Re: She said/He said???

[glenn tamir <klezska...>]

Boy are you a yekki (sp?) or what!


--- Robert Cohen <rlcm17 (at) hotmail(dot)com> wrote:
> Dear friends:
> 
> The bizarre response to my several paragraphs of not
> too long ago responding 
> to Shirona's description of an egalitarian
> traditional service she attended 
> seems to me (no doubt mistakenly ...) to require a
> response--a forceful 
> (and, I'm afraid, long--and certainly, delayed;
> couldn't be helped) 
> response.
> 
> First, I'm sorry to have disappointed some undoubted
> well-wishers on this 
> list who felt that my remarks--which actually seemed
> to me pretty restrained 
> (!), and whose gist I continue to believe--were
> overly harsh or personal. 
> (I'm trying to separate that out from some folks'
> not agreeing with 
> me--which is another matter altogether.) I'm going
> to simply leap to the 
> provisional conclusion that if some (though, I
> should add, not all) good 
> folk thought so, perhaps it _was_ so. I certainly
> don't intend to introduce 
> incivility to this list--and in terms of this
> broader discussion, I don't 
> think it was I who introduced it. I perhaps should
> have kept Shirona's name 
> out of my response, for one thing--I mentioned her
> name once, which may have 
> been once too often. (Although Winston rebukes me
> for *not* mentioning her 
> name!--more often, I guess--and although it will be
> impossible to coherently 
> respond here *without* mentioning it...) I was
> responding to what seemed to 
> me--and still seems--an endless series of
> self-righteous, intolerant 
> postings mostly from one source; it's hard to
> (forcefully) criticize the 
> attitude without criticizing the poster--though it's
> no doubt an effort 
> worth making.
> 
> And I clearly erred in mistaking Shirona's
> description of a service for the 
> service itself. I happily stand corrected and (also
> happily) accept sister 
> Lorele's description of the service as the correct
> one--indeed, I should 
> have inferred so from Moshe Adler's position as
> spiritual leader. He would 
> not preside over a carnival.
> 
> Having said that, I must demur from one small piece
> of sister Lorele's 
> valiant, and laudable, defense of her shul: She
> really cannot say that "no 
> one was negatively affected by Shirona's watching
> them." How can she say? 
> How can they, perhaps, even say? I continue to
> believe, strongly--sister 
> Lorele perhaps and sister Reyzl definitely to the
> contrary 
> notwithstanding--that observing others
> davening--with pride, with curiosity, 
> or otherwise--has absolutely no place in any place
> of (serious) worship. And 
> that, if you're not bothered by people watching you,
> then you either weren't 
> aware they were watching (which is certainly
> possible--and might bespeak a 
> *high* degree of focus in prayer) or, less happily,
> you weren't, at that 
> moment, very focused in prayer at all. (Or you may
> have been very focused 
> til the moment you realized you were being watched,
> which is part of the 
> point.)
> 
> It is, no doubt, possible for people to be inspired
> by watching others pray; 
> I know of this. And my own intensely disapproving
> (or overheated?) reaction 
> may in part stem from my exceedingly disliking,
> myself, feeling watched 
> during prayer (*not* necessarily by women!)--It's
> incompatible, for me, with 
> the spiritual communion that is the goal of prayer:
> the unself-conscious 
> sense of "dissolving of the self ... of union ... of
> infinite spacelessness" 
> that a neurologist (!) recently identified as
> corresponding with states of 
> prayer and meditation. (He's the author of the
> forthcoming book WHY GOD 
> WON'T GO AWAY [!].) Indeed, sister Reyzl's comments
> only make things worse. 
> To watch men at prayer to see if they're
> uncomfortable, angry, guilty 
> (!--How can you tell?), or resentful--none of this
> is appropriate behavior 
> in a synagogue or minyan.
> 
> As I mentioned in my previous posting, many women
> whom I've talked with, or 
> heard from, like being separated in shul so they
> *won't* be watched. Why 
> aren't men entitled to the same respect?
> 
> Now having said *that,* attention must--or I think
> should--be paid to the 
> preposterous, ignorant, condescending, and/or
> hostile responses that my few 
> paragraphs occasioned (or, apparently, provoked):
> 
> 1) A small footnote (not covered by the description
> above): Moshe Adler 
> *was* married to (the feminist theologian, as she
> was described) Rachel, but 
> they have been divorced for many, many years. I'm
> not going to enlarge on 
> that; but I *will* observe, though only Rav Moshe
> knows, that I suspect that 
> his (Moshe's) openness to egalitarianism in davening
> is, at best, 
> problematically and complexly related to Rachel's
> own understanding of the 
> intersection of Judaism and feminism.
> 
> 2) While I'm on this subject: Winston W., in a
> posting that begins by 
> observing that I was not "reading Shirona's posting
> properly," charges, 
> bizarrely, that I "attack" Rabbi Adler "for his
> leadership." I do? Where? I 
> may or may not have read Shirona's posting properly,
> but Winston doesn't 
> seem to have read mine at all. I had, and have,
> nothing but regard for Rabbi 
> Adler, and I expressed nothing but regard in my
> posting--which Winston 
> surely *didn't* read "properly."
> 
> 3) Winston also, perhaps meaning it lightheartedly,
> indicates that he put 
> together a program of women's music for my ...
> enlightenment? edification? 
> (That's not, of course, why he did it, but he seems
> to suggest that it might 
> serve that purpose.) Well, I'm always ready to hear
> new music--including new 
> women's music; including Shirona's, which has been
> praised highly here--but 
> this is a bit much, even lightheartedly.
> 
> Listen up, Winston et al.: I've been showcasing and
> promoting Jewish women's 
> music well before the Internet, on which you
> transmit your programs, 
> Winston, existed--and continue to do so right up to
> the present and, G*d 
> willing, (already scheduled) future. In some 100
> radio programs, on 
> prime-time (and drive-time, and late-night) New York
> City radio; on National 
> Public Radio; in hundreds of lectures and classes,
> where I've introduced 
> Jewish women's music to audiences that would
> probably never have heard it 
> otherwise; in magazine articles; in my forthcoming
> CD. (Indeed, I give 
> entire lecture/presentations on Women in
> American-Jewish music.) Given the 
> opportunities I've had (and created)--and, more to
> the point, availed myself 
> of--it's questionable that anyone on this list has
> done more--or, maybe, 
> even as much--to promote Jewish women's music to
> more people than I have, 
> over as long as I have.
> 
> On my New York radio shows, btw, I
> broadcast-premiered any number of women 
> singers and albums; proudly showcased Debbie
> Friedman more than 20 years 
> before Carnegie Hall, and many years before so much
> of the Jewish world 
> embraced her; and invited as guests the first
> invested woman cantor in this 
> country, the first woman member of the Rabbinical
> Assembly, and the first 
> woman rabbinical student at JTS--as well as many of
> our most prominent 
> Jewish feminists (Rachel Adler, btw, included). I
> didn't agree with 
> everything all of them said, but I believed in
> giving exposure to a very 
> wide range of voices in Jewish life, including views
> both 
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=====
KLEZSKA - part of the next wave in Jewish music   www.mmp3.com/klezska

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