In middle school, I fell in love with Chazal. After a teacher gave me a copy of Massechet Pesachim, I spent hours thumbing through my English-Hebrew-Aramaic dictionary, slowly teasing out the linguistic and textual puzzle. It was through the Talmud that I first experienced the feeling of an intellectual heritage. As I pondered legal principles and fanciful legends, I became aware and appreciative of the gift of books, language, and culture. The rabbinic engagement with every aspect of life taught me to feel both love for and responsibility to the printed word.
 |
| Maya Rosen ties tzitzit. |
More than just another text, the Talmud introduced a host of characters into my inner world. I encountered figures who view learning as an all-encompassing life orientation, and I loved them. I marveled over Rabbi Akiva’s logic, Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai’s conviction, and Ben Azzai’s intuitions. Reish Lakish always made me smile, and I admired Rav Huna’s character. These rabbis became constant figures in my life, and I thought regularly about what they would think or how they would act in the situations in which I found myself.
At the same time, I was convinced that Chazal would have hated me. I regularly encountered misogynistic stories and statements in rabbinic texts, and I imagined Chazal’s disappointment that I, a young woman, was learning Talmud. I didn’t want to stop, but I felt that my learning affronted the very system I loved so much. I spent my days in public high school wishing I had the opportunity to learn Torah seriously, and it pained me to think about what Chazal would have thought of my secular studies, my Western dress, and my liberal politics. I wanted Chazal to approve of my life, but my female body was a source of resentment and shame every time I opened a new daf.
Around this time, I acquired my first set of tefillin and tzitzit. At the time, it felt like an impulsive decision, though looking back on it, I realize I had a strong conviction that Torah was speaking to and demanding something of me. I wanted desperately to be a full and active citizen in the world of Torah. I no longer believed that the mitzvot I spoke of twice a day in the Shema were speaking only about men. In the same way that Chazal had become real people for me years earlier, I wanted the words of the Torah also to become real. Beginning to lay tefillin and wear tzitzit was, in a literal sense, the materialization of my prayers.
Happily, my relationship with Chazal has changed considerably. As I have learned more Torah, I see the change inherent to the system; also, I now understand better how history generally is constructed. I now think, or at least hope, that Chazal would have thought that I’m worthy of living within the same history as their system.
Perhaps it is ironic that by beginning to observe what many consider particularly “gendered” mitzvot (tefillin and tzitzit), I finally improved my angst-ridden relationship with Chazal. I found that these mitzvot combined the physical and the transcendent in a way that ultimately felt beyond gender. I started counting the seven wraps of the tefillin strap around my forearm with the seven words of Psalms 118:5: “min hametzar karati ya anani bamerchav yah," "Out of the straits I called upon God, who answered me with great spaciousness.” As I tucked the corners of my tzitzit into my clothes, I would smile thinking of the Sifre’s comment: “‘v’asu lahem tzitzit’—af hanashim b’mashma," "‘they should make for themselves tzitzit’—this includes women.” Sometimes I would think of Rashi’s comment that compares the four corners of tzitzit to the four verbs God uses in promising redemption. Often, I recited the words of a baraita in Menachot: “chavivin yisrael she’sivavan ha’Kadosh Baruch Hu b’mitzvot: tefillin b’rosheihen u’tefillin b’zeroteyhen, v’tzitzit b’bigdeihen." "Beloved is Israel for the Holy-Blessed-One surrounded them with mitzvot: tefillin on their heads, and tefillin on their arms, and tzitzit on their clothing.” Putting on my tzitzit in the morning before school and remembering that, indeed, "chavivin yisrael" became a gentle act of tikkun with Chazal.
Wearing tzitzit and laying tefillin remain the most sincere ways I know to portray to God the identity to which I strive. When I put on tzitzit in the morning, I am putting on the uniform of the person I want to be. The words of the Shema and the tassels on each corner under my clothing remind me to try and live a life that is surrounded by and enveloped in mitzvot. For this reason, tzitzit are the best example I know of the linguistic link between “text” and “textile.”
There are still problems. I am vain about not allowing my tzitzit to peak out of the shoulders of my favorite dress, and I often wake feeling that laying tefillin is only a task to be checked off my morning to-do list. One thing that has been helpful is finding peers, teachers, and communities who think seriously about mitzvot, gender, and their intersection. When I started wearing tzitzit, I thought that doing so would isolate me from the Jewish community. My work this past year to create Netzitzot, an initiative to sell tzitzit designed for women (www.netzitzot.com), has shown me that my fears were misguided. At the Netzitzot launch party in New York a few months ago, the dozens and dozens of people in attendance proved to me that tzitzit are fringe in the literal sense only. We tied tzitzit onto fifty garments that night, and as the party came to a close and we gathered together to doven Maariv, there was a certain buzz in the air as each person got to the phrase in Shema: “v’asu lahem tzitzit," "you should make for them tzitzit.” This we had done, and I knew Torah approved.
Maya Rosen is a rising sophomore at Princeton University and the founder of Netzitzot.
