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RSSWomen’s Seder redefines women’s role
Nov 10
By JF NJS
Women saved Moses from certain death. Without Moses, there would have been no Exodus (no Exodus, no Sinai; no Sinai, no Judaism). Yet in the traditional Haggadah, these women are ignored.-
To rectify that omission, modern Jewish women will honor these heroines, and other outstanding Jewish women, at the annual JCC on the Palisades Women’s Seder on March 20.
Dr. Vivian Kanig, founder of the Jewish Women’s Agenda and one of the “Four Cups” honorees at this year’s Seder, founded the service eight years ago with Leah Richter, chair of the JCC’s Jewish Women’s Connection, following the success of Ma’ayan’s Women’s Seders in Manhattan.
Since the 1970s, the Jewish feminist movement has been struggling with the Passover story and the Seder. Many women have created rituals — notably, the Cup of Miriam ceremony and text additions — to bring important women-to the fore.-
Women’s Seders, initially greeted with skepticism, have evolved over the years. They are traditionally celebrated two weeks before the actual holiday, so as not to interfere with preparations at home.
In a traditional Seder, the only line in the service that refers to women appears in the story of the Four Sons, where it says, “Aht psach lo.” “You (feminine) must teach him,” meaning that a mother must teach her children about both Judaism and the Passover story.
According to Women’s Seder organizers, a woman’s place at the Seder table today is what she makes it, and it can be enhanced by adopting rituals that incorporate the role of women in Jewish history into her own family’s traditions.
The intent of the Jewish Women’s Connection is to bring women — excluded from the text — back to life at the Women’s Seder.
Says Richter, “[Women] are not adjuncts to Jewish history: They are key players who have been ignored, and they deserve their place in the spotlight.”
Richter asks, “How many women have heard of Yocheved, Miriam, Shifra, Puah, and Batya? All of them had important parts to play, so we decided to provide a venue in northern New Jersey where women could take part in their own seder to learn about these women and special rituals. It gives them a chance to incorporate what they like into their own family traditions.”
Each participant in the Women’s Seder will receive the newly revised Women’s Haggadah, edited by Phyllis Gordon-Brecker, Judy Chessler, Harriet Cohen, June Kane, and Toby Lubin Shifre — along with Richter and Rabbi Adina Lewittes of Cong. Sha’ar in Tenafly, who will lead the Seder. Other women have been chosen to read specific sections of the service, and each of the traditional four cups of wine has been assigned to an honoree.
Says Lewittes, “When our women gather, we are there to learn about our own experiences and history and to seek ways to use that to bring healing and redemption to ourselves, our families, and the world around us. This is an opportunity for the women to go beyond themselves and the borders that normally confine them spiritually, and it inspires [them] to see themselves as agents of change and hope.”
This year’s honorees are Dr. Vivian Kanig, a founder of the JCC’s Women’s Seder; Barbara Berman Dobkin and Eve Landau of Ma’ayan, who will share one of the four cups; the late Betty Friedan, and Ruth Warshauer, a founder of-Jewish Women’s Agenda.
The first Women’s Seder at the JCC in Tenafly attracted 150 women and was co-sponsored by the local branch of the National Council of Jewish Women.- By the third year, there were 300 participants. Now the numbers have dropped, because, as Richter explains, “Emulation is the sincerest form of flattery.”-
The organizers are thrilled that women in different communities across the area have created other venues where they, too, can learn about women’s seminal roles in the Passover story. NCJW continues to co-sponsor the Seder in Tenafly and now also co-sponsors a seder at the JCC in Washington Township.
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The myth of the Seder orange
One thing you will not see on the Seder plate at the Women’s Seder at the JCC is an orange.- The by-now-apocryphal story goes something like this: A woman (ostensibly Susannah Herschel, the Jewish feminist and scholar) was speaking from the bima (pulpit) in a synagogue, when a man shouted, “A woman belongs on a bima like an orange belongs on a Seder plate.”
Wanting to add feminist rituals to the family tradition, years ago,-I called Dr. Herschel and asked about the story behind the orange. What she told me was a very different tale.
She had once been invited to a lesbian Seder at Oberlin College. There, the women placed a bread crust on the Seder plate to describe their exclusion from-the mainstream,-an act-Herschel-found unacceptable. But it got her thinking about the different, marginalized people and the “varying-groups”- who comprise the Jewish nation. In particular, she thought about widows and divorcees who are rarely invited to-lifecycle events and major Jewish holiday get-togethers, like the Seder service. She realized that the Jewish nation is like an orange, with many sections creating the whole. That’s when she began putting an orange on her Seder plate.
The explanation of “many creating the whole” is offered, and the orange is broken up, blessed (using “borey pri ha etz” — Creator of the fruit of the tree), and distributed just before the main meal, after the “koreych,” the sandwich of bitter herbs, is served.
