168 Hours

I read a lot of books how to manage one’s time and make the most of one’s life, a question all rabbis need to address at one point or another, both for themselves and their congregants. Most recently I picked up Laura Vanderkam’s 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think.

The premise is simple: there are 168 hours in a week. Spending the requisite amount of time working, sleeping, and attending to personal needs, there should still be plenty of hours in there to spend quality time with loved ones, and even squeeze in other passions, like playing an instrument or writing a novel. The trick is to be intentional about one’s time.

I was totally hooked by the premise. However, I soon found myself at odds with Vanderkam’s approach to reorganizing one’s time.

While Vanderkam offers helpful exercises and thoughtful questions about how we spend our time, and shares stories of people with different careers and family structures, her book is overwhelmingly about restructuring one’s life to spend more quality time with one’s family (I inferred from this that she assumed that people without children already have enough time for everything and would never read such a book).

Vanderkam doesn’t offer a disclaimer about writing from a place of privilege and from a particular family structure. She is a freelance writer with a working spouse and professional help raising her children. Many of her suggestions are not going to work for someone who doesn’t fit that mold.

For one thing, one of her major suggestions is to outsource everything that isn’t a “core competency,” not only housework, like cooking and doing the laundry (which I happen to love doing because it’s part of my day-off ritual), but also the less satisfying elements of one’s paying job. If that’s not possible, Vanderkam says, it’s time to think about making bigger changes in one’s career.

In that vein, Vanderkam does ask some really thoughtful questions about what we want to spend our workday doing, and challenges the notion that the hours we spend in the workplace are equivalent to the hours of actual “work” we do. She talks about the hours of our workday that are wasted in activities that don’t utilize our “core competencies” and offers two options: 1) work within your job to restructure your schedule and minimize wasteful activities 2) leave your job and find or create one that makes the best use of your time.

Then she says this:

“How do you get to that position of confidence?….First, if possible, don’t be the only person in your family earning an income. While two-income families have their own issues, they give the person who would be the sole breadwinner more flexibility. When you are your family’s sole means of support, it’s hard to quit a project or take a big career risk that might allow you to focus more on your core competencies” (Vanderkam 97).

I have to say, I took issue with this remark. I was raised in a household where my father was the primary breadwinner. My mom worked (and still works) as a nurse because she finds the work meaningful, but she never had to think twice about cutting back her hours to be a stay-at-home mom (she referred to her weekly 3-11 shift as her “night off”) or quitting a job when it became intolerable. She never had to worry about fighting for health insurance or a retirement plan from her employer, because my father’s employer provided these benefits. She never had to ask for family leave, because she could just cut back her hours.

My life and career are going to look different from my mother’s. And so I was troubled by Vanderkam’s notion that the solution to a career issue is to fall back on one’s spouse. This not only comes from a place of privilege (many of my partnered friends don’t have that luxury either), it perpetuates the notion that a career (particularly a woman’s career, though Vanderkam doesn’t say that explicitly) is about an individual’s personal fulfillment and not financial sustainability.

Like many books and articles coming out on how to “have it all” and/or advance in the workplace, Vanderkam doesn’t address the radical changes that need to happen in our society, in order to give women–and men–the opportunity to pursue fulfilling work while having families or pursuing other passions.

Imagine the “confidence” and freedom women and men of all skill and income levels might gain if we had a higher minimum wage, pay equity between genders, universal health-care, universal preschools, or tax-deductible child-care. We might choose to work more, knowing that our children are in good hands, or less, knowing that our healthcare and childcare needs will be provided of regardless of whether we are part-time or full-time. Imagine how these and other infrastructures might make it possible for everyone to re-imagine how we spend our 168 hours.

Esther, Vashti, and Women of the Wall

My sermon from last Friday night, cross-posted to This Is What A Rabbi Looks Like.

When I was a first-year rabbinical student in Jerusalem, one of my classmates organized a blood drive in our student lounge. As I was lying on the stretcher, needle in my arm, the medic looked at my purple kippah and said, in Hebrew, “Is it Purim today?”

Purim is a holiday when everything gets turned upside down. Jews are the victor and not the victim, and we “celebrate” until we don’t know Haman from Mordechai. It is also the only day in the calendar when “cross-dressing” is permitted by Jewish law. Hence, the only space in which that medic could imagine a woman wearing a kippah was not a Reform rabbinical seminary, but rather a holiday when women are allowed to dress like men.

Purim that year was my first experience with Women of the Wall, an organization which has been fighting for the past 24 years for the rights of women to pray and read Torah, wearing tallit and tefillin, at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. One of the grounds for opposition to this group is that their donning of ritual garb is considered begged ish, cross-dressing. While that reading of megillat Esther proceeded undisturbed, probably due to the general chaos surrounding us, in recent years we have seen a resurgence of aggression towards Women of the Wall.

Anat Hoffman, director of the Israel Religious Action Center, posits that because ultra-orthodox men in Israel do not work to provide for their families, relying instead on government assistance while they study, they feel lowered in esteem, emasculated. They feel “like women,” and so resent women who behave “like men,” by working outside the home, attaining high levels of education, or praying publicly. Rather than change their own circumstances, they assert themselves in the only way they know how: by imposing stricter laws of modesty on women in public space, including at the Western Wall.

This past month, 10 women were detained during the Rosh Chodesh service for wearing tallitot. Bonna Devorah Haberman, one of the original members of Women of the Wall, wrote a brilliant article retelling the story of this month’s detentions in the form of the megillah. She generously casts Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz, head of the ultra-orthodox Western Wall Heritage Foundation, as the King. The police who detained the women are cast as Hegai, the keeper of Ahashuerus’ harem. The role of Mordechai is played by the four veterans from the 55^th Paratroop Brigade—who liberated the Western Wall in 1967—and who accompanied the women to this month’s service.

One thing that makes this megillah particularly interesting—aside from the fact that there is no one playing Haman—is that Haberman goes back and forth between casting the Women of the Wall as Vashti—the openly defiant queen who is banished because she won’t play by the rules—and Esther, the paragon of beauty, grace and obedience who replaces her.

The real megillah gives us two female heroines, but only one clear message about how women should behave. While in modern times, Vashti is celebrated as a feminist hero, in the megillah she doesn’t last very long. The “real” heroine is Esther, who moves between being manipulated and being a manipulator, between hiding her identity and proclaiming it proudly. Only when her cousin Mordechai begs her does she take a stand, and then only when she has thoroughly charmed the king and earned his favor. Even then, she asserts herself in a decidedly “feminine” way, making herself completely vulnerable to her male counterparts by prostrating herself before the king and making a very humble request, first for a dinner party, then for her life.

There are many positive messages in the Purim story: to be proud of who we are, and to stand up for what we believe in, even when we are scared. But it is interesting that the heroine of Purim is a woman who behaves, for the most part, as women are expected to behave in that time and place.

Although the Women of the Wall are treated as rabble-rousers, their request is even more meager than Esther’s. Once a month, for one hour, they wish to be able to pray, as women, according to the Orthodox tradition, in the Women’s Section of the Western Wall. They asking for what Hoffman calls, the “four t’s” during this hour: tefillah, Torah, tallit, and tefillin.

A 2003 court decision determined that it is not legal for women to read Torah at the Western Wall itself, only at Robinson’s Arch, a designated area near the site. Over the past few years, women have frequently had religious articles confiscated, or were detained, interrogated, and even arrested and banned from the Western Wall, for the crime of “performing religious acts that offend the feelings of others.”

This month’s detentions received a lot of attention because, among the 10 women who were detained, was Rabbi Susan Silverman and her 17-year-old daughter Hallel Abramowitz. Rabbi Silverman’s sister is the comedian Sarah Silverman, who responded by tweeting something I can’t repeat in support of Women of the Wall. She then made a more family-friendly public statement to CNN, saying:

“I don’t care much for people who use religion as a cloak to justify hatred, injustice and fear. And I can’t imagine God, should He or She or It exist, does either. I am so proud of my sister and niece for fighting for what they believe in—by having the nerve to pray at the Western Wall while being female.”

I used to study with Rabbi Silverman, and was proud to see her and her daughter, now Israeli citizens, standing up for their right to pray publicly. But I couldn’t help but notice two trends in the media coverage. There was not a single article about their arrest that did not mention that the women were related to Sarah Silverman, aside from Haberman’s megillah. Most publications mentioned it in the headline. There were also very few articles that did not feature a picture of the beautiful young woman that Hallel has become in the ten years since I’ve seen her.

Like Vashti and like Esther, these women had the courage to stand up for what they believed in, even at great personal risk. But, also like Vashti and Esther, the way they are treated is often bound up in how they are perceived as women. The Purim story asserts, if subtly, that the only way a woman can survive in a man’s world is to behave like a man’s definition of a woman. And while we may learn many things about courage from this text, we must reject this notion that there is only one way to be female, just as we reject the notion that there is only one way to be Jewish.

Tablet Columnist Rachel Shukert writes that Sarah and Susan have more in common than it might seem: “When Sarah was starting out, most of her critics seemed to be focused less on what she was saying than that a woman was saying it; …. Similarly, the only thing remotely controversial about Rabbi Silverman’s actions is that she is performing them while female. To her opponents, a man donning a prayer shawl is a sacrament, commanded by God; a woman doing the same thing is an abomination.”

When Ahashuerus learns of Esther’s identity, he wants to overturn the decree but cannot, because it is already sealed. But the Jewish tradition is not sealed by a royal signet ring, and it is not owned by the Western Wall Heritage Foundation or the ultra-orthodox. It is open and evolving, and there must be room for every expression of Jewish identity and gender identity in our people’s story.

Whether we ask nicely or demand defiantly, on Purim, we, like our ancient heroines, have the opportunity to overturn an oppressive regime. Natan Sharansky, Chairman of the Jewish Agency, has been charged with finding a solution to the “problem” of women’s prayer at the Kotel. Please join us as we write to Mr. Sharansky (at the WOW site and the IRAC site) and make our humble requests: that there should be times set aside for women’s prayer at the Kotel, and, hopefully, soon afterwards, a time and space for mixed-gender prayer. We also need to remind Mr. Sharansky that part of this solution needs to be dismantling the Western Wall Heritage Foundation, and requiring the police to arrest the harassers, and not the harassed. We must broaden the definition of “performing a religious act that offends the feelings of others” to include aggression by the ultra-orthodox towards progressive Jews. Make it illegal not for a woman to wear a tallit, but for people to shout obscenities and throw things at the women who do. Make it illegal, not for women to behave “like men,” but for people to behave like animals.

Rabbi Leah R. Berkowitz is the associate rabbi at Judea Reform Congregation in Durham, NC.

It’s (Not) Hard to be a Jew at Christmas

I had a really lovely Christmas this year.

It sounds silly to hear that coming from a rabbi. But the concept of a “Jewish Christmas” has evolved so that, rather than try to meld the two traditions together by way of a Hannukah Bush or Hannukah Harry (or this monstrosity, which deserves its own post), we have developed our own beautiful Christmas Day tradition. I spent the day volunteering with my fellow Jews, serving lunch at the Ronald McDonald Room at Duke Hospital.  I skipped the movie this year (I just know that Les Mis is going to break my heart), but I really enjoyed running into my fellow congregants during the traditional Chinese meal (check out this hilarious Talmudic discussion of this tradition).

When I was growing up, in a public school in a mostly Christian community, Christmas could be a huge pain. My whole family was Jewish, and actively so, so I didn’t have to deal with what we now call the “December Dilemma” at home. I knew who I was and what I did and didn’t celebrate, but the rest of the world hadn’t quite caught up. I got irritated when Santa wished us “Merry Christmas” at the mall (my much more defiant older brother once replied, “And a Happy Hannukah to you!”).

There were enough Jews in my school district that I didn’t have to deal with the theological aspects of Christmas in class or in the choir. As a musician, though, I did have a disdain for hokey “holiday” music in general, even the token Hannukah song, which very often sounded like a yuletide carol with the word “Christmas” replaced with the word “Hannukah.” In high school, by then a proud NFTY kid, I once walked around on the last day before winter break with a handmade sign saying, “Wish me a Happy Hannukah” pinned to my sweater.

On Christmas day itself, my mother, a nurse, worked a double-shift (for time-and-a-half pay AND doing a mitzvah for her Christian co-workers!) while my dad and brothers and I went to a movie. Later, we all met up for dinner at Garden China, or, if my mom was too exhausted, we brought it home. Volunteering was a later addition to the mix. As a teenager, my youth group once brought so much food and so many volunteers to the local shelter that we were able to serve the patrons at the table and eat with them.

Never once do I remember feeling jealous of my Christian counterparts. Sure, I felt annoyed that everyone assumed that I celebrated Christmas. But I don’t remember feeling like I was missing out, not even on those later nights of Hannukah when gifts of books, clothes, and music transitioned into socks and underwear.

Now that I’m grown up, it’s a relief to be spared from the Christmas shopping and traveling. I’ve heard it’s a relief for those who grew up with Christmas as well, such as Annette Gendler, a Jew-by-choice who wrote this piece for Tablet Magazine.

Recently, a Jew-by-choice in our community explained to me why this was the case, quoting back to me what my senior rabbi had once said to her, “If your children have a rich and active Jewish life, they’ll never feel like they’re missing out at Christmas.”

Now I work with a lot of interfaith couples, where the question of how to shape ones own family traditions is more fraught. I can’t make the decision for them whether Christmas will find its way into their home. So often, I hear from congregants that it is the one concession made in an otherwise entirely Jewish household. But I can remind them that a full and vibrant Jewish life includes year-round opportunities for gift-giving, house-decorating, costume-wearing and sweets-eating. We even have a magical, mysterious man who visits our houses once a year, even if he doesn’t bring us presents (we’ll have to work on that).

While we get to experience panic and over preparation at Passover and on the High Holy Days, we have, as of yet, been spared the commercialization of Hannukah (though each year I see it creeping into holiday marketing. I don’t know if this is a good sign or a bad sign). And in this relaxed atmosphere, we have even been able to develop a beautiful Christmas tradition of our own: serving our community, and spending some much-needed down time with our  families and our Jewish friends, without the pressure of cooking or gift-giving. That’s a pretty great Christmas gift for the Jewish community.

That, and I’m glad to have my radio stations back.

MissRepresentation and the Women Rabbis’ Pledge

Originally posted on Thisiswhatarabbilookslike.wordpress.com.

A few weeks ago, our Women’s Group teamed up with several other local Jewish institutions to bring a screening of MissRepresentation to the Triangle area. MissRepresentation is a documentary film about how women are portrayed in the media, and the detrimental affects this portrayal can have on women and girls, and the public’s treatment of women and girls. Sexualization and objectification of women, impossible standards of beauty, reluctance to show women as complex characters or potential leaders, and the pitting of women against one another—all of it contributes to an epidemic of eating disorders, body issues, depression and low self-esteem, and makes it more difficult for women and girls to imagine themselves in positions of leadership.

This film is a must-see and a must-discuss. Host or find a screening in your community. Bring your daughters. Bring your colleagues. Bring your youth groups and religious schools. I can’t cover all of the issues the movie addresses, so you’ll have to see it for yourself. I can only speak to how it felt to watch it as a young female rabbi.

I want to begin by saying that no one ever told me that I couldn’t be a rabbi, and the issues I struggle with are a gift given to me by the generation of women who made it possible for me to pursue this profession in the first place. I am so grateful to them, and I can’t even imagine how my struggles compare to theirs.

Watching this film, I kept coming back to a moment, over a decade ago, when a group of my college classmates and I were gathered at a URJ Biennial convention. Many of us were considering the rabbinate or other Jewish professional work, and one young woman commented that a friend of hers had rejected the prospect because, “Women rabbis are frumpy.” (I think there was something about mustaches in there too but I will have to ask my colleague if she remembers).

We took it upon ourselves to break that stereotype, taking what we called the “Women Rabbis’ Pledge”: we would dress stylishly, wearing clothes that fit. We would put on makeup, style our hair and, this part I remember exactly, “we will wax what needs to be waxed, and pluck what needs to be plucked.”

This wasn’t a serious thing. We didn’t swear on Bibles or sign a contract. I joke about it all the time. But watching the movie today, I realized what had happened in that moment: there were women in that group who could not consider pursuing a path to the rabbinate, until they could break down the stereotype of women rabbis as unattractive. And that is something many of us have come to take very seriously.

This pledge followed me all through seminary and beyond: I remember long talks during placement my senior year about suit color and nail polish, skirt lengths and heel height. At another campus, colleagues of mine–all women–were brought into an administrator’s office, where they were told that their weight would be an obstacle to getting a job.

Although I have never been one to closely follow trends or spend an inordinate amount of time in front of the mirror, I take my appearance very seriously. I struggle with my weight. I blow out my hair and put on makeup every day. And while you may see me in workout clothes at the JCC, you will never see me in jeans or sweats at the synagogue.

Part of this is a simple desire to look professional, whatever that means. Part of this is because of all those media messages I get about how I need to look good to be listened to. Part of it is because I believe in the motto of Beauty Tips for Ministers, “Because you’re in the public eye, and God knows you need to look good.” (BTFM is great, by the way, because there is an emphasis on looking and feeling your best, whatever your natural size and shape, with an eye towards beauty and modesty instead of focusing on “cuteness” and sexual attractiveness).

But there is another layer to this for me. I want to be a role model to our young girls and women. I want them to see the rabbinate–and other high-status professions–as a possibility for themselves. And sometimes, I get to see that lightbulb go off, that look in their eyes when they realize a new possibility for themselves. But I know that, in order to be a role model for women, I need not only to be perceived as intelligent and capable, but also as attractive. As much as women and girls want to see themselves as successful, intelligent, creative, and powerful–our media and our society tells them that none of that is worth anything if they aren’t also perfectly proportioned, conventionally beautiful, well-dressed and well-made-up, and appealing to the opposite sex. Even the most self-confident, critically-thinking young girl is taking that into account when she imagines her future and chooses her path and her mentors.

The pioneers in professions like mine had to, as Charlotte Whitton said, “do twice as well as men to be though of as half as good”. We now face a different challenge. We might be perceived as intelligent and capable, but as women, we walk a thin line between being attractive and being perceived as sexually provocative, between being assertive and being perceived as “bitchy,” being compassionate, thoughtful (and sometimes even vulnerable) and being perceived as weak. Appearance is only the tip of the iceberg of how women are still treated differently than men, and how these discrepancies have an undue influence on the careers we choose to pursue and the success we have in pursuing them.

When I first applied for a job as a senior rabbi, it was important for the congregation to know what I looked like. They didn’t tell me this: they just googled me, and proceeded to tell my supervisor, “She’s adorable!”

That comment just about tore me apart. I’ve never been called adorable in my life, and part of me was flattered. However, long before I even interviewed for the position, I knew one thing for sure: No one ever says, “our new senior rabbi” and “adorable” in the same sentence.

Go to MissRepresentation.org: see the film, sign the pledge. As local radio personality Frank Stasio said today in the panel: they’ll stop making this stuff if we stop buying it.

Rabbi Leah R. Berkowitz is the associate rabbi at Judea Reform Congregation in Durham, NC. Check out her blog for updates on the #tzitzitchallenge.

“Say You Are My Sister…”

As Shabbat approaches, there are a series of news stories weighing heavily on my soul. There are reports on the recovery of Malala Yousafzai, the 15-year-old girl who was shot in the head by Taliban members for publicly speaking out about her right to an education. There is the arrest of Anat Hoffman, for wearing a tallit and reciting the Shema at the Western Wall. There is the pre-election circus over policies–and ideologies–that negatively affect women right here at home.

And then there is this week’s Torah portion, Lech Lecha, in which Abram is chosen to be  the first leader of the Jewish people. It is admirable that he should leave his ancestral home and set out for a land unknown to him. But what is the first decision he makes as a leader?

When they had almost reached Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai, “Look, now–I know what a beautiful woman you are! So when the Egyptians see you, and say: ‘This is his wife,’ they may kill me; but you they shall keep alive. Please say then that you are my sister, so that on your account it may go well for me, and that my life may be spared because of you” (Genesis 12: 11-3).

Abram’s strategy works, and he and Sarai leave Egypt richer than when they had arrived. In the interim, Sarai is brought to Pharaoh and “taken to wife,” an arrangement that can only be ended by divine intervention. Midrash tells us that Abram smuggled Sarai into Egypt as if she were a precious commodity (Gen. Rabbah 10:5), but that the Egyptians discovered her anyway.

I picture Abram explaining his logic to Sarai, “Listen, either way, you are going to be violated. I can’t do anything about that. This way, at least I will be safe. Make this sacrifice for the greater good.” With that, Abram essentially throws his beloved wife under the bus.

How is it that, thousands of years later, we are still reliving this story?

When we let a man tell a woman that she cannot participate in prayer or study because of her beauty, we are reliving this story. Religious fundamentalists still attempt to soothe women with flattery, assuring women that it is only because of their great beauty that they must be oppressed, reminding women that it is “their fault” when their beauty leads to violence, instead of doing everything in their power to protect women they claim to treasure from harm.

When we let politicians tell a woman that she cannot decide for herself when to engage in sexual activity and how to protect herself against pregnancy and STIs, or that she does not have the intellectual capacity to decide when rape has taken place, and that she must bear a child, no matter the circumstances of her life or the conception (because this is God’s will) we are reliving this story.

But the oppression of women is NOT God’s will, and that, too, is evident in this story. Although Abram does nothing to protect his wife’s body or her honor, God strikes Pharaoh’s household with a plague, and Pharaoh, realizing his transgression, ends his relationship with Sarai and sends the couple, quickly, on their way.

In Bereishit Rabbah, we finally hear Sarai’s voice, crying out for justice from Pharaoh’s palace: And the whole of that night Sarah lay prostrate on her face, crying, ‘ Sovereign of the Universe! Abraham went forth [from his land] on Your assurance, and I went forth with faith; Abraham is without this prison while I am within!’ Said the Holy One, blessed be God, to her: ‘Whatever I do, I do for thy sake, and all will say, “It is BECAUSE OF SARAI ABRAM’S WIFE.’” (Gen. Rabbah 41:2).

We hear Sarai’s voice in our own day: in Malala Yousafzai’s blog posts about the challenges she faces as a Pakistani girl trying to receive an education, in Anat Hoffman’s recitation of the Shema, and in her tireless work to empower Israeli women to demand their right to full religious expression. But it isn’t enough.

We, too, need to speak out on behalf of the Sarai’s in our world. Because as long as there are those who would treat women’s opinions as inferior, their bodies as property, and their autonomy as something to be sacrificed, even for the “greater good,” we will continue to relive this story.

Leah Rachel Berkowitz is the associate rabbi at Judea Reform Congregation, in Durham, NC. Click here for her firsthand account of Anat Hoffman’s arrest in July 2010.

Taking on the Talmud

To follow the trend of tying this into #blogelul (I’ve been spending Elul away from social media so I almost missed this) I’ll begin Elul 8 with a Prayer: Blessed are You, Eternal our God, who makes us holy with commandments, and commands us to immerse ourselves in the study of Torah.

I remember the exact moment when I started thinking like a rabbi. We were discussing the ritual of halitzah in Dr. Panken’s class. The law required the levirate widow to remove her brother-in-law’s shoe and spit in his face. Dr. Panken asked, “What concerns might the rabbis have had about this ritual?”

Almost automatically, I responded, “What if the man doesn’t have feet?”

It seemed so ridiculous that I actually giggled, but Dr. Panken smiled. “Close,” he said. “The correct question is, ‘What if the woman doesn’t have arms?’”

We went on to study the possible roadblocks to halitza, such as a woman who spits blood (Is it still considered spit?). I can’t say that this information has helped much in my rabbinate. Some knowledge about levirate marriage comes in handy when preaching on the stories of Tamar I and Ruth, when I need to offer a counterpoint to arguments for traditional marriage, or when I happened to catch the movie Loving Leah. I’m almost certain that I will never be called upon to preside over a levirate marriage or a halitza ceremony. Why did I need to study that particular text?

This is only one example of my continuing struggle with rabbinic texts. I want to know them and embrace them, immerse myself in them and use them in my rabbinate. However, I often find that there are large swaths of rabbinic text–even midrash, one of my favorite topics to teach–that are damaging at worst and irrelevant at best, particularly when it comes to the treatment of women.

Often I find myself cherry-picking passages or ignoring Talmudic thought in favor of more modern Jewish thinkers and writers. However, on Friday, August 3, a strange convergence of events led me want to take on the Talmud in its entirety.

1) My copy of the new Koren Talmud arrived.

2) The Daf Yomi cycle–7.5 years of reading a page of Talmud every day–started.

3) I read this article, in which one of the leaders of our movement explained why Talmud study is not a priority for Reform Jews.

If only out of stubbornness, I decided to take on Daf Yomi for myself. I had always hoped to do so at some point in my rabbinate, when my Aramaic was better, or when I had time and a partner for a daily chevruta. That, I realized, was not going to happen anytime soon, and so I was going to have to do Daf Yomi in my own way.

Although the Steinsaltz edition of the Hebrew found in the Koren Talmud would make it possible for me to tackle the original text, I decided to read the English translation (with footnotes) instead. Even this takes me about half an hour a day, which has made me reevaluate how I spend my time.

It fascinates me that not a single day–not Shabbat, not Yom Kippur, not even the day after the massive international siyyum that celebrated the end of the last Daf Yomi cycle–is taken off. I’ve always reminded my congregants that Jewish learning is a lifelong, never-ending process, and that it doesn’t take breaks for the summer or school breaks or young adulthood. Now I’ve been challenged to live those words for myself.

I haven’t missed a day yet. I don’t always absorb or understand everything I read, even in English. Much of it strikes me as off the wall. There is talk of demons and impurity and exclusion of the differently-abled that doesn’t mesh with my understanding of Judaism (for another English reader’s analysis, check out Adam Kirsch’s weekly report on Daf Yomi in Tablet Magazine).

While the content of the Talmud may not always be relevant to my life as a Reform Jew, the process that the Talmud records is one with which we need to be familiar: a process of discussion and argument and difference of opinion. The rabbis were a group of people committed to imagining every possible scenario. They were charged with balancing a tradition with modernity, a desire for order with a desire to be lenient (in certain cases). They were charged with making sense of their world, even as it changed constantly.

I may never need to know the answer regarding halitzah and the woman with no arms (in case you’re curious, she removes the shoe with her teeth). But by making myself familiar with the methods of the Talmud, I pray that I’ll learn to ask the right questions, as I face the challenges of my own community.

Ad Meah v’Esrim Safta!

Last Wednesday, July 18th, my grandmother, Anne Berkowitz, turned 90 years old. At her birthday dinner, she agreed to answer any question we asked. This wasn’t the easiest game, due to some hearing and short-term memory problems (including forgetting that she had agreed to do this in the first place). Still, we were able to gather some pearls of wisdom.

My favorite question came from my cousin Rebecca, who asked, “What was the most significant invention in your lifetime?”

My grandmother, who up until this point had shrugged off every question, answered, without hesitation, “Birth control.”

We all laughed, but we had to admit that it was a good answer. It made me think about all of the other inventions and social programs that enabled my grandmother and her family to pull themselves out of poverty and live the American dream.

My grandmother was born to immigrant parents and grew up in Harlem, where her parents worked odd jobs until they could open a grocery store. Her mother had been well-educated and wealthy back in Warsaw; her father was illiterate and only spoke Yiddish. That her mother was able to navigate this new country and all it had to offer spoke to her fortitude, but also to the multitude of programs that were available to families like hers.

My grandmother lived across the street from a branch of the New York Public Library, where she retreated whenever she had the chance (and an adult to walk her across the street). I once asked her what she used to read, and my tough-as-nails grandmother answered, “Mostly fairy tales.”

The reading paid off, and my grandmother thrived at her public school, skipping grades and earning entrance to the prestigious Hunter High School and Hunter College, which, at the time, were free to whoever passed the entrance exams. Work-study helped her make ends meet until she earned a degree in accounting–with a minor in physiology, since she had originally hoped to be a doctor–and got a job working as a bookkeeper in an accounting firm, where she met my grandfather. Together they produced three children and eight grandchildren–all college graduates, many with advanced degrees–and now two great-grandchildren (and counting).

My grandmother also benefited from developments in Jewish education. Her mother insisted that the cheder that educated her two sons also take her daughter, and my grandmother–who claims to be the only child who paid attention–developed a lifelong passion for Jewish learning. Later in her life, she attended the Melton program at HUC-JIR to be certified as a Religious School teacher. She studied Talmud well into her eighties, leaving the class, ultimately, because it “moved too slowly.”

I mention her history, not (only) because of pride, but because of a realization that the programs that made her American dream a reality are still under fire. We are no longer a nation that welcomes immigrants, our communities are constantly trying to cut costs and cut corners when it comes to public education and other essential institutions, many in our government are still threatened by the concept of a woman being able to make choices about her body and her family.

As we prepare for another election season, I have to ask: are we still moving forwards? Could someone born in poverty today, or arriving in this country as an immigrant, achieve the same levels of education, independence, and financial security as my grandmother did? And, ninety years from now, what will our children will say was the greatest innovation of their lifetimes?

Me with my grandmother at her 90th birthday party. Yom huledet sameach!

When the Rabbi is a Bridesmaid

This past weekend, I married one of my best friends.

This is a phrase we are used to hearing from a bride or a groom, not an officiant. But as a thirty-year-old woman rabbi, I often find myself under the chuppah with people I love. And, every so often, it’s in a bridesmaid’s dress.

Mazal tov Rebecca and Zach!

Ever since I began rabbinical school, friends and family have offered me honors in their weddings: singing the sheva brachot, guarding the yichud room, and signing the ketubah. As soon as I was ordained, it followed that I would also perform the ceremony.

According to the New York Times, because many twenty-somethings don’t have a relationship with a synagogue or a clergy person, it has become common to ask a friend to solemnize the marriage by getting ordained online. It’s meaningful for them, because they can personalize the ceremony, and it’s meaningful for me, because I get to be a part of their special moment, and get to know them through the process in a way that I hadn’t known them before.

Unlike an online ordinee, however, I officiate as a representative of a faith tradition with boundaries and expectations. This sharply contrasts with the modern conception of a wedding, which celebrates romantic love, individuality, and the desire to create a “perfect day” for the couple getting married.

It can be difficult to balance my desire for a couple to have exactly what they want with my understanding of tradition, particularly when that couple are friends or family members. In striving for balance, I’ve learned a few things:

1) The importance of wedding “minutiae”: Having been on both sides of the chuppah, I know how heavy a bride’s bouquet can be, how important it is to keep your knees bent during the ceremony (I’ve seen both a groomsman and a father-of-the-bride go over), and that even something as small as the wording of a wedding invitation can bring the drama between two families to a head. I’ve learned that some little things aren’t little at all, as they are often the first real decisions a couple–and their families–will make together.

2) How to stand my ground: I don’t officiate at intermarriages, and I don’t do weddings on Shabbat. Sometimes I have to tell a bride and groom that they can’t have things exactly as they wanted them, which runs contrary to current cultural norms. Even when couples agree to my terms, there can be friction. Twice now, someone has asked me whether I would move up the ceremony because of an impending storm (once this was the wedding planner, once my own mother). I said no, keeping the tradition trumped having the wedding outside, and proceeded to watch the skies with angst that the bride would never speak to me again if I ruined her wedding. Fortunately, God smiled on us. At a wedding during Hurricane Irene, the rain stopped for the exact duration of the ceremony. This past weekend, the rainclouds burst during the cocktail hour and quickly passed us by. The ceremony, though late, was dry. (On a side note: can we bring back Sunday weddings? In synagogues? My heart isn’t made for this kind of drama. . .)

A ketubah signing for Adam and Rachel.
Notice how the gold taffeta matches my kippah. . .

3) How to be “me”: At my first “double-duty” wedding, I did not want to carry flowers or be escorted, so that I could be “fully rabbinical” during the ceremony. I ended up doing both. My rabbi’s manual was taken from me and brought to the chuppah by a wedding coordinator, which made me incredibly nervous. This time, when I asked the wedding coordinator whether I should carry my rabbis’ manual or my bouquet, she said, “You can carry your book. It’s who you are.”

People ask me about how I “switch back and forth” between roles when I am a rabbi and bridesmaid at a wedding. The truth is, I don’t. I may have a wardrobe change here and there, but whatever I am wearing (though Rev. Victoria Weinstein may disagree), whatever I am doing, I am simultaneously rabbi, bridesmaid, and friend. I am supporting my friends by blessing their marriage and making their wedding ceremony meaningful, and I am being a rabbi by consecrating a marriage and rejoicing with the bride and groom, even when that means bustling a dress, making sure the bride gets her favorite appetizers, or rocking out on the dance floor.

Leah Rachel Berkowitz (NY’ 08) is the assistant rabbi at Judea Reform Congregation in Durham, NC. She blogs at thisiswhatarabbilookslike.wordpress.com.