A congregant had read in Rabbi Nina Beth Cardin’s book, Tears of Sorrow, Seeds of Hope: A Spiritual Companion for Infertility and Pregnancy Loss, about a folk custom that the rebbetzin in the shtetl would give an infertile woman a red stone. Should a healthy baby be born, the new mother returned the talisman (with its heightened power) to her rebbetzin, who could pass it on to the next struggling woman in need. I was asked to supply her with such a stone.
I composed a small blessing that God’s will – whatever it was – should be done. The stone is back in my possession, and the baby is beautiful.
This stone symbolizes for me the loving feminist reclamation of our great grandmothers’ folkways. Not so long ago, I shared the views of colleagues who felt that Jewish women could never again submit to the indignity of mikveh (ritual bath); the title rebbetzin was demeaning; and the matriarchal longing for babies was also ideologically dubious. Today, even as we export the serious analytic literature of American Jewish feminism and innovate, we also reclaim, and we find new magic in the red gems of our ancestors. [www.jwa.org/feminism]
Suggested Discussion Questions:
1. Lefkowitz claims that, "we also reclaim, and we find new magic in the red gems of our ancestors." How do you understand this statement? How do other feminist thinkers incorporate the experiences of their female predecessors into their own beliefs?
2. How can traditions be re-claimed? What is this process?
3. How do you respond to the claims of Lefkowitz's colleagues that Jewish women could not call themselves feminists while maintaining these traditions? How to reconcile the two?
Time Period: Contemporary (The Yom Kippur War until the present-day)