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One Woman's Journey:
Feminism And Judaism
ELIZABETH APPLEBAUM ASSOCIATE EDITOR
W
hen Blu Greenberg was
a little girl, she consid-
ered it an honor to shine
her father's shoes.
Just before Shabbat, her fa-
ther, a Torah scholar, would call
to Blu and her sister, "Who wants
a mitzvah?" and both girls would
eagerly run to help him with his
shoes.
Today, Mrs. Greenberg retains
her ties to the Orthodox commu-
nity, but she also is an outspoken
feminist and author. She dis-
cussed her upbringing and cur-
rent perspec-
tives last week
for the Adat
Shalom Sister-
hood's annual
Donor Day.
A native of
Seattle, Mrs.
Greenberg was
raised in an Or-
thodox, Zionist
home where
"family and
Jewish commu-
nity were cen-
tral." This "kept
me anchored" in
the turbulent
1960s and '70s,
when many oth-
er women en- Bin Greenberg
tirely rejected
the concept of family, she said.
Her childhood also gave her a
love of Orthodox Judaism, which
she described as "a wonderful
thing, a gift."
In view of ensuing assimilation
and disintegrating families, the
way she was raised "left me with
a strong feeling - which I still
have today - that great care and
great caution should be taken in
changing things, lest it should re-
sult in destruction," Mrs. Green-
berg said.
When it was time for Blu and
her sister to get an education, her
family moved to New York City.
"Though my mother always cau-
tioned me not to marry a rabbi,"
she did (she is married to author
Rabbi Irving Greenberg), and for
years was content in her life as
wife and mother. "Then along
came feminism."
Rabbi Greenberg bought his
wife a copy of The Feminine Mys-
tique by Betty Friedan, which he
had found in a used book store.
Fascinated, Mrs. Greenberg
nonetheless set the work aside,
finding it "did not relate to my life
as an Orthodox woman...The sta-
tus quo was just fine for me."
But then she began to consid-
er more carefully incidents in her
own life.
Why was it, she wondered,
that no one questioned her ab-
sence at a cousin's bar mitzvah
(she was home with the children
and couldn't make it because of
rain) - though her husband was
at the synagogue. "There was
some unspecific awareness that
my place was not in the shul and
no one would even wonder why I
was not there."
Why was it, she wondered,
that she was the only woman in
a talmudic class with 30 men, all
of whom had learned Torah as
a matter of
birthright? She
was the daugh-
ter of a Torah
scholar. Why
wasn't the same
Jewish knowl-
edge expected of
her?
In 1973, Mrs.
Greenberg at-
tended the first
National Jewish
Women's Con-
ference. Here,
she said, she re-
alized she could
no longer deny
that "pockets of
inequity" existed
for women in Ju-
daism. Among
them are the divorce laws, which
stipulate only men can grant
women a bill of divorcement.
She also came to realize that
Jewish law is not static but open
to constant reinterpretation. She
came to see, she said, that "where
there was a rabbinic will, there
was a halachic way."
Uncomfortable with the often
"anti-man, anti-family" rhetoric
of much of feminism, Mrs. Green-
berg nonetheless came to see the
women's movement as a way
"into Judaism." Many women
"searching for their roots as
women also are searching for
them as Jews," she said.
Mrs. Greenberg predicts the
Orthodox community will one
day ordain women rabbis, and
she said she is encouraged that
more action is being taken with-
in the modern Orthodox commu-
nity toward equity for women in
issues of divorcement. (Some
Jewish marriage contracts in-
clude a prenuptial agreement
protecting women.)
"The bad news is that we
haven't dealt with the basic issue
of a man's total rights," she said.
"The man still has an absolute
right to give a divorce or withhold
a divorce." O
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