Page 6-The Canadian Jewish News, Thursday, November 18,1993
Canada
M-T
CJN Exclusive
Susan Weidman Schneider, editor-in-chief and founding editor of the New York-based independent Jewish feminist magazine Lilith, was in Toronto recently as keynote speaker at a program co-sponsored by the United Jewish Appeal Business arid Professional Women's Network, UJA Women's Campaign and Jewish Women's Federation.
Weidman Schneider, a native of Winnipeg who lectures extensively, is the author of three books, />ic/j«///i^ Intermarriage: The Challenge of Living with Differences Between Christians and Jews and the cpmprehensive Jewish and Feiiiale: Choices and Changes in Our Lives Today. While in Toronto, she spoke to CJN reporter Frances Kraft.
CJN: What do you see as the biggest stride Jewish women have made since your book Jewish and Female was published almost a decade ago?
Weidman Schneider: To say there's been one biggest stride is to ignore the real diversity that exists in the "Jewish Women's movement.''
Some women might say the ordination of women as rabbis has been the most important stride, not only because it gives sanction toi women's leadership roles, but also because it empowers women to see themselves as people for whom public religious roles are. acceptable and appropriate.
On the other hand, there are women who would say the biggest strides are the infusion of female sensibility into Jewish religious practice [by] using new God language, rewriting prayers and religious liturgy.
I think for me the most important gains are the ones that we're still trying to make in terms of women's leadership in the Jewish community. When a page one. story is quoting once again the same male, Jewish leaders, the same often predictable opinions, I realize there's still an enormous amount of Work to be done bringing' forward those women who sometimes are recognized for their expertise,outside the Jewish community, biit aren't yet accorded either the recognition or the genuine power that they should have.
CJN: What issue would you put at the top of the agenda for the Jewish community?
Weidman Schneider: I think there's been a great deal of lip service given to the idea of continuity. Certainly the statistics of the last two or three years only bear out that there's a lot of attrition through disaffiliation; to say nothing of intermarriage. \
I think Jewish women are more at risk, particularly university age and post-graduate. They have sometimes more fragile Jewish identities than their male counterparts. For the most part they have not received quite as good a Jewish education. They feel more disparaged by the negative stereotypes, JAP stereotypes. They feel less valued by the Jewish community.
So for lots of reaisons I think that what is at the top of agenda for Jewish women should also be at the top of the Jewish community's agenda. It's a population that we can identify clearly. It's a population where we know what wrongs need to be riedressed and a population that for the most part is interested in stkying connected or returning to some connection.
It's interesting to me that 40 per cent of LiUth's subscribers don't do anything else Jewish when they first read the magazine. One woman who hadn't been in the synagogue since age 10 wrote to^us that she saw an article about women rabbis in'ZiM. She didn't even know there were women rabbis. She found a synagogue near her where there was a woman rabbi, and her son was being bar mitzvah there fUlithJ represented for her a whole conduit into the kind of Jewish life that she had never experienced as a kid and that she found very appealing.
CJN: How does it make you feel when you hear storiies like that?
Weidman Schneider: It makes me feel very pleased and gratified, but more than that it makes me want to shake up the rest of the Jewish community, because it's so simple to touch the lives of women who would otherwise not be part of the community.
A book list was recently circulated across North America to Jewish college students where half a dozen prominent Jews were asked to sub-_ mit lists of Jewish books they thought college students should have in their library. Of the leaders, only one was female, and of the [approximately' 60] books suggested, there were only two by, women.
There's a great deal of ferment and excitement around women's writing, and for a Jewish booklist not to take this into account is sending a powerful and rather negative message to young Jewish women.
to raise the kids Jewish and to go through with the bar mitzvah and the Hebrew school training?"
She looked atme as if I was crazy and she said, "What do you mean? The whole thing was my idea. I knew it mattered to my husband before
CJN: Tell me about your work on intermarriage.
Weidman Schneider: With [the book I wrote on intermarriage], 1 spent a lot of time in groups for intermarried couples and for couples who are dating people of different faiths.
It became clear that I was really working on a book about Jewish identity, not siniply a book about intermarriage. For Jews it's very hard to say explicitly why being Jewish matters. There are very real differences between Jews and Christians in that for a Christian, a statement about religious affiliation is a statement about belief, For Jews it's a statement of identity, except perhaps for Orthodox Jews, who might be able to make a statement more clearly about belief and practice. -
It's hard in a Jewish-Jewish marriage also sometimes. It's hard to explain to your Jewish kids in a Jewish-Jewish marriage why it matters and what you care about and why you go to synagogue or why you dori't go to synagogue. But . in a Jewish-Christian marriage, you have to make these things explicit.
I think it's much harder for Jewish women [dian for Jewish men] in interfaith marriages, because their husbands are a little more confrontational, not necessarily in a negative way, but they want explicit answers. "How is our home going to be Jewish? What observances are we going to
;. do?";■:
There's a much higher divorce rate among intermarried couples where the woman is Jewish
• than when the man is Jewish, although you would think that there would be fewer conflicts because, according to Conservative and Orthodox interpretations of Jewish law, the children of a Jewish mother are iautomatically Je\yish. You would think there would be some additional clarity
: there..;' ':
I was struck by how in many intermarriages,
—when it was a Jewish man and a non-Jewish wom-i an, the noiFJewish woman wrw/rec/ whatever it was her husband felt about being Jewish.
One of the couples had just [celebrated] the bar mitzvah of one of their sons. I knew that Susie hadn't converted to Judaism and was actudly still kind or^nvolved through her parents in their Pro-' testant church. I said to her, ' 'Was it very difficult for you
/he.ciid.";
She said, "He claimed, when we were first talking about having kids, that it didn't matter to him at alt whether the kids were raised Jewish, but I knew that it did. Everything he talked about, his politics, the way he reminisced about his grandmother's kosher kitchen, the way he talked about his childhood — everything suggested it mattered to him far more than he could say, and I knew that if the kids were not raised Jewish, thait it would pain him very much. I'm happy that it worked out.''
They were a very happy couple, actually. But it became obvious to me that that sort of kindly intuitiveness doesn't work in a couple where the Jew is a woman."
I think there are big unexplored gender differences. We are going to have to figure out ways of helping the Jewish women who are in interfaith marriages stay connected, as many of them indeed want to, and also figure out ways of being welcoming to the wives of Jewish men who are themselves not Jewish.
I think attentiveness is problematic in certain circumstances, because one wants not to exclude [the intermarried couple] but on the other hand not to send the message to children that intermarriage is something to encourage.
There isn't a family in Jewish life that has not been touched by intermarriage, so it seems to me the more we know about it, the better off we are. And the more we are able to help giris and young women feel comfortable in their identity as Jews no matter who they marry, the better off the Jewish community will be in the ftiture.
If somebody has a good, strong sense of herself as a Jew at 18 or 20, even if at 28 or 30 she marries somebody who's not Jewish, there isn't the same kind of loss to the Jewish conuriunity as there is if she is somebody who says, "I don't care, I am going to convert out of Judaism" There's a whole kind of hidden-population of Jewish women, somebody has estimated as much as perhaps 50,000 or 60,000 in North America, who have converted to Christianity.
CJN: What's the most important thing that we as Jewish mothers can teach our daughters ?
Weidman Schneider: And our sons. If we're talking about gender equality, we're talking also about raising our sons to be menschen.
It's a much easier job raising daughters in this day and age than it is raising sons to be feminist. There are all these courses now being offered in the Jewish community for women, but there's no parallel body of courses for men teaching them how to change a diaper, how to be better daddies, how to relate to women better.
The most important lesson for my daughter, I think, is a willingness to take certain kinds of risks, to speak out on what she knows to be right.
The willingness to speak out is an awfully important message, because as women we're socialized to be so well-behaved, and it's terribly hard to see oursielves as disruptive, to speak out for our own ne^s.
As Jewish women in particular, the role models we have had are of people who do things for others. The stereotype of the self-sacrificing Jewish mother who will do anything for her progeny or her community but might neglect her own needs is not such a good model. . Too often, Judaism has been a religion that we create for our kids, which is very telling for them. [I think] not only university students but also high school and even junior high school students should be invited into adult women's forums to see that here are smart, tuned-in, well-informed, alert Jewish women talking about Jewish subjects with a degree of seriousness. They're giving two or three hours on a busy schedule to talk about realconcerns in terms of Jewish religious practice and Jewish intellectual development, and that's an. important counterweight against stereotypes.
CjN: How have you personally balanced tradition with feminism?
Weidman Schneider: For me that has not been a conflict. I grew up in a community in Winnipeg in which I felt very comfortable both as a Jew and as a woman. I grew up in a congregation where girls, as well as boys, were expected to participate,
I wore a kippah because that's what all the girls wore. The giris and the boys led junior congre-. gation. It was expected that I would have a bat mitzvah, which I did, and of course after my bat, mitzvah I didn't have a speaking role in syna^ gogue again for many years, but in those formative years,-probably 8 until 12 or 13,1 felt myself at no disadvantage being female in the synagogue.
The congregation I belong to now, where the women often wear little lace doilies and notyar-mulkes, feels to me in some ways like a throwback. I had an Israeli friend make me a little black crocheted yarmuike with rosebuds on it that I sometimes wear in that congregation.
My own mother was never afraid of new ideas, and went to Hebrew school in an era where giris.; often didn't get much of a Jewish education. She was a good model for somebody who was unafraid of the new [but] who minded all the social niceties. . ■ ■ ■
I think rather than tradition versus feminism, it was a matter of being excited, arid 1 think that has informed my style as a lecturer and as a writer. I'm excited by what's new, and I'm excited about the possibilities Of social change and about making the world a better place.
I don't believe anger is a useful teaching tool. When I lecture, I'm interested in spurring the audience to make change, and to have them get in touch with their own sense of anger or outrage or eagerness to have things be done better, but I don't believe in being angry toward them.
[The synagogue in Winnipeg provided] equal access to the male rituals and the male liturgy, but it wasn't until much, much later that I began to think about that infusing of women's experience into Jewish life.
CJN: You said that your shulfeels in some ways like a throwback. Do you feel part of it?
Weidman Schneider: In terms of formal religious practice, it would be intolerable to me if it were not an egalitarian congregation. Women carry the Torahs on Simchat Torah, women read from the Torah, bat mitzvahs and bar mitzvahs are celebrated identically on Saturday mornings with girls reading from the Torah.
[But there's] still more male leadership. There has never been an assistant rabbi who's been a female, and the head rabbi is a man in his=JOs who sets the tone of the place, so my sense of outrage has more to do with the kind of hidden messages there — the insensitivity sometimes to English language, the prayers that talk about the head of the household being male and so on — but the synagogue has for many, many years been fully committed to equal participation in formal ways for women.