One can open the book "Jewish Women's
Prayers Throughout the Ages" (published in Hebrew by
Yedioth Ahronoth), without fear and with curiosity, just
as one opens a book of poetry. The questions that arise
after one leafs through the book do not require a
specific reaction. Either one will be captivated by it
or put it aside for lack of interest. And what is
certain: There is no mutual contract between the reader
and God, nor even room for guilt. Neither a vague
bitterness, stemming from years of being forced to pray
three times a day, nor an attitude of holiness. The
initial attitude toward the book is therefore likely to
be liberating.
"Perhaps because of people's fear of the existing prayer
book," speculates Dr. Aliza Lavie, a lecturer on
communications in the department of social sciences at
Bar-Ilan University, and the author of "Jewish Women's
Prayers Throughout the Ages." "The book has succeeded in
touching so many and varied audiences, from the Haredi
[ultra-Orthodox] sector to [left-wing socialist]
kibbutzim of Hashomer Hatzair." This week, for example,
she lectured at Kibbutz Ma'abarot near Hadera. "This is
the first time there was a lecture on Judaism there,"
she says. "It was moving for me to understand what is
actually happening with this book. Women are relating to
the prayers without any inhibitions, as though the
emotional outpouring of the women in the book is what is
transmitted and what moves them."
"Women's Prayer" is an anthology of forgotten women's
prayers from throughout the generations, alongside
contemporary prayers. It is one of those books that
struck it lucky. Three months after publication, it
still heads the bestseller list and is arousing
questions as to how a book that is ostensibly sectoral
and religious, has succeeded in going beyond the
periphery and reaching the center and the secular world,
and as to what need it fulfills in its readers. Its
publication aroused a debate over the fact that it does
not include prayers written outside the Orthodox stream,
a fact that did not hurt sales, but just the opposite.
According to Lavie, the criticism voiced by the
non-Orthodox rendered the book kosher for the Haredim.
The book has become a cultural
phenomenon beyond its success in terms of sales. Since
its publication, there have been constant conferences in
various cultural worlds in which women's prayers are
discussed. Lavie tells with excitement about a group of
secular women - Maagalei Nashim (Women's Circles) - who
explain and discuss the texts of the prayers. And on the
other hand, about the awakening of women with a
traditional bent, who are reviving ancient texts they
vaguely remembered from their grandmothers, and relating
them to the book.
For example, Lavie was invited to a basisa in Or Yehuda,
a Tripolitan ceremony that is celebrated on the first
day of Nissan (March-April). There have even been
various cultural events inspired by the book: a play, a
dance performance and the prayers set to music. Lavie is
amazed by "the way the book has been welcomed in Israeli
society." Since its publication, she has been on an
anthropological journey, as she puts it: "I think that
what connects all the audiences to the book is a great
longing, a kind of feeling of having missed something by
not listening to what their grandmothers brought from
home, and even making light of it."
"The book came out at the right time and in the right
place," says Prof. Avigdor Shinan of Tel Aviv
University, who studies the history of liturgy and of
synagogues, and writes prayers himself. "Thirty years
ago, a book of this kind would have been seen as a
curiosity. Today, within the general tendency of
bringing women into the inner circle of religion, when
there are female rabbinical pleaders, women who study
Torah, women who are professors and doctors of Talmud,
it was accepted naturally."
Lavie reports a contemptuous attitude on the part of
academe toward her extracurricular project and toward
her, as a person who does not come from the field of the
study of liturgics. "I was unable to raise even one
stipend for the book. I think I was touching a sore
spot," she says.
A feminist model
Lavie, 41, an impressive and energetic woman, is as
excited about the book as about a firstborn child saying
his first words. She belongs to the national religious
camp, but lives on the seam line between the religious
and secular worlds, communications and Judaism: She is a
lecturer in communications at Bar-Ilan University, the
moderator of a television program dealing with Jewish
culture (at present on the program "Vehareshut Netuna" -
"Permission Granted" - on Channel 10) and a leading
activist in the religious feminist organization Kolech.
She lives in Netanya and is married to Tzuri, a
businessman. The couple has four children.
Although she grew up in Netanya in a national religious
home and was a member of Bnei Akiva (the religious
Zionist youth movement), her emotional childhood was
experienced in the shadow of her grandmother in
Jerusalem's Bukharan neighborhood. She says her
grandmother, who died four years ago at the age of 96,
symbolizes for her a type of naive faith alongside
knowledge and a feminist model. Her grandmother
immigrated to Israel at the beginning of the 20th
century, says Lavie, became widowed at an early age,
raised 12 children by herself, and was an important
figure in the community and the synagogue. She went to
pray in the synagogue three times a day, and was very
strict in her observance of the commandments, "unlike
me." "I wonder how she knew so much without knowing how
to read, and who transmitted her knowledge of Judaism to
her," says Lavie.
For three years, she searched for the sources of the
anonymous prayers and pleadings and tikkunim (literally
"repairing"), for those same significant moments or
junctions in the lives of women that were not reflected
in the ordinary prayer book, such as barrenness, birth
and the loss of a child. Some of the prayers, it turned
out, were even written by men for women. That explains
the horrifying wording of the "Tikkun for a woman who
was the reason for her son's death," by Ben Ish Hai (a
leading 19th century Iraqi rabbi and scholar).
She collected the prayers in a long and Sisyphean
process. At the same time, she also collected
contemporary prayers. She received the information about
these prayers from various worlds, through the
grapevine. For example, Maagalei Nashim, who were
fascinated by the extremely modern poem, "A prayer for a
mother before Shaharit [the morning service]," written
by religious poet Hava Pinhas-Cohen, called the text to
Lavie's attention. And on the other hand, for two years
Lavie wooed Shulamit Eisenbach, a Haredi woman who is a
member of the Belz Hasidim in Jerusalem, until she won
her confidence and received from her a unique prayer
that deals with the relationship between a mother-in-law
and her daughter-in-law.
Prof. Shinan believes the book shows how intimate and
personal is a woman's relationship to prayer. "The world
of the siddur is a masculine world that keeps out women,
who in the first place are not obligated to say all the
prayers," he explains. "The siddur is silent regarding
the needs of the woman. She remained on the margins. Men
were offered various solutions. There were even prayers
composed for the soldier before going to battle, and for
the pilot. They differ from those written by women. The
man is not supposed to talk about feelings. I can't
recall a man praying about the relationship between
himself and his son-in-law. The religious person seeks
channels for catharsis, and suddenly it turned out that
there are events related to female experiences, birth,
abortion, for which there was no answer." Shinan
believes that "this is a positive ricochet of the waves
of feminism."
Lavie defines her impulse as spiritual and feminist. "I
tried to bring female voices that had no outlet, and to
place them on the agenda," she says. The emotion can be
heard in her voice as she expresses her anger: "How is
it possible that we don't know about women like Freha
bat Rabbi Avraham, a Moroccan poetess in the 18th
century, or that nobody knew about the existence of
Fanny Neuda, a fascinating woman from the Enlightenment
period, who published a book of prayers in German, and
provided an answer for the distress of women who didn't
understand Yiddish." Her book, she says, tells a Jewish
historical story from another angle.
'A certain injustice'
In light of her anger at the historical injustice done
to women, a question arises regarding her failure to
include women from non-Orthodox communities in the book.
Prof. Shinan even points out that Lavie included a poem
by Hava Pinhas-Cohen, which is barely a prayer, and not
songs by Naomi Shemer ("Lu Yehi") or Leah Goldberg,
which are clearly texts that express prayer. But he saw
nothing wrong with that: "Lavie did not have a policy of
non-inclusion," he says. "She clearly addressed an
Orthodox community. The name 'Women's Prayers' may be
too broad."
"The book is beautiful and important," says Reform Rabbi
Dalia Marx. But she has reservations about Lavie's
disregard of Reform or Conservative prayers. "She has
committed a certain injustice by talking about a female
mosaic of prayers, by saying 'I am giving a voice to
women from all eras,' and leaving out other women. Where
is her female solidarity? After all, most of the female
liturgy is being written today outside Orthodoxy."
Lavie treats these complaints seriously. She went to
meet Marx at Hebrew Union College (the academic center
of the Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism) in
Jerusalem, and read new prayers there, with which she
was not familiar. She learned about an important figure
in the field, Marcia Falk, who is involved in liturgy in
the United States, and whose groundbreaking prayer book,
"The Book of Blessings: New Jewish Prayers for Daily
Life, the Sabbath and the New Moon Festival," recreates
Hebrew and English liturgy in poetic forms from a
contemporary, gender-inclusive perspective. "We can
learn from that about the limits of my research," she
says. "I really didn't come across Reform prayers. I
come from a Mizrahi culture [of Jews originating in
North Africa and the Middle East], which is a culture
that includes everyone."
Among the Reform and the Conservatives there are many
who don't accept the apology, and believe this is false
naivete. Lavie says that in the English version of the
book, soon to be published in the United States, prayers
from other denominations of Judaism will be included.
And on the other hand, she speaks of the unease in the
Haredi sector with the contemporary prayers. "I'm
thinking of publishing an edition for the Haredi
community."
Apparently, the connection with the Haredi world is
important to her, in spite of everything. A few weeks
ago, Lavie, who usually doesn't wear a head covering,
sat on a stage in Bnei Brak at an event attended by
girls from the Bais Yaakov seminary, as well as teachers
and mothers from the Haredi sector and gave her lecture.
Occasionally there were melancholy and amazingly kitschy
musical selections, as is usual at these events. Every
once in a while Lavie tripped up and said something
unconventional, and eyebrows were raised. But in the end
they didn't let her leave.
After years during which she was considered a rebel in
her community, and attracted fire as a member of Kolech,
she is discovering that the embrace from the religious
establishment, from such figures as Liora Minka, the
chair of Emunah (the women's movement of the national
religious stream), and like Rabbanit Yehudit Shilat, a
symbol of female conservatism, is a comfortable place to
be. Maybe there is a kind of maturity in finding
something unifying rather than divisive. Lavie admits
she was worried about the timing of the publication of
the book, shortly after the difficult events of the
disengagement. After the fact, she says, she was
surprised; apparently many people found consolation in
it.
