Looking for a Little Rebellion: Vayeitze 5770

Sometimes the best history is made through courageous acts of religious rebellion.

This thought occurred to me on Thursday evening, as my stomach worked overtime digesting a festive meal of turkey, stuffing and cranberries. I said to myself, ‘Gee, you know, none of this would of happened if certain people wouldn’t have been willing to risk it all for the sake of religious rebellion. That’s right, those blessed Puritans, those loveable religious fundamentalists who left blasphemous England in search of new shores, a land where they would be free to persecute anyone who did not think or worship like them.

Then, of course came the great Roger Williams, founder of our great state. Who broke off from those original rebels to create a religious rebellion of his own: one called tolerance; a gift from which we continue to benefit in this fair state and in this wonderful country.

Yes that’s right, a little religious rebellion can really go a long way. Whether it was Martin Luther hammering home his edict on the Church door in Worms, or Baruch Spinoza who decided that excommunication was preferable to religious inauthenticity; the truth is plain: sometimes the best history can be made by behaving badly.

This morning’s Torah Portion VaYeitze contains a brief moment of religious rebellion, but one that certainly resonates today, especially given the events of the past week.

As Ya’akov Aveinu, Jacob our forefather, begins to prepare his flight from the house of Lavan, he hurries to gather his family and possessions before leaving under the cover of night. As Jacob, Leah and Rachel gather their things; Rachel decides to commit one small act of religious rebellion by stealing her father’s idols.

Now I know that this may not seem like a big deal to us now, but let us pause to appreciate what a great act of religious rebellion that Rachel was committing. Our foremother Rachel believed so strongly in the sinful nature of idol worship that she was willing to steal from her own father in order to rid his home of this impiety. By doing so, she anachronistically transgresses two of the Aseret HaDibrot, the Ten Commandments: that of Kibbud Av V’Em, Honor your Mother and Father; and Lo Tignov, Thou shall not steal. But for Rachel, this test of competing Jewish values: the value of worshipping the one true God, versus the value of honoring her father and his possessions was a Biblical no-brainer. I’ll chose monotheism, thank you very much. You see, Rachel knew this lesson even then: when you believe in something so strongly, when you are certain that what you are fighting for is right, moral and desired in the eyes of Heaven, then you must be willing to commit small acts of rebellion in the name of your convictions.

Unfortunately, this past week contained a story representative of a small act of religious rebellion which I fear represents a great breaking-point among the Jewish people. On November 18th, at the Kotel, the Western Wall in Jerusalem, a woman named Nofrat Frenkel was arrested for violating the Law of a Jewish Holy Place. Her crime was wearing a Tallit.
She describes the events that transpired as follows:

“Every morning, since I was 15, I have worn a tallit for morning prayers in my home. During my army service, I was forced to swallow many negative comments by other soldiers who prayed in the army synagogues… After leaving the army, I began to visit the Kotel every Rosh Hodesh. The atmosphere at the Kotel, the feeling that all those women praying around me were also turning to God and pouring out their hearts, inspires me with the joy of Jewish peoplehood. Here is one place in which, shoulder to shoulder, all hearts are calling to God.


The response of the “righteous women of the Kotel” to my donning a tallit never delayed in coming: Curses in Hebrew and Yiddish, venomous treatment toward me and my tallit, and speculation regarding my gender and religion: “A man in the women’s section!” “He’s not even Jewish!” “Perhaps she’s dressed up for Purim?”

One Rosh Hodesh, when I had finished my prayers and was making my way out from the prayer area, I suddenly saw a group of tallit-wearing women standing and praying together. It was my first meeting with the Women of the Wall: ¬ Conservative, Reform and Orthodox women who have been meeting to pray together every Rosh Hodesh over the past 21 years. I immediately felt that my place was with them.

The morning of Rosh Hodesh Kislev, November 18, [2009] was a cold Jerusalem morning. We stood, 42 Women of the Wall, and prayed in the women’s section. Our tallitot were hidden under our coats; the sefer Torah was in its regular bag. There was no booing, no pushing, no shouting. We were surprised that our service passed off without any disturbance, and we thought that, perhaps, they had already become accustomed to our presence and that we could even read from the Torah, opposite the stones of the Kotel. Then, just moments after we had removed the sefer Torah from its bag, two men entered the women’s section and began abusing us. All we wanted was to conclude our prayers in peace, so we decided to forgo the Torah reading there and go, as on every other Rosh Hodesh, to read the Torah at the alternative site [at the Southern Wall]. As we were exiting with the Torah, a policeman met us and began forcefully pushing me toward the nearby police station. I was transferred for questioning to the station at David’s Citadel. All I had on me was my tallit, my siddur and a sefer Torah.

In my interrogation, I was asked why I was praying with a tallit when I knew that this was against the Law of the Holy Places. [but I could not] allow my basic right to freedom of religious worship to be trampled because of a court ruling given years ago.

The Kotel belongs to all the people of Israel. The Kotel is not a Haredi synagogue, and the Women of the Wall will not allow it to become such.

Jerusalem is the city of holiness and justice for all humankind. From Zion, the voice calling for equality should be heard, for boundless love, for better understanding between people. Jerusalem has already been destroyed, due to Sinat Hinam, unfounded hatred. Let us hope it will not happen again.”

Powerful words for us to contemplate together this morning. So how exactly should we classify Nofrat Frenkel’s act of wearing a tallit at the Western Wall? Should we applaud her for her courage to stand up for her religious convictions, or should we label her as a provocateur, aiming to outrage the religious right with her behavior. Furthermore, couldn’t she and the rest of the Women of the Wall simply make it a point to only daven at the Southern Wall complex, a place that was specifically set aside for progressive Judaism to have a home for egalitarian prayer services. Since we already have a space set aside for us, does it really further our aim to risk public harassment from the Orthdodox and arrest from the police simply to make our point?

My own personal answer to this question is yes, and I will tell you why. I worry that the Kotel, the Western Wall, the last remaining remnant of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem no longer belongs to the Jewish people as a whole. Instead, this wall, the Jewish people’s holiest site, belongs solely to the Ultra-Orthodox, or to those who are willing to play by their rules. This is why in recent months there was a scandal when some of the meaningful tekesim, Army ceremonies, which have taken place at the Kotel for generations, have now been relocated, after the Kotel’s chief rabbi proclaimed that the men and women who gathered there to celebrate their children becoming soldiers, would have to agree to sit separately from one another. Yes, the sad case is, that the Kotel, the place that felt so comfortable to me when I first reached out to touch hose stones as a child, has now become a synagogue for the ultra-Orthodox, instead of a home for the entire Jewish people.

There is a Hebrew phrase which I think reflects a very powerful Jewish concept. The phrase is Klal Yisrael, Collective Judaism, and this term denotes that we share a single Jewish destiny, regardless of our differences. I hear this phrase very often, usually in the context of a Judaism that is growing tired of denominationalism, fragmentation and ideological boundaries which separate Jew from Jew. But I want to sound a call of warning here this morning: the concept of Klal Yisrael will die a regrettable death if it does not come to mean a type of tolerance that works in both directions, to the right and to the left. If Klal Yisrael means that we as progressive Jews have a home in Jerusalem only at the Southern Wall, then our children will not know what it means to feel the incredible exhilaration that comes with a sense of united peoplehood.

A final thought: When Eliana and I first visited this wonderful shul nearly two years ago, we paid close attention on Shabbat morning to something important to us. We were counting the number of women who choose to wear tallitot. For both of us, but for Eliana in particular this was a telling indicator, it gave her a sense of the Jewish community she was entering as a woman, and needless to say, we were very pleased with what we found. Now that we have a daughter, it is not difficult to imagine the emotion of the day when she first wears her tallit, taking her place along the continuum of the Jewish people. I can only pray, that the first time she visits Israel as a Bat Mitzvah, she will know the incredible joy of wearing her tallit, wrapping herself in her history, and reaching out to touch those ancient stones which have absorbed the hopes, the prayers and the tears of the Jewish people for millennia. This prayer is a prayer for Klal Yisrael, for the entirety of the Jewish people.
And let us say: Amen.