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From Ha'aretz.com: Medieval siddur battles gender inequality via Jewish prayer
The traditional morning prayers include one recited by observant Jewish men, blessing the Creator for not making them women. The women's counterpart runs, “Blessed are You, Lord our God, Master of Universe [the "blessing" formula] for Creating me According to your Will.” No surprise, Jewish women through the ages have found this offensive, and men have used it as a justification for insisting on their own gender superiority.
Now it turns out this may be a modern distortion of Jewish values. A siddur (prayer book) written in 1471, specifies the women's prayer as, "... For You made Me a Woman and Not a Man.” The clear intent was for each person to appreciate and celebrate who they are. The siddur was written by Rabbi Abraham Ben Mordechai Farissol (1451-1525), a well-known Northern Italian scholar, cantor, and physician.
“This Siddur proves that the degrading attitudes towards women, which we are seeing in certain extreme religious communities in Israel today, are a modern distortion of Judaism,” said Rabbi [Julie] Schonfeld. “Ironically, treatment of women in certain extreme sectors of the community is far more denigrating to women today than even the attitudes of the late Middle Ages." Schoenfeld is executive vice president of the Rabbinical Assembly, Conservative Judaism’s official rabbinical association.
To remain true to the spirit of the text, celebrating who we are, how are we to honor our transgendered brothers and sisters? One way might be to allow each person to choose the text that speaks for them. Another would be to move toward a universalist version, applicable to all people, expressing gratitude that we all are as we are, that we are all glorious and precious.
The traditional morning prayers include one recited by observant Jewish men, blessing the Creator for not making them women. The women's counterpart runs, “Blessed are You, Lord our God, Master of Universe [the "blessing" formula] for Creating me According to your Will.” No surprise, Jewish women through the ages have found this offensive, and men have used it as a justification for insisting on their own gender superiority.
Now it turns out this may be a modern distortion of Jewish values. A siddur (prayer book) written in 1471, specifies the women's prayer as, "... For You made Me a Woman and Not a Man.” The clear intent was for each person to appreciate and celebrate who they are. The siddur was written by Rabbi Abraham Ben Mordechai Farissol (1451-1525), a well-known Northern Italian scholar, cantor, and physician.
“This Siddur proves that the degrading attitudes towards women, which we are seeing in certain extreme religious communities in Israel today, are a modern distortion of Judaism,” said Rabbi [Julie] Schonfeld. “Ironically, treatment of women in certain extreme sectors of the community is far more denigrating to women today than even the attitudes of the late Middle Ages." Schoenfeld is executive vice president of the Rabbinical Assembly, Conservative Judaism’s official rabbinical association.
To remain true to the spirit of the text, celebrating who we are, how are we to honor our transgendered brothers and sisters? One way might be to allow each person to choose the text that speaks for them. Another would be to move toward a universalist version, applicable to all people, expressing gratitude that we all are as we are, that we are all glorious and precious.
