In February 1973, a Jewish Feminist Conference was held at the McAlpin Hotel in New York City with 500 women from around the country in attendance. The women represented the full spectrum of observance, including Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist, and Orthodox Jewish women, as well as those who were unaffiliated. I was fortunate to have been one of the keynote speakers.
The conference was devoted to the place of Jewish women within Judaism and in the larger Jewish community. During those years, I was meeting regularly with other Jewish women who saw a nearly barren landscape in terms of women’s rights and leadership within our communities. The one bright event was the ordination of Sally Priesand by the Reform Movement in 1971.
At the time, I was living in Maplewood, New Jersey, with my husband and two children. We were members of Oheb Shalom, a Conservative synagogue in South Orange, New Jersey.
Although I had asked for and been given the opportunity for a Bat Mitzvah at age 13 at a Conservative synagogue in New Bedford, Massachusetts, not much had changed in the Conservative movement since then. There were no women rabbis. Women were neither counted in the minyan nor allowed to have aliyot to the Torah.
Lilith, a magazine devoted to Jewish women’s issues and advocating for expanded women’s rights in Jewish religious and communal life, would not be published until 1976. And my own article, “A Morning of Firsts,” describing my first aliyah in an “underground” Conservative synagogue, would be published in December of that same year, in Congress Monthly.
While the rabbi of our synagogue in New Jersey, Rabbi Alexander Shapiro, was personally very sympathetic to Jewish women’s aspirations for increased participation in congregational Jewish life and rituals, the synagogue had not done anything to change things.
What happened in the fall of 1974 or 5 (so long ago, I don’t remember the exact year) was unplanned. I had not thought much about what might happen in the synagogue before we set out for Simchat Torah services that morning. And I certainly didn’t know that I would create a sea change in the synagogue, one that would have a major impact on the synagogue and in my life personally.
Simchat Torah, the holiday that celebrates the completion of the yearly cycle of Torah reading and the beginning of a new cycle, has always been festive and joyous. All the Torahs are removed from the ark, and congregants circle the sanctuary carrying the synagogue’s Torahs. Or, should I say, men circled the congregation carrying Torahs. Women sat with their children and watched. During the procession, men would line up in the front of the sanctuary where the Torahs were handed off to the next group of men so everyone who wanted to carry a Torah would have the chance to do so.
When it was almost time for the procession to begin, a synagogue officer started handing out the first group of Torahs to men, my husband included. Jerry took it. Something in me shifted at that moment. And I touched him on his sleeve and said, “Let me carry it.” He gave me the Torah, and I carried it forward toward the bimah where men were lining up to start the procession. When I reached the front of the synagogue, the man who had handed the Torah to my husband turned, and when he saw me with it in my arms, he reached out to take it back. After all, I was a woman.
At that point, Rabbi Shapiro had his opportunity and said, “Let her carry it.” And that was how a new tradition was born in South Orange, New Jersey, at the historic congregation Oheb Shalom.
As I joined the procession of men walking around the synagogue, you could hear whispers, which grew louder as women and girls saw me and recognized something different was happening. First it was sounds of surprise, and then of excitement. Girls and women who had been sitting passively, were trying to take in what they were seeing … something new, something radical, something unexpected.
Suddenly, females of all ages were running toward the front of the synagogue, forming a line at the bimah where the Torahs would be handed off to the next carriers. Each was excited to wait her turn to hold the Torah and walk in the joyous procession. And thus a new custom was born. The Torah I carried became the women’s Torah and suddenly there was a new possibility for joyous expression by all the girls and women of the congregation. As “my” Torah circled the congregation, there were women and girls, old and young, waiting with excitement for their turn.
When I saw what I had started, I cried. It was like a door had opened that had been closed and locked. An opportunity for participation in Jewish religious life was born. And at that moment I felt I had marched into history, forging a new reality, at least in my local synagogue.
Judith Manelis is a Tucson-based writer, editor, and journalist whose work has appeared in American Jewish newspapers and magazines. Her book “This Shall Tell All Ages: Art, Music and Writings of the Holocaust” was published by United Jewish Appeal.
