PASSOVER

WAITING FOR

WOMEN'S EXODUS

Now in its 15th year, the author's feminist seder celebrates
mothers, grandmothers and prophetesses

LETTY COTTIN PROGREBIN

Special to The Jewish News

N

obody needs three
seders. God seems to
think two are enough.
Yet I have come to feel that
the holiday is incomplete
without the all-women ritual
that I have attended on the
third night of Passover every
year since 1976.
Why is this night different
from all other nights?
Because on this night, 20 to
30 women sit in a wide circle
on pillows on the floor with a
cloth spread like a table
before us, and we ask the Four
Questions of women. On this
night, for a change, we speak
of the Four Daughters, female
archetypes yearning to know
their past. And on this night,
the goblet usually set aside
for the prophet Elijah belongs
to the prophet Miriam.
On this night, we invoke
the Shechina, the feminine
essence of the deity. On this
night, we name our mothers
and grandmothers, the
women who cleaned, cooked,
and served at family seders
while the men reclined
against their pillows retelling
Jewish history — his story,
the story of Jewish men.
On this night, we give her
story equal time. And a
woman, Esther Broner, leads
our seder. We tell of Miriam;
of Shiphrah and Puah, the
midwives who disobeyed Pha-
raoh's order to murder all
first-born Jewish sons; of
Moses' mother Yocheved, who
gave up her baby so he might
survive; of Pharaoh's
daughter, a righteous gentile
who disobeyed her father's
decree and adopted a Hebrew
baby marked for murder.
At our seder, we do not
praise good girls and polite
ladies; we honor rebellious
women.

Excerpted from Deborah,

Golda and Me: Being Jewish
and Female in America by
Letty Cottin Pogrebin. To be
* published by Crown Pub-
liedishers in September.

- 28

FRIDAY, MARCH 29, 1991

• a.

Illustration by Scott Matten

We also remember the un-
sung heroines of the rabbinic
period: Rachel, who labored
for 24 years so her husband
could study; Beruriah, an es-
teemed teacher of Torah; Ima
Shalom, a feisty intellect
whose husband, the head of
the Sanhedrin, left us such
aphorisms as "It is better to
burn the words of the Torah
than to give them to women."
On the third night of Pass-
over, the words belong to
women.
Six women and myself con-
stitute the Seder Mothers,
whose job is to create the
event, plan the service, invite
the guests, organize the pot-
luck meal, and choose the
seder theme.
Last year's theme was
"Omission, Absence, and
Silence." We asked partici-
pants to undo men's silencing
of women and women's self-
censorship. My assignment
was to create a feminist
midrash on Jephthah's

daughter, a character in the
Book of Judges. Jephthah, a
military general, promised
God that in return for defeat-
ing the Ammonites, he would
sacrifice the first thing that
emerged from his house upon
his return. The first to open
the door and welcome him
was his daughter, whose per-
spective on the ensuing tale,
unrecorded in the Bible, was
the subject of my recitation:
"Why did you allow an inno-
cent girl to be sacrificed in
your name? You stayed Abra-
ham's hand and Isaac lived.
Why did you save the son and
let the daughter die?' "
In 1976, we started small.
At our first seder, 13 of us sat
in a circle at Phyllis Chesler's
apartment and introduced
ourselves as we would every
year: "I am Letty, daughter of
Ceil, who was the daughter of
Jenny." Then we recited the
Ten Plagues, our plagues, the
afflictions of women: the
plague of being unwanted

daughters and taken-for-
granted mothers, the plague
of voices silenced and minds
unused, the plagues of pover-
ty, dependence, and discrimi-
nation, of rape and battery
and sexual exploitation, of
defamation and subordina-
tion and lost dreams.
And we opened the door for
the prophetess Miriam .. .
The second year we brought
our daughters with us, and
they would attend every seder
from then on. None of us
knew that a dozen years later,
these young girls would bless
us with a seder of their own.
On April 23, 1989, the 14th
seder took place at the apart-
ment that my daughters then
shared on West 86th Street. It
felt strange to just show up
with my pillow and a bottle of
wine. After so many years en-
cumbered by lists and chores,
at last the Seder Mothers
were carefree. Who could have
imagined that those little
girls tiptoeing around with

their candles and feathers
searching out chametz would
so soon become these strong,
self-assured, glowing young
women who now welcomed us
to their seder? Yet, here they
were instructing us. Each
woman was to name her
chametz, the stuff we have to
get rid of before we can "pass'
over" into freedom. We
named jealousy, hurtful gos-
sip, obsession with body im-
age, passivity, fear of failure,
addiction to pleasing men,
shyness, loneliness.
Naomi Wolf asked the Four
Questions from the Hag-
gadah, then, posed questions
to the "elders": What do you
want to pass on, and what
don't you want us to inherit?
Are you ready to let go, not
just of the responsibility, but
of the power? Will you let
your daughters be Jews and
feminists in their own way?
The young women worried
that they might not do justice
to our legacy; that they would
just glide along on the road
we paved for them. They
wanted to know: Could they
keep their mother's traditions
and also change them? At
what point does feminist or-
thodoxy become as oppressive
as any other orthodoxy?
Mothers who are good role
models are also a tough act to
follow. We made them strong;
now, would we set them free?
The mothers had no an-
swers. And that, I believe, was
our legacy. We said they must
find their own answers. We
told them that we do not have
it all figured out; we only ap-
pear more secure because we
made our revolution together,
with passion and anger. That
was our way; they would find
theirs.
The truth is, I do have one
answer for them: Just as Jews
are instructed to remember
slavery as if it had happened
to each one of us, daughters
should remember their
mothers' oppression as if it
had happened to them.
Because it could happen to
them. Women's Exodus is not
complete. Our Sinai is still to
come. L

)
\I

K

