The news has been buzzing for the last month about Salanter Akiba Riverdale High School (SARS), a modern Orthodox yeshiva in Riverdale, New York, allowing two female students to begin wearing tefillin during their morning prayers. To make matters more controversial, Rabbi Haskel Lookstein, the principal of the modern Orthodox high school Ramaz, said that since 2002, women have been allowed to wear tefillin during the weekly women-only prayer session. Now they will also be able to do so during the regular daily minyan.
The reactions to this news have run the gamut from applause to condemnation. Many predict that Orthodox women will use laying tefillin as an entryway to petition for lower mechitzas and egalitatarian minyans. Most responses have been written by Orthodox men. One piece that received a poor reception was from Rabbi Avi Shafran, who wrote that a woman’s place behind the mechitza isn’t really so bad. He argues that, for shy men like him, a woman’s private role can actually be preferable over a man’s public role. Women should enjoy their lack of responsibility in synagogue and legal matters.
Another article by Avital Chizhik, tries to remedy the lack of female response to news of “tefillin-gate.” Ms. Chizhik says that Orthodox women have bigger fish to fry than whether or not they can lay tefillin.
“Most of my friends and acquaintances, and the women whom they know – we are still learning, and struggling, to articulate our own realities: the fact that, shockingly, many of us still find sincere value in our roles, in the mehitzah (barrier between men and women in synagogues) and in modesty, too. Many of us would rather spend little time in the synagogue and would choose to go about the “woman’s way,” the way we have been taught: where every moment one turns to God, and daily life becomes an intimate conversation with him rather than a series of mandated public encounters with the Divine…..
I’d much rather put effort into ensuring actual empowerment. We are raising daughters who are encouraged to be simple-minded here – and no unique educator, dean or principal can combat that, when an entire society silently smirks at young girls with minds and opinions and ambitions…….
So – tefillin? Adjusted prayer services? Female rabbis? Lowered mehitzahs? I’m not convinced. Those women who feel disadvantaged by ritual differences are welcome to do as they please in communities that are receptive to it, without being dismissed by others. But to demand for a community to reform tightly held traditions is insensitive, and those who use it is as a political means are only doing harm to the Orthodox women who have (dare I say?) deeper and more critical questions to face……..
Because I don’t care to own the bimah. I simply want to own my mind.”
I agree with Ms. Chizhik that there are certainly more important social issues for frum women than being allowed to don tefillin. In a sense, this controversy isn’t even on my radar, as any interest I might have had in wearing tefillin or praying with a daily minyan has vanished long ago.
Before marriage and children, I remember feeling resentful that women didn’t have the same prayer obligations as men. After all, davening is a way to have a direct conversation with God using a siddur as the blueprint for the optimal way in which to have that conversation. A minyan is a more certain guarantee that even if a person’s own prayers aren’t up to snuff, perhaps another participant’s will carry up our own inadequate words. When you daven alone, you don’t have anyone else more deserving to piggyback onto. Your tefillahs are all on your own shoulders.
After I had children, I was actually grateful that I had no such time bound obligations such as laying tefilling, putting on a tallis, or catching a minyan each day. Raising young children was a tiring and time consuming task. I figured that I had finally learned the lesson firsthand about why women are not obligated in time bound mitzvas. I could offer up prayers to Hashem as the spirit moved me and not because of an imposed schedule. I could formulate my own spontaneous prayers that were individualized to my current circumstances, and not part of a “one size fits all” book. I considered this a positive sign that was making the transition from BT (baalas teshuvah) to FFB (frum from birth).
Reading about the tefillin controversy, I realize how little it interests me now. I remember what a firecracker I used to be about women’s rights and the concern that women be allowed to participate in synagogue life as fully as the Torah permits. I remember feeling chagrined at the opinion that if a woman is not obligated in a task, therefore, she is prohibited from performing it. Any woman who wants to take up a ritual that she is not commanded to perform is considered arrogant.
The sad truth is that I just don’t care anymore. I have very little investment or commitment to synagogue life. I don’t know many women who do. I made a commitment about a year ago to try to go to shul every Shabbos. I was always one of a handful of female regulars (in fairness, part of the reason for this is because I go to an early minyan). More than one woman, showing up on rare occasion for a simcha, told me they admired my regular attendance and could never be that motivated themselves.
While I was proud of myself for sticking to my commitment, my presence there didn’t detract from or enhance the service in any way. This point has hit home even more this year, as I have been unable to walk to shul for months due to an injury. The shul continues along nicely without me. The same wouldn’t hold true for my husband, who lains, gets aliyas, counts for a minyan, participates in learning, etc. If he suddenly didn’t show up for a few months, people would wonder where he was.
There is no shortage of battles for Orthodox women to choose from. Many of us are simply fighting the daily battles on our own home fronts. Most of us have many children, financial concerns, and more cooking and housework than our secular counterparts due to kashrut restrictions, kosher food prices, and our previously mentioned large families. Sometimes seeing all the kids off to school with their homework, lunches, and school supplies in tow is a victory in and of itself.
The social issues I have discussed on this blog and that Ms. Chizhik discusses in her article are certainly ones that affect the lives of Orthodox women more than wearing tefillin. Hyper tznius rules, educations that encourage marrying young and supporting a kollel husband, impossible standards of size and beauty for shidduchim and beyond, agunot, the lack of female leadership in halachic matters and consequently social matters – these are the kinds of issues that are more troublesome to me than whether or not I can put on leather straps and boxes every day.
There are so many problems that have been skipped over, that it’s impossible to be concerned with wearing tefillin until those other matters are addressed and resolved. Tefillin is an end game issue. It’s like fighting for the right to wear a stethoscope when you haven’t even been admitted to medical school yet.
