If She Cry Out

This post is posted in honor of International Woman’s Day, March 8

Four months ago (November, 2009) a young woman, Nofrat Frankel, was arrested because she prayed wrapped in cloth that had knots and tassels on each corner. Like any living religious tradition, there are a variety of subgroups in Judaism, each with its own understanding of what the tradition is. Not all Christians are Catholic; not all Jews are ultra-orthodox; not all Muslim are Sunni. The woman was arrested because one group of Jews decided for all others, that women can not pray in this cloth.

Women wearing tallitot, reading Torah (Yael Katzir, from the documentary: Praying in her own voice)

In Jewish tradition the cloth, known as a tallit, is a symbol of God’s protective presence (Psalms 91:1). At each of the four corners hang knots and tassles that remind us of our responsibilities to act with mercy, justice, and humility in the world. (Micah 6:8). In Judaism, prayer stands between action in the world and relationship to God in our hearts. The cloth fittingly wraps and embraces the body, the tool we use, both to act in the world and to bend and flex in prayer to relate to heaven.

Once upon a time, this cloth, the tallit, was worn only by men. In the last thirty years, women have become more and more insistent on finding ways to pray that connect body and soul, belief and the practicalities, public life and personal responsibility. Jewish women from both liberal and traditionalist communities have begun adopting the tallit as their own. The traditional male version of the tallit is a white strip of cloth with either black or dark blue stripes at either end. Although some women wear the traditional men’s tallit, many women have experimented a great deal and opt for either colorful and rather feminine versions or a simple white on white striped cloth.

Clearly the group doing the opposing thinks they are in the right. They do not see themselves as denying the value of women or their prayers. In their eyes, the women wearing the tallit simply weren’t praying!

In the news articles and comments immediately after the arrest, one could read many such excuses: they wear tallitot as a fashion statement; they are ignorant; they can’t really mean it. But it isn’t just the rabble that gather around the comments of on line news that say this. Even the esteemed Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef, former Chief Rabbi of Israel, discounts the sincerity of the women’s prayers at the wall: “These are deviants who serve equality, not Heaven. They must be condemned and warned of.” A month later, when women gathered again for Rosh Hodesh services, some of whom were wearing tallitot, a group of ultra-orthodox hurled accusations of “Nazis” and “not Jews”

Selichot - Night prayers (Anna Kocherovsky)

Doubting the sincerity of a woman’s prayers is nothing new. In the biblical book of Samuel, Eli himself had similar things to say about Hannah, accusing her of being drunk, when in fact she was pouring out her heart to God. But Eli merely rebuked Hannah. When she explained herself he listened with compassion and told her “Go in peace and may the God of Israel grant your petition”. Hannah’s answered prayer was the birth of her son Samuel. When grown, Samuel anointed David as king. Year later, Samuel rebuked David when, as king, David abused his power to make love to Bathsheba. Hannah’s “drunken prayer” gave birth to courage, justice, and empowerment.

Unlike Eli, Ovadiah Yosef and those protesting in news article comments did not listen with compassion. Hannah is considered the true model of prayer by both traditional and liberal Jews. Judaism loves to take lofty ideals and capture them in ritual actions, but there is no formal rule of conduct in Judaism that prohibits women from praying with a tallit. The inability to listen with compassion therefore must come from something deeper and far more concerning: a hardening of the heart of one person against another.

A hardening of the heart. Judaism is a religion built around trauma and recovery: the trauma of slavery in Egypt and the joy of rescue; captivity in Babylon and the rebirth of Jerusalem and the Temple under Nehemiah; the fall of the second Temple and the rise of a rich rabbinic culture in Europe and North Africa; the Holocaust and the re-establishment of a Jewish state.

In each of these stories a hard heart plays a central role. The hard heart of Pharaoh brought 10 plagues on Egypt and the loss of his own first born son. The hard heart of Jews towards the widow and orphan caused Jews to lose the first Temple. Baseless hatred, a hardened heart of one Jew towards another, caused Jews to lose the second Temple.

The Garden (Hannah Frank, 1932)

At the heart of all trauma, for Jew and non-Jew is a hard heart. The world over, when we value power and privilege over compassion we, like Pharaoh, can become self-destructive. When we ignore other’s needs because we ourselves are comfortable, we, like the ancient citizens of Judah, destroy our societies ability to defend itself against outside threats. When we place certainty in our own rightness over respect for honest differences of opinion and the sincerity of our peers and neighbors, we lose the center of holiness, the Temple, within our own lives.

At the heart of injustice to women is a refusal to learn the lessons of person-on-person trauma. At the heart of injustice to women is a hard heart. The lure of privilege overwhelms compassion. The satisfaction of having our own needs met makes us blind to the vulnerable and needy. At the heart of injustice to women is certainty: certainty that all women’s needs are met; or failing that, certainty that all women who suffer are either rare tragic victims of chance or else ultimately to blame for being inadequate daughters, wives, or mothers.

The tallit symbolizes the transformation of heavenly respect into day to day action. It is the bridge between the heart and the world. There is no better symbol to fight over when it comes to the matter of justice for women.

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