Published: 13 September 2021
Last updated: 4 March 2024
JUDITH ROSENBAUM: We are only just starting to expand the Jewish story to include women’s voices and value their essential contributions
For the past 18 years, I have chanted the haftarah for the first day of Rosh Hashanah, which tells the story of Hannah. Barren and bereft, despite the love of her husband, she prays so fervently that the high priest, Eli, mistakes her for a drunkard. Her wish for a son is granted and Samuel is born.
The haftarah does not end with this happy fulfillment but goes on to detail her weaning of Samuel and delivery of the young boy to Temple service – the “deal” she made in her desperate negotiation with God.
To the rabbis, Hannah becomes the paradigm of spontaneous prayer. To me, she’s an exceptional case of a woman’s story centered in our liturgy, her spiritual life held up as a model and the transitions of her motherhood acknowledged as essential human experiences.
The liturgy of the High Holidays focuses, in part, on failures – ours and those of our ancestors – to remind us that we all miss the mark, and that we must try to do better. The texts at the center of the holidays, like the story of Hannah, highlight the challenges inherent to the human experience: jealousy, judgment, loss, misunderstanding.
That women play a central role in these texts also serves as an invitation. If the rabbis assembling our liturgy centuries ago could perceive and lift up the lessons of women’s lives, we, too, must expand our perspective by listening to the stories that are not generally centered in our narratives, such as the stories of women.
As an historian of women’s lives, and the CEO of the Jewish Women’s Archive (JWA), I am acutely aware of how rare it is for women’s lives to be recognised as touchstones of power and leadership.
Twenty-five years into JWA’s work, with thousands of Jewish women’s stories documented and made accessible to people all over the world, we are only at the beginning of expanding and transforming the Jewish story to include women’s voices and to value their essential historical contributions.
I became a student, and later a scholar, of history because I am interested in how individuals, families, and communities work to make change in the world. I am drawn to women’s stories because I love the surprises they offer and the untapped resources for learning about where we come from and where we might be headed.
As the CEO of the Jewish Women’s Archive, I am acutely aware of how rare it is for women’s lives to be recognised as touchstones of power and leadership.
As a woman, I enter the High Holy Day experience in a deeper way when I hear Hannah’s voice (and as the chanter, give literal voice to her story). But it is not enough to hear the story. We must also heed the lesson that she teaches us: to listen to the voices that we might initially be inclined to dismiss, to seek insight from experiences (public or private) that have not traditionally been part of our narratives of human experience, spiritual life and communal leadership.
When we listen to the stories of women like our mothers and grandmothers, we learn about resilience and how families have been built, loved, protected, and held together in times of violence and prosperity, continuity and upheaval.
From women who have run businesses and built institutions, like Helena Rubinstein or Henrietta Szold, we learn about the creativity and ingenuity it takes to navigate systems and make change, especially from behind the scenes.
From activists, like Pauline Newman or Judith Heumann, we learn about the insights that come from the margins, and the bravery and risk-taking of those who have everything and nothing to lose.
From scholars, artists, healers and spiritual leaders – women like Asnat Barazani, Gertrud Bodenwieser, Helena Kagan and Regina Jonas – we learn about what it takes to work within societal restrictions, and what it takes to challenge expectations and break new ground. We learn to see the world through different eyes and to expand the range of
role models we can turn to when we need advice and support.
In the midst of constant change, there is comfort in what remains the same: each year at Rosh Hashanah we encounter anew familiar stories – both those in the liturgy and our own life experiences. We are not alone in missing the mark; the founders of our people were themselves imperfect, deeply flawed, seeking ways forward. Just as we continue to work on ourselves, year after year, we will never be finished writing and rewriting the Jewish story.
Hannah, with her quiet but insistent prayer, invites us to listen more carefully, to attend to women’s voices more fully, and to carry the thread of women’s experiences throughout time, creating a richer historical tapestry with the potential to hold us, teach us and heal us in good times and bad.
