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A response to ‘It’s no surprise why women leave Orthodoxy’

[additional-authors]
July 7, 2016

Last week, Susan Esther Barnes wrote a blog about something she thought she overheard at a breakfast table at Bay Area Limmud. Below is a response to that blog, which has already been read by Barnes and is being posted with her knowledge. 


Last week the Los Angeles Jewish Journal published a blog, titled “It’s No Surprise Why Women Leave Orthodoxy,” by Susan Esther Barnes.  The blog describes an overheard informal conversation between a woman who “had left Orthodoxy” and a “Modern Orthodox rabbi” that took place at a breakfast table at the Limmud Bay Area Shabbat on the campus of Sonoma State University over the weekend of June 23-25.

Ms. Barnes wrote that the woman wanted to remain in Orthodox Judaism “but felt pushed out by the role and status of women,” in particular that, in orthodox shuls, women don’t lead services and they are separated from men by a mechitzah.  The article discussed several arguments in favor of the Orthodox status quo that were made by the “Modern Orthodox rabbi” and found them “weak”, “patently absurd”, “lame” and not “rooted in text or logic.”  Ms. Barnes also found the rabbi to be deficient for failing to ask “What could I say or do which would convince you to give us another try” and for failing “to acknowledge her pain or longing” or even inviting her back by saying “something like, ‘We would love for you to come back to us.’”

The article certainly grabbed my attention because there can be no doubt that I am the “Modern Orthodox rabbi” Ms. Barnes wrote about. 

There were only two orthodox rabbis at the Limmud and I was the only one with a leadership role. In addition, I knew I had a breakfast conversation like the one Ms. Barnes described.  The article troubled me because I wondered if I could have completely misunderstood the circumstances of the woman with whom I had that breakfast conversation . I contacted the woman by email and confirmed that I had correctly understood the following:  she has not “left Orthodoxy”; in fact, she regularly attends an Orthodox synagogue in Jerusalem and is quite knowledgeable about the basis in Orthodox Jewish law for the distinctions in ritual obligations of men and women. She even gave me permission to use her name – Hanna Jaffe. Her father was a respected orthodox rabbi in the U.K.  I don’t wish to discuss further my private conversation with Hanna; nor is there space here to discuss the various issues regarding the roles of women in Orthodox Judaism.  What I do wish to discuss is an interesting parallel between the challenge created for me by the article and the lessons of the parasha Shelach-Lecha (Numbers 13:1-15:41), which was the Torah reading for the week in which Ms. Barnes’ column appeared.

We will begin with a famous line in the movie, Duck Soup:  “Who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?”  With all respect to the Marx Brothers, we will see that the Torah teaches that this a very serious question. 

In fact, the challenge of gaining accurate perceptions, and gaining an appropriate understanding of their significance,  is a fundamental challenge to all of us.  In the parasha, the Torah records the panicked reaction of the Jewish people upon hearing the report of their leaders that the Land of Israel was too dangerous to conquer.  The leaders’  failure was not that they did not report accurately what they saw and heard, but rather that they failed to convey  the broader context that was necessary to understand the significance of what they had seen and heard.  While on the one hand, the leaders accurately reported the dangers present in the Land, they and the Jewish people neglected to consider that, with the help of God  who had so recently delivered them from Egypt and from Pharaoh’s army, there was no danger in the Land that could not be overcome.  At its root, the failure was a lack of wisdom, the ability to understand  the true implications of the information one receives.

At the end of the parasha there is a seemingly unrelated brief discussion of the mitzvah of tzitzit, the ritual fringes that are attached to the tallis.  The Torah tells us that purpose of these fringes is to serve as a reminder of God’s commandments “so that you will not follow after your heart and eyes.”  In other words, the Torah, specifically its mitzvot, provides essential context, without which we can easily be lead astray by our limited understanding of the significance of what we see and what we hear.  Far from being unrelated to the leadership failure described at the beginning of the parasha, the Torah’s teaching about tzitzit generalizes from the failing of a particular set of Jewish leaders to a lesson applicable to Jews living at all times.  

The Torah teaches us that there was a very severe penalty for the leaders’ failing to assist the Jewish people in drawing correct conclusions about the Land of Israel, including 40 years wandering in the desert, with nearly the entire generation of the Exodus prohibited from entering the Land of Israel.   We know that, in our day, misunderstandings of all kinds wreak havoc among individuals, within families, within our community and throughout the world. 

We human beings are fallible.  Indeed another lesson of Shelach-Lecha is that the Torah recognizes that, even a unanimous decision of the 70 most knowledgeable Torah scholars of the Jewish people, could still be wrong.  In such a case, these scholars may receive forgiveness from God for their error. 

In summary, Shelach-Lecha teaches us to be very careful that we get our facts correct, to be very careful in our interpretation of the facts that we obtain, to be guided by the Torah in our interpretations, and to recognize that it is very difficult to both perceive facts accurately and to obtain the wisdom to reach appropriate conclusions.  We should see that we human beings are very fallible in such matters, and that just as we can seek God’s forgiveness, we should likewise be ready to  forgive those who reach incorrect conclusions based on misunderstandings.

How should these lessons be applied to the challenges created by the publication of Ms. Barnes’ blog?  Clearly I should give her the benefit of the doubt and assume that she would have described the overheard conversation very differently if she had been aware of the true facts and circumstances.  And I hope that she will give me the benefit of the doubt that I would have had a very different conversation with the woman if, in fact she had left Orthodoxy, did not know the Jewish law relevant to her concerns and was looking for a path to return to Orthodoxy.  Perhaps in these small ways we can repair some of the damage that has been caused to the Jewish people throughout the ages as a result of our very human limitations in our ability to perceive  the true facts and properly assess their meaning.

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