Re: A nice surprise?

[Robert Cohen <rlcm17...>]

>For me it was a spiritual and emotional experience - seeing "frum" women
>taking an active and awe inspiring roll in the service, as equal to men and
>equal before G-d.  (I was watching the men during the portions where women
>were leading, and they  seemed very comfortable. The husbands whose wives
>were leading looked very proud.   It was all very natural...


I have much respect and regard for Moshe Adler and am very interested to 
hear that he's overseeing a traditional but egalitarian service.  I would 
automatically incline to assume that he's coming from a thoughtful and 
serious place in doing so.

Having said that:  Between the lines--or, actually, *in* the lines--of this 
posting are flashing yellow lights indicating some of the potential 
problems, perhaps, of such services.  *Why,* for example, was our 
correspondent "watching the men during the portions where women were 
leading"--or at any time, for that matter?  One of the reasons why many 
women that I've talked to about this, or whose thoughts I've read about from 
other's writing and interviewing, *like* a separate space from men is so 
they *won't* be watched during davening--and I can't imagine that the men 
being watched here benefited from being watched--"spiritually and 
emotionally," as our correspondent puts it.  Nor do I imagine that the women 
at the service would have experienced a deeper kavannah in their davening if 
*they* were being watched.

It's nice that the husbands of women leading the service "looked very 
proud"--though, again, nobody should have been noticing--but that suggests, 
again, *less* focus and intensity in prayer (or contemplation, study, etc.), 
which is what a synagogue service should be about.  This service comes off, 
at least in this account, as more of a show-and-tell entertainment 
production--that's where one is appropriately "proud" of one's 
spouse's/children's/friend's home run, aria, etc.  Parents, etc., can't help 
but kvell over their children's bar/bat mitzvah--uncles too.  But that 
should be the exception--and, indeed, in the synagogues, in my experience, 
where bar mitzvah is taken maximally seriously as a religious coming of age 
and not a pageant-with-party, even parents' kvelling is expressed in a very 
different way from at Little League.


>Later I spent a good half hour talking with the Rabbi,  Moshe
>Adler.  We should all be blessed with such Rabbis - open minded, spiritual,
>a man who is in touch with his own conscience - and has the guts to act on
>his beliefs.  Even in the face of a hostile "peer environment".


I have, as I said, nothing but regard for Moshe Adler.  But Shirona is, 
sadly, again so wrapped up in self-righteousness that she imagines that only 
those who agree with her are "in touch with [their] own conscience" or 
"[have] the guts to act on [their] beliefs."  It's a supremely arrogant and 
ugly notion--but Shirona seems incapable of recognizing that a rabbi who 
*doesn't* choose to go in this--i.e., her preferred--direction may be just 
as in touch with his conscience--and perhaps showing even more guts, since 
he has to defy, among other things, the limitless self-righteousness of some 
(but not all) Jewish (and non-Jewish, for that matter) feminists.


I admire Rabbi Adler, among other reasons, because, in my limited 
experience, he *doesn't* convey this kind of arrogant 
self-righteousness--but, rather, an earnest humility (one of the 
requirements of which is the knowledge and belief that one may be wrong) in 
seeking to hear what G*d wants of him at any given moment and to serve G*d 
as best he can.

It's an example worth emulating.

--Robert Cohen


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