Rosh Chodesh Sivan 5776 - Are we ready to stand at Sinai? Women of Temple Beth Hillel

15. "[the men among] you should not go near a woman." In vv. 14-15, Moses implements the instructions received in vv. 10-13. He repeat's God's charge to the Israelites to stay pure and launder their clothes, while he adds the command not to approach a woman. The prohibition seems to concern sexual intercourse (based on how the synonymous verb k-r-v is used in Leviticus 18:14; 20:16; Deut. 22:14; Isa. 8:3). According to Lev. 15:18, sexual intercourse renders both parties ritually impure, so that they may not have access to the Sanctuary or objects deemed holy. By specifying a common action that would preclude individuals from participation in the sacred event of revelation, Moses amplifies God's directions to ensure the purity of the people. ...

Some scholars infer from this that Moses spoke only to the men; they argue that if women were included in the covenant community, Moses would have phrased his warning in mutual terms, something akin to: "Men and women do not go near each other." However, this suggestion can be challenged by the fact that biblical Hebrew rarely addresses sexual relations in mutual terms. Instead, references to sexual relations usually contain a masculine subject and a female subject: a man "knows" a woman, "lies" or "lies with" her, "approaches" her, or "comes to" her. This language presents the male as the active figure and the female as the passive party. Although this linguistic pattern is problematic for contemporary readers, it means that the address to men in this verse cannot be used to argue that women were excluded from revelation at Sinai.

Note on Ex. 19:15 from The Torah: A Women's Commentary, pp. 414-415.

Read from a feminist perspective, Yitro contains one of the most painful verses of the Torah. At the formative moment in Jewish history, when presumably the whole people of Israel stands in awe and trembling at the base of Mount Sinai waiting for God to descend upon the mountain and establish the covenant, Moses turns to the assembled community and says, "Be ready for the third day: do not go near a woman" (19:15). Moses wants to ensure that the people are ritually prepared to receive God's presence, and an emission of semen renders both a man and his female partner temporarily unfit to approach the sacred (see Lev. 15:16-18). But Moses did not say, "Men and women do not go near each other." Instead at this central juncture in the Jewish saga, he renders women invisible as part of the congregation about to enter into the covenant.

These words are deeply troubling for at least two reasons. First, they are a paradigm of the treatment of women as "other," both elsewhere in this portion and throughout the Torah. Again and again, the Torah seems to assume that the Israelite nation consists only of male heads of households. It records the experiences of men, but not the experiences of women. For example, the tenth commandment--"You shall not covet your neighbor's wife" (20:14)--presupposes a community of male hearers.

Second, entry into the covenant at Sinai is not just a one-time event, but an experience to be reappropriated by every generation (Deut. 29:13-14). Every time the portion is chanted, whether as part of the annual cycle of Torah reading or as a special reading for Shavuot, women are thrust aside once again, eavesdropping on a conversation among men, and between men and God. The text thus potentially evokes a continuing sense of exclusion and disorientation in women. The whole Jewish people supposedly stood at Sinai. Were we there? Were we not there? If we were there, what did we hear when the men heard "do not go near a woman"? If we were not there originally, can we be there now? Since we are certainly part of the community now, how could we not have been there at that founding moment? ...

Several lessons can be drawn from this. One is the inseparability of revelation and interpretation. There is no revelation without interpretation; the foundational experience of revelation also involves a crucial act of interpretation. Second, we learn that the process of interpretation is ongoing. What Moses does, the Rabbis in this case seek to undo. While they reiterate and reinforce the exclusion of women in many contexts, they mitigate it in others. Third, insofar as the task of interpretation is continuing, it now lies with us. If women's absence from Sinai is unthinkable to the Rabbis--despite the fact that they repeatedly reenact that absence in their own work--how much more must it be unthinkable to women and men today who function in communities in which women are full Jews? We have the privilege and the burden of recovering the divine words reverberating behind the silences in the text, recreating women's understandings of revelation throughout Jewish history.

Excerpt from "Contemporary Reflection" by Dr. Judith Plaskow The Torah: A Women's Commentary, p. 423.

We All Stood Together by Merle Feld

for Rachel Adler

My brother and I were at Sinai

He kept a journal

of what he saw

of what he heard

of what it all meant to him

I wish I had such a record

of what happened to me there

It seems like every time I want to write

I can't

I'm always holding a baby

one of my own

or one for a friend

always holding a baby

so my hands are never free

to write things down

And then

as time passes

the particulars

the hard data

the who what when where why

slip away from me

and all I'm left with is

the feeling

But feelings are just sounds

the vowel barking of a mute

My brother is so sure of what he heard

after all he's got a record of it

consonant after consonant after consonant

If we remember it together

we could recreate holy time

sparks flying

a spiritual life: a jewish feminist journey, p. 205