Reclaiming Simchat Torah

 

Are there women who find their fulfillment on Simchat Torah standing behind a mechitza and watching men dance, sing and parade around while carrying Torah scrolls? Undoubtedly.

 

I'm not among them.

 

I’ve spent the past 25 years trying various strategies to deal with it. One of the first things I attempted was programming against it. I invited women to my home during the prolonged hakafot and aliyot on the morning of Simchat Torah and asked each of them to bring a dvar Torah. I had a fabulous time.

 

The following Shabbat, the rabbi strongly urged women to stay for hakafot, claiming that the men were drawing down holiness with their dancing and the women had to be there as vessels to receive.

Another year, I called every rabbi in town to get permission to organize women’s hakafot in a separate room in a local shul. No one would give me permission. No one would lend us a Sefer Torah. No one gave me a better reason than, “It isn’t done.”

 

I tried attending more liberal synagogues where women did have access to a Sefer Torah, but that didn’t work for me, for reasons unrelated to the gender junk.

 

For years, I simply pretended Simchat Torah wasn’t happening, treating it like an ordinary Shabbat.

 

When we moved to Israel, I tried anew. I went to shul on Simchat Torah and was again slapped in the face by male privilege. By the attitude that the Torah scrolls belong to the men and they get to decide whether or not to give permission to women in the congregation to dance with one. And under what conditions.

 

In a particularly egregious ruling this year, one rabbi in Israel decided that women in his community could have a Sefer Torah. However, the conditions he attached to his permission were both profoundly offensive and without any basis in Jewish law. He declared that only women who met the following standards could hold the Sefer Torah during the hakafot for women, which were held in a side room.
1. They must be married.
2. They must cover all of their hair.
3. They must cover their knees and elbows.
4. They must not have their periods.

 

As if these fabricated conditions aren't offensive enough, this rabbi declared that whoever met these standards could hold the Torah, but must not dance or jump around with it. They were given permission to sit or stand in place while holding the Torah scroll while other women dance around them.

 

This is the insanity of Simchat Torah for many Orthodox women.

The Bright Side

This year, something shifted. The number of women who are tired of the status quo, who are not willing to ask for permission, who are not willing to beg for access to a Sefer Torah, who are fed up with the expectation that women are to be passive observers of men’s simcha on Simchat Torah, who are taking Simchat Torah into our own hands, is growing.

 

In my community, at the suggestion of a friend, I organized an event I called a Parsha Slam. Women in the community signed up to present a one-minute summary of each of the 54 parshiot that make up the Five Books of Moses. This was our way of celebrating the Torah.

We met in a centrally located home. The crowd was standing room only. Women were treated to the scholarship and creativity of dozens of other women who prepared messages drawn from each of the weekly parshiot. We had presentations by scholars and teachers and by women who only started learning Torah recently. We had teens and grandmothers presenting. We had women whose mother tongue was Persian, Romanian and Hebrew presenting in English. Some spoke in sonnets, some in rhymed verse. Some spoke in memory of a loved one and others offered a blessing for the entirety of the Jewish people. Some women spoke about why the parsha she picked touched her heart. Some brought teachings from their favorite Torah teachers. Others shared life lessons derived fromt the text.

 

There was spontaneous applause. There were gasps of appreciation.

 

And there was a unanimous yearning to repeat this event next year.

 

Jewish women are reclaiming Simchat Torah for ourselves.

 

Not a moment too soon.

 

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