On the 100th anniversary of the bat mitzvah, considering my own bat mitzvah trajectory

In honor of the first American bat mitzvah a century ago, Jewish women are sharing their stories on social media. I shared mine, and it has taken me to some unexpected places.

***#100yearsbatmitzvah****

I'll share mine.

Flatbush. December 1981. Shabbat Parshat Miketz. Around Hanukah. On Friday night, we had a dinner at home for the extended family, cousins, etc. We laid out tables that took over the living room and dining room. My father made a speech.

Shabbat morning, The Young Israel of Flatbush. My father got an aliyah. Had there been other males in our family, they would have gotten aliyot, too, I presume. But with four girls, the opportunities for kibud are limited. My father got the kibud on behalf all of us.

After services (or maybe it was after the sermon, I can't remember), the rabbi made an extra speech wishing me mazal tov. I stood up in my row in the women's section -- the fourth row off to the right, our permanent spot -- where the rabbi could see me from the distance. After shul, I got a present that someone in the shul had bought. I can't remember what it was. Probably a book. I wish I remembered.

After shul, we had a big lunch in our house for not only the extended family but also for a bunch of my friends. Girls only. I made a speech about the parsha. It had to do with Yosef overcoming obstacles. I wish I remember more about the speech. I had it etched in my brain for a long time. But it's still 40 years ago. Details fade.

It was all on Shabbat. To keep it sort of wholesome. No party or event hall or music or catering or anything like that, as many of my classmates were doing. No excessive materialism. No bands or DJs. No boys. No potential for mixed dancing or games of spin the bottle -- which happened once at a girl’s bat mitzvah party, to my parents' absolute horror. This was the way to do bat mitzvah, my family said. Keep it focused on the religious purpose. On the purity of the idea. And of course no photos. Shabbos.

For years after, my parents took great pride in how advanced our family was for celebrating the "bat torah" (we didn't call it "bat mitzvah") for all my sisters and me. My father often bragged about how much he supported women and girls. Whenever he heard of a family that had all girls, he would proudly go over to them and tell them what a "delight" girls are, and that if they needed any insights about raising girls, they should ask him.

A few blocks away from me, the late Rivka Haut -- whose daughter Tamara was a classmate -- was organizing the Flatbush Women's tefillah group on east 13th street between Ave I and the cut. We heard about it, but my family rejected it. Feminists, we heard, were women who were just trying to be like men. Who were angry. Careerists. Changing halakha. All of that. It was all wrong, we were told. And it was weird, you know, hearing only women's voices. No men. Something was wrong with that whole sound, the whole experience. The whole thing was just not right, we determined. We never went, ever, to women's tefillah.

Although, my aunt Sara, who also lived on East 13th between Avenue I and the cut, recently told me that my Grandma Bea used to go to the women's tefilla group. I didn't know that. That was so surprising to me. I wish I could verify that experience somehow. Find out how she liked it. How they liked her. How often did she go? Did she do anything there? Did she ever get an aliyah? Give a dvar torah? I have no idea. I wish I could have had that conversation with her.

And what kinds of conversations did she have with her oldest son, who was raising his daughters to think that such things were posnisht? That feminists were a threat to men and to the world order? What were those conversations like? Did they ever even take place? I wish I knew.

Grandma Bea died when I was 23, before I discovered feminism. There is like this little hole in my heart where that conversation should be, where my connection to her belongs. It's like, it's there, and yet it's invisible. I'm trying to touch it. It's like trying to grab at that eggshell that got into the batter. You try and try to find it and hold it but your hand always comes up empty. That little piece that you want more than anything else always slips away.

That's all I know about my bat torah/bat mitzvah. Overall, it is a happy memory. A moment of joy and pride.

Which explains a lot. When your moments of pride and joy are wrapped up in other things that you won’t be able to recognize for years or decades, you still hang on to them. Sometimes you hang on to the things that hurt you because those are the same things that are providing the stuff you want most in your life.

****

I posted all this on Facebook the other day, tagged my Aunt Sara and my classmate Tamara Haut Weissman, and waited to see what happened.

Tamara wrote:

I love this!

Mine must have been in the summer of 81. The first women's tefilah wasn't quite put together yet. My parents were still trying to find a Shul for themselves, which they found so many years later, in the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, after they left Brooklyn.

They were davening at the time in The Flatbush Minyan, which met in the basement of a bank on Ave J. I gave a dvar Torah from the women's section, which was quite radical even in an experimental-type of Orthodox Shul. At least 1 of the men walked out in protest.

On Sunday we had a family gathering in Shang Chai and they have out Xerox copies of a special menu that said "Tamara Haut's Bat Mitzvah" which I thought was so fancy, and I still have it somewhere.

People who knew my family sometimes assumed that I had read Torah for my bat mitzvah, but I hadn't.

Tamara’s mother was legendary in the world of Orthodox women’s advancement, though I certainly did not know that at the time, and people’s influence on the world does not always mirror their influence on their own families.

A few more commenters shared history of the Flatbush Women’s Minyan. Aliza Berger, a longtime Orthodox feminist activist and member of Original Women of the Wall, also from Flatbush, wrote that the Flatbush group started in 1982. Tamara also added, “And of course as we had to say all the time, ‘It's not a minyan, it's a davening group.’ 😄Which was supposed to make it more kosher.” A conversation also ensued about whether it was in fact radical back then for a girl to give a dvar torah. Edda Eisenstadt Weissberg, who was a year ahead of me in Flatbush, wrote:

Was it radical to give a dvar Torah? I gave a dvar Torah at my Bat Mitzvah (or Bat Torah as they also insisted on calling it.) My father wouldn’t have had it any other way …. I still remember the topic of my dvar Torah - the different davening we learn from each of the forefathers.

Edda’s comment is striking. We often believe that history is a linear progression, that if we wait long enough, the thing that seems radical today will not be seen radical in a generation. But history is often not linear at all. We hear that line all the time, and it’s often an excuse to slow down change. “It’s not the time”, kind of thing. “Not yet”. Or “Be patient”. That is the mantra thrown at feminist activists everywhere. But it’s just a smokescreen. There are clear-sighted people in every generation who are able to discern basic humanity despite their surroundings.

(I am reminded about the fact that in 1776, people like Granville Sharp were already sharing powerful ideas about why slavery was wrong. And yet it took nearly another century for America to abolish it. The idea that slaveowners didn’t quite understand that slavery was wrong because of the times that they lived in is an argument that does not hold up. Humanity is visible to those who are paying attention, no matter what your society tells you.)

Women’s accounts of their celebrations, their family customs, and the dynamics around them continue to challenge perceptions and stereotypes. My HS classmate Rachel Mohl Abrahams wrote on her page:

Parshat Yitro 1982. I was the first girl in my Modern Orthodox shul to mark the day by speaking from the pulpit after services were done.

The rabbi of Manhattan Beach Jewish Center, Rabbi Joseph Singer, a YU musmach, agreed that if we closed the ark after Adon Olam, it was perfectly fine.

I spoke about how both בני ישראל and בית יעקב are mentioned before the giving of the 10 commandments, and how Rashi explains that was to include men and women.

My parents knew that marking the event in the sanctuary was important. Their advocacy let me know that it was important too.

That explains everything, doesn’t it. When we are surrounded by supportive people, it’s a whole different story.

*****

My Aunt Sara also came on my thread to help fill in gaps about my Grandma Bea.

Grandma Bea attended the minyan on our block which was held on Shabbos Mevorchim. She would then come to our house for lunch. She did get kibbudim at the minyan. One Shabbos they gave her Hagbah and she wasn’t very happy about it. Grandma Bea was a very intelligent woman who was ahead of her time.

Hagba! She lifted the Torah up! That is fascinating. Grandma Bea was a very tall and strong woman (I obviously got height genes from a different side of the family). So I'm guessing that's why she was asked to do it, because of how she looked. (My spouse, who is 6'3", gets that all the time. He walks into any synagogue and immediately is asked to do hagba). So Grandma Bea did this, but not by her own choice. It’s fascinating that she hated it.

Hagba is a very gendered part of the service that I have thought a lot about over the years. In fact, I wrote about it in the epilogue to my book, The Men's Section, where I consider the differences between Orthodox all-women's prayer spaces and orthodox-egalitarian spaces. For the most part, a mixed-gender space seems like a more progressive and inclusive, right? After all, we don't want a world in which women are only considered "equals" if there are no men in the room. Also, in theory, an egalitarian space would allow for equality of all genders without having to place people in binary boxes the moment they walk into the room -- although Orthodoxy clearly has not discovered this idea yet.

There is also something jarring about the all-women's space in Orthodoxy, of being in room packed full of women and not being allowed to recite kaddish or even hazarat hashatz -- nothing with the words "amen", nothing that is considered divrei kedusha, "an item of holiness". You can have 100 women praying together, but you're still only considered individuals, never counting as a group. Never counting, period. No matter how many of you there are. Even today, when the room could be full of women Rabbis, Rabbas, or Maharats. Even then, there is no kedusha. No holiness. You're not considered a communion of human beings by the men outside the room who have all the say in the matter. That is very hard to endure, no matter how much I have enjoyed Orthodox women's prayer groups.

On the other hand, there are certain ways in which the all-women's group has advantages and even a certain power. And that is, a woman will never be pushed aside by a man to do a particular job, which is what women have experienced elsewhere. (I have a whole chapter about THAT dynamic in my book....) In the women's group, women do all the jobs that there are available. There is never a moment of someone saying, "We need a man to do this job". Women do everything. Well, you know, except for counting as a minyan and doing minyan stuff. Whatever is done is done by women.

Most notably in the all-women’s space is hagba. It is very rare to see a woman do hagba -- in any synagogue in any denomination. As challenging as it is to get the world to view women as leaders, as competent, or as brilliant, it seems even harder to view women as STRONG. Like, all this Torah reading is lovely, but when it comes time to physically MOVE things or HOLD things or be RESPONSIBLE for things, call in the men. The strong ones. The dependable ones.

The only place where women hold up the Torah ALWAYS is in the all-women's prayer groups. So there's that.

And my grandmother did that. But she didn't want to. I wish I could have asked her about that.....although I was 23 when she died and had not even begun to think about any of these issues at all....

****

Rabbi Jane Rachel Litman is not impressed with some of the ways that the #100yearsbatmitzvah is being celebrated. The other day, they wrote:

PSA - Judith Kaplan was not called to the Torah one hundred years ago. She read a selection chosen by her father from a printed Chumash in the men's section of a room divided by gender, after the Torah had been rolled up and dressed.

It was still groundbreaking, but let's not overly romanticize what happened and minimize the difficult road to gender equity.

Yes, exactly. It’s hard to celebrate a little baby step when it would take another half century before the next little baby step.

The next day, Rabbi Litman wrote:

I'm wondering if the big hoopla over Judith Kaplan's "bat mitzvah" is because it glorifies the male equivalent of the "white savior."

In response to my previous post about how Judith was excluded from the bima, from the Torah scroll, and from reading the actual parashah of that week (all of which were done by her father). M Kaplan's biographer Mel Scult wrote, "It is clear that Mordecai Kaplan was deeply devoted to the empowerment of women and that's the point.”

Is that the point? That a man created the first "bat mitzvah?" Isn't it more the point that it took thirty or forty or fifty years after J Kaplan's "bat mitzvah" for women to fight for our right to be called to the Torah and for bnot mitzvah to be a normal part of non-Orthodox congregation life?

Like Rabbi Litman, I found this story infuriating. Not only for the White-Male-Savior Syndrome. But also for the silencing. When a person walks into a room where a bunch of people are talking about thing and declares, “THIS thing that I AM SAYING is THE POINT”, that person effectively silences the entire discussion. It’s a way of saying that, “None of you know anything about anything and I am here to tell you what there is to know about this thing with the absolute authority of the words THE POINT". Having experienced that particular dynamic too many times to count, I cannot even bare it. Even when it has a name — “mansplaining” — it still makes me shudder.

And also, Rabbi Litman’s point of glorifying the baby-step that a man took on behalf of a woman and keeping the story focused on HIS greatness is, also, outrageous.

This story also raises some big questions for me about how “The Daughter Of” is treated in our culture. There is much more to say about this, but I’ll save it for another day.

******

Rabbi Litman played another role in my meanderings today around bat mitzvah, culture, and my grandmother. They commented on my thread:

This is so touching and beautiful. I don't mean to be presumptuous, but perhaps next yizkor (or any time really), you might try to have that conversation with Grandma Bea.

Yeah.

As it happens, I have been chatting with Grandma Bea a bit over the years. I once blogged about her . I also have a photo of her on my wall in a collage I made of women who I look to for wisdom. It’s called my “Women’s Council”. Maybe one day, I’ll share a photo of that collage here.

My Grandma Bea also appeared unexpectedly in my life 22 years after she died, when I decided to leave Orthodoxy and go to rabbinical school with the Reform movement. A popular orthodox blogger who is also a cousin of mine -- a distant cousin who I have never met in person but with whom I share a name and a lot of favorite relatives in common -- decided to jump on the bandwagon and declare that my life choice was an embarrassment to "the family". He had used my life as a kind of piñata for his fan base before. He would take things I said as "proof" that feminists are all anti-religious, arrogant, disobedient ignoramuses and things like that. Then he would say that HE is the real feminist and that if I understood feminism at all I would share his views (eg that women should not be rabbis, for one.) Anyway, when I posted that I"m going to rabbinical school, he invoked Grandma Bea and said that she would be horrified by this.....I pushed back. It did not end well. I said that it is the height of arrogance to tell a woman that he knows better than she does about her own relationships... He replied, "I've never been called arrogant in my life." Like that. You can see some of that here, if you like that sort of thing.

Grandma Bea has been with me for a while, even before I realized how much. Here’s how I know: She died on a day that I will never forget. I was a new mother and a new immigrant to Israel living in an absorption center in Jerusalem. One morning, I woke up early to change my daughter's diaper, and in the messy morning haze, the unthinkable happened and my 5-month-old fell off the changing table!!! We quickly called an ambulance, panicking and praying, and went to the emergency room. After a few hours she was released and the doctors said that she was 100% fine. Nothing happened. We were incredibly relieved about the miracle...

Later that day, we learned that my Grandma Bea died. To this day, I believe that she was with us, and had a hand in protecting my daughter..... That is a knowledge that is planted deep in my soul....

So there’s that.

I shared that story for the first time during my studies in spiritual counseling that I did for a year as part of rabbinical school. I can’t remember what triggered the story, but it came up very powerfully. I had never told that story anywhere ever, and yet there it was. I needed some time after telling it just to sit with the experience of sharing. And then everyone around the room started sharing all kinds of moments like that — moments of big parental fails, moments when we desperately needed help, moments when we felt connections and support that we could not rationally explain. I will never forget that day.

*****

Forty years after my bat mitzvah, revisiting the experience is about so much more than the bat mitzvah itself. It’s about seeing our cultures, our family histories, and the millions of ways that patriarchy embeds itself around us. Moments of rebellion and change are both big and small. Generations are both gaping chasms and little slivers of distance. We are here and there at the same time. What happened 100 years ago or 300 years ago or 3000 years ago is sometimes still with us. Still with me. Sometimes in ways that we don’t even know that we know.

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