A-Z OF JEWISH VALUES -

I FOR INCLUSIVITY & INVOLVEMENT

Ask anybody what the main differences between an Orthodox and a Reform synagogue service are and they will tell you: the service is shorter, it’s partly in English and men and women sit together. We take this for granted, though it would have shocked and still does shock some people who are not used to it all.

If I were to ask you what value links those three elements together – shorter services, partly in English and men and women together, what would you reply? The word I would go for is Inclusivity.

Inclusivity is total involvement.

No-one need be left out because the service is too long and hence has to be read at such a fast pace that not everyone can follow.

No-one need feel left out because they can’t read let alone understand the Hebrew. (Ideally when the Hebrew is read there’s a chance to follow the translation).

No-one need be left out because they are female.

In our congregation a woman may lead the service or read from the Torah. Women are encouraged to be called amongst the Aliyot. Women rabbis may officiate and have done. Our constitution, however doesn’t permit a female to take out carry and elevate a Torah scroll, but it is nevertheless denying someone the right to participate in a way that is meaningful to them. It goes against the grain of other positive values we uphold.

What possible objections can there be? Over the years I have been asked to give a halachic view. And having given it, those who oppose women carrying the scroll have said well- I’m not objecting on halachic grounds. I’m objecting because it is ‘minhag hamakom’ the custom of the place. Well the customs of this kehilla have changed over the past 150 years, not to mention the past 50. Quite considerably. And there is a strong principle – not to impose a minhag on a community the majority of which cannot accept it. And ‘majority’ means the greater number of people.

The majority at our meetings have voted over the years to alter the constitution. We have reached a two-thirds majority. but it requires a 75% majority of all those members present. So an abstention is effectively a vote against change. I am urging you to take the opportunity a week tomorrow to vote in favour of our Executive’s resolution, for complete inclusivity. Let EGM be an abbreviation for Egalitarianism.

Another point that is raised is that we don’t like to see it and we would not want our Orthodox friends who visit our schule to see it. Why so? If it’s that their not used to it, there will be plenty that they’re not used to seeing- or hearing, women’s voices in the choir, or a woman reading the Torah. If it is that they think it’s against the din, then they are mistaken. It’s not, and as I shall show you to claim so is to support a position of ignorance.

We are, in any case Reform we do not need to look over our shoulders at what is Orthodox practice. I promise you, there cannot even be any orthodox objection to women having contact with a scroll. I recently came across an article by the renowned Israeli Orthodox Rabbi Shlomo Riskin familiar to many readers of the Manchester Jewish Telegraph for his regular column of commentaries. He also writes for the Jerusalem Post. Let me quote from a column he wrote on last week’s Sidra Aharei Mot.

It was on the verse found there ‘Do not come near a woman during her period of impurity’ (Lev 18:19)

This (says Riskin) leads to one of the most controversial questions that a modern Orthodox rabbi must deal with - whether Jewish law permits women to touch, carry and dance with Torah scrolls.

“Even in the most traditional synagogues, there are some women who would like to have the Torah passed to them within their own women's section.

Rarely does a religious question engender such heavy emotional involvement - on both sides. For many, excluding women from the privilege of holding a Torah scroll is tantamount to excluding them from Torah altogether.

For others, breaking from the time-honored custom that only men may carry Torah scrolls threatens to undermine the very infrastructure of our tradition and faith”.

Riskin then quotes from authoritative sources of Jewish law:

He says that: The philosopher Maimonides wrote that in the Talmud : "Anyone who is ritually impure, even a menstruating woman, is permitted to hold on to a Torah scroll and read from it, because the Torah can not receive ritual impurity."

Rav Yosef Karo, author of the Shulchan Aruch he states, supported this view. Riskin concludes that ‘in our generation we should show singular sensitivity to women’.

Obviously it would be a nonsense for us who do not adhere to the Orthodox strictures against women’s ritual impurity, to appear to support them, and it is also arguably a case of hypocrisy even to appear to do so.

We cite tradition as our watchword. There’s a journal called ‘Tradition’ subtitled A Journal of Orthodox Thought. It’s not the place we would turn to for guidance as Reform Jews. But there too the key article on the subject supports the halachic view which permits a woman to carry, written by Rabbi Avraham Weiss of Yeshivah University, New York in 1982. I have copies for anyone who wants to read this very scholarly article.

He too cites Yosef Karo in the Shulchan Aruch as follows ‘All who are tameh, (impure) even niddot, menstruating women, may hold the scroll of the Torah and read from it.

Rabbi Moshe Isserles, Karo’s Ashekenazi counterpart appears to disagree with him over this in one place but does not object the second time he states it. Weiss concludes because Karo adds a proviso the second time: provided their hands are not unclean or dirty. That makes sense: Torah cannot contract ritual impurity but must be treated with decent respect.

This is Weiss’s concluding paragraph, which is inspiring:

“Prayer is a dialogue, a rendezvous with God. It is a song, a tear, a meditative though, a joyful smile which helps bridge the tremendous chasm that exists between the mortal human and the infinite God. The distance is not easily spanned. every fibre of intellectual concentration and emotional strength is needed to achieve that instant when we feel the spark of God and breathe that spirituality into our being. For many the moment becomes more possible, the experience more intense when carrying, holding, touching, kissing, the deepest expression of God’s love- the Torah

It would be a great disservice to our communities if we would deny men or women the right to have contact with the Sefer Torah, a contact which for so many enhances the prayer experience, and a contact that has its clear basis in the halachah”.

At today’s story of the Crossing of the Red Sea Miriam, the sister of Moses, leads the women with timbrels and dances in singing the Song of Triumph and Joy, a model for the leadership of women forever afterwards.

If we were to remove the one remaining obstacle to full inclusivity and full involvement in our services, we would have effectively crossed a Red Sea of our own and effected a great leap forward in the history of our schule-community.