“And All the People Saw the Sounds”
By: Yehuda Kurtzer
Tags: Gender, Parenting, Shofar, Judaism, Rosh Hashanah

Women blowing shofars at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, Aug. 23, 2017. (photo credit: Women of the Wall, published online at https://bit.ly/3E2ONH3)

At some point near the beginning of the shofar service on the second day of Rosh Hashana — as Rachel recited the verses and blessings in preparation to lead the service, and as Jennie stood by her side preparing to softly but firmly call out each blast, keeping the count and keeping time — I realized that it had been over 16 years since I had last heard a man blow shofar on Rosh Hashana, and that I couldn’t remember who that man would have been, or what that was like. Memories are not indelible; the fact that they leave a mark does not mean they can’t fade, or even sometimes get erased. All that art and iconography of Jewish history of men blowing shofar — in oil paintings, inevitably bearded like the mythic cantor imagined in the pre-Musaf prayers — do I remember any of them, from my own life?

It was not always this way for me. I grew up Orthodox and in the Orthodoxy of my youth — and probably still very nearly everywhere — the idea of a woman blowing shofar for the community would have fallen somewhere between unlikely and unthinkable. I’m not even sure I ever thought about the question of its permissibility until the early 2000s when, serving as part of the leadership of an independent minyan community that was striving to be both “traditional” and “egalitarian” — what loaded words! — we were building the lineup for our first High Holidays and the question came up. By “the question came up” I mean there was a woman who wanted to blow shofar, and we needed someone to blow shofar. I suppose it is often the case that halakhic innovation follows opportunity and convenience; and here was Meg, ready and willing. Our community was a good testing ground, as it was constituted of some people for whom egalitarianism was axiomatic, and of others for whom it was a process, or a novelty, or a discovery.

As one does in such communities we embarked on a process of study on the question, learning ancient sources and modern commentaries on the mitzvah of shofar, and who was included in the obligation, and could women discharge the obligation for men, and so on, an elaborate exercise of creative searching for precedent, or perhaps justification, for the decision we wanted to undertake. (It is often this way, but rarely spoken of, that halakhic journeys are pursued on the basis of a desired known outcome.) As I look back on those sincere and rich conversations — I re-read the emails this morning — I see now in the continuous halakhic investigation into the practice of egalitarianism both beauty and tragedy: there is beauty in seeking to revise the tradition, or perhaps to discover old truths buried within it, impelled by the presence of people who obligate us to see their humanity; and there is deep tragedy in the inability, or unwillingness, to simply accept a commitment to egalitarianism, to radical human equality, as a moral fact and a moral truth and to pivot our commitments around it without the degradation involved in trying to locate that commitment in our sources. Those of us committed to halakhah and egalitarianism are ostensibly acting on behalf of the future: if we do it right by the chain of tradition in this generation, later generations will see our commitments as part of that very chain. But in the present, I increasingly find aspects of the whole process as dispiriting as they are dehumanizing; and I know that because of the privileges of my gender and upbringing, it is never me for whom the tradition has to “adapt” or “evolve.” My presence causes no gymnastics on the part of others to make room for me.

We found the answers we needed, though, and the results in the form of our master shofar blower were persuasive enough for those who might have been on the fence. And so for the 14 years that we prayed High Holiday services at our minyan — 4 while we still lived in the community, and 10 for which we drove back to Boston to be part of the congregation — Meg was coterminous for us with the shofar rite. Meg is a strong, straightforward shofar blower: the blasts are military in their precision, the tekiot-gedolot record-setting in their length, and their spiritual register throughout one that calls us to attention.

And then for these past two years we have been in backyards in Riverdale for our makeshift services, unable to travel back to our minyan and unwilling to incur the risks even if we could. Rachel blew shofar for the first time last year — the minyan was in her backyard, and she up on her porch, like the shofarot at Sinai resounding from the mountaintop — and even with experience as a French horn player, the level of expertise for a shofar novice was staggering. The sounds of her shofar are powerful, too, but they are more plaintive. I always knew the metaphors for the “shevarim,” the three ‘broken’ sounds, but I don’t remember ever quite feeling it. Rachel’s shofar sounds broke my heart, and for the past two years the shofar service has left me in tears.

I have the benefit of seeing this story unfold for me over time, in that strange way that the cyclical Jewish calendar enables us to see the past return to us every year as living memories, packing the past into the present in layers. My boys, now 15 and 13, have grown up with Meg and Rachel as the only shofar blowers they know. On that second day of Rosh Hashana, I was thinking about this and getting a little overwhelmed. My 8-year-old daughter came over to stand with me during shofar. She is the only one who still fits under my tallit, and she knows to come running back periodically from playing with her friends for the shofar-as-check-in. I thought about leaning down and telling her: “Look at these women! It is incredible! Do you know you are living at a time in Jewish history when this is possible? Do you see them as you should, these extraordinary powerful role models of ritual leadership, of religious authenticity and spiritual self-confidence? Can you believe this? See them, and maybe you can be them.”

That’s what I felt, and then I realized: why should I saddle her with the baggage I had to acquire on own journey? She will encounter the challenges of inequality in her own lifetime, I am sadly sure of that; she will be disappointed by the failures of egalitarianism in even the communities that consider a commitment to egalitarianism a badge of honor. But this moment that felt redemptive for me could just be normal for her, and not some sort of triumph over history. It could be, for our daughters and our sons, the baseline.

So instead, I leaned down, squeezed her tight, and whispered: “Listen!”

And we did.