I've been glad to see several articles recently published on Ynet (an Israeli internet news source) exposing the ills of the Rabbinic court here in Israel. The writer, Rivkah Lubitch, is a toenet (a lawyer in the Rabbinic court system) and works through Center for Women's Justice , who are strategically publishing articles weekly to raise awareness about women's rights in the backwards and corrupt world of religious courts. Kol Hacavod!

I was just rattled by this article about “victim feminism.” Marla Braverman claims that second wave feminism, in pointing out the systematic forces that work to keep women down, has created a generation of women who see themselves as victims. Consciousness Raising itself creates women who don’t feel stronger for recent gains, but rather accept that the deck is stacked against them.

The most startling claim she made is that sexual harassment victims who do not protest and or make reports immediately are part of the problem. Had we been trained to see ourselves as loud outspoken strong women then…. well then what?

Problem is, Braverman suggests that those women who report abuse after the fact are themselves adding to the sense of victimization by declaring their own victimhood and scaring more women about the invincible predators lurking around the corner. So perhaps they should have protested in the moment, she suggests.

Yes why not, women should be trained to voice their consent or refusal loudly and clearly. Maybe we can strengthen our sense of choice and voice. Yet that does not erase all the societal barriers than need to change for this utopia of women’s strength to flourish. (Maybe that’s the “victim feminist” in me). Society at large – not just women- still attributes shame to being sexually harassed and to talking about sex in general. Moreover, how do we change a boss or a professor’s awareness about his or her power, without talking about it?

I’m not sure how I would react if I was ever put to the test, but I know that I have gained from the conversation about power dynamics. I know that as a teacher I am aware of the influence I hold over my students and I try to use it wisely. I agree that all relationships: sexual or professional, work of friend, across gender lines or across power divide are complicated. And perhaps the court room, as Braverman suggests, is not the best place to begin policing some of the more nuanced cases she mentions.  Still I am not certain that the work of feminism in the societal and educational spheres can yet afford to stop raising awareness.

I recently attended the conference on Halakhic Prenups, mentioned in this article. I must say there were a lot of fascinating details, that differ from the RCA agreement, which I had not been aware of. Here are just a few tidbits.
1) The prenup is entirely egalitarian. Both the wife and husband-to-be sign this document promising to pay each other a certain amount of increased food stipend if either side is recalcitrant (meaning the husband refuses to give a get or the wife refuses to accept or either side doesn't show up for their court date. )
2) The Israeli prenup builds in a period of reconciliation. During the 6 month waiting period, which precedes the  requirement to pay each other the sum mentioned above, either side can request marriage counseling, with either a psychologist or a rabbinic figure. The second person (usually the one who sued for divorce) must attend three sessions in order to maintain their right to the sum at the six month point.

I learned a lot at this training conference and hopefully will share some more details in further posts.

Sometimes Chazal make drashot on a word that you just find totally implausible. Like on daf 10b of Ketuboth they say that the term Almana- Widow- is based on the word Maneh- the amount of money an widow receives in her Ketubah if she remarries (as opposed to the double portion – maataim- that the virgin receives).

Are they for real or is it just a cute mnemonic device that happens to linguistically work out?

Thankfully the gemarah expresses the same consternation. When the word Alamana appears in the  Torah, it wasn’t known that the Rabbis would later institute this kind of Ketubah, with this specific amount. To me this is another way of saying that creative linguistics shouldn’t work backwards; you can’t assume origin from the current usage or the current value assigned. Other voices in the gemarah quiet the question by citing additional locations where the language employed by the Tanach seems to reflect a reality much later than its period of composition.

Now I’m getting into Biblical Criticism and that’s not a place I feel comfortable going….. Just want to say that while the Rabbis play with language, and imbue words with multiple meanings from multiple periods of history- granting the word  a timeless power- I also think they are winking at us, aware of the elegant word games they are playing.

The week of Yom Haatzmaut, as I prepare a shiur on whether one should say Hallel to celebrate the founding of the State, the police are blowing up a Chefetz Chashud outside my window.

First I hear a cop speaking into an intercom telling people not to cross the police line, but that could just be the end of a Hachnasat sefer torah or a street fair, which are frequent in the neighborhood.  But then I hear the sound of the police robot shooting into a chefetz chashud, blowing up a suspicious object that might be a bomb. They are unmistakable loud tight targeted shots.

I am forced to think about Rav Ovadiah’s claim that the miracle of the founding of the state is incomplete; that we can’t say Hallel on a country that still isn’t safe and secure, to the extent that there are suspicions of bombs on a quiet residential street. I think of his claim that we can’t say Hallel over a war that was so bloody and the limbo state in which we are still suffering casualties.

But then I see, in the lamplight, the silhouette of the policeman in his bulky ephod, proud as a Cohen Gadol, saunter down the street. He takes off his helmet and tells the people on the sidewalk they are free to walk down the street. There is something in his swagger, in his pride to sound the all clear to the neighborhood children, that reassures me. With all its dangers and shortcomings, this is our country and we take care of each other here, and that is reason enough for me to say Hallel.

To day is Yom Hashoah, Holocaust remembrance day. The siren sounded at 10:00 am for a moment of silence where people even stop in the highway to stand at attention. It is such an Israeli way to commemorate. It is the sound of war, a call to war to defensive stance, to miluim, to bomb shelters. It is not a sad sound, it is a fearful sound. Like at the seder where we are asked to relive the feeling of leaving Egypt, you too should feel like you lived through the holocaust and survived, you too should feel what it means to be in war to panic to think fast to make creative solutions to save yourself and to fight back.

I thought this article was a nice clear overview of Rabbi Dr. Sperber's work and ideas, and a convincing review of modern/liberal/ "friendly" psak (law decisions) that are still based on texts and tradition.

The part of the Seder that is most vivid for me – being obsessed with Talmud- is the scene of a few “founding fathers” holding a Pesach Seder at Rabbi Akivah’s house in Bnei Brak. Their conversation about leaving Egypt was so engaging that they nearly missed the time for morning Shema, loosing all track of time. This story proves statements made in the haggada: “even the wise have a responsibility to talk about the Exodus, the more the better” and “we all must feel as if we ourselves were leaving Egypt,” for the telling of the past was more real than the actual sunrise and the present responsibility to pray.

Interestingly, there is another story about a seder of Rabbis who are so immersed that they too almost miss Shema; this Seder is lead by Rabban Gamliel. The Tosefta records an interesting detail: these Rabbis were not discussing the national story of our leaving Egypt, as Akivah was, but rather were talking about the laws of performing the Korban Pesach- the Sacrifice of Passover.

I wonder at the philosophical debate that is being waged by these two texts - story vs. law, a divide that also seems to appear in the questions and answers offered by and to the four sons. The wise son asks about the laws and is answered with the minutia of halakhic information, while all the other sons receive answers that focus on the story of leaving Egypt and its importance.

I want to suggest that Rabban Gamliel’s choice to focus on the sacrifice reappears later in the haggada as well. Towards the end of Maggid, we read: Rabban Gamliel says anyone who does not say the following three things did not fulfill their responsibility: Pesach, Matza and Maror. The Hagadda goes on to explicate these three elements in relation to the Exodus story: Pesach is the sacrifice that the Jews gave on the night before they left, Matzah is the bread they made in a rush as they left Egypt, and Marror represents the harsh labor of their enslavement.

But knowing that at Rabban Gamliel’s seder they discussed the laws of the korban and not the story of Exodus, I would suggest that this part of the haggada is a gloss. (In fact Rabban Gamliel’s original short quote appears in the Mishna without the explication.) The original meaning of his exhortation is a desire to bring to our seder night the elements of the sacrifice, which we are no longer able to perform. After all the elements of Matzah and Marror were part of God’s original command for how to eat the Korban Pesach even before the Jews leave Egypt, before historical fate forces them to make Matazh, and before they are free from the servitude, which the Marror will eventually represent.

Raban Gamliel is placing the emphasis on the Korban, and only the later gloss sides with “Rabbi Akiva’s seder,” turning the Korban into representative elements that connect back to the story of leaving Egypt. In our own time, we are so distant from the culture of sacrifices that we can’t understand why these two positions – focus on the Korban and focus on the Exodus – should stand opposed to each other. Surely the Korban is only relevant in so far as it represents and teaches us about the Exodus! But the existence of these two parallel Seders, told in the same literary form, suggests to me that they are either opposed or complimentary but not identical.

One binary that we may draw is that Rabbi Akivah tells a national story while Rabban Gamliel tells a religious story. Some suggest that Rabbi Akivah was discussing the Bar Kochba revolt with his fellow Rabbis who had all just returned from a trip to Rome to lobby on behalf of the Jews. The National story of Exodus- rather than the details of law- inspired their own rebellion for independence from the political slavery of Roman rule. However, I worry that presenting their opinions as a strict binary insinuates that while Akivah ran a current and relevant Pesach seder, Rabban Gamliel was detached from the present reality of the Jews, and chose to be busy with the irrelevant details of a sacrifice that was never to return.

But as we examined Rabbi Akivah’s historical moment, we also must understand Rabban Gamiliel’s. Rabban Gamliel is one of the founders of the project of Yavneh, which is at its heart a religious rabbinic pursuit. Its founding is literarily tied with Yochanan Ben Zakkai’s leaving of Jerusalem, the choice to pursue religious sovereignty and national survival over physical political sovereignty. However, religious pursuit is not by necessity detached from reality. Rabban Gamliel may be interested in the sacrifice first and foremost because the temple is destroyed in his lifetime and the pain and loss of the korban is too fresh to imagine a full seder where the sacrifice plays a purely representational role.

At the beginning of his reign as Nasi of the Sanhedrin there probably was no formal Seder, because when the korban was offered in the Mikdash the bringing and eating the sacrifice itself was all that was needed to fulfill the commandment to feel as if you were leaving Egypt. In the most tangible way possible, by eating the Korban Pesach with Matzah and Marror, a Jew could actually act out the moment of Exodus, and relive the sense of declaring National Unity (separation from the Egyptians) with their sacrifice. When the temple stood, the seder was improvisational theatre, whereas only afterward it became storytelling. It would have been insensitive not to mourn the passing of the korban at this point in the Jewish trajectory.

More importantly enactment of the korban encapsulates within it several important values; therefore Rabban Gamliel’s choice to talk of the details of the sacrifice was not a hollow act of halakhic nitty gritty. Korban Pesach is the one sacrifice that all Jews do at the same time, yet individually. On Yom Kippur and other holidays the koahim sacrifice one korban in the name of the entire nation, while individual sacrifices were brought when one sinned or had something specific to be thankful for. Korban Pesach is the one sacrifice that all of Israel individually part of a national ritual.

Because of the simultaneous individual and national nature of the korban, there are other special laws. Jews are allowed into the sanctuary to offer this korban in concert with the kohaim. He is even allowed to do the shchita. On the other hand, the meat of the may be eaten in all of Jerusalem, not only in the walls of the sanctuary as with ordinary sacrifices. The ordinary Jew is allowed into the Mikdash, and the kodesh is allowed out side of the Mikdash.

Lastly korban pesach models the creation of smaller communities within the national whole, in which every individual counts. Several families would join together in order to ensure that the sacrifice would sufficiently feed those who gathered to eat it and meat would not be left over or wasted. Men and women need to be counted ahead of time to a given group, so that every individual is included in the korban at the time of the sacrifice. This magnificent law again highlights the importance of the individual in the community within the nation. Each person is included in a smaller community, counted in that community, while circles upon circles are huddled into the walls of Jerusalem all taking part in the Korban.

If these were the laws of Korban Pesach that Rabban Gamliel wanted to discuss, it seems to me that he too wants to talk about nationality and community, the importance of the individual to the whole, and the ability to import the holiness of the temple into the walls of Jerusalem and beyond, into the actions of each individual.

The korban may have been the most appropriate vehicle to discuss the issues of community building in the wake of the destruction, the task of his generation. While for Rabbi Akivah the need to throw off the yoke of political slavery was better served by returning to the story of leaving Egypt without intermediary of the Korban.

I think that both of these stories are embedded in our seder, though the further we get from the time sacrifices the less relevant it seemed to the framers of the seder and to us us. However the value of joining the individual and community in partnership to extend the umbrella of holiness and memory is still relevant and perhaps should be reemphasized in our seder as well.

As modern Jews we tend to privilege aggada- story telling and narratives, which teach values- over law, which we often assume is meaningless in its details. But in truth the two work together, and just as we act to emphasize the values of our religion, we must work to unveil the importance of halakha rather that dismiss it as misguided and empty.

Here are two Pesach tracks that Doogree Rec (my brother) has produced. This first is Ori's dub version of Vehi Sheamda. And the YouTube video is of Mat Bar's take on the ten plagues, it's part of his Bible Raps project. Enjoy!