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September 10, 1999/29 Elul 5759, Vol. 52, No. 1
Speaking of God
Rabbis, scholars struggle to enhance prayer experience with inclusive language
VICKI CABOT
Contributing Editor
Marilyn Carson blesses the Sabbath lights at a Ruach Hamidbar-Spirit of the Desert service. Ruach Hamidbar includes a choice of three candle blessings in its prayer book.
Photo by Barry Bisman
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Our Father, our King.
Our Mother, our Queen?
New translations, reflecting sensitivity to women and appreciation for female attributes of God, are appearing in High Holiday liturgies.
Even such prayers as the Avinu Malkeynu, a particularly familiar and resonant prayer recited on Yom Kippur, may be cast in egalitarian language, reflecting efforts to make even the most traditional prayers more inclusive.
"Prayer is the deepest spiritual and emotional experience we can have," says Rabbi Ayla Grafstein of Ruach Hamidbar - Spirit of the Desert, whose Renewal congregation's translation of the Avinu Malkeynu alternates "O Mother" with "O Father."
"It has to be something we can respond to," she says.
Grafstein and others are grappling with the language of prayer to make it accessible and satisfying to both men and women. At the same time, they seek to preserve the powerful emotional response that familiar words and melodies evoke.
"It's a gentle line that we walk," says Marlene Burns, a lay service leader at Temple Chai.
Historically, much English-language Jewish liturgy has been steeped in male images. Both God language and people language reflect male dominance. Powerful words such as "lord," "master" and "king" are used to describe God; masculine words such as "mankind" refer to humanity.
To many contemporary worshippers, such language is insensitive and limiting.
"You tend to feel excluded if you hear it over and over again," says Rabbi Bonnie Koppell of Temple Beth Shalom in Mesa.
Rabbis and scholars attribute the predominance of masculine language to a variety of factors. Grammatically, Hebrew is a gendered language; every noun and its corresponding verb form is either masculine or feminine. To further complicate matters, all collective nouns are expressed in the masculine form.
"It's a language problem," says Burns. And the language problem becomes compounded in translation.
"In English there is a neutral," observes Rabbi Barton Lee. "In Hebrew, there is not." Baruch atah (blessed are you) is clearly masculine in Hebrew, notes the rabbi, while in English, the same words would be gender neutral.
Social constructs contribute to the problem. Feminist scholars hold that the structure of the conventional household with the male as its head contributed to the concept of God as masculine, explains Arizona State University Professor Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, an expert on Jewish medieval philosophy.
But for many, referring to God in male terms is an issue of theology - of irrefutable Jewish law.
"God is the master. He is the creator. He gives us life," says Rabbi Zalman Levertov of Congregation Bais Menachem /Chabad-Lubavitch Center in Phoenix. "It is 'he' because God is the one who gives the world."
Levertov allows only minor textual changes from officially recognized translations, eliminating obsolete words such as "thee" and "thou" that can confuse meaning. He says that the prayers recited at his central Phoenix synagogue are the same as those chanted 3,000 years ago.
"We are praying as our fathers did, back to the time of the Temple," he says.
Tirosh-Samuelson explains that for Jews who accept the revealed status of the text, words can not be changed, but the meaning is open to interpretation.
The Reform and Conservative movements both accept evolutionary change in liturgical language, with varying limitations. "What is in the prayer book can be changed," says Lee. "There isn't just one siddur."
"Since the late 1800s, no two prayer books have been the same," says Rabbi B. Charles Herring of Temple Kol Ami. "In the Reform movement, no two generations have prayed out of the same prayer book."
Herring's congregation uses a traditional, 25-year-old prayer book for its High Holiday services, but the Friday night service was written by the congregation, a phenomenon that is reflective of contemporary social reality.
"I added the English matriarchs and the patriarchs (to traditional prayers)," says Herring, "understanding that avotenu, plural for 'patriarchs,' is collective (refers to both men and women)."
Herring suggests that gender issues in liturgy are driven more by political than religious agendas. Some of those changing the liturgy seek to redress political disparities rather than enhance the reflective experience of prayer, he says.
"We rush to supplant what we see as inequities."
While the Reform movement is readily acknowledged as being on the forefront of gender equality, the Jewish Renewal and Reconstructionist movements are equally innovative, and often more so.
The new Reconstructionist prayer book is gender neutral, eschewing all specifically masculine or feminine references such as "he" and "she." Ruach Hamidbar's High Holiday liturgy, written by Rabbi David Wolfe-Blank, is suffused with both masculine and feminine images of God.
The duality of God's image is universally accepted in Jewish thought. The shechinah, one of the feminine manifestations of God, and other feminine imagery have a prominent place in kabbalah (Jewish mysticism)
While Levertov of Chabad qualifies such representations as "another level of godliness" and maintains the essential maleness of God, some rabbis and scholars hold that the feminine imagery amplifies the understanding of God in daily and holiday prayer.
"It helps to conceptualize God," says Marcie Lee, who teaches a popular course on women in Judaism at ASU, "and it more accurately reflects the nature of God."
Marcie Lee cites the creation story in Genesis as evidence of the duality of God. She refers to Genesis 1:27: "God created man in his image, in the image of God, he created him; male and female, he created them."
"If both men and women are created in the image of God, then what is God?" she posits. The biblical text says that the name of God is male, she says, but not the nature of God.
Grafstein draws on a multitude of names and manifestations of God in general use. The frontispiece of Ruach Hamdibar's machzor (prayer book for holidays and festivals) contains 31 names for God, ranging from the traditional Borai (creator), Shaddai (almighty) and Hashem (the name of God); to Malkah (queen), Rahamayma (compassionate womb mother) and Hakadosh Barucha hi (blessed be she).
Multiple names for God play on God's universality, making the Deity more accessible, say proponents of inclusive worship language.
"It is important for people to relate to the infiniteness of God and that God is available in so many different attributes," Grafstein says.
She explains that every name of God corresponds to a specific quality. "If I need a god of judgment, I would call out Elohim," she explains. "If I need a god of compassion, Yahweh."
Grafstein says that she is amplifying, rather than changing, tradition. "I am looking at the tradition and finding new ways to use it."
Koppell also sees the liturgy expanding, not changing. "We're adding rather than subtracting," she says, by highlighting feminine aspects of God and providing meaningful choices for men and women in the prayer experience.
She suggests that using a word such as "humanity" as a replacement for "mankind" is a gentle way of signaling inclusiveness. Other changes might include avoiding "he" or "him" when referring to God and using gender-neutral terms, such as "Creator."
"We can make small changes that make women feel valued," says Koppell.
But the zeal to make language inclusive should be tempered with reverence for tradition and familiarity, rabbis say. "There is great power in the traditional words and great power in more feminine words," says Grafstein. "We need to integrate both."
Barton Lee says that he hesitates to change the words Avinu Malkeynu (Our Father, Our King) in the Yom Kippur service because of their resonance. He may, however, follow the model in Mahzor Hadash, a Conservative machzor that uses transliterated Hebrew at the start of each English sentence in the translation, rather than translating God language into gender-specific English words.
Burns, the Temple Chai lay leader, says traditional liturgy evokes childhood memories, providing a powerful link with her past. She acknowledges that she is resistant to change and cautions about arbitrarily excising sections of the prayer book.
Yet she notes the benefit of making the language more gender sensitive. "It makes it more personal," she says.
There is a difference between personal prayer and its communal manifestation, rabbis note. When prayer is a communal experience, many rabbis and lay leaders struggle to make it meaningful for a broad cross-section of worshippers.
Many Jews attend services only on High Holidays, and the language they hear and read can affect their view of the community and their perception of themselves in relationship to the community as well as with God, they say.
"The big thing is to be sensitive," says Burns. "The important thing is that we are praying as a community" and engaged in developing a personal relationship with God.
The essential question, says Tirosh-Samuelson, is "how we relate to God and not only what language we use to relate to God."
The translation of the Avinu Malkeynu should be of less concern than the essence of prayer, Jewish leaders say. After all, reminds Burns, "God came before gender and (before) the English language."
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