I Had the Hard Part

Thursday evening, I participated in a three-part panel presentation on “The Effects of the Women’s Movement on Religion.” The public forum was organized by a local Rabbi and sponsored by The Jewish-Christian Council of Greater Charleston. Isn’t that precious? They still think that ecumenism is possible…

 

The audience was comprised of older members of the community. And I don’t mean older than my students. I mean older than me.

 

It was my job to introduce the feminist critique of patriarchal religions (which is redundant of course, because they all are). I had ten minutes. I know. You’re laughing. I’m laughing too. I started by doing the breakdown of “feminist critical analysis.” Although I had to skip the “feminist” part and just hope that they understood that this was about women. The “critical” part begins with the observation that all of recorded history has been recorded by men, for men, about men. I did the standard Schussler-Fiorenza working definition of patriarchy, i.e. “a system of organization in which dominant men exercise the most power (politically, culturally, religiously, domestically… oh shoot, in every damn way there is) and less dominant men hold lesser power in descending order.” Fiorenza is quick to point out in her classes that one of the characteristic marks of patriarchy is that women are not even included in the structure of power. Then, I did the “analysis” part; that 5,000 years of human reality described, proscribed and prescribed by men must mean something. It does. It means that the body of inherited knowledge; of human understandings of ways of being in the world; of philosophy, history, psychology, mythology, theology… oh shoot, of every damn ‘ology there is, has been constructed by men, through the experience of men. But not just men; men who have lived within a patriarchal system of organization, which privileges them.

 

The result of the analysis is the conclusion that this body of knowledge is fraught with androcentrism, the tendency to think, write and act as if men constitute the standard of what it means to be human; that men serve as the model of ideal humanity and all those who are not men are marginal and peripheral as human beings. And then I gave examples of androcentrism as it rears its ugly head in language; in authorship, interpretation and translation of texts. One of the consequences of androcentrism, particularly in worldviews that assume a dualistic approach to all things, is that those things associated with maleness/femaleness will correlate to other dualisms; spiritual/material, heaven/earth, sun/moon, dry/damp, and ultimately, good/evil, superior/inferior.

 

Then, I read an excerpt from Judith Plaskow’s Standing Again at Sinai in which she points out that at the moment in which the chosen people make a covenant with God at the foot of Mount Sinai, Moses addresses the people by saying, “Be ready for the third day; do not go near a woman.” (Exodus 19:15). At this defining moment in Biblical history, when the God of the Bible makes a covenant-not with an individual, as with Abraham-but with the entire people, Moses addresses the people only as men. This is, of course, counter to the experience of Jewish women. They know that they were there. But, in one swift androcentric move on the part of the chronicler, they are rendered invisible.

 

And then, my ten minutes were up. I hadn’t even scratched the surface. My nail had not even made contact with the skin of the thing.

 

The next presenter spoke about the role of women in Biblical history, naming the names we know and relating the changing role of women in the participation of leadership and ritual in Reform Judaism. The next woman spoke of the increasing power of women’s roles in certain denominations of Christianity; of changes in the language of ritual (particularly the marriage ceremony) and of the power of women’s ordination.

 

Then came the Q and A.

Guess who bore the brunt?

 

The first question was posed (to me) from a man who asked, “I’ve been married 50 years. My marriage has been equal. Does that mean I am not a man?”

 

Huh?

 

“No sir, it simply means that your marriage has not been characterized by patriarchy, a system of organization.”

 

It really was a great opportunity though to point out the complexities of the feminist analysis of structures of domination, which do not operate solely on the basis of sex, but of race, ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, age, etc., what Fiorenza calls “kyriarchy,” from the Greek word for master. To point out that the term “patriarchy” implies that all men dominate over all women would be erroneous and would constitute a naïve understanding of the issues. Clearly in history there have been women who have wielded the power of life and death over certain men (white women in the South during a certain part of its history as having power over black men, for example). The key word here is system, which excludes women from exerting powers of decision, of agency and the exercise of choice for the direction of their own lives; of participation in encoding the laws that will govern them, the texts that will describe them and the voices that will name who they are.

 

The next question (again, addressed to me) was more of a statement than a question--the inevitable person in the crowd (or classroom) who will point out the exception and expect it to send the rule crashing.

 

“What about the Greek goddesses?”

 

Huh?

 

That a culture might have goddesses in the sky does not mean that female power gets translated to the ground.

 

“What about Mary, in Catholicism… blah, blah, blah?”

 

I didn’t even tackle this one. I merely said, “Yes. Thankyou.”

 

The next few questions were (gratefully) not posed to me in particular so I remained quiet while the other panelists fielded them. The last question of the evening asked about women’s ordination and what did we think women’s rabbinic and priestly roles contributed to the future? The other panelists took their turns and then I said (something like); “I was raised in the Roman Catholic tradition. When I was a little girl women were not allowed to even go near the altar unless she was a nun changing the altar linens (which of course, she had also washed and ironed). The first time I saw a woman at the altar I was in divinity school and in my thirties. It was a powerful moment. Can you imagine what it was like for me, to see a woman occupying the sacred space that had always been denied me? Can you imagine what it was like growing up learning and understanding that by the very fact of my being, I violated sacred space? Can you envision the impact of believing that my very body constituted a thing so repugnant and profane that I was barred from the Divine’s imminent presence? The stunning fact of women at the altar, reading the Torah, consecrating bread and wine, accomplishes many things. Among them, it begins to reverse centuries of betrayal and pain, and it assures that those little girls sitting or standing in the halls of sacred space will not experience the blow of exclusion and rejection.”

 

Then the evening officially came to a close and the crowd began to disperse.

The Rabbi approached me with tears in his eyes. He clasped my hand and then told me something that made me laugh out loud. The Rabbi said, “I want to take your class!”