By Rabbi Jeremy Winaker
Note: This blog post was featured as part of our #HeshbonHodesh: Sivan monthly newsletter.
“Mazal tov!” Unmuted Zoom participants declared as Mordecai Kaplan’s granddaughter celebrated her second bat mitzvah April 24, 2021, by chanting Torah and Haftarah. Or should I say as Judith Kaplan’s daughter celebrated? If I understood Miriam “Mim” Eisenstein correctly that Shabbat morning, the distinction does not matter. For her, at 83 years old, the celebration was as much about Judaism and, in particular, the Society for Advancing Judaism (SAJ), as it was about her.
I grew up thinking about women and Judaism as a process of breaking the stained-glass ceiling to achieve equality. The famous story in my family notes how my mother’s mother immediately switched synagogues when her rabbi said, “Goy’rlz...we don’t teach here.” My mother had her bat mitzvah service, doing more than Judith Kaplan did. That ceiling has many cracks in it, but it is still there.
Eighteen years into my rabbinate, I began to explore my role in gender equity more deeply. Through the Gender Equity in Hiring Project’s cohort experience last summer, I noticed how often I have expected women to be able to break the ceiling for themselves. I believed in their cause, shared their frustrations when the ceiling held, and cheered them on. I am no Mordecai Kaplan; what could I really do?
It turns out that there is so much more that I was doing and have learned to add to my allyship. I am far more vocal now, and I am actively engaging other male allies in identifying the many small and large actions we can take to work alongside (not on behalf of) women to create greater equity in Jewish spaces. Listening and learning is just an example.
What did I hear “Mim” Eisenstein say about her second bat mitzvah? Well, I heard her say that SAJ was a family, filled with cousins,learning and engagement. A favorite photo she shared showed her at a Hebrew school model seder sitting next to my childhood friend’s father on one side and Carol Gilligan (nee Friedman) on the other; both attended the Zoom. Equitable Judaism was the air they breathed; it was not a cause.
Seventy years later, the air feels too thin. I see the need to make the cause of gender equity one of many worthy of engagement now. Male allies can and should pick up our end of that cause we may have left to others. Men and women together may just make enough cracks in that ceiling to break it. Even if we don’t, though, we will have modeled the kind of work, the kind of Judaism, the kind of world where allies share in getting more light to shine through. That light is Torah refracting colors to benefit us all. This Shavuot, I will be focused on how to let more color shine.
Rabbi Jeremy Winaker was ordained by the Jewish Theological Seminary in 2002. He lives in Delaware.
Read the Other Blog Post in This Series:
Giving Birth to Myself: Healing a Toxic Relationship with My Gender