In my north London Jewish primary school a religious studies teacher once spent an entire lesson explaining to all my class what the role of a good Jewish woman was. I listened with growing horror as she listed all the expectations she had of what me and the other girls in the class were supposed to grow into.
According to this teacher, an adult Jewish female’s sole raison d’être was to be a good, modest and obedient wife and devoted mother. She ought to be uncomplainingly dutiful and happily slave for her husband and children. In between the cooking, cleaning, koshering and nappy changing she should perform mitzvahs and do a lot of praying (probably for an extended luxury holiday all alone). Having a career was out of the question, she told us, which was strange considering she was working as a teacher. I was appalled. She painted a picture of such mindless, boring drudgery but delivered it with such zealous fervour that it felt like she was indoctrinating us into a cult.
I looked round at the eighteen boys in my class. Understandably, they mostly looked very smug. So, wait, I was supposed to marry one of these boys in about ten years and become his slave? I didn’t know any other Jewish boys my age apart from these ones and I couldn’t possibly imagine taking orders from any one of them.
There was Charles who picked his nose and ate it and didn’t care who saw. Sometimes it didn’t go into his mouth and stayed on his fingers. All day. I spent seven years avoiding being partners or having any hand contact with that boy. There was William who ate worms and wet his pants regularly. And there was Harry who was nice to you one minute but then started viciously kicking your shins for fun the next. There were boys too, who whilst not being covered in bogeys, or being potential worm eaters or serial killers, weren’t humans I imagined ever becoming my superiors. I was a young women’s libber and I knew it. Your sex should never limit your opportunities or choices.
Many years later and now with my own clutch of children I found myself one Pesach all stocked up with matzah but with no Seder to attend. My parents were living abroad at that time and, as a single parent, I didn’t feel able to give my children a proper, authentic, experience and so I was delighted when a Jewish acquaintance invited us along to a local community Passover Seder. All I had to do was to bring a big nut-free vegetarian dish to share and muck-in. A local school hall had been rented for the event to accommodate the large group and, to my surprise, it was presided over by a woman rabbi. She was wearing a kippah. And a tallit. And she was pregnant.
That evening was one of the most liberal Jewish north London experiences of my life. Progressive and egalitarian, with a woman taking the lead, wearing the kippah, and tallit, leading the prayers and blessings and everyone following her. All the children took turns to read a line. Some of them very very slowwwwwwly. On the Seder plate mock meat symbolised the lamb shank bone, in order to maintain the group’s vegetarian ethos. Alas, many of the songs were almost unrecognisable with tunes unfamiliar to me which further made me feel disconnected from it all.
On the face of it I should have loved it. But I really didn't. Somehow it didn’t feel right. Not for me. Like the mock meat, it felt like a mock seder. Hoisted by my own petard, I felt guilty for feeling that way and tried to join in heartily.
The evening was very civilised. Nobody got drunk and much of the conversation was about worthy campaigns and environmental causes. Good people talking about societal problems. Nobody, except for me, seemed to feel the need to get terribly tipsy and lean to the left. To my apparently traditional mind they had already leant so far to the political left that they really would have fallen over if they’d leant anymore.
And then there was the food. I didn’t even eat meat or chicken, yet I found the cold buffet spread of homemade nut-free vegetarian dishes bland and a little suspect. I’ve never been a fan of food from other people’s houses where small children have ‘helped’ prepare the food and, to my horror, there was one child at the Seder with an alarming resemblance to Charles the boy from primary school who picked his nose and ate it. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. Was grown up Charles here in the group and was this child his son? I scanned the room. Nobody obvious. I looked back at the child. His fingers were up his nose. I went home hungry that night.
I never went to a Jewish do there again. A meat-free, pregnant-woman-rabbi-led Seder should surely be something someone like me is all over but it felt like an imitation of the real thing. Even now I can’t really tell you why I like a seder to be traditional when, as you might have guessed, I’m hardly a conventional Jewish woman. I’m no subordinate to any man but perhaps when it comes to Jewish festivals I am a bit of a Patriarchal Jewish Princess and I want the rabbi in charge to be a man.
My friend Thor told me an old joke today: At an Orthodox wedding the bride’s mother is pregnant; at a reform wedding the bride is pregnant; at a liberal wedding the rabbi is pregnant, and at a reform wedding the rabbi’s husband is pregnant. I know where I feel most comfortable.
(The names of Charles, William and Harry have been changed, to spare their blushes)
