July 23, 2009

While I've been woefully remiss in my blog posting, that's no reason to give up for good.... so even though I won't be able to provide a comprehensive update of all that I've done in the past month, I'll try to hit the highlights and especially some of the topics that I've been pondering.

So after I decided to stay at Pardes for the year program, the next project was completing all of the requisite paperwork. I won't bore you with a list of everything that I've been compiling, but it's certainly been a process. Luckily I had a breakthrough today - I found an apartment! I had looked at four different places, but in the end I decided to live at Tzippora 11 - only a 5 minute walk to Pardes!

During the July session (which ended Tuesday), I studied Masechet (tractate/volume) Kiddushin of the Babylonian Talmud, which is all about the process of how a man goes about (successfully or unsuccessfully) betrothing a woman. While I learned a lot about the technical aspects of Gemara study, I gained an even greater insight into the society at the time the Talmud was written (200-500 CE). Many of the situations we looked at seemed totally ridiculous to our modern eyes and ears - what happens if a man says the magic bethrothal formula (harei at mekudeshet li - behold, you are betrothed to me!) and gives a woman a pruta (small amnt of money, or today a ring) but says that the betrothal/kiddushin isn't going to take effect for another 30 days? And then, what happens if other men come along during these 30 days and try to betroth the woman themselves? She can only be betrothed to one of them, so which one is it?? Leah Rosenthal, our brilliant Talmud teacher, suggested that these case studies could be a basis for a whole creative writing course, to expound upon these situations and figure out what motivated these men to make these crazy formulations in the first place. In the last case we looked at, a father had the ability to accept kiddushin on behalf of his young daugther from a man, but he forgot to specify which of his daughters he was betrothing! In this case, each of the daughters became caught in a bizarre trap where they could not consummate their marriage, because if they were not really the one that was betrothed, they would potentially be sleeping with their sister's husband - and that's a big no-no. But really, what kind of father says, "Okay man, you can have one of my daughters" and doesn't think about which one that is? If I end up in Leah's class for the year there will be lots more Kiddushin to enjoy in all of its glorious detail, so stay tuned!

One of the highlights of this session was the amazing chevruta partners that I worked with. If I didn't explain the chevruta system already, I'll do so now - chevruta learning is the classic way to study Jewish texts, and it means learning in pairs. The two partners read the text back and forth outloud, translate it, and then examine it together to understand both the literal meaning and the interpretive or spiritual meaning, depending on the text. My chevruta for Talmud for both June and July, Raissa, was such a joy to work with, and we became very close both on an intellectual and a personal level. She made aliyah (immigrated to Israel) 3 years ago, and is now studying at Pardes and working on a fascinating internet dating project.... I can't disclose much more, but keep your eyes out for her work! I also worked with Zahara (from Florida) for Talmud and a class on different approaches to Judaism and Alma (from London) in the latter class, and they both provided amazing insights. One of the most valuable aspects of studying at Pardes is that everyone comes from a very different Jewish background and has a unique way of understanding the world. We probed such topics as the nature of prayer and how to fill fixed liturgy ("keva") with intention ("kavanna") and spirituality as well as how it's possible for the "pietistic/spiritual" approach to Judaism to have limits.

One of the biggest challenges this session, however, was the topic of Women and Judaism, in its broadest sense. Growing up in the secular world where men and women have the same obligations to study, choose a career, and hopefully create and build a family, it's really jarring to shift mentalities when looking at the Orthodox Jewish world. I had always assumed that it would only be a matter of time before the Orthodox world "came to its senses" and began to ordain women as rabbis just as the Reform movement did in the 1970s and the Conservative movement in the 1980s, but it's not quite that simple - and it never really is. In Orthodox Judaism (and I'm already over-simplifying because Orthodox is NOT a monolithic movement at all), there are different obligations in mitzvot (commandments) for men and women. While men are obligated to perform almost all of the mitzvot that are still applicable today (ie, not the ones having to do with the Temple and sacrifices), women are "exempt" from the positive time-bound mitzvot - the ones that you do b/c it's a certain time of day or year. Most of these have something to do with prayer - saying the Sh'ma, wearing a tallit (prayer shawl) and tefillin (phylacteries, but that doesn't help, so Wikipedia it). The argument for women being exempt from these mitzvot is that it's impossible to be obligated to pray 3x a day AND take care of children, and there are many Orthodox apologetics stating that women are capable of getting just as close to G-d by fulfilling their role of having children and raising them, because the center of Judaism is the home, not the synagogue. I don't really buy that argument, but in any case, the fact that women are exempt from these mitzvot is challenging when trying to build a Judaism of true equality between the sexes. Because women don't share the same obligation as men to pray (in this halakhic [Jewish legal] framework), they can't lead certain prayers in a community and they can't count in a minyan (10 men required to form a prayer quorum to say certain prayers). I could say much more about this and the challenges it poses for the advancement of women in Orthodox Judaism as well as how women in the more liberal movements relate to this framework, but I'm leaving for Tel Aviv now.... so more to come later!

To come:
-More on Women and Judaism
-Things I've learned after 2 months living here
-Birthday festivities!