SHABBAT SERMON NOVEMBER 11, 2017 RABBI MITCHELL WOHLBERG. Thank God for Not Making Me a Woman; Reflections on Harvey Weinstein

Transcription

1 SHABBAT SERMON NOVEMBER 11, 2017 RABBI MITCHELL WOHLBERG Thank God for Not Making Me a Woman; Reflections on Harvey Weinstein There is a blessing Jewish men are supposed to recite every morning amongst other blessings, where we declare, Blessed Art Thou, Lord our God, King of the Universe, who has not made me a woman. It is safe to say that this is amongst the most controversial and criticized words in all of Jewish tradition. There are several explanations for the meaning of the blessing, but the bottom line is, if I were a woman, I would find the words deeply offensive. But as you all know, I am not a woman and I still find the words deeply offensive! However, I must, in all honesty, confess that in recent weeks based on the news, I have found myself thinking, Thank God for not making me a woman. It all started at the end of September with the death of Hugh Hefner, of Playboy magazine fame. This was the man who, amongst other things, made pornography mainstream. I was astounded by the tributes for him that were found in the media. He was proclaimed as being iconic, legendary, with Reverend Al Sharpton giving his seal of approval in thanking Hefner for all he had done for civil rights. Did anyone give a moment s thought to what this man had done to the civil rights of women? He had turned them into sexual servants, making buying and selling their bodies into a legitimate business; objectifying them not as being human, but bunnies. His Playboy mansion was one of the places where Bill Cosby and others, including Hefner, turned women into sexual playthings. There was a book written about Hefner portraying him as controlling, emotionally abusive, treating women as passive receptacles of male sexual pleasure. This makes you iconic? This makes you a legend? This is worthy of tribute? If that s the mores of our society then all I can say is: Thank God for not making me a woman! This feeling about Hefner reached a boiling point with the revelations regarding Harvey Weinstein, now accused by more than 50 women of sexual assault, abuse and rape. What a shanda! Not just regarding him, but this has been going on for nearly 30 years. Countless people knew about it, enabled it, disregarded it, honored him, paid tribute to him, befriended him knowing what he was doing to women. And even when the story of his escapades broke out, dear friends like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama took five days before they had something to say about it. Would they have waited so long if it was their daughters who had been abused? Well, you know it was many people s daughters they were all a mamma s ah kind. Do you blame me for thinking: Thank God for not making me a woman? The breaking point for me was when Weinstein said he was going into rehab and would come back a new man ready to do good things. And we, as collective society, have allowed him to think that way. Because that has happened with so many other well-known rapists, pedophiles and sexual predators: - Roman Polanski, the well-known producer and director, gets convicted for statutory rape of a young girl and then gets honored at the Golden Globes Awards.

2 - Woody Allen, a total schmutz, stands accused of being a pedophile by his 7 year-old daughter. But people still run to see his movies and Hollywood backs him. - William Jefferson Clinton, of Paula Jones and Juanita Broderick fame, who almost got impeached and kicked out of the White House for his affair with intern Monica Lewinsky. Now he gets up to a half-million dollars for his speeches to corporations. - Roger Ailes, the genius behind Fox News, is forced out of his job because of sexual abuse and then gets hired to be an advisor to the Trump campaign. - The same Fox News that had to get rid of Bill O Reilly because of allegations of sexual abuse, signed him to a $25 million contract knowing this, and now has him back selling his book on their most popular program with Sean Hannity. And then there is the man who sexualized his own daughter on public radio, walked in unannounced to the changing room of the Miss Teen USA Pageant, had eleven serious sexual assault accusations made against him, and is recorded as saying: You know, I m automatically attracted to beautiful girls I just start kissing them it s like a magnet. Just kiss, I don t even wait and when you re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything grab em by the, you can do anything. And then, 62,979,636 Americans went and elected him President of the United States! Blessed Art Thou our Lord, our God, King of the Universe, who has not made me a woman. Who wants to be a woman in such a sick society a society where you have bloggers like the one in the Times of Israel who writes, One can, of course, ask what young lady with half a brain would go up to a mogul s hotel room unchaperoned and expect to find anything other than a dirty old man bartering stardom for sexual favors. What exactly were these girls thinking? And who forced them to comply or even remain in Weinstein s room? Get it? It s all THEIR fault they were asking for it! Blessed Art Thou our Lord, our God, King of the Universe, who has not made me a woman. Perhaps the best reason for saying that blessing was written by a woman named Lauren O Connor, who worked for Harvey Weinstein s company and in 2015 wrote a memo to the executives there saying, I am a 28 year-old woman trying to make a living and a career. Harvey Weinstein is a 64 year-old world-famous man and this is his company. The balance of power is: Me: 0, Harvey Weinstein: 10. I know a lot of women who feel that way. I even know who the first one was! It was our matriarch Rivka Rebecca. In this morning s Torah portion, we find Rebecca for the first time seeing Isaac, her husband-to-be. You may recall that Isaac did not choose his wife. Abraham entrusted that task to his servant. Servant and bride-to-be are travelling back by camel, and as they approach Abraham's tents, Rebecca sees a figure in the distance: Now Isaac had come from Beer Lahai Roi, for he was living in the Negev. He went out to the field one evening to meditate, and as he looked up, he saw camels approaching. Rebekah also looked up and saw Isaac. She got down 2

3 from her camel and asked the servant, Who is that man in the field coming to meet us?' He is my master, the servant answered. So she took her veil and covered herself. On this the Netziv, Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Berlin, writes in his classic commentary: She covered herself out of awe and a sense of inadequacy as if she felt she was unworthy to be his wife, and from then on this trepidation was fixed in her mind. Her relationship with Isaac was not the same as that between Sarah and Abraham or Rachel and Jacob. When they had a problem they were not afraid to speak about it. Not so with Rebecca. Rebecca felt powerless next to her man she was afraid to speak up and the results were disastrous. Rebecca was the first made to feel this way. But the tradition continues. How else to explain that in our own day and age, in the 21 st century, newspapers and magazines in the ultra- Orthodox community will not print pictures of a woman. It was okay in the 19 th and 20 th century but not in the 21 st! Pictures of Angela Merkel, Tzippi Livni and Hillary Clinton are Photoshopped out, treated as if they don t exist. All with rabbinic approval! It s the removal of woman from the marketplace of ideas, a way of robbing young Jewish girls today from role models who might inspire them, and let them know that while motherhood is great, there are other things in life that women can do. And ultra-orthodox women can t even raise their voice in protest for fear of the male-dominated community proclaiming them feminists. A few years ago a new journal appeared entitled, Dialogue: for Torah Issues and Ideas. It is written from the ultra-orthodox perspective. The first article in the first issue of the new journal began with the words: Ill winds have been blowing of late in the Orthodox Jewish world. And what are those ill winds? Is it the problem of poverty in the ultra-orthodox community in Israel? Is it the problem of 60-70% of the men not working? Is it the problem of many ultra-orthodox children going, what is called off the derech, rejecting their parent s values and turning to drugs? No, that s not the ill wind that s not the problem. The problem is Orthodox feminism! The problem is Orthodox Jewish women have been caught wanting to serve as rabbis, write sifrei Torah, write commentaries on the Torah! The millions of Jews in this world who never enter a synagogue, who have no connection to their Jewish roots they are not the problem. It s these Jewish women who are the problem! Do you want to see the terrible results from this problem? You see these books: - Genesis, The Beginning of Desire - Parasha - In the Image of God - Daughters of the King - The Women of the Torah - Tradition in a Ruthless World 3

4 - Biblical Women in the Medrash - The Passions of the Matriarchs - Sara Laughed - Out of the Garden - Biblical Seductions All these and many more are in my home library and are written by women 50% of the Jewish world that had been kept in silence for centuries have raised their voices and are teaching us Torah. That is some problem! We, in the Modern Orthodox community, must recognize that this is also our problem. The Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America recently, to its credit, established a Department of Women s Initiatives to address women s roles. But at the same time, while in Israel, women as rabbis are becoming more widely accepted, here in America right now, the same Orthodox Union is debating whether to expel four synagogues from the organization because they have hired women to be rabbis. Beth Tfiloh is safe because we have hired a Rabbanit to be our community educator a woman serving as a rabbi is too much for the Orthodox Union to contemplate. And how did they come to this decision? They appointed a commission of seven to decide and all seven were men! And how many women rabbis did they interview in making this decision? Not one! So, the fate of women is kept where men have always tried to keep it in the hands of the men. And don t for one second think this is simply an Orthodox issue! Look at the Conservative and Reform movements where women rabbis are totally acceptable, and yet, see how most get positions as assistant rabbis and how few are considered suitable to be the main rabbi. I know of one female Conservative rabbi who IS the main rabbi in a major Conservative synagogue in New York and she has described to me how she is talked down to, and talked about by many of the men in the congregation who ask to speak to the man-in-charge. In regard to the Reform movement the movement that emphasizes social justice that justice stops at the door of their temples, where women rabbis get paid less than their male counter-parts! So, can you blame me for thanking God for not making me a woman? But you know what? I never say that blessing and I ll tell you something else. Here at Beth Tfiloh, every morning the leader of the service does not recite that blessing. We instituted that change some years ago. One of the reasons we stopped saying the blessing aloud was because, thank God, we have women coming to services and how could we possibly want to put them in the position of hearing a blessing of men thanking God for not making them a woman and the woman being obligated to answer, Amen. 4

5 I ll tell you something else I never recite that blessing because I thank God every day for making four of my six grandchildren women. They and their brothers are the greatest blessing of all! I pray that they will grow up in a society where all, male and female, can feel that way and treat each other as all being created in the image of God. I pray for a day when the blessing our tradition assigns to women to recite every morning will be the blessing that men AND women can join together in reciting: Boruch attah Hashem Elokeinu melech ha-olam sh asani kirtzono Blessed Art Thou, Lord our God, King of the Universe, who made me according to His will. Amen. Sermons/ Thank God for Not Making Me a Woman copyright 2017 by Rabbi Mitchell Wohlberg. All rights reserved. 5