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Collected Critiques (Hebrew)
Gratitude Notification (Hebrew)
Read Rabbi Yisrael Meir
Haskama
Letter for
"Tfilat Nashim"
Overview
About
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Book's
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Questions and Comments
Aliza
Lavie's Biography
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On wings of prayer
By Tamar Rotem, Haaretz
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. |
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