Judaism without Patriarchy, #metoo, and Welcoming Jews of all Genders, with Rabbi Yohanna Kinberg
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“We still see some relics that are very harmful to families, to women. Why are we holding on to that? If we've been able to let go of a lot of patriarchal aspects of the world, why are we holding on to these certain pieces within Judaism? What would happen if we let go of them?
-Rabbi Yohanna Kinberg
Clarissa talks with Rabbi Yohanna Kinberg about the influence of the patriarchy on Judaism and how it impacts gender roles in Jewish spaces today. In the early 2000s, Rabbi Kinberg had to act as a whistleblower in a sexual abuse case involving a clergy member. Clarissa asks Rabbi Kinberg about that experience, and her approach to leading tough conversations on gender equality and justice within the larger Jewish community.
Note: This interview was recorded before the outbreak of COVID-19 in the United State.
EPISODE NOTES
Click here to find Rabbi Yohanna Kinberg’s Bio, Blog & Contact Info
Organizations Mentioned
Muslim Association of Puget Sound: MAPS
Articles Mentioned
“When Reform Leaders Downplay Charges of Rabbis Behaving Badly” (The Forward)
“Twenty-Five Years After the Rebbe’s Passing, Chabad Perpetuates Its Mission to Unite All Jews. Can They Bring Us Together?” (Jewish in Seattle Magazine)
Hebrew Terms Mentioned
You can follow Clarissa on Twitter and Instagram @ClarissaRMarks
If you liked this episode try out: Feminist and Full of Chutzpah w/Alma Editor Molly Tolsky
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On Wandering is produced and presented by Clarissa Marks, with intro music by Ketsa and outro music by Gillicuddy.
The show is recorded on the traditional land of the first people of Seattle, the Duwamish People past, present and emerging. As a land-based people in diaspora, we recognize first nations and indigenous people as the stewards of this land from time immemorial. We honor with gratitude the land itself and the Duwamish Tribe.
TRANSCRIPT
Rabbi Yohanna Kinberg (RYK)
A woman couldn't be a free agent in biblical times. You were either someone's daughter, or you were someone's wife, or you were a prostitute, you know, those were your options. We still see some relics that are very harmful to families, to women. Why are we holding on to that? If we've been able to let go of a lot of patriarchal aspects of the world, why are we holding on to these certain pieces within Judaism? What would happen if we let go of them?
Clarissa Marks (CM)
This is On Wandering, a podcast that explores the tricky questions of Jewish identity. I’m Clarissa Marks. It’s Women’s History Month in the U.S., and it’s almost Passover – a time for reflecting on liberation and justice for many Jews. So I thought this would be a good time to share a conversation I had with back in the spring of 2020 with Rabbi Yohanna Kinberg.
I grew up attending a fairly progressive synagogue with gender-neutral prayer books, so it's been hard to put my finger on gender inequality in Judaism as a religion, and Jewish culture, has felt patriarchal to me. So, what I love about Rabbi Kinberg's approach is that she recognizes gender inequality can be both explicit and implicit.
She's involved with several Jewish social justice organizations including Faith Action Network, Hadassah and the Women's Torah Project. And in the early 2000s, Rabbi Kinberg had to act as a whistleblower in a sexual abuse case involving a clergy member. So, content warning: there will be some discussion of that case. We talked about her experience as a whistleblower, and about leading tough conversations on gender equality and justice within the larger Jewish community. I hope this interview brings you inspiration, and maybe starts some of those conversations within your circles.
So, I wanted to start by talking about some basics for talking about the patriarchy. Just in case we have some listeners who are less familiar with what that term means, how would you describe what the patriarchy is?
RYK: It's a system that gives privilege to males in the economic, home, religious, spiritual, intellectual spheres of life. Meaning that you know, there's we have men and women and people who are not identifying as either and we also have a system that will consistently privilege men, one group over others that has been going on for a very, very long time. And even though we've developed as a civilization in many ways, the strictures of patriarchy still function to really hurt women and LGBTQ people in our society. So you can say just in terms of an anthropological point of view, the patriarchy is a system where wealth identity is inherited through the paternal side, but it's much more than that. It's really about a system that's fundamentally not just.
Clarissa Marks (CM): When did you first realize there was a gender disparity in the Jewish community?
RYK: Well, growing up, my dad was a rabbi, but I grew up in a very egalitarian household and where my mother was a very active feminist. And so she was really bringing a lot of feminist consciousness into my life starting at a young age. So we would have goddess figurines in our home that were, you know, symbolic of the divine feminine because my mother felt that there was enough of the divine masculine, brought into our household through traditional Judaism, and also being exposed growing up in Eugene, Oregon to Wicca and to celebrating the seasons and the solstices and doing that and communities of women just because those were my friend's moms who were involved in that, and my mom had friends and so I grew up in a really strong community of women who had a spiritual and political consciousness. It was in the Water, like I just grew up, it was organic. I say I'm H.B.B, hippie by birth, like, that's what I grew up in. And I also grew up with a traditional Judaism where we kept kosher, and we kept Shabbat, and we went to services. And so I think I really, I didn't even necessarily know that there was a lot of gender differences until we went to Israel when I was around 13, right after my bat mitzvah, and my grandfather died. And we went through the whole burial and mourning process in an orthodox framework, a Sephardic orthodox framework. And I just for the first time, sort of realized that now as a bat mitzvah, my status was radically different than I'd ever experienced in my life. And just saw that there was there was a whole other system of Judaism that I was about to learn a lot about.
CM: In an orthodox setting.
RYK: Yeah, this was my mother's side of the family, but she had moved to the United States in her early 20s. And so she was not living in that context anymore in Israel.
CM: So, when you talk about having a different setting of Judaism, expressing the patriarchy differently, that makes me think of the question, well, is Judaism inherently a patriarchy? And a big part of Judaism goes back to the texts and the literature that we have. So what are some of the ways that you see Jewish texts supporting the idea of a patriarchy?
RYK: Judaism definitely is a patriarchal religion in and it also has elements within it that have, I think, allow it to outlive systems that no longer serve to function. So I'd say both of those things are true for me. And that we are now sort of coming to a greater consciousness just like we did with issues like slavery, and really, really extreme laws around separating us from other parts of the community or non-Jews. We are now coming to another consciousness about how to live which hopefully is post-patriarchal. So I have confidence, I feel very confident and live that way that Judaism can transcend patriarchy. But before you can do that you have to acknowledge what it is and where it is and how it functions. And Judaism inherently, the Rabbinic Judaism post biblical Judaism really established a very firm patriarchy in terms of men, males do this dress this way, look this way, talk this way, study this way, this is how they live. And this is how females live. And while the Talmud does acknowledge that there's seven different gender expressions in the world, that's something that they observed, but at the end of the day, you're going to choose one or the other and you're gonna get married and have kids and do this, this whole system. So they can observe what a lot of multiplicity of identities and yet, I think, and I think this for me is the most important example is that tradition doesn't move forward saying, "let's celebrate all these." It says, "and this is what you do."
There's a law in the Talmud that says that if your wife doesn't get pregnant after 10 years, you're required to divorce her so that you can fulfill the commandment and be fruitful and multiply. So if the first mitzvah, the first commandment within rabbinic Judaism is be fruitful multiply, in the past, before we had the kind of biological technologies we have now, that meant you're going to get married and have kids and you're going to fulfill your gender role that you were put on this planet to do. Now we're moving forward and the Jewish community is very comfortable, I believe the majority of the world Jewish community, with people having different gender expressions and different expressions of sexuality and not being in these boxes, and a lot of people do choose to be fruitful, multiply, and want to have Jewish families and bring Jewish children into this world, and that's really beautiful, too. So I'm glad that we can actually see ourselves transcending that and saying, "yes, we do love babies, and we love anybody who brings a baby to the community." And that's that's just wonderful to see. Like Judaism is stronger than patriarchy.
CM: So what are some of the texts, because I'm less familiar with them, that do say specifically, "this is what it means to be a man. This is what it means to be a woman."
RYK: Well, you know, in the creation story in Genesis, we have this first creation story, which is the very linear on the first day, this happened in the second day and then you get down to the day where human beings are created, and it says, "God created the man and woman as though it was in one breath." And so there's some rabbinic commentary says that the first human was a hermaphrodite, or was a being that embodied both genders. One being. And there's a second story of creation, which goes into the Adam and Eve story. That Adam was alone. He was the only person and God took Adam's Rib and created Eve from Adam, and then they live in the Garden of Eden. Then Eve is the one who lures Adam, to be eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil and then they both eat from this. And look, and oh, they're naked, and they're shameful, and she caused that. And then it says, "and you will toil in childbirth and you will have a painful childbirth. And you know why? It's because you're the one who, got everybody kicked out of the garden of Eden. And then it moves forward.
But that concept of Eve’s role in the formation of humanity can be read is very negative, and placing her in an inferior status or something being fundamentally different about her nature than Adam, the male. But you can also read it another way, which is that she opened up humanity to choice and freewill. And you know, by eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, they were then able to leave the garden and make choices about how to live in this world. The full expression of humanity is to have freewill, which is why when women's freewill is taken away we're put in a subhuman status. And so that feels [like going] back to maybe a fundamental injustice in the interpretation of the text. As Judaism progresses in the Torah, there's actually not as much gender distinction as one would think. There is sort of in a very fundamental tribal way, which would probably be true of any tribe at that time in that area. But in terms of the laws, they're not as extreme in terms of breaking up the lives of men and women as the rabbinic era.
CM: Oh, really?
RYK: Yeah, because in the Torah times, everybody becomes impure. So if a man has a seminal a mission at night or has sex, he is required to go and cleanse himself before he can touch anything or do anything and the same thing for women when they're menstruating or after they have a baby. And so both parties involved in humanity become impure and have to cleanse themselves to get into proper relationship with the community, with God, with themselves. It's a cleansing process. You know, it would be immersion and transcending these different states of being. But in Rabbinic Judaism, and I was just studying this in Daf Yomi, in the daily Talmud study I'm doing in Brachot, it makes it very clear that men no longer have to engage in that cycle of purity and impurity, only women.
CM: So before the Talmud was written, when we had the Torah, which is before most of before the, oh gosh, I'm forgetting the word, the diaspora out of Israel, the being expelled from Israel. We relied heavily on the Torah, which it sounds like it had more equality in the way that it talked about the roles for men and women and what men and women had to do to be pure or experience the divine. But then after the Jews left Israel during the Babylonian period, when the Talmud was created, these rules became more codified and enhanced the patriarchy?
RYK: Well, let's say there's the writing of the Torah and all the rules, and then as the story tells us in the Torah as they gathered these rules, and then they went and inhabited the land, and we don't really know if they ever practiced it exactly as it's written in the Torah. Because they didn't document their actual practicing of a lot of this stuff. What we do know is that the Torah, in terms of purity and impurity of the physical body is egalitarian in terms of both men and women can become pure and impure, and that hasn't changed in the Torah since that time. And what we also know is that rabbinic law makes it so that men no longer have to participate in that cycle, and a lot of what rabbinic Judaism looks like today is around women going to the mikvah, being impure. There's a lot of the religious tradition around women's bodies and impurity and purity. And so we just see that that shift.
Some would say, "Well, that's because they were part of a larger patriarchal culture. So it's not necessarily that Judaism is inherently patriarchal, but the world around them is. Therefore it becomes part of the culture." And that's what's hard to ascertain. What I do know now is that today, in orthodox communities is a woman cannot divorce a man, and that in biblical times marriage was a financial transaction, and that she was bound to that man and that a woman couldn't be a free agent in biblical times. You were either someone's daughter, or you are someone's wife, or you are a prostitute. You know, those are your options in terms of how you could be. And today that's changed, but we still see some relics that are very harmful to to families, to women. And so the question is, why are we holding on to that? If we've been able to let go of a lot of patriarchal aspects of the world, why are we holding on to these certain pieces within Judaism? What would happen if we let go of them? And I want to have deeper conversations with people who are still upholding them about what's so important about gender and having a split, and it's such a stark distinction, within gender. Why is that so important to Judaism?
CM: Right. So what are some of the ways that you see patriarchy having a negative effect in the Jewish community right now? What are some of the things that we're upholding that are harmful?
RYK: Absolutely. Well, as I was just mentioning, women not being able to divorce men and being kept in legally a marriage where you're bound to this person. Even if you're not living together, you're you still can't marry someone else, you still can't have a legal divorce. That just seems so unfair and unkind at this point in the course of human civilization. I also think about my own experience of knowing in community so much many LGBTQ people and also trans people, and people who are non-binary. And I think, well, that array of human expression has to also exist in the Orthodox community. I just can't believe that that beautiful array of humanity isn't reflected there too. And so what does that mean? What I see is that people feel that they can't be themselves, they feel oppressed, they feel they have to hide, they feel like they have to harm themselves or hurt themselves, because they're not accepted. And that deeply disturbs me. That just deeply disturbs me to know that they could be living in another way, where they're accepted and where they're invited to fulfill all the commandments, you know, and be a full part of the community in the way that's right for them. That's another piece. And then I would say just, you know, in terms of Israel, and the fact that we have so many people around the world who are liberal Jews who want to have full access to sights and to religious experiences, and Israelis also would probably like to have full access to all the forms of Judaism that exist in this world.
But because Israel's religious courts are, according to orthodox law, anything that has to do with birth, marriage, divorce, adoption, and inheritance has to go through the religious court. So even to this day, if you want to have an abortion in Israel, you're still supposed to go before a tribunal of three orthodox rabbis to get permission to do that. And that's the reality of living with a patriarchal structure that is also in the legal system. It's not even in the just the family system. And in the United States, probably the year I was born, I think women still couldn't get a credit card on their own in a department store because of property rights and issues and trust issues around women. So we are moving forward and you can see it's so different than what I would even have imagined 2020 in terms of what's moving in our world around gender, and it's really amazing. And I want Judaism to move along with it. And I especially don't want it to become a force then that tries to protect the patriarchy and harm other people.
CM: Right. So I wanted to ask about how you've seen the spoken and unspoken support of the patriarchy. When you talk about in Israel there's very specific laws, there's a court you have to go to if you want an abortion or a divorce, that's a transparent form of supporting the patriarchy. But then I also feel like even in some maybe more progressive spaces of Judaism, there's kind of an unspoken support of the patriarchy. I don't go to services very often at all, but when I do go, even if I go to the most progressive, hippie-dippie services I can and I still think feel the sense of, well, I don't want to wear a kippah because that feels like a man's clothing. Or I don't know if I feel comfortable wearing a talis or there's certain prayers where we're talking about father figures that make it hard for me to feel like I can embrace Judaism even when everyone around me feels like they want it to be very gender inclusive.
RYK: Yeah, I mean, it's interesting because when I lead I try to lead from a post-patriarchal place which means, just like with the God language when it was changed, to be more gender-neutral, to really try to make those changes. But it's really, really challenging because the patriarchy is so looming. So when we, you know, when we talk about patriarchs and matriarchs, I mean, people will ask me, "Well, why do you always say the patriarchs first?" It's like, you're right. I mean, we really have to be willing to do a deep dive to think about where are the places where we're reinforcing patriarchy and not everybody has done that work and that can be very problematic. Because I have also people who come who want a post patriarchal experience, but so much of the structures are the same even if they have nothing to do with patriarchy. And so just walking into the building feels like that is a male space. And you know what? It probably is in it's design and all the things. If it came from a tradition where men and women had been doing spiritual architecture together for 200 years, it will feel very different because that's the direction we're moving in. But I can completely understand why when you're creating a life for yourself that doesn't include a lot of patriarchy, that most of the Abrahamic systems are going to feel very, very patriarchal walking in. I think this is a time in a place where representation matters as it always does. Because anytime you're doing something in the synagogue or around religious life to have a lot of representation of voices there to help build. And we're constantly building Judaism, so it's going to happen. But for example, there was a story just last week about the conservative movement where they had a list of the top like 15 or ten, most innovative rabbis, and they didn't include a single female.
CM: Hmm, wow.
RYK: Or non-binary. So they were called out, obviously, and they apologized, but how they could have gotten there..? I'm more concerned about how did you get to this decision? Because that's where the problem is, is everything that led up to that decision meant that you did not have appropriate representation in your decision making, and so you need to make a real effort to have decision making bodies that represent lots of different types of talent in our world and lots of expressions of humanity. That's where the changes need to happen. Someone asked me recently, "how can I, as a Jewish leader make a difference?" And it is some of the things that I've learned from watching women in the tech world. Saying, "I will not be on a panel, if there isn't this much representation, and I'm not going to participate in this." Withhold yourself and your talent and make demands to see the culture change, because that's how it's going to change. It's happening, but it's happening slowly. I would say, I would love for synagogues to privilege and give voice to people who don't feel comfortable, because if everybody are the ones who are feeling comfortable are the ones making decisions then it's a self perpetuating situation. We had conversations last year about disassembling our sisterhood because we were wondering, does that language still speak to people. Do we want to just be doing things all together, or do we want to be doing things divided by gender? And what does sisterhood mean? And there's still a lot of conversation going on about that. We're undecided. I think that there's a desire within the community for women to gather, there's a desire for queer people to gather, there's a desire, sometimes for people who identify as male together, but everybody seems sort of unsure about what's the proper way to go now because the old structures just don't seem to fit.
CM: In addition to that, when we're talking about the existing structures of Jewish institutions, you've been an advocate for increasing awareness of sexual misconduct by clergy members, which is one of the biggest and maybe most harmful barriers to women feeling comfortable in traditional Jewish institutions. Have you seen examples where rabbis or Jewish institutions have used Jewish patriarchal tradition to defend sexual misconduct?
RYK: When I first started speaking out on these issues, some of the pushback from the community, and this was before 2014, was the argument of not gossiping, of lashon harah. Sort of bringing to me the rabbinic and biblical injunction, and something that's very strong within Judaism, about not gossiping, not spreading untruths, not spreading a lie. That was the first big hurdle was, I was being told that I was a gossip by sharing information and trying to see some movement on a situation that I felt was very dangerous for people in our community: that there was a predator. It was very, very painful to be told that and be castigated in that way. I had to do my own deep dive of Jewish text and also bring up the injunction that we should truly rebuke people in our community who are doing things that could harm other people and also overall harm the community. That there's a way to rebuke but sometimes that way to rebuke does end up having to be public, because that's the last line of accountability. And in my own story of wanting to help people be safer in our community and call out the misconduct of someone. I started out by trying to do it very quietly and in doing it quietly, when things happen quietly, I was quietly told, "you're not the right person to do this. This isn't the right time. This isn't the right way." And I tried lots of different avenues of quietly trying to have this problem addressed. [I] was told, "you're gossiping. You have no evidence, and why didn't any of these people go to the police?" Again, before 2014 so I was really navigating this in the dark. I hadn't heard all the stories of a lot of other people. This was not reported on widely.
CM: And 2014, what was significant about that year?
RYK: That was the beginning of the MeToo movement. That's when #MeToo became something and we started talking about this. This was like months before that, unfortunately, because if it happened now, I would really know what to do. But back then I did not. And so I went to people I trusted who had positions of authority within the religious framework I was working in and tried to do it quietly, and then had to get louder, and louder, and louder, and louder until I was a named source in an article in the Jewish Daily Forward, which, in the Jewish world to be part of a national press is about as loud as you can get. was shocked by how loud I had to get to be heard. I thought, "well, I'm a female rabbi, and I went to rabbinical school, and at that time was a senior rabbi of a congregation, and part of a rabbinical organization. Why isn't anybody listening to me?" And then I realized, as many of us came to realize, is that a lot of these institutions were keeping a lot of secrets for a really long time protecting their own. Yes, I think all institutions that are primarily male led do function to protect their own. While this particular person had been expelled from the rabbinical movement, what the rabbinical movement didn't do was go to the community and warn them that this person was coming. You can't take someone's title of Rabbi away, so they can just hang up a shingle and be a rabbi and continue to serve people. Unless you do that proactive move of send a letter to every Jewish organization saying, this person has been expelled, and this is what they did, they're just going to keep on perpetrating in the community, and that's exactly what was happening.
CM: So they would just find another community that didn't know what happened and set up shop there as their rabbi.
RYK: Absolutely. Unfortunately, there were people in this community who did know what happened, and who didn't say anything, and he was perpetrating. One of his victims came directly to me so I couldn't be quiet, and so I that's when I had to start getting really loud. And there was fallout for my behavior. That was, at that time, the loud screaming, the vindictive, angry, out of control feminist who had to take it to the most extreme place. I did have to take it to the most extreme place, because, we know now, most people don't report to police. If any of these people who spoke to me directly about their experience had reported, it would have blown up their whole lives. And I was not one of his victims, so I felt that because I was not in that position that I should speak out, but it did have consequences for my life and for my career. That's something that I'm okay with living with, because there's someone not out there using the same title that I have hurting people. The patriarchal aspect of that was, we weren't doing our jobs that we want to cover up that we weren't doing our jobs appropriately. But they have now changed, and this particular movement did pass a rule that says if someone was expelled, and they move to another community that they they should not be hired by another congregation within the movement and that they will inform the rest of the community. So changes have happened in the rules since that. Since 2014.
CM: So after 2014, is it just the Reconstructionist movement?
RYK: This was in the Reform movement. All this was in the Reform movement. I think all the rabbinic movements have had to deal with stuff. Orthodox, Reformed, Reconstructionist, Renewal, all of them since 2014, have had to deal with major issues around ethics violations, and how do you address rabbis who abuse? Being a second generation rabbi and my husband being a rabbi, I'm very concerned probably more than most, about rabbis abusing their power and hurting people, because that's the most dangerous part about walking into a Jewish institution right now. While some of the things might feel uncomfortable, I would say overall, that the rabbi's role is still very powerful. If you're in a room alone with the rabbi, they do something that's uncomfortable for you, you might feel like, "well, who do I go to? What do I say?" We just don't talk about that enough. We don't have probably the same levels of abuse as the Catholic Church, all the religious groups of this world have a problem when it's primarily run by men and as does the Jewish world.
CM: That brings me to my next question. If we're in a Jewish community that aims to disassemble the patriarchy, and make a safer world for folks of all genders, what's our responsibility and how do we approach working with other Jewish communities that seem to be upholding the patriarchy, or parts of the patriarchy that feel harmful?
RYK: Absolutely. I mean, that's one of my greatest challenges. I want the Jewish world to be as one, and to feel a sense of responsibility for each other, and have a relationship with each other, and it's very difficult when you have these two systems that sort of exclude each other. It's very, very hard. So on one hand, I believe that representation matters, so I should be present, and visible, and interacting. On the other hand, I don't ever want to put myself, or ask others to be, in a situation that diminishes their dignity. Nor would I want that of of people from the Orthodox community either.
CM: Can you talk a little bit more about what does that mean?
RYK: Diminishes their dignity? Well, I would say, where you don't feel like you can be your full personhood. So, I mean, one of the examples from my own life is going into a situation, with my husband, we're both rabbis, where I know I would never be asked to make kiddush, to say the blessing over the wine, because women aren't supposed to do that for men within the Orthodox Jewish legal framework. Even though it might not come up, because obviously they're not going to ask me, I know that my status is different and that feels hard and problematic for me, within my own sort of family and community. It's one thing if I'm going into another community and making a choice to say like, I'm going to go to a mosque and I'm going to cover my hair because I'm choosing to step into this framework, and be a guest, as opposed to part of my own family, and what does that mean? If there was sort of an equation like, well, "I'm going to give up a little bit of meat and you give up a little bit of you" that's even hard to even have that conversation. But I do find that, more and more for myself, those experiences do feel like that diminishes me. And then I imagined for myself, that how that must feel...I think about people who are queer, who might not feel they can even talk about their partner, or their children or, a transition they're going through, or anything because they feel that that might not be accepted, or their status might be seen as different in the community. There's a sense of, it's not just for me, it's really about bringing others with me in this journey. Because I'm just at the forefront of being born the year that the first woman was ordained in 1972, at the beginning of this. Then LGBTQ people were ordained, and now trans people are being ordained. So in future generations, there'll be greater representation, and I think that, that might increase the challenge of all these groups coming together, but I think also with the multiplicity of different identities, that'll be a good challenge. It'll be a good challenge for the Jewish community, 'cause we'll have to face each other, and honor each other and acknowledge each other.
CM: I wanted to ask more about your experience working in Jewish spaces with more conservative communities. You mentioned you would go into a mosque and cover your hair because you're a guest in that community and it feels appropriate.
RYK: Although it's really hard for me.
CM: Okay.
RYK: I do it, but it's really hard for me. And I prefer to work with the Muslim community like at MAPS and Redmond, where I don't have to cover my hair.
CM: I see. It's more neutral ground.
RYK: Yeah, because there's some mosques where you don't have to cover your hair and so that's my preference. But again, there have been times. Because right across the street from my congregation is a Shia mosque, and I don't want not do stuff with this whole Muslim community that's right across the street because I won't cover my hair. So I will cover my hair, but when I'm in the room and all the women's hair is covered, and none of the men have their hair covered, or in the same way and it's just so stark, it's like, okay, I am in the patriarchy and I just stepped into a space that's not where I live all the time. But I know how to do it well because I'm the child of a first generation American from Morocco. I know how to rollover and show my belly. l know how to step into the patriarchal form and be the rebbetzin-
CM: The wife of a rabbi.
RYK: That's why I'm holding on to my dignity in some, because it's just so easy for me to let go of it. That I feel like no, now that I'm like, older, I'm like, "wait a second. What does that do to you long term? When you walk in the room and sort of give away your dignity?" And I think about my mom, because she grew up in Morocco, super bright. I mean, so bright. Such a smart woman. Spoke like seven different languages, but didn't have the same kind of educational opportunities that I had. I know that she wanted to be a rabbi. But what she did is she worked while she put my father through rabbinical school. And then she took care of my kids while I went to rabbinical school, and then she took care of my kids while I was working as a rabbi. And I think about you know, just that I was born into this world where my parents were delighted. I mean, dream come true that I decided to become a rabbi. And I had all this support, and just so many people cheering me on, and that she didn't have that. I can't go back and create that for her, but I can cheer other people on. I can sort of pass it forward.
CM: Right. That's something that you brought up the last time I saw you speak. It's interesting working with more conservative Jewish communities, because you have to think about one, "what are my actions going to do to my sense of self and dignity? is doing something like holding back and not saying kiddush? Or...
RYK: Sitting behind a mechitza.
CM: Sure, sitting separately from the men. How does that make me feel small?" But then, you're also thinking about, "well, I know there's other people in this community who are being affected by this. I know that the women might be harmed in some way if this is something that they experience on a regular basis, or there's probably queer people who don't feel comfortable speaking up or being themselves in this community." So how do you balance the desire to be in that space and make a difference with respecting that community, and then also what you need for yourself to feel healthy?
RYK: I think because I've been outspoken about issues around the patriarchy I'm less and less invited into those orthodox spaces.
CM: Okay. That's hard.
RYK: Yeah, because I have spoken up about certain things, and that's become difficult. When you're outspoken and then you have the title rabbi, then you become sort of like a figure and someone who speaks out on these issues. So I was quoted in Jewish in Seattle last summer in an article about Chabad. I mean, no liberal rabbis ever want to say anything negative about Chabad?
CM: Why?
RYK: I think because they are the most sort of open to liberal Jews of all the Orthodox groups and so we interact with them a lot. And because they are often nice, loving, welcoming, generous, beautiful people. Having said that, they also are still within the laws of the bounds of Jewish law. And so one of the things that I experience in my career is that they're very open and welcoming to people up until a certain point. And then if that person wants to get married, or have a baby naming, or commit suicide, or anything that has to do with the same things that that the Jewish legal system in Israel, that the Orthodox has to do with, birth, death, marriage adoption, then it's like, no. You hit a wall and then they get bounced back to the liberal community. First of all, we know that we're not like their first choice. That they actually sort of saw Chabad as being more authentic, more Jewish than what we do. But they get bounced to us when Chabad draws a line and says we don't recognize you. So they might invite a gay couple to a Shabbat dinner but they're not going to do a baby naming for their child. So that's that's sort of where there becomes tension because we are working with people who are sort of bouncing back and forth from both communities and people who specifically might have been rejected by that community, and then it becomes our pastoral issue, that that they've been rejected when they thought that they were going to be welcomed and embraced.
CM: So you've actually seen or worked with folks who are trying to find their way between more liberal and Orthodox communities.
RYK: All the time, all the time. Yeah.
CM: That's so hard.
RYK: Yeah. Very, very often. That becomes a challenge because they are very welcoming, and they do present this very, very beautiful form of Judaism. And I wish in some ways that my job was to make Shabbat dinner and invite people over, I would love to do that. But I also am a rabbi and I have these services to lead and sermons to right and so there's a tension there in terms of what Chabad offers, which is a rabbi and a rebbetzin, and a home. And that's something that's very appealing and something that my husband I could, but again, it's based on there being someone who stays home and cooks and cleans and someone who works. And we actually both are rabbis, and we both work. We almost never have people over for Shabbat because we're always working that's just not part of our lives anymore. I think that there should be lots of people inviting people over, but the way my career's taken me as a place where I really see that it can that people bouncing back between orthodox and liberal Judaism because of the patriarchy. Because of those laws there can be a real pain line, a really, really, painful line that people bump up against. And so I spoke about that in an article in Jewish in Seattle. And it was it's very controversial.
CM: I wonder too if that’s what part of what people like about conservative groups. I’ve heard of some folks who’ve joined more liberal synagogues say that they miss some of the structure of a more conservative setting. Sometimes that structure are just the ways that prayers are sung, but I wonder if there’s something comfy about knowing your role in society.
RYK: Yes, and that’s what I bump up against. My next comment is, “yes, patriarchy is very comfortable.” It’s comfortable until it’s not comfortable, right? It’s comfortable if it’s comfortable for you. And I’m speaking as someone who got married at twenty-five, and has two kids, and has a husband. I mean, I didn’t take his last name, but I made all the choices that are within the sort of normative, Jewish patriarchy box. But I always want to be creating a world where people can make different choices than the choices I made. And I also always want to work on behalf of the people that I love and not just myself. So I recognize that this is my joy and I’m surrounded by all these other people who have their life, their joy too. And I want to more and more create a Jewish world that includes all of them.
And I think that that’s happening because so many of the people who are coming to our community and coming to Judaism as new Jews, are queer people and trans people. I was asking one of my newer conversion students whose trans, “why do you think that is? Because you’re like my fifth trans conversion student in a row.” And they said because they see that the rabbis are out there fighting for the rights of trans people, and immigrants, for poor people. And, at least through their lenses of what the Jewish world looks like, what they see is all this activism, and all this Tikkun Olam, and they’re drawn to that. They want to be part of something that’s rooted, at least what this one individual expressed, something that’s ancient and rooted but also something that’s radically progressive in terms of this almost messianic vision of the world that we’re reaching for. And I was like, “oh good! I’m so glad that’s the lens you see.” Because I feel like a lot of people within the Jewish community disparage what they would call Tikkun Olam Jews, and Jews who are very focussed on transforming our world and that that’s somehow a lesser form of Judaism. And part of transforming our world is moving beyond patriarchy.
And my push back for people who are very comfortable with the forms is, what are you willing to give up to be in that comfortable form? You might feel comfortable on one side of the mechitza, but what about your non-binary friend? Where are they supposed to sit? And you might feel comfortable not making kiddush, but what about the person sitting next to you who wants to make kiddush? It’s just about moving beyond yourself, and also thinking about what is the patriarchy protecting? Why do those structures feel so comfortable for people that they’re willing to fight for it, and say, “we’re willing to give up other things, but this, no. We have to keep this system of this is what men do and this is men do and this is what women do and never should they depart from that structure.”
CM: Right. One of the ways that you ended the talk that I saw at Limmud Seattle, was you talked about [how] even though sometimes we cede power to more conservative groups, like in Israel where the religious authority that’s in charge of different legal decisions is also a very conservative, patriarchal authority, overall there are more Jews out there who want to see gender equality.
RYK: Yes.
CM: I thought that was a very good take away and that felt very empowering.
RYK: Absolutely. I think that that’s the majority of the Jewish world, and that our world is constantly moving forward and transforming. And you see that in the orthodox world now too that there are people who are opening their eyes to recognizing the full humanity in their community and wiling to think about changing for the sake of love and compassion, and letting go of things that bind us and keep us away from that. So I feel confident in moving forward, it’s just that the conversations are hard. They’re really, really hard because anything that’s about identity can be a hard conversation, and I’m willing to have them, and I hope to have more of them throughout my life.
CM: Well this has been really wonderful. Is there anything else I haven’t asked about yet that you’d like to talk about it?
RYK: No, I think I’m good.
CM: Oh great. Well, thank you so much for coming!
RYK: Thank you!
CM: This was a really lovely conversation. Where can people find more about your work if they’re interested in what you’re up to or what your congregation is doing?
RYK: Just go to KolaAmiNW.org.
CM: Fabulous.
This episode was produced by me, Clarissa Marks, with intro music by Ketsa and outgoing music by Gillicuddy. If you like the show, you can support it by sharing with a friend, or by adding a review to Apple Podcasts. You can connect with me on Twitter or Instagram at ClarissaRMarks. And to hear more episodes, find transcripts, or learn more about the people or media we mentioned, visit our website: OnWandering.co. That’s OnWandering.co. Thanks for listening and see you next time.