So authentic, this daring insight - Haaretz

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Fri., August 17, 2007 Elul 3, 5767

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So authentic, this daring insight

By Noam Seri

"Shnei hameorot, hashivyon bamishpaha mimabat yehudi hadash" ("The Two Lights, Family Equality from a New Jewish Viewpoint"), edited by Zohar Maor, Bina Le'itim Institute, Siah Yitzhak yeshiva, 317 pages, NIS 69

He begins with Freud and also mentions commentaries by Slavoi Zizek, which join references to Camus and Sartre, who may be the most important; occasionally feminist theoreticians are also enlisted to sharpen critical insight. Some of his students make frequent use of contemporary feminist theories; they even sometimes investigate how Antonio Gramsci's hegemony theory works. And now for the riddle: Who is the person being described? Is he a fluent scholar of culture with a determined tone and a fiery gaze, or a confused and introverted head of a yeshiva, with downcast eyes. In this case it's the latter option - as strange as that may sound.

In recent years the philosophy of Rabbi Shagar (an acronym for Shimon Gershon Rosenberg), who passed away in June at age 58, has found a place in the hearts of many religious people, including a large number of intellectuals and artists. It is hard to exaggerate the originality and daring of this man, who served for several years as the head of a post-high-school yeshiva and wrote several works that deal among other things with the encounter between the religious world and the "postmodern situation," with the inescapable falseness of a religious society and its spiritual leaders, and with the social structures that are responsible for the creation of decisions based on halakha (i.e., traditional Jewish law), etc. His insight is penetrating and authentic, and he does not always pretend to find a solution or a "proper viewpoint." Often his students suffer heartache, as they soon discover that the work of dismantling their familiar world of values does not necessarily lead to any improvement.

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This book is the second in the series "Torah and Modern Life" published by the Siah Yitzhak yeshiva, which is identified with Rabbi Shagar's philosophy. As in the previous book, the collection of articles (which were written by the yeshiva students and their teachers) offers a contemporary and refreshing viewpoint. It's true that this is not the first time we are reading Jewish texts as seen from the vantage point of cultural criticism. That is a necessity, it's even fashionable. But when this material originates in the beit midrash (study hall) of a yeshiva rather than the academic world, it seems extremely daring. When the head of the yeshiva, with undisguised admiration, cites French feminist psychologist Luce Irigaray in a theological article, it arouses your interest. That's something new.

The declared purpose of the book is to "promote thought, imagination and halakhot" concerning feminism, which is presented in the introduction as "the spiritual revolution of our generation." It should be noted that the first collection of articles, which is no less interesting, dealt with halahkic, political and critical analyses regarding intimate matters in the realm of sexual ties and couple relationships. The articles in these books reflect a variety of voices, but the influence of Rabbi Shagar on the writers is evident, if only in their willingness to rethink, in a critical manner, some of the most fraught issues and crossroads in the religious world.

Mourning masculinity

The book has three sections: the first tries to introduce new ideas in an area that is important, but has been discussed ad nauseum in recent years - Torah study for women; the second deals with femininity and masculinity in the wake of the feminist revolution; while the third section deals with several additional "burning halakhic issues." The book concludes with an article by Rabbi Shagar that tries to define the place of love, romance and alliance within contemporary religious discourse.

The rabbi discusses the difficulty of obscuring the patriarchal dimension of the family in its traditional sense, and the mourning involved in abandoning the masculine image of the godhead. He feels the need to find an appropriate and serious solution that is not apologetic, that will properly express the true and proper status of the modern Jewish woman within religious discourse.

The editor took into account the fundamental problem of men writing about feminism, and therefore Prof. Tamar Ross, who studies and writes about the relationship between feminism and religion, was invited to respond to the second section of the book, in an article which turns out to be one of the most critical and fascinating in the collection. And, in fact, the second section is in my opinion the most penetrating and the most interesting - if only because of Ross' critical reading of the men's efforts "on behalf of the women."

Ostensibly, almost all the articles in the second section make politically correct use of gender distinctions between "femininity" and "masculinity," from the school of essentialist feminism. Neil Manusi tries to respond to the theological challenge offered by generations of feminist criticism. He does this by creating a new theology using terminology from the world of kabbala and Hasidism. He proposes presenting a new ideal theological model for male-female relationships, which will preserve the necessary hierarchy between Creator and created, while at the same time serving as a suitable response, in his opinion, to feminist criticism. At times the male element of the godhead is dominant, and at times, its female element is.

Another article in this section, by Zohar Maor, revives "Eliahu," the forgotten book by Dr. Yitzhak Breuer (one of the founders of Agudat Israel), which was published in 1924 in Frankfurt. He seeks to find in it a relevance for our times. Breuer's criticism regarding the place of men, women and the family in the modern world is penetrating and, he says: "The woman is right ... ruining the woman did not harm her, but rather the man. The woman remained a woman, but the man is no longer a man." He calls for a revolution in which the familial "feminine circle" (femininity as inclusive and accepting) will provide an opportunity to redeem man from his enslavement. Breuer, according to Maor, describes the sense of family that must be the foundation of society as a place where one regards the other as a subject, a place of inclusion and concession.

The criticism by Tamar Ross is fascinating. She is opposed to the solutions proposed in this section: It is difficult to accept the "solution" for the status of women based on mystical theologies, because of the androcentrism of which all the kabbalists are guilty. Also problematic is the exaggerated and incautious use of gender characterization, since "even feminists from the essentialist stream ... are aware of the fact that arguments based on the unique nature of women are a two-edged sword that the opponents of women's liberation can adopt and exploit adversely in order to support male hegemony."

That was my feeling, too, when I read some of the articles. As we know sometimes the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Ross emphasizes that it is impossible to prefer preoccupation with the "lofty" spiritual plane to the "base" practical political plane. The personal is the political, and the writers (almost) refrain from discussing implementation of the practical revolution. "With all due respect" to mystical interpretations, in the end male hegemony becomes stronger whereas mystical, imaginary "female hegemony" does not play a role at all.

In terms of interpretative struggles, Ross would actually prefer to adopt a policy that tries to examine the halakha through historical rather than essentialist eyes, thus making it easier to reshape it in favor of women because of the change in the social order. Perhaps what is meaningful here (as Ross herself implies) is actually the manner in which the discussion is structured in this section: Four men break out in a cold sweat in order to repair distortions created by members of their sex, guided by a great woman, a critical judge, a genuine traditional "masculine" authority.

One of Ross' arguments is that it is impossible to make do with theology, that there is a need to discuss political agendas. Perhaps in the third, halakhic section we see the beginning of such a discussion. The article by Rabbi Harel Gordin examines the various attitudes toward nida (the period during menstruation and the week following) in the halakhic sources. He wants to reinforce the "lenient" voices that do not practice "exclusion" in relation to women, and do not demonize them. Itamar Brenner examines the fraught cultural significance of the religious custom of women covering their heads. Rabbi Uri Lifschitz discusses the urgent need to examine the ethical foundation of the world of (political) values characteristic of the rabbinical courts that deal with the laws of marital relations. (He also stresses how important it is that this foundation be as liberal as possible and adapted to the changing world of values).

The weak link in my opinion is an "intuitive" basic assumption common to most of the writers, that the institution of the family is a condition for a "complete" Jewish life. That is a very problematic assumption, of course, and there is no profound discussion of it. In the article that concludes the book, Rabbi Shagar points out, with painful integrity, the high price that family life exacts from the individual, but he treats this distress as something heroic. The manner in which he mentions the commitment to the "Orthodox issue" stands in embarrassing contradiction to some of the criticism about "agents of halakha" and guardians of religious culture. And thus he ends his article and the entire book: "The true rebellion is the Orthodox rebellion of being a sucker in a world where nobody is willing to be a sucker ... This involves mesirut nefesh (self-sacrifice), but this mesirut nefesh is the essence of the covenant." And in spite of all that, the courage to be open and the daring to delve deeply without fearing a religious upheaval, are a sufficiently worthy goal for the article in particular and the book in general.

Rabbi Shagar died recently after a serious illness. He was a great and important man who paradoxically left behind a great fullness as well as a tremendous urge. During his funeral his son-in-law read his somewhat veiled will, in which he emphasized: "There's no time." We can reasonably assume that he intended to spur people to individual inner work. But indirectly it is possible that by doing so, his students will be encouraged to stop being afraid and to start working with pride, to let his and their voice be heard more strongly in the direction of a religious-cultural revolution.

Noam Seri is writing his PhD in the field of hermeneutics at Bar-Ilan University.

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