah 1:17, that King
David was Miriam’s distant progeny? And don’t we have a linguistic
connection between the following verse in Isaiah and a subsequent statement
in Exodus Rabbah such that we may identify Miriam as his ancestor? This
connection between Isaiah and Exodus Rabbah turns on a pun in the Hebrew
on yeriot and the name Jerioth in I Chronicles 2:18. This is an example of the
midrashim’s long reach between texts. It is also an example of the ancient
genre’s exploitation of biblical genealogies for the purpose of linking biblical
characters. The eight opening chapters of I Chronicles are a series of
genealogies from Adam onward, and it is through I Chronicles 2:18 that the
Talmud identifies Miriam as the wife of Caleb and David as their
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 725
descendant. Graetz has not “invented this strange genealogy connecting
Miriam and the birth of the Davidic dynasty” but has moved onto prepared
ground.
She draws as well from Deuteronomy Rabbah 6:12, the midrash on
her verse from Ki Tetzeh. It makes use of a mashal (parable), which is a very
common genre in rabbinic literature. A noble lady sings the kings praises and
is rewarded with an honorific, but when she causes “disorder,” she is “sent
away to the mines.” So, too, Miriam, who chants a song at the sea and is
“named prophetess” but when she speaks against her brother, Moses, she is
“shut out of the camp” (Num. 12:15). This refers to the incident in which
Miriam and Aaron complain about Moses to God, and God is enraged at both
siblings but only Miriam suffers an attack of “snow-white scales.” Moses
appeals to God: “Let her not be as one dead, who emerges from his mother’s
womb with half his flesh eaten away” (Num. 12:12). Miriam is “shut out of
camp for seven days,” and the entire community refrains from moving until
she recovers and is readmitted. Rabbinic opinion condemns her for the sin of
gossip.
In her midrash, Graetz includes the well-known association of
Miriam with water. Miriam the dancer and timbrel-player also appears. But
Graetz’s primary concern is to substantiate the image of Miriam as a mother
and “ancestress of the Messiah.” Graetz seems to feel that in her emphasis on
Miriam’s maternity, she must “counter any accusations of essentialism.”
Towards this goal she includes her post-midrash explanation reference to
726
Phyllis Trible, in whose work Graetz finds “a higher role for Miriam” than
727
“her birthing role,” and to Devora Steinmetz and Charlotte Fonrobert, both
of whom “take into account the birthing role of Miriam.” I don’t feel that
Graetz needs to apologize or justify her interest, and her final statements
about Jewish women’s diminishing birth rates and her own “continuity”
through her children and grandchildren are weak and unnecessary.
Interest in midrash, both the study and creation of it, has been
reinvigorated in the last 30 years, and Graetz is eminently qualified to be
among those writing it and writing about it. She knows biblical and rabbinic
Hebrew and the midrashic form, she has the literary skills, and she has the

725
Steinmetz, p. 43-47 for her discussion of Miriam as the wife of Caleb.
726
“Bringing Miriam Out of the Shadow,” Bible Review 5/1 (1989).
727
“The Handmaid, The Trickster and the Birth of the Messiah: A Feminist
Reading of Midrash.” Graetz’s citation, dated from 2001, is from the website
www.bet-debora.de. This article is also in Current Trends in the Study of Midrash,
ed. Carol Bakhos (Leiden: Brill, 2006)
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patience to mine the text and tunnel through its dimmer corners. Also, she
has granted herself the authority to hear what the sacred text is “saying” and
to appropriate the ancient form for her own good and creative uses.

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-646-
CHAPTER EIGHTY-ONE: BOOK REVIEW OF THE RABBI’S
728
WIFE BY RABBI JACK RIEMER

What’s going on with rabbis’ wives lately? Something is happening; that’s

for sure. First, there was Mollie Blume, the heroine of Rochelle Krich’s last
four murder mysteries, who is engaged to a rabbi. And then there came Ruby,
the rabbi’s wife, by Sharon Kahn, who has so far solved four murder
mysteries in a row. And now we have Toby Kramer, the rabbi’s wife who
sets out to solve the case in this new murder mystery by Naomi Graetz. How
do you explain this sudden rise in brilliant rabbis’ wives?
I always knew that rabbis’ wives were smart, but SO smart? Perhaps
it is a reaction to the old image of the rebbetzin—staid, prim and proper, who
serves the tea at sisterhood meetings and entertains the congregation at home,
that Shuly Rubin Schwartz has documented so well in her new book: “The
Rabbi’s Wife”, which NYU has just published. These new rebbitzins are too
busy solving murder mysteries to waste time serving tea or smiling in the
receiving line, the way the old rebbitzins did.
I have a couple of simple ways of determining the quality of a murder
mystery. One is if it takes me more than twenty-five pages to guess who is
going to be the victim. In this book I never saw it coming until the murder
took place. Another is if it takes me more than a hundred pages to guess who
did it. In this book I was never sure who the murderer was up until the very
last page. And the third way is if I can put the book down after I start reading
it and not pick it up again until the next day. In this case I was hooked from
the moment I started reading it and I had to rearrange my schedule and put
off some other things until I could finish the book.
And so Naomi Graetz deserves a place of honor alongside Rochelle
Krich, Sharon Kahn, Faye Kellerman, and the other women who combine an
extraordinary talent in writing murder mysteries with a delight in describing
facets of the Jewish tradition along the way. Ms. Graetz manages to provide
some important information on the issue of wife-beating in the Jewish
tradition and what needs to be done to confront it in the present, as well as
some interesting perspectives on the politics of academic life.

728
Jack Riemer wrote this review entitled “The Rabbi’s Wife Solves a Case”.
According to Rabbi Riemer it appeared in various newspapers such as the South
Florida Jewish Journal, the Los Angeles, San Francisco, Denver, San Diego,
Orange County, and Minneapolis Jewish newspapers as well.

-647-
At the end of the book we hear a rumor that her husband, Daniel, the rabbi,
may be leaving his congregation and moving to Israel. If the rumor is true,
we can only hope that his wife goes with him, and that they build a new life
for themselves there, free of synagogue and academic politics. And, if they
happen to uncover any murders in their new home, I do hope that they will
stay in touch with us and let us hear how she solves them. For this book left
me wanting more.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Naomi Graetz (b. 1943) is a native New Yorker who came to Israel in 1967
"for a year or two" with her husband Rabbi Michael Graetz. After a brief
stint in the youth village of Alonei Yitzchak, they lived in Jerusalem for six
years before moving to Omer in 1974. Along the way they acquired three
children: Ariella, Zvi Yehuda and Avigail, each of whom was born in a
different city: Hadera, Jerusalem, Beersheba.
Prior to coming to Israel she attended Ramaz Lower and Upper Schools,
Massad and Cejwin Camps, City College and The Jewish Theological
Seminary of America. She taught Judaica at various and sundry Hebrew
Schools in New Jersey and taught Freshman English at Rockland Community
College in Suffern, N.Y.
Graetz taught English in Israel since 1968: at the pre-Academic Center
of the Hebrew University, at David Yellin Teacher's College in Beit Hakerem
and at Ben Gurion University of the Negev. She taught critical reading skills
to generations of students in the Department of English as a Foreign
Language at Ben Gurion University of the Negev before retiring in 2009. In
these courses she integrated articles on feminist thought, pluralism, civil
rights and Judaism. She was one of the founding members of UTELI, ETAI
and ISRA-TESOL. Graetz was among the first to apply skimming and
scanning techniques for university students of English as a foreign language
(UTELI, 1977; IAAL, 1978) and the use of abstracts in the EFL class (IAAL,
1978). She has also lectured and written about the use and justification of
outlining and summarizing texts in the EFL Classroom (1982, 1986).
In 1985 Graetz began to write aggadic tales about the Bible from a
feminist perspective and presented workshops at ETAI and UTELI about the
use of these biblical tales in the EFL classroom (1986, 1987, 1988).
Graetz's non-professional life was equally rich. She was a founding
member (and President of the Board) of the Light Opera Group of the Negev
(LOGON), a founder of the Negev Branch of the Israel Women's Network
and on its National board (1989-91), the ba'alat koreh (Torah reader) of the
egalitarian congregation Kehillat Magen Avraham in Omer and an active
member of MASLAN, the Negev Center for Women's Support.
She was a Research Associate at the Five College Women's Research
Center at Mount Holyoke College in the Fall semester of 1992 and a Visiting
Scholar at the Centre for Research in Women's Studies and Gender Relations
University of British Columbia, Vancouver in the Spring Semester of 1999.
She was also a Scholar in Residence for the United Synagogue Central
Region in the Fall of 2006.

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 She was a speaker at all four JWI International Conferences on
Domestic Abuse in the Jewish Community in Baltimore and Washington,
where she lectured on Wifebeating and Trafficking (2003, 2005, 2007, 2009)
She is the author of Unlocking the Garden: A Feminist Jewish Look
at the Bible, Midrash and God (Piscataway NJ: Gorgias Press, 2005), The
Rabbi’s Wife Plays at Murder (Beersheva: Shiluv Press, 2004), S/He Created
Them: Feminist Retellings of Biblical Stories (Professional Press, 1993;
second edition Gorgias Press, 2003), and Silence is Deadly: Judaism
Confronts Wifebeating (Jason Aronson, 1998).
Her many book reviews and articles on women and metaphor in the
Bible and Midrash have appeared in such journals and edited books as
Conservative Judaism, Nashim, Judaism, A Feminist Companion to the Bible
(ed. Athalya Brenner).
Naomi Graetz describes herself as a Feminist Jew/Jewish Feminist
who is grounded both in Jewish tradition and feminist thought. She continues
to grapple with problems of modernity while seeing the value of tradition.
She is the wife of a retired rabbi, mother of three, and grandmother of seven.
Since retiring, she has regularly presented papers at SBL (the Society for
Biblical Literature) at both its annual and international meetings and teaches
two Bible courses in her community in Omer, both in English and Hebrew.
She swims a few times a week and is sporadically working on a sequel to her
mystery novel tentatively titled, The Road Taken.

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