My father Isaac would not have considered himself a feminist. And the last time I spoke to him, he reminded me of this fact as he worried aloud about what he was leaving behind for my mom. Would she have enough for the rest of her days? “She’s fine!”I responded blithely.
“No,” he said, regretfully, “I didn’t make enough money.”
That morning, my dad looked small and sunk in the depths of his brown corduroy chair, a hospital bed-like monstrosity that moved up and down noisily at the press of a button.
I proceeded to debate this claim, but my dad— there was fire in him yet—pounded a fist onto his chair’s plush armrest, which, in its indifference, barely registered the dull thud. I couldn’t understand, he declared.
“Why not?” “Because you’re not a man.” I wanted to argue, but it was time to go to the airport — back to England, some land and an ocean away from my parents.
So, we agreed to disagree. I hugged him and tried not to harp on about the “not a man” business.
He meant well. And I had always known my father was not a feminist. He never changed nappies or cooked our dinners or washed our clothes. He came from a time and a place where gender roles were distinct, and only after my sister, Frances, and
I moved out and he retired did my mom have him help around the house as her full-time partner.
For most of my life, it didn’t matter that he wasn’t a feminist. Because, luckily for me, he had no sons. It meant that even if he wasn’t a feminist, Dad had to act like one.
Such as when my sister turned 12, and Dad wanted her to have a bat mitzvah. He had no opportunity, after all, to throw a bar mitzvah. Bat mitzvahs were not standard in my community; some girls had them, but many did not.
Moreover, my dad was very involved in his Orthodox shul—a founding member, the treasurer, later a respected elder. Until he was sick, he never missed a single Shabbat.
This was a shul in which women were shoved into a cramped space in the back behind the mechitzah.
They weren’t given much thought by the men, who called out page numbers in Hebrew, forgetting that many of the women didn’t speak the language. The women certainly never went up to the bimah.
But for my sister’s bat mitzvah, and later for mine, Dad chose a Conservative shul—something otherwise utterly out of his wheelhouse — so we could chant from the Torah, just as any son would.
My dad was determined that his kids would have a good education, would succeed professionally. When he was young, his parents made him turn down a scholarship to the Technion to study engineering so he could support his family. He became a welder.
He wanted more for us. When we started thinking about careers, he steered my sister, who was good at science, toward medicine, and myself, the debater, towards law.
As it was, the legal route he had envisioned for me was usurped by my sister when she announced she was thinking of becoming a legal secretary.
“I like organising a desk, keeping things neat and orderly,”she said. (Until today, every piece of clothing in her closet must be arranged by colour and envelope-folded, every tin in her pantry neatly aligned with its neighbours and facing forward).
“A legal secretary! Why would you be that when you could be a lawyer!” my dad roared. And, boy, could the man roar. It didn’t occur to him to limit our options because we were female.
In the event, my sister became a dentist. We kept our birth names, and I passed mine on to my son. Women have advanced in so many ways, yet it remains markedly uncommon for children to be given the surnames of their mothers. Why? Am I any less the parent?
My choice must have struck my dad as odd, but how could he have been anything but pleased.
Who else would carry on his name? People made snarky remarks. He never did. You see, my dad was not a feminist, but he raised his daughters to believe that they were equal to men in every way. Which is a decidedly feminist way to bring up girls.
