Counting the Omer Day 10 - 1 week, 3 days

Today is Tiferet she b'Gevurah - a day of compassion in a week of strength.


At Ritualwell.org you will find Rabbi Jill Hammer's Omer Calendar of biblical women. Day 10 is the day of Deborah, the only woman judge mentioned in the Book of Judges.

My feelings on the place women and the GLBT community have in the Conservative movement's "Big Tent" theory is clear--see this post. My bottom line--the theory doesn't work unless anyone can go everywhere in the big tent, and only straight males have that privilege.

One of the voices who reflect my views is Rabbi Judith Hauptman, a pre-eminent Talmudic scholar and professor at the Jewish Theological seminary, where she has taught since 1973. (If you read this bio from the JTS site, you'll see in the last paragraph that her rabbinical ordination is from the non-denominational Academy for Jewish Religion. Why not JTS, I wonder.......). Two years ago, as the Conservative movement was facing a change in leadership, she wrote this article in The Jewish Week outlining the challenges that lie ahead. Today, in a drash published in The Forward on this week's Torah parasha, Shemini, she continues the theme but expands the challenges to the entire Jewish community. She also outlines changes in Jewish practice regarding women and gays across all denominations. While there is still a long way to go, she reminds us that there has been evolution and there is cause for hope:

"The larger point in this entire debate is that the past 35 years have witnessed the halachic maturation of the American Jewish community. Every one of its segments, in one way or another, has adapted itself to the realization that women are as fully human as men. Every one of its segments is also rethinking its attitudes toward, and its treatment of, gay men and women. We tend to focus on the issue of the moment. If we look instead at what has happened to Judaism over time, we will find it exhilarating: The American Jewish community has restored the ethical impulse to its halachic deliberations. A cause for celebration."

כן יהי רצון Ken y'hi ratzon - May it be so.