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Second-Class Worshipers No More
by Sandee Brawarsky She found that these women love the Bible, study the Bible, quote the Bible and are open to reinterpreting texts used to limit women and justify male dominance. In other settings, Tanenbaum sought out Catholic, mainline Protestants, Muslims and observant Jewish women, all of whom love their religion and refuse to give it up, even as they might object to the way they are treated as women. Instead, they are working to bring change. “Historically, men have monopolized God. Today, women are taking back God for themselves,” she writes in “Taking Back God: American Women Rising Up for Religious Equality” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). “When you look across faiths, you see many similarities, and that is very empowering,” she tells The Jewish Week in an interview in a Manhattan cafe. “When I look at Catholic women struggling to be ordained as priests, it makes me think of the Orthodox Jewish feminist movement, and our desire to have Orthodox female rabbis.” She says that she and others have much to learn from Catholic women and their 30-year movement, how they go back to their sacred texts and use sources to advance their arguments. At the outset of this well-written book, Tanenbaum tells her own story to the reader, as she has told it to the many women she interviewed, to provide a context to her own quest. She writes, “You should know that religion is central in my life, as is motherhood. I have chosen to represent the new class of devout women — those seeking to expand women’s rights within their faith — because, well, I share many of their beliefs,” she writes. She describes herself as an observant Jew who “respects Jewish law and adheres to it to the fullest of my abilities. Jewish law guides many, if not most, of the small and large actions I take every single day.” A proud feminist, she attended Orthodox schools through high school and is grateful for the training. She admits to days filled with contradictions in a life that is both modern and preserving of Jewish traditions. As she takes Jewish law seriously, she also leaves open the opportunity to struggle with the law. While Tanenbaum attends Orthodox services, she doesn’t appreciate sitting upstairs and separate, far from the action. But she says she gains spiritual strength from many aspects of the service, and also attends a monthly partnership minyan near her home on the Upper East Side where women have opportunities to have a role in leading the service. Tanenbaum sees her own struggle as mild in comparison to what others face. The author and her subjects seem to connect, as fellow travelers along paths of faith, even as their paths diverge. Women were very open with her, welcoming her into their places of worship and their public and private conversations. She had no problem finding women to interview; she went to conferences, made connections, and then was linked to other women. “Dissatisfied people,” she notes, “want to talk.” She found that the Muslim women in particular wanted to be heard, and appreciated the opportunity to talk to someone who would listen to them respectfully and without judgment. Frequently, the curiosity was reciprocal. She noticed that people who are devout want to know about other faiths. In fact, some of her subjects hadn’t spoken to anyone Jewish before. Muslim women talked to her about their longings for and efforts at women-led prayer, and also about their frustrations with having to enter their places of worship through a back door; one woman told of hearing a visiting imam preach about the permissibility of wife beating. These women understood, as one told Tanenbaum, “that we have layers to peel back before we can figure out how Islam can be just to women,” and are confident that the egalitarian impulse and gender justice are there, within Islam. They also spoke candidly about how they feel about covering themselves with the traditional hijab. “The main thing I learned is that they see it as their choice,” Tanenbaum says. “If they wear it, it doesn’t mean they are oppressed. Many Muslim women want to dress in a way that makes them feel close to their God.” She adds that a lot of them are perplexed and disturbed that it’s seen as a sign of oppression. Tanenbaum, who hadn’t been to a Muslim prayer service before beginning this project, visited several mosques, including the Islamic Cultural Center on the Upper East Side, where one of the imams was her guide. She found the services to be very beautiful and physical, with the women behind a curtain, performing identical actions to the men. One of the very moving experiences she had during her research was to attend a communion service presided over by a Catholic woman priest, with several hundred people in attendance. She reports that more than 60 Catholic women have been illicitly ordained as priests and deacons in the United States. Although they are not recognized by the Vatican and can’t serve congregations, they hold services in homes and private places. She found that some of the most radical feminist Catholics today are nuns. Tanenbaum’s chapters on Jewish women are incisive, providing some of the best concise explanations of Jewish rituals and practice, and Orthodox feminists’ perspectives. Hearing story after story of women who feel left out, or treated like second-class citizens, or simply ignored by a tradition they crave to be a part of, readers might wonder why these women don’t walk out, or find a denomination or place of worship more akin with their attitudes toward equality. “If you’re dealing with someone with very strong beliefs about God and how to serve God,” Tanenbaum explains, “it’s not so easy to just go somewhere else. They take their faith very seriously and don’t want to give up on their core beliefs, what keeps them going.” The prevailing attitude is that if something is broken, don’t leave the broken thing and find something else — fix it. Across faiths, she sees women involved in serious study of religious texts, often at the same level as men. She’s hopeful that with more education, women will be able to take on more leadership roles. Tanenbaum is the author of “Slut! Growing Up Female with a Bad Reputation” and “Catfight: Rivalries Among Women — from Diets to Dating, from the Boardroom to the Delivery Room.” “I’m very interested in girls’ and women’s lives, and I want to help girls and women make sense of how they are socialized to make certain choices. From that point of view, this is a continuation of my first two books.” She sees her work as consciousness-raising in book form. In her next book, she hopes to look at devout gays and lesbians. Books change their writers as well as their readers, and Tanenbaum admits that writing this book broadened her outlook. “I understand Islam in particular in a way that I didn’t before,” she says, expressing gratitude for the opportunity to meet progressive, non-fundamentalist people who are very devout. When she hears people in her community equating Islam with fundamentalist Islam, she tries to point out that there’s a whole other world of Islam they should know about. Now available in a new revised edition, “Four Centuries of Jewish Women’s Spirituality: A Sourcebook” edited by Ellen M. Umansky and Dianne Ashton (Brandeis University Press) is a collection of prayers, poems, readings, stories and meditative works — a book to be read, consulted at holidays and lifecycle events or kept next to Sabbath candles. Included are newly uncovered voices from the past, as well as newly emerging voices from the present, culled from sermons, letters, ritual blessings, prayers and sisterhood minutes, written by a wide range of women from 1560 to the present. Leora Tanenbaum will moderate a discussion based on her book, with Aisha Taylor, Pat Dunn and Renee Septimus, on Tuesday, Feb. 24 at the 92nd Street Y, Lexington Avenue at 92nd Street, Manhattan, at 8:15 p.m. Tickets are $27.
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