How to make women’s ritual innovations take root

VANESSA OCHS: If we hope to see them as enduring, let us try to come up with explanations that will have continuing resonance

YOU CAN PROBABLY name some of the new practices and ceremonies that address women’s exclusion from the public face of Judaism and crafted ritual responses to previously unmarked events in women’s lives. Bat Mitzvah, check. Women’s Seder, check.  Baby naming ceremonies for daughters, check.

You may not know what occasioned the creation of any innovation especially relevant to women or how it came about. What did the creators discuss as they debated and then finalised their ideas? What were their strategies for introducing the innovation? How did rabbinical authorities, communities and family members push back when the status quo was challenged, and how long did general acceptance (if it ever came) take? 

Not surprisingly, few can name the individuals or small groups behind Jewish women’s innovations. There are exceptions: the first women rabbis, the first Bat Mitzvah. Some might recognise the names of Rivka Haut, Bonna Haberman, Anat Hoffman for their roles in women’s group prayer at the Kotel.

But which woman first showed up at morning minyan wearing a tallit or tefillin?  Who first referred to God in Jewish communal prayer as “She?” Who first called together friends to find Jewish ways to celebrate a pregnancy or heal after a miscarriage?

That the details of how and who get quickly forgotten or were never publically known in the first place doesn’t worry me. 

Here’s why: Jews tend to speak and teach about beloved ritual practices and ceremonies in simple, mythical ways. Even innovations that have changed dramatically over time and places and those that have been debated by rabbis of the past and present are given straight forward, rudimentary explanations that could satisfy a child.

 A good many of the explanations fit the familiar “we suffered, but then we survived” template.  Hence: We light a Chanukah menorah because we returned to the desecrated Temple and there was enough oil to last eight nights. We eat matzah and horseradish because we were slaves and now we are free. The explanations answer the questions “What does it mean?” or “Why are we doing this?” by offering some narrative (usually fabricated) and a little theology