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Edie Arbit
for the crowd around the kid-
dush table badgered me with
one demand: "When are Yom
Kippur services next week!?"
On the Day of Atonement,
we gathered on an outdoor
deck with willow trees and
Japanese pines as witness to
our abbreviated service, just
Yizkor (the memorial service),
and N'eilah (the concluding
service of the High Holy
Days). As I finished chanting
the seven-times repeated-lit-
any at the end, the sun
slipped behind the trees like
a magnificently timed special
effect setting on the old year
right on cue.
Looking back, I could say
it was also setting on an old
habit, my tendency to equate
being Jewish with practicing
Judaism by men's rules. In
Saltaire, I had abandoned all
pretense of doing it "right"
and still it felt right; more
than that, it felt real. For the
first time, I began to think
about finding a way to rejoin
the Jewish people, a way to be
a Jew not just at home or in
my head but publicly and
communally as a woman,
though it would take me
years to determine what that
way would be.
•
It is ironic that feminism, a
secular movement, is at the
root of the most seismic
changes in my Jewish life. I
left Judaism essentially be-
cause of a feminist issue —
my exclusion from the Kad-
dish minyan — and I returned
to Judaism because of a fem-
inist issue: my acceptance as
the cantor of a prayer group
that grew twenty times larger
than a minyan.
Each year, from 1970
through 1983, I entered my
metaphorical telephone
booth, shed my secular iden-
tity and emerged as the can-
tor of this ever-expanding
flock that materialized out of
the mists like Brigadoon. In
1984, I was able to pass the
cantorial robes to another
woman, a finance professor
whose girlhood yeshiva
schooling makes her over-
qualified for the job.
B'nai Saltaire remains a
congregation like no other.
We arrive by bicycle and
tricycle, on foot, and pulling
wagons full of children. The
fashion aesthetic ranges from
sweat suits to nautical chic,
with men in crew neck
sweaters and women in gauzy
shifts and kids wearing
everything from a Superman
outfit to a well-pressed sun-
suit. For 13 years, my favorite
sight was the tableau of
children walking down the
aisles, barefoot in shul.
Thirteen years. An inter-
esting number, come to think
of it. If the 13 years until my
Bat Mitzvah charted my ori-
ginal coming of age within
Judaism, the 13 years of my
cantorial tenure marked
another kind of spiritual and
religious maturity — one that
has been more organic and
certainly more conscious. The
first coming of age tested my
mastery of dogma and abso-
lutes; the second developed
my capacity to synthesize
and question.
What do I mean when I call
myself a Jew? What do I real-
ly believe? How do I ex-
perience the divine? Which
ceremonies move me to a
higher spiritual realm, and
which do I want to perform
for the sake of Jewish con-
tinuity whether they move
me or not? How do I reconcile
the contradictions between
Jewish tradition and feminist
ethics?
If I am unwilling to fulfill
most of the religion's formal
obligations, can I still create
some distillation of Torah
ethics and ritual that adds up
to a "Jewish way of life?" Can
I forgive God for the un-
speakable cruelties of the
Holocaust, the torture of
children, the oppression of
nonwhites and women — and
for taking my mother at such
a young age? Can God forgive
me for my desertion, for com-
plaining so incessantly, and
for taking so much of Juda-
ism into my own hands?
Each year, on Yom Kippur
Eve as I stood in the pulpit
ready to intone Kol Nidre, I
saw once again the magni-
tude of my own impertinence.
Inevitably, a wave of fear
coursed through me. Who
was I to worship in this crazy,
heretical way? Even though
my congregation couldn't
care less, I was no stranger to
Halacha: the cantor is the
shaliach tzibbur, the mess-
enger of prayer for the whole
congregation and legally, if
even one man is present, only
a male can pray on this be-
half. Also, Orthodox custom
prohibits men from hearing
kol isah, woman's voice raised
in song.
I could not believe God in-
tended to censor my Kaddish
or the spiritual expression of
any female human being who
is also created in the divine
image; therefore, I concluded,
the inequity was not God's
law but men's — and could be
ignored.
As I lifted my voice and
sang through my fears I
always paused after the first
two words to see if God might
prefer to strike me dead
rather than endure another
round of supplications from a
Jewish woman with a thin