JewFem Blog

“Men come to the partnership synagogue for a whole host of reasons,
the overwhelming majority of which have nothing to do with feminism.”
-The Men’s Section

The Men’s Section is about the men’s side of partnership minyanim in Israel–their reasons for joining and their difficulties after joining. The author was clearly distressed by her own findings, which even I admit were surprising. Partnership minyanim are generally seen as being the “next step” to equality and gender balance. Admittedly, her research is Israel-centric, but one thing was clear: men weren’t joining out of a sense of feminism. In fact, what we know as the ideal of feminism was actually one of the difficulties men had with the minyanim!

Many of the men interviewed reported that they didn’t feel a sense of community in their old shuls, or they felt an emotional disconnect, or that they felt constant pressure to be perfect (the “man-on-man gaze”), or that they were dissatisfied with the hierarchies. Note that none of this has anything to do with women. In fact, many of the problems reported by men were with the women–that they had their own incorrect “women’s trope,” or that they didn’t come on time. The fact that women were never taught the trope as meticulously as men were wasn’t discussed, and as Sztokman observed, women were expected to prepare meals for shabbos, and take care of the children, and still show up on time and stay throughout the service. She found that these men will let women into “their space” via the partnership minyanim only if they are willing to abide by the same rules by which the men were socialized. The irony is that these are the very rules and patterns that the men hoped to escape by joining these minyanim.

Sztokman shows they are replete with the same social hierarchies that one might find in any mainstream Orthodox shul. Feminist deconstruction of gender and manhood was not a concern, and it seemed as if the women were there as sort of an afterthought. In fact, when one of the members had a non-egalitarian member of his family come in for his son’s bar mitzvah, many of the members argued that they should rescind women’s leadership positions. As one woman said, “we all fix things up in our home before the mother-in-law visits. How is this any different?” It was obvious that, as strange as it seems, egalitarianism wasn’t a very pressing item.

Read more here: http://jewschool.com/2013/02/17/30144/men-being-nice-another-look-at-partnership-minyanim/

Still in shock by this news... that my book won the National Jewish Book Award, the Barbara Dobkin award in the category of Women's Studies. Full of gratitude to all those who helped me get here.... inspired by all the good will.... mostly just over the moon....Read more here http://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/awards/2012-national-jewish-book-award-winners

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I am still on a high from the responses I’ve received from participants in my book tour events. Jewish communities around America are wide-eyed in their search for meaningful frameworks to help them understand and unravel their Jewish and gender experiences. Many of the conversations revolved around community dynamics and tensions, while others went beyond Jewish life and started to unpack men’s and women’s experiences of grappling with societal expectations generally. In some cases, I found myself doing what the HBI people called “Sociology 101”, talking about how identity is formed through navigations vis a vis forces of surrounding cultural constructions. It seems to me that the Jewish community overall can use some Sociology 101 to help us separate our spiritual and/or halakhic needs from our fears of societal disapproval.

Here are some of my more memorable exchanges that have stuck with me:

• “I thought my mother was going to hell because of me”– A man at Netivot Shalom in Baltimore told the crowd that for many years he thought that he had caused his mother an eternity of damnation because at his bar mitzvah, he was so nervous reading Torah that he lost his place and ended up reciting from memory rather than read from the scroll. Apparently some teacher along the way had planted in his mind that this was the worst thing a Jewish boy could do, worse than, say, murder. He carried that feeling around for so long, and it was very painful. He also talked about how much watching and measuring goes on in the boys’ yeshivah, so that he became accustomed to rabbis touching his tefillin while he was praying to “fix” it, and the general gaze of rabbis whose job it was to fix every miniscule act of observance. Ultimately the experience was too difficult to bear, and he eventually left his ultra-Orthodox community and now belongs to a more open, liberal Orthodox community.

   

• “He told me, ‘You should be ashamed of yourself’.”– A man from the Five Towns in Long Island who attended the Drisha/Darkhei Noam/Yavneh event in Manhattan said that he posed a question on the list-serve in his community about whether there was any interest in starting a partnership minyan. One man responded, ‘What is a partnership minyan?’ and he explained to him about the principle of maximizing women’s participation within the framework of halakha. The response was quick and simple: “You should be ashamed of yourself”.

   

• “We all just want to be accepted for who we are.”At the Tehilla Minyan In Cambridge, Mass, a man took issue with my assertion that all we really want from society is to be labeled as “normal”. He said that it’s not exactly precise – that what we really want is not to change but rather to be accepted by society for who we are. I think we were kind of saying the same thing. He told me an inspiring story about a rebbe who encountered a man who sat under the dining room table and insisted he was a turkey. While most people were frustrated with turkey-man, the rebbe decided to climb under the table and be a turkey with him. Eventually the rebbe decided to sit at the table, to the perplexity of the turkey-man. “Just because we’re turkeys, it doesn’t mean we can’t sit at the table,” the rebbe replied. It’s about accepting people as they are with care and compassion. I really loved that story.

   

• “I am open to women because of my grandfather”. The men’s panel at Netivot Shalom in Teaneck, New Jersey, consisted of four men who all offered inspiring expressions of openness, flexibility and self-awareness vis a vis gender issues. One man talked about feeling “completely whole” with who he is, that all his friends know that feminism and gender equity are a vital piece of his identity, and he does not feel the need to hide. Another man said that it was very easy for him to adjust to hearing women’s voices in the sanctuary because of this grandfather: he said that when he was growing up in South Africa, his grandfather would take him to different synagogues all the time, from every ethnicity and “nusach” he could find. That appreciation for diversity made it completely “natural” for him to be at home where women are treated as equal participants.

   

• “I was always a tomboy, but when I grew up and moved to Houston, I had to turn myself into a ‘proper’ woman’.”The idea of having to conform to “boxes” is certainly not unique to men. Women also have boxes, and several people urged me to write a second book about “The Women’s Section” (seriously considering it….). One woman at Hadassah Women in Houston talked about growing up in South America as a “tomboy”, with strong sisters and a strong mother. But when she grew up and moved to Houston, it was expected that she would become a ‘proper’ woman, wearing dresses and make-up, etc, etc. I posed the question to the group, which is worse, for a boy to be a “sissy” or for a girl to be a “tomboy”. What do you think?

   

• It's also about sacrifice. Another man from Houston, wrote in the following note: "'Be Serious':  The Many Pressures to Perform -- Dead on.  Within Orthodoxy, we are all measured by a “scale” of “Commitment” or “Seriousness”.  Except “Commitment” appears to be only half of the equation.Sacrifice is the other, more unspoken, part.  Reform and Conservative Judaism don’t require as much commitment, but they also don’t require as much “sacrifice” of their adherents.  I don’t know of anyone in the observant community who hasn’t had some loss to maintain their observance.  This runs the gamut, people are being asked to refrain from behaviors and activities which results in lost income, misunderstandings, divorce, and abstinence of various kinds (e.g., sexual, food, but also smoking [on Shabbes]).  Part of the “commitment” is the “sacrifice” one must make to maintain the practices...."
  
  
• “Some of the men I know have been talking about this for twenty years”. At the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, one of the women in the crowd took issue with my assertion that conversations about masculinity are novel in the Orthodox community. “Some of the men I know have been talking about this for twenty years,” she said. I hope that’s true. Where there’s life there’s hope.

I want to take this opportunity to thank all my hosts and hosting organizations, especially the Hadassah Brandeis Institute and Dr. Laura Schor. And I would like to thank all the people who came and engaged and kept an open mind and a listening heart. All in all, I feel uplifted and inspired and honored to be able to be part of these important conversations.

If you want to talk to me more, please contact me anytime at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . As you can see, I love the conversation, so feel free

And of course, you can purchase my book The Men's Section on Amazon

Now that I’m on the last leg of my three-week book tour, the dozens of comments and questions that I’ve heard in different communities are starting to play over in my mind, some issues repeating themselves and others new and stimulating each time. Here are some of the issues that have dominated discussions, along with my responses:

Is there a difference between younger and older men?

A common assumption is that younger men are more “flexible” in their thinking than older men, and that the gender problem in Orthodox Judaism can be attributed to generational differences in attitudes. Actually, my research did not validate that finding. Anecdotally, some of the most open-minded men I interviewed were retirees and those with some of the most ossified ideas about women were in their thirties. Although I assumed this to be merely a counter-intuitive finding, it was actually explained to me by a discussant in Boston – my uncle, Hy Kempler, a 78-year old psychologist who, in his retirement, is researching identity shifts in later life. His research, which he published with the Harvard Adult Learning Institute, found that many people in later life experience significant shifts in identity and ideology, and find themselves opening up to ideas and lifestyles that they would not have in earlier years. Whether this is because burdens of childrearing and providing can be overwhelming, or whether we start out life with rigid expectations of perfections only to discover as we live life that such ideals are elusive and perhaps unhelpful – it is not entirely clear. But what is clear is that the idea of generational differences that view “young” people as more open and flexible than “older” people is an assumption that is not necessarily valid.

Maybe this is more about Israelis than Americans

Several people told me that some of the descriptions of the “Be an Orthodox Man Box” reflect more Israeli norms than American norms. This may be true to a certain extent. For instance, expectations of a prayer service that does not exceed 90 minutes is clearly an Israeli thing. Also, descriptions of army service as part of the construction of a masculine identity are also clearly Israel.

That said, I think that despite these slight differences, I think that there is far more overlap than difference overall. For instance, even though the word “hafifnik”, referring to a kind of “slacker” who comes late to services and does not care about precise performance, is a Hebrew slang word, the attitude of annoyance with the hafifnik-type has crossed through pretty much every synagogue I encountered. The communal narrative around those who come late, who don’t layn well, who don’t bother with mincha, or who just aren’t attentive enough to detail, took place in shuls in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Boston, Melbourne, Jerusalem, and Modi’in.

Moreover, I think that as people are traveling more and communicating more, cultural differences are starting to blur. I interviewed men who started a shul in Chicago but moved to Jerusalem, who hail from Jerusalem but were part of a minyan in Boston, who spent time in NY and LA but eventually joined Shira Hadasha in Jerusalem, who lived for a while in Jerusalem but then moved to Australia, etc, etc. The cultures are traveling and it’s getting harder to say that a cultural behavior belongs to a particular place.

However, I would also add that I hear men’s criticism that the box is not precisely their experience. Many men have told me that they found themselves in pieces of the box but not all of it. My response to that is that I’m happy to be corrected. I am merely opening the conversation, to help men ask themselves the question about how they were raised to believe that they need to “be a man” and how this “being a man” informs communal life. My goal here is to get men talking about this, to promote communal and organizational openness and wellness – and that means asking themselves what kind of box they may find themselves in.

When it comes to correcting layners, aren’t women also doing that? Why is that a masculinity thing?

I do not think that women are pouncing on layners the same way men are. But where women are, it means that women are taking on the box of masculinity, performing the ritual with the formulations and expectations that men impose on one another. It’s a set of behaviors like men’s competitiveness in sport, using sports as an instrument to prove one’s worth vis a vis other men. The pouncing on layners has that sport quality to it, the same kind of men proving to one another that they are the ‘best’ or that others are NOT the ‘best’. It’s a cultural style rooted in the man-on-man gaze, and when women do it, they are simply entering a man’s culture without necessarily questioning the value of that culture.

But what about halakha? Isn’t being “perfect” part of the halakhic demand?

Those who have studied this issue at length have assured me that not every mistake in layning must be corrected, and that the communal pouncing often reflects a misreading of halakha. Knee-jerk responses to incorrect layning may have less to do with halakha and more to do with an OCD-type of masculinity that is increasingly dominating Orthodox discussions of religiousness, especially around gender issues.

More than that, we have a fundamental halakhic precept not to shame another in public – “kol hamalbin pnei haveiro….” – that if a person causes another to be so shamed as to turn white, it is as if he has murdered that person. So the question of halakha has to be taken in context – correct pronunciation of a vowel, for example, versus a Torah offense equivalent to murder. The Orthodox community needs to have a broader and more humane conversation about halakha, one that placed the human experience at the center, one that seeks to build compassionate communities.

This research also has applications to Jewish life beyond Orthodoxy

Absolutely! The entire “boy crisis” in the Reform movement is about these very same issues. It’s about cultures of Jewish masculinity that make it difficult for men to be led by women, to be in places that are female-dominated. Jewish men are socialized into being in charge and being in control and being powerful leaders. This is not an Orthodox thing but a Jewish thing. Look at the federations system and the gender wage gaps and leadership gaps. Jewish men are socialized to be in charge. As soon as women take on roles that were once “male”, many men step back, afraid of being labeled out of the box. Like every other men’s club in history, when women step in, men feel at a loss with their own definitions of masculinity and retreate. In shul, this is also combined with relief – as in, okay, let the women do all this, let it be a woman’s thing. Privileges associated with leading services are sometimes less apparent than privileges associated with communal leadership. What is clear is that the discussion about the role of masculinities in Jewish life has barely started to take place, and is desperately needed. Men are acting out of struggles with masculinities, and this is affecting many aspects of Jewish life.

If you have more questions or comments, please write to me. I am really very happy and even excited to continue talking about all this.

There have been some moments on my book tour when I felt like I’m on a journey revisiting my own life. Part observer, part social commentator, and part Jewish traveler, I seem to be making stops that connect in significant ways to voyages past.

The first striking moment was the discovery that Prof. Jon Levisohn of Brandeis University would moderate at my official book launch. Jon and I were very close friends when we were 14, and the truth is that even though we have only seen each other a few times over the past 20 years, he has a very special place in my heart. During that awkward period of adolescence when it’s easy to think that nobody sees you or understands you, Jon was a patient and kind listener, and a thoughtful, intelligent conversationalist. Actually, it seems to me that he still is all those things. His friendship was healing then, and his presence at my first ever book launch was incredibly comforting. It made me feel whole. As if to say, I have been on this journey for thirty years, taking me to this place, and I stll am this same person. And by the way, the fact that we both ended up with doctorates in education makes me wonder what we were talking about during those late night conversations all those years ago.

My tour has also taken me back to the Barnard/Columbia Hillel, some 21 years after I graduated from Barnard. I spent a lot of time at the Hillel back then, when it was in what now seems like a small office in Earl Hall. I was particularly active in Columbia Students for Israel, with my friend Josh Leibowitz, z”l, and I remember many hours spent preparing all kinds of flyers and events. We used to sometimes take over the desk of then program coordinator Helise Leiberman who was nice enough to pretend not to mind. (Helise now works with Jewish students in Poland, and we recently reconnected, and are now Facebook friends of course.) We were really happy then, I think – although seeing what HIllel has become, a multi-story building of its own, the Kraft Center for Jewish Life, with an Indian-themed kosher cafeteria, alarge synagogue that does not alternate as a mosque, and lots of spacious rooms and offices for every possible occasion including four different types of prayer services, just blows my mind. The building today is used by a thousand students on campus. That’s just amazing. Still, I should say that the moment that really blew me away was when I mentioned during my session that partnership synagogues have “only” been around for ten years, realizing that for some of the students in the room, that was more than half their lives! Their reality forced me to adjust my thinking and reconsider my narrative of social change.

At one of these events, I had a very special audience member: Susan "Sooz" Goodman, my first cousin once removed, whom I had never met in person! She's a fabulous musician, and just came out with a new disk called "Live out loud". Her music is a form of activism, and she's particularly interested in promoting awarness about anti-LGBT bullying. I've been enjoying her music for many years, but we only recently started talking via email and Skype. But this week, she drove several hours to come see me, and after my talk, I went to dinner with her and her son Miles, (who is graduating next month from Tisch as an actor). It was incredible. She is just an awesome person and it was great to connect with her.

I also had an evening at Drisha, the women’s learning institution on the Upper West Side. I spent a lot of time at Drisha when I was a Barnard student, and I particularly loved the bible classes with Rabbi David Silber. I cannot read the book of Genesis or the book of Samuel without his voice of commentary running through my mind. “Everything comes back to Breishit”, he would say, and that remains true. After I graduated college, I also spent some months learning in the full-time program – and in fact last week I had lunch with one of my Drisha “chevrutas”, or study partners, Miriam Goldberg. I think I can admit today that I don’t really love learning Talmud the way the other women there did. The truth is, I think I annoyed Rabbi Silber at the time because my questions about the Talmud were always sociological. I was always looking at the stories behind the texts, the ways in which the texts reflected societal realities. I can’t help but wonder how many kids in school studying Talmud have similar experiences. Anyway, I think that those encounters may have prepared me a little bit for my path towards sociological research.

Finally, the weekend in Baltimore, staying with my friends Aaron Frank and Laura Shaw, brought me in many ways full circle. Laura was a year ahead of me at Barnard, but light years ahead of me in feminist thought and activism. I was not a feminist when I was at Barnard, despite my feminist surroundings. It took me years of experiencing life, motherhood, adulthood, for the feminist pin to drop. But I have memories of going to a “Women of the Wall” meeting at Barnard that Laura ran with passion and expertise, and I also remembered a sign she had on her wall that read, “Women are a nation.” These things stayed in my consciousness until the time was right for them to emerge. Meanwhile, Aaron had a pivotal role in the writing of this book. He was the first person to interview Orthodox men, he shared his research with me, and he taught me a lot of things about what men are experiencing. As a couple, Aaron and Laura are true leaders. Their community is lucky to have them as members, and I am lucky to have them as friends.

Anyway, I have four more events over the next week, and although I must admit that I am physically exhausted, I am also spiritually and emotionally invigorated. This has been an incredible journey. And it’s not over yet!

The strangest part of Monday night’s panel discussion of my new book, “The Men’s Section,” about partnership synagogues, wasn’t that the four-person panel was made up of all men.

All-male panels are so common — to wit, I passed by a poster at Harvard this week announcing an economic conference with no female speakers at all — that Joanna Samuels of Advancing Women Professionals has been asking Jewish men to take a pledge not to sit on all-male panels. (Several of the men on my book panel said that they had taken the pledge and actually felt odd sitting on this all-male dais at the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute.)

The really unusual part for me was that, although all the speakers are accomplished men with very impressive resumes and professional and communal achievements, their speeches had nothing to do with their expertise. Rather, they each talked about their feelings about partnership synagogues and the discussion centered on their own journeys in Jewish communal and religious life. In fact, Marc Baker, of Minyan Kol Rinah in Brookline, Mass. opened by saying, “I’m not used to talking about myself in this kind of forum.”

The men were used to talking about ideas; they were not used to talking about themselves.

This is what I want to happen from the publication of my book. I want men to start exploring their journeys and experiences, and to start examining Jewish life — not from the perspective of halachic and cold, cerebral, detached analysis of rules and facts. I want to give men the language and framework to ask themselves what they feel, what they see, what they really want.

It’s a story about tension, identity and dialogue. About living on the borders of a culture, yet still navigating within them. About negotiating, pushing back, and yes, acceptance. Its tale is particular, yet so universal that scholars and laymen all over the world are picking up Elana Sztokman’s new work, “The Men’s Section: Orthodox Jewish Men in an Egalitarian World.”

Read more

The following is a review of The Men's Section that appeared in the Florida Jewish Journal on Feb 14, 2012

I have not yet met either of these two writers but I am a big fan of them both and I read them whenever I can find them, for they each represent a fresh and a much to be admired trend within Orthodoxy.

Elana Sztokman is both a scholar of gender studies and an activist in feminist causes within Orthodoxy. This book is meant as scholarship but it raises a troubling question that I, for one, had never thought of before. The question is: How do Orthodox men deal with feminism?

There are now nearly two dozen "partnership minyanim" in Israel, America and elsewhere. In these minyanim women teach and read Torah even though they still sit behind a mechitsa. In some of them, they require both ten men and ten women for a quorum. It is obvious why women would want to join such a minyan. It is a way for them to achieve some measure of equality within the framework of halachah. The question that she studies in this book is: Why do men join such a minyan?

To her and to my surprise, she found that the men who joined these minyanim were not necessarily feminists. They joined for a host of different reasons, some of which had nothing at all to do with feminism. And she learned that at the core of these minyanim, as at the core of all social interactions and institutions, the issue of power is still central.

The men who attend these partnership minyanim may be nice, they may be accommodating, they may be generous, but at the end of the day, the power to permit and the power to allow is still in their hands. And at the core of their consciousness is their image of who is a real Jew. In their culture a real Jew is still the one who studies full time in the yeshiva, while the outside community — be it his wife, or his parents or the society — takes care of him. Until that ideal is reexamined, partnership minyan will not achieve much.

The men in the partnership communities have to deal with the reality of a new kind of woman now, a woman who is accomplished and powerful in the secular world, a woman who wants to bring a feminist perspective to the understanding of the Torah and the commandments and a woman who does not aspire to imitate what men do. She concludes, reluctantly, that until the men in these minyanim come to terms with this new reality, partnership minyanim will not really be equal partnerships.

Despite her pessimism, I can only hope that when we have more women like Dr. Sztokman, who are learned, articulate and committed to both equality and halachah, that things will eventually change.

Read More: http://www.sun-sentinel.com/florida-jewish-journal/lchaim/fl-jjps-riemer-0215-20120214,0,4590763.story

The most surprising part of the story about Rav Aharon Bina’s alleged emotional abuse of his students at Netiv Aryeh comes from the reactions: It is astounding to see how many people apparently knew this has been going on but continue to sing his praises. This entire episode raises some difficult questions about what is really going on in the yeshiva world.

The Jewish Week article, written by Jewish media veteran Gary Rosenblatt in collaboration with courageous young Yeshiva University journalist Yedidya Gorsetman, catalogues a series of abusive behaviors that Bina allegedly carried out for decades against his students at Netiv Aryeh and before that at Yeshivat Hakotel. (Bina left Hakotel when he was fired by his successor — none other than Rabbi Motti Elon, who was recently indicted for indecent acts against his male students).

Bina reportedly yelled, mocked and systematically disparaged students — some students more than others — as part of his approach of psychological manipulation to gain obedience. Parents, students, and former students describe traumas incurred, and even violence at his hands, which in some cases turned the boys away from Judaism altogether.

Reading the comments on the story and blog posts about it this week, I have found that Bina’s defenders fall into one of two categories: those who deny that this happened, and those who knew but claim that it is part of Bina’s special “methodology” that is based on his love.