On Women, 9th Av, Harlots, Agency and the Future of New London Synagogue

The Eve of the Deluge, William Bell Scott c. 1865

Jerusalem the Harlot

On the Shabbat before Tisha B’Av we read a Haftarah that warns of the destruction of the City of Jerusalem.

Eichah Hayitah LZonah the prophet Isaiah asks about the city – How is it possible that she has become a harlot?[1]

Harlotry as a Biblical metaphor is staggeringly well-attested; the Israelites run after other gods when they are supposed to be monotheists. And the prophets describe them as harlots.

This is from the opening of the book of Jeremiah;

“The word of the Lord came to me,

This is what the Lord says: ‘I remember the devotion of your youth,
    how as a bride you loved me
and followed me through the wilderness,
    through a land not sown.

And then a few verses later

“Long ago you broke off your yoke
    and tore off your bonds and under every spreading tree
    you lay down as a prostitute."[2]

The entire structure and driving force of the Book of Hosea is the command, given to its hero, to marry a harlot – Gomer, so Hosea can appreciate God’s pain with Israel running off after other gods. It’s an ugly relationship. At one point the cuckolded lover promises retribution – it’s not clear whether it’s Hosea talking about his wife, or God talking about Israel – in these sharp words;

“I will strip her naked and expose her as in the day she was born, and make her like a wilderness, and turn her into a parched land, and kill her with thirst.”[3]

The Biblical scholar Renita Weems writes: “Hosea’s use of the marriage metaphor to describe [God] and Israel’s relationship is very effective, [but] it raises problems for those who are concerned that the Bible may excuse violence against women. If God has the right to punish the people, the image of a husband physically punishing his wife becomes almost unavoidable, and his right to do so unquestionable.”[4]

We claim the Bible should infuse our contemporary actions. We are proud of the way Exodus inspires us to oppose contemporary slavery. We love the way Shabbat seeks to give us a balance between being workers and ensouled human beings. We proclaim that the creation of every human being in the image of God means that all humans should be honoured. So, what do we do with an idea that gives a divine imprimatur to domestic violence?

Jerusalem the Wailing Widow

Let me try another problem, one less brutal but far broader in its contemporary reach.

The verse in the Haftarah read before Tisha B’Av  Eichah Hayitah LZonah – ‘How did she become a harlot?’ – echoes the opening line of the book of Lamentations read on Tisha B’Av itself.

Eicha yashvah bdad haIr rabati am hayitah k’almanah

– ‘How did the city once so full of people, become deserted, like a widow.’

Jerusalem is to be compared to a widow.

‘She weeps bitterly, tears on her cheeks, she has no comforter among her lovers.’[5]

Throughout the book of Lamentations, the victim of destruction is referred to in female terms, Bat Zion - ‘Daughter Zion’ (see Lam. 1.6; 2.1), Bat Yerushalim - ‘Daughter Jerusalem’ (Lam. 2.13) Betulat Bat Yehudah - ‘virgin Daughter Judah’ (Lam. 1.15) Jerusalem is a mother mourning her ‘her children.’ (vv. 16, 18)[6]

Some, such as the Bible Scholar Barbara Kaiser, find it moving that, finally, after so many male heroes, we get the Bible using a female persona to express itself.[7] But others, like Deryn Guest, argue these female metaphors just perpetuate seeing women as recipients of male violence. The men, Guest suggests, evade the public glare of scrutiny while the brunt of the blame is shifted onto a personified woman.[8]             

To me, the issue is not that men evade responsibility – there are plenty of verses attacking male failure. It’s that the role the Book of Lamentations presents only one role for women – the role of weeping. There’s no female agency in Lamentations.[9] The role of woman that arises from the Book is to wail, and that's it.

Again, that imagery is not limited to one Biblical appearance. In Jeremiah we find this;

Thus says the LORD: A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted for her children because they are no more.[10]

Men do things, sometimes good things, more often bad things. Women cry.

And again, for those of us who believe that this ancient book should guide how we live our lives today – we have to ask the question, what impact does the framing of ‘woman’ as ‘wailer-only’ have today?

Half-Way to Modernity

Let me try and answer in two steps stepping, first, 1000 years forward from the Biblical period into the classic Rabbinic period. I want to look at how the Rabbis of 1500 years ago read the story of Dina as told in Genesis 34.

Dina, daughter of Jacob, gets raped. That’s awful. Everyone in the Biblical period knows that that is awful and the Bible reports vigorous argument over how to respond to this awful act. But it is only the men whose arguments are recorded. Regarding Dina herself, her mother, any sisters (is it really the case that the only one daughter was born to Jacob, or maybe Dina is the only daughter whose name is deemed worthy of recording?) we have nothing. To fill in the blanks in the Biblical account we, as Rabbinic Jews, are counselled to turn to the great Rabbinic commentaries and here we find familiar refrains.

The Biblical narrative opens by saying that Dina went out - ‘VaTaytze’ - to visit the daughters of Canaan. Rashi suggests that the reason for her rape was that she was a 'Yatzanit' – ‘the kinda girl who goes out.’[11] In contemporary terms, this, of course, is known as victim-blaming. It's unacceptable, not least since there’s nothing in the Biblical narrative that suggests Dina’s wrongdoing. She’s just blamed for being a ‘Yatzanit’ because … well I think it’s impossible to view this any other way, there is an assumption among the male commentators of the Rabbinic period, that she’s liable to harlotrous behaviour simply because she’s a woman.[12]

And then there is this. In the Talmud the Rabbis are engaging in hermeneutic play and suggest, of all the possibilities, that Dina marries Job[13] - Job the greatest sufferer of the Biblical period. Well, I think it’s impossible to view this claim any other way than to believe the male commentators of the Rabbinic period assume that the typology, the role and the destiny of Dina, as a woman, is to wail.[14]

The point is that Biblical images, narratives and typologies constructed around women continue to impact into the Rabbinic period – of course they do.

Today, and Tomorrow, at New London Synagogue

We finally turn to the question of the impact of all of this on the vitally important consultation we are engaged in at New London.

We’re consulting on the long-term future of our community; whether women in this community should women be able to participate fully in every service in the year, or should we retain our existing arrangements; whereby women are only able to lead services or read from the Torah on alternative weeks. 

Whereas, in the past I’ve led these conversations as the Rabbi – and we’ve considered, primarily, halachic issues[15] – this time, we are going to be led on this by Council on this strategic decision about the nature of the future of our community. I don’t get a vote on Council, so I feel freer to state my case. And for those who disagree with me, I still love you all. But my job is both to teach Torah and to provide leadership for our community. So let me try.

The key issue, as far as reading from the Torah is concerned, is the honour of the community.[16] The Talmud says that the honour of the community would be besmirched by having women called to the Torah, and that while it would be possible to call women to read from the Torah, we don’t for this reason.

Now that attitude – that calling women to read from the Torah besmirches the honour of the community - makes sense if one views women as harlotrous, or good for wailing, but not good for action. But it doesn’t make sense if one views women as full and equal members of society and as capable of bearing honour as men.[17] And I know everyone in the community believes women are equal members of society and this community, but at the moment, there is concern about having women called to the Torah every week.

And the people, decent, caring, passionately committed members among them, who articulate this concern don’t suggest, for a moment, that women are second-class human beings, or lacking in any way. They just claim that it feels wrong, or they feel no need to make a change that would mark out this community as being less close to its orthodox beginnings than they would wish to see. Now I accept that. I accept that doing things differently can feel odd and wrong and can make people feel less comfortable in the Shul. But I don’t accept, I can’t accept that it’s possible to disentangle how we got to this place – where women are not honoured with being called to the Torah – from all the imagery associated with Dina, and Rachel, and Bat Zion and Gomer.

I don’t accept, I can’t accept that we are in this place because men and women are valued by the tradition equally but given different tasks in our religious lives. That’s not true when you look at how men and women have been imagined and valued through three thousand years of religious history. 

It’s not true that our tradition honours not being called to the Torah for one gender and being called to the Torah, for the other as equivalent. There are people who make that claim, but it’s a deceit, [18] it’s an attempt to justify the unjustifiable. I don’t and I can’t accept it.

So what do we do?

Here’s a technical example that makes an important point. In the Talmud[19] there is an argument as to the implication of the term ‘Uvshochbecha’ – ‘and you lie down’ as it appears in the first paragraph of the Shema.[20] The great House of Shammai thinks it means you have to lie down to say the Shema in the evening and the great House of Hillel thinks the word ‘Uvshochbecha’ just means you say it in the evening. Hillel thinks the term has nothing to do with lying or standing or sitting to recite these words.

Then comes this story.

Rabbi Yishmael and Rabbi Elazar Ben Azarah were staying in the same place and Rabbi Yishmael was lying down and Rabbi Elezar was standing up. And it came to the time to say the Shema.

Now Rabbi Elazar was a follower of the House of Shammai, so he lay down.

And Rabbi Yishmael was a follower of the House of Hillel, so he stood up.

And the Rabbis ask, why did Yishmael feel the need to stand up? Hillel didn’t say you had to stand up, he just said how you stand or sit, or lie is irrelevant. The answer is given that Yishmael stood up because he didn’t want anyone to look at him and think he followed the ruling of the House of Shammai. Yishmael felt he needed to stand up to demonstrate he wasn’t to be counted among the people who believed something that he didn’t believe to be true.

Here’s the problem for all the decent, serious, passionately committed members of this community who don’t see why we should change and have no interest in being associated with the way in which women have been included in narrative after narrative and legal category after legal category for thousands of years of Rabbinic Judaism. It’s not that these people are sexist or misogynist or anything like that. The problem is that by continuing to accept the structures of the past, they allow others to look on and think that the very thing they oppose is, in fact, acceptable, or maybe even divinely mandated. Not standing up to oppose the existing structure is to allow another generation to grow up thinking that these structures are somehow God-given, even if they don’t accept that to be the case.

Rabbi Yishmael is an inspiration. He puts himself out to demonstrate he doesn’t accept what he doesn’t accept. He doesn’t allow people to look at him and think the thing he rejects is OK, and that requires effort and discomfort.

We need to change to become fully egalitarian every week. We need to make that shift, even if it is uncomfortable, and I know it is uncomfortable. We have to make that shift soon and we have to make it cleanly. I know many women in this community won’t wish to receive aliyot, and that’s fine. They don’t have to. But we as a community can’t enter 2020 without making our future on this issue clear.

It’s not acceptable that ancient models of seeing women as harlots and wailers continue to dominate our future, as a community that values and wishes to honour all our members.

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[1] Is. 1:21, see also 57:8.

[2] 2:20, see also Jer. 3:1. 3:2, 3:6, 13:12.

[3] Hos. 2.3. Israel as a harlot is a trop of other Biblical books too, particularly Ezekiel, see Ez. 16:15, 16:16, 16:25, ‘At the head of every street you built your lofty shrines and degraded your beauty. With increasing promiscuity, you spread your legs to all who passed by.’

[4] Substantially reworded, See Helpmates, Harlots and Heroes ed. Bellis, p.160.

[5] Lam 1:2. Note that even as a widow ‘she’ is still referred to as a harlot.

[6] I’m grateful to Discourse of Resistance: Feminist Studies on the Psalter and Book of Lamentations,  Carleen Mandolfo for much of this analysis.

[7] Barbara Bakke Kaiser, ‘Poet as “Female Impersonator”: The Image of Daughter Zion as Speaker in Biblical Poems of Suffering’, JR 67 (1987), pp. 164-82. For her notion of ‘persona’ she draws on the work of William F. Lanahan, ‘The Speaking Voice in the Book of Lamentations’, JBL 93 (1974), pp. 41-49.

[8] Deryn Guest, ‘Hiding Behind the Naked Women in Lamentations: A Recriminative Response’, BibInt 7 (1999), pp. 413-48 (428).

[9] Possibly 2:20-21, but it’s not much.

[10] 31:15. See also Isa. 3 16 & 25.

[11] Rashi follows BR 80:1 and Tanhuma Vayishlach 7. Interestingly Rabeinu Bachya records four other rabbinically attested reasons for the rape (each of which blames Jacob, nor Dinah), but Rashi focusses exclusively on the one that blames the woman. See here. That said Bachya perhaps reflects the underlying Rabbinic assumption regarding women – and Dinah among them – when he cites “Rabbi Yehudah son of Shalom added: ‘there is no worse cause of sin than woman; whereas we find that three thousand Jewish males were slain for having worshipped the golden calf, (Exodus 32,28), twenty-four thousand Jewish males were killed due to the seduction by the Moabite and Midianite women reported in Numbers 28,9.’”

[12] Or, as Rashi puts it, she takes after her mother, Leah, was is also labelled a ‘Yatzanit.’

[13] Baba Batra 15b

[14][14] It’s clear from the Sugya that the Rabbis are playing a hermeneutic game. Job is not being considered a real person, but rather an exegetical plaything that can be used to associate and disassociate ideas, rather than historical facts. I’ve published on this Sugya in Conservative Judaism, available here.

[15] There is a summary here. My responsa on women reading from the Torah is here and on women leading services here. Rabbi David’s Golinkin’s responsum on mixed seating (with which I entirely agree) is here.

[16] Tosefta Megillah 3:11, see sources and discussion cited here.

[17] Equally, this view doesn’t make sense in the reverse – i.e. if we view women’s ability to besmirch the honour of the community on a level equal to men.

[18] The absurdity of that claim is most apparent when considering the question of ‘the voice of women.’ The reason the ‘voice of women’ is precluded from religious and public settings, in those religious communities that preclude a woman’s voice, is because it is deemed to entice sexual promiscuity – it’s the harlotry thing again. See Talmud Brachot 24a and discussion here.

[19] Tosefta Brachot 1:6 and TY Brachot 11a:15.

[20] Deut 6:7.