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April 6, 2012
Peek into Orthodox worlds
One book is an academic investigation, the other is a memoir.
CYNTHIA RAMSAY
For some time now, an international media spotlight has been shining on the state of women’s rights in Israel. From bullying an eight-year-old girl for a skirt deemed too short to harassing women on “gender-segregated buses,” the actions of some ultra-Orthodox men have given cause for pause. This is one reason why two very different books caught the Independent’s attention: an academic, albeit not scientific, examination of the motivations of men who choose to be members of Orthodox synagogues that allow women a more involved role; and the memoir of a young woman who chose to leave her life in Brooklyn’s Satmar Chassidic community.
Elana Maryles Sztokman’s The Men’s Section: Orthodox Jewish Men in an Egalitarian World (Brandeis University Press, 2011) is based on extensive research, including interviews she conducted with 54 men who belong to “partnership synagogues” in Israel mainly, but also in the United States and Australia. These are synagogues in which women’s participation in the prayer service is being, or has been, increased in ways congruent with halachah, i.e. women can lead more parts of the service, though not those that require a minyan, as women are still not counted in the minyan.
Sztokman has a PhD (education) and MA (Jewish education) from Hebrew University. She has worked on the issue of agunot (chained women, women whose husbands are denying them a divorce) for more than 15 years and, among other work experience, she writes on gender issues for the Forward, and has taught at the Schechter Institute for Jewish Studies and Bar-Ilan University, among others. In addition to gender issues, she also has a particular interest in Jewish identity – and this aspect of The Men’s Section makes it fascinating.
She herself lives in Modi’in and attends Darchei Noam Synagogue, so the “largest cluster of the research – twenty-eight interviews as well as the overwhelming majority of observations – takes place around Darchei Noam,” she writes. She used to live in Jerusalem, where she went to Shira Hadasha, another Orthodox synagogue that attempts to be egalitarian, and so about a third of the interviews happen there, while the rest of the interviewees come from elsewhere: various American cities, Zichron Yakov in Israel and Baka Shivyoni partnership synagogue in Melbourne, Australia, where Sztokman also lived for a time.
“While the role of women in challenging patriarchal norms is rather intuitive – it is easy to understand why women would take a firm stand in undoing practices that render them powerless and invisible – the role of men, which is remarkably strong within these synagogues, is less readily apparent,” she writes – which is why she wanted to study the motivations of these men in particular.
The book is organized according to the three goals with which Sztokman undertook the research. The first is “to unpack the characteristics of Orthodox manhood by answering the question ‘What does it mean to be an Orthodox man?’” She does this using as a model Paul Kivel’s “Act Like a Man” Box, “which lays out the many components of masculinity among many Western, English-speaking, middle- and upper-class men. Kivel’s ‘box’ has three components: the attributes of a ‘man’ [tough, don’t cry, have sex with women, etc.]; the physical [beat up, isolated, etc.] and verbal [wimp, fag, punk, etc.] tools of abuse that keep boys and men in the box; and the emotions trapped in the middle of the box that are unable to emerge [sadness, confusion, excitement, etc.].”
The second goal of Sztokman’s research is to explore how the men who belong to partnership synagogues deal with the messages of what manhood is generally understood to mean, “and how they have changed these definitions of masculinity within their own identities.” The third goal is “to examine the impact of these individual changes on broader Jewish culture and society.”
One of the more surprising findings – even to Sztokman – is that the population of men in partnership synagogues “is hardly what one could call a predominantly feminist or even pro-feminist group. As the previous chapters indicate, men come to the partnership synagogue for a whole host of reasons, the overwhelming majority of which have nothing to do with feminism. In fact, even when gender issues factor into their reasons for coming, they are often a minor subtext, or even an afterthought.... They come because they are grappling with their own inductions into orthodoxy and are challenging issues of self, relationship and community, and seeking avenues to further their own liberation.... I would say that the dominant reason men come to these synagogues is social. They are looking for connection.”
This desire for connection, Sztokman finds, is related to men wanting to have a different type of spiritual experience, of course, through having all of their family around them in synagogue, by creating opportunities for more meaningful relationships with fellow congregants and via increased inclusivity in the service not only for women, but for other men as well.
There are also men who resist change within these partnership synagogues, and Sztokman explores their reasons as well, including fear: “They are afraid of losing the masculinity that gives them presence, power, direction and identity.... Deconstructing [what makes a man] is a huge threat. They risk being labeled as outsiders, not normal, nonreligious, or worse, Reform. If they shift masculinity, they lose that treasured identity marker of being part of the religious community.”
Sztokman is up front about the limitations of her study and, while readers should be cautious about drawing any definitive conclusions from it, The Men’s Section is a very interesting and methodical look at a relatively recent phenomenon. And, while she would like to eventually see the Orthodox community “develop a gender-neutral spiritual culture,” Sztokman doesn’t prescribe this as a necessity and, in fact, leaves the matter in the hands of men: “It’s up to men to reconstruct a religious life without the unwanted and undesirable constructs. I hope that this book can be part of the first step in that process.”
A need for freedom
In a lesser way, the changes that are occurring in some parts of the Orthodox world – as well as the resistance to change – is why the memoir Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots (Simon and Schuster, 2012) by Deborah Feldman also intrigued the Independent.
Acknowledging that it is based on a young woman’s very real, difficult and at times heart-wrenching personal experiences, Unorthodox, while not that scandalous, reads more as chick lit than memoir. Feldman’s youth, the short amount of time that has passed since her exit from the Satmar community in which she grew up and the fact that she was brought up in such a restrictive environment – and, therefore, with limited experience of the larger world – combine to mean that there is not a lot of depth to this work.
This is not to say that there isn’t anything to learn from Unorthodox. Feldman has had some horrific things happen to her and, though not all were the result of being raised Satmar, they do raise questions about women’s rights here in North America – one doesn’t have to go far geographically or to another religious group to find mistreatment and abuse. This won’t be a surprise to most of us, but it might be for some.
In addition to religious and other constraints – on her way of dressing, her reading choices (no English, though she secretly did so), her marriage partner, etc. – Feldman had a mentally ill father and a mother who had left the community, she was sexually assaulted by her cousin when she was 12, she had to deal with a gynecological health issue with no support from family or friends (and no education about such things), and she seems to have suffered from post-partum depression but was never treated. According to her website, Feldman – who lives in New York City with her son from her since-dissolved marriage to a Satmar man – “is working on another memoir, and collaborating with various NGOs [nongovernmental organizations] and nonprofits in efforts to establish a shelter for women like her.”
As one reviewer of Unorthodox noted, the Satmar lifestyle, with all its rules and constraints, is actually a comfort and feels safe for some people, even makes them happy. However, for people who don’t fit into the mold, it is beyond stifling. There should be an easier way out for such people and, if Feldman’s book can help create that possibility, then that’s something positive.
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