There has been quite a firestorm in the Jewish blogosphere of late with regards to ritual and gender, and the ways in which gender is tied to, or not tied to, religious obligation and donning of ritual garb. The discussions are tremendously multilayered and complex and I cannot address them fully here. Though debates of this sort have been going on for quite some time, the latest round began after several Orthodox day schools began to allow female students to lay tefillin, black boxes containing pivotal passages from the Torah that are worn during morning prayers on the head and arm. I have found these discussions deeply frustrating and it often feels to me like we are spilling more virtual ink derailing and attacking instead of relating and accepting. As a Conservative egalitarian woman, tefillin are an incredibly important mitzvah for me. I yearn to live in a world in which mitzvot are not gendered, a world in which religious obligation is accessible to all who wish to take hold of Torah. I believe we need to radically rethink obligation and implementation of such, and I believe this is a sacred task.
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| Lauren Tuchman |
One of the most unique aspects of the rabbinical school at JTS is that it is the only rabbinical school in the world of which I am aware that requires women to lay tefillin. My tefillin journey began several years ago, and although it had its ups and downs, laying tefillin is a mitzvah I deeply cherish today. When I expressed interest to a friend of mine in learning to lay tefillin, I was incredibly fortunate to receive unqualified support for this. I began laying tefillin while a graduate student exploring my relationship to mitzvot and observance more broadly and was incredibly fortunate to have been taught and encouraged by a variety of women, each of whom was very excited that I wanted to take on this mitzvah. I must say—at first, though I always knew intrinsically that laying tefillin was the right thing for me—I found them incredibly overwhelming and not a little strange. No sooner would I finish laying my tefillin in the morning than Shacharit would be nearing its end, requiring me to quickly master the art of speed davening. Since tefillin have been and in many communities still are traditionally a men’s thing, it can be hard for women to find the support and resources they need. For me, finding a group of likeminded women was incredibly comforting.
Though tefillin is a mitzvah that I deeply cherish, I have experienced feelings of isolation as one of the few women I knew who laid tefillin in my community, and I often wondered why I, unlike so many other women I knew, never felt uncomfortable with the prospect of laying such a typically or traditionally masculine ritual article. Whenever I would be asked about this, particularly by more liberal friends of mine—women who, though raised in egalitarian communities still felt a visceral discomfort with tefillin—I began to be unsure of myself. Why didn’t I feel the same discomfort, and in fact felt the exact opposite, that tefillin was the absolutely right thing for me? What was their experience that I was totally missing and couldn’t relate to? And how can I relate to it? I believe that this is emblematic of the fact that the gendering of ritual garb has been something I have always struggled with. After all, if Michal, the daughter of Saul and Rashi’s daughters, according to legend at least, laid tefillin, why not me?
I was thrilled to participate in a class this summer at the National Havurah Committee’s summer institute taught by two women all about tefillin and encouraging the mostly female audience to take on the mitzvah, if they felt it was the right thing for them.
Although I am now at a place of complete comfort with my own Jewish choices and mode of Jewish expression, I look back on those moments when I felt like tefillin was the weirdest, most overwhelming thing I had ever tried to put on and feel incredibly grateful that I managed to find a community of supportive women who helped me along my journey. It is my hope that I can pay it forward.
Lauren Tuchman is completing her first year of rabbinical school at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, where she previously earned a master of arts in Judaic studies. She is a contributing scholar at State of Formation, a platform for emerging religious thinkers from a variety of traditions.
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