I was a young teen when my mother a”h told me that, if I didn’t say Pitum ha’Ketoret, “the incense prayer,” I wouldn’t find a husband. I recognized the irony in her tone, which signaled an old wives’ tale she had likely heard from her own mother. And yet, I repeated the words without fail for years, all the while wondering what relevance they had to my marital prospects… or to prayer, in general. Long before it occurred to me that the siddur (prayer book), or the authoritative nusach (rite) I had learned in the first grade, was just that – a nusach – I hadn’t given much, if any, thought to the prayers or their source. By the second grade, my classmates and I could recite the entire morning service from memory; nevertheless, though fluent in Hebrew, none of us could give context to the text.

Every few months, I come across a query about Birkot ha’Shachar, “the dawn blessings” – and about one, in particular, that provokes, exasperates and offends our modern sensibilities.

Blessed are you, Lord, our God, ruler of the universe, who has not made me a woman.

Orthodox feminists of both sexes are equally perturbed by the widely accepted alternative prescribed for women.

Blessed are you, Lord, our God, ruler of the universe, who has made me according to His will.

And, whilst it smacks of resignation, this blessing, which dates back to the late Middle Ages, is still common in many liturgical traditions.

Abraham Farrisol, the fifteenth-century Italian biblical scholar, polemicist and geographer, knew better. In 1471 and 1480, respectively, he hand-wrote siddurim for two women. A pioneering thinker and, arguably, proto-feminist, Farrisol supplanted acquiescence with a more emphatic verse.

Blessed are you, Lord, our God, ruler of the universe, who has made me a woman and not a man.

Whether we view tefillah (prayer) as a spiritual, cultural or intellectual endeavor, it is, at once, a communal and personal ritual from which orthodox women are not exempt but are largely excluded. The mekhitzah (partition) instantiates the perception of women as the uncounted other. Present, but unseen. Present, but unheard. Safely removed from the male gaze and, heaven forbid, his impure thoughts. And yet, when freed from its shackles of script and structure, tefillah is – rather, can be – a testament to our vital and evolving faith.

Nothing – including this essay – is composed in a vacuum. Everything – including the siddur – must be viewed with some appreciation of the social, political, intellectual and cultural realities in which it was written, edited, printed and published. All this is to say that Judaism does not – rather, should not – exist independently of its historical and moral contexts. And the same may be said of tefillah.

Consider for a moment the exclusory language of the Misheberach blessing for the kahal (community), itself a later addition, which concludes the Yekum Purkan trilogy:

He Who blessed our forefathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. May He bless this entire holy congregation, together with all the holy congregations – them and their wives and their sons and their daughters and all that is theirs….

Now, consider a modern orthodox rabbi’s reluctance to adopt the widely accepted modification of this language: “them and their families and all that is theirs.” It stands to reason that a prayer, intended to publicly recognize the good works of the whole community, should be chanted aloud by the ba’al tefillah (the leader of the service). But not in this rabbi’s synagogue. And the paradox of reciting it silently – “so as not to offend,” in his words – was never lost on me.

So as not to offend whom? The wives? Or, perhaps, those of us who had neither husband nor father?

Exclusion whitewashed with silence.

I imagine few people’s thoughts turn to literature – let alone Jane Austen – while praying. I also imagine few people who know me would be surprised to learn that mine do. A room at the fictional White Hart hotel in Bath provides the setting for a masterfully scripted debate on the character and constitution of men and women in a novel aptly titled Persuasion.

Capt. Harville: Well, Miss Elliot… as I was saying, we shall never agree I suppose upon this point. No man and woman would, probably. But let me observe that all histories are against you, all stories, prose and verse…. I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon woman’s inconstancy. Songs and proverbs all talk of woman’s fickleness. But perhaps you will say, these were all written by men.

Anne: Perhaps I shall. —Yes, yes, if you please, no reference to examples in books. Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands.

If ever there was a book in want of a close reading – and, to this writer’s mind, some revision – it is the siddur. The power of a text is in its cultural context, but Jewish liturgy, composed and edited by men and for men, still favors the male prerogative over community. Furthermore, in too many synagogues, where “time-bound” denotes when the service must end – or kiddush must begin – the text and context of tefillah form a rite to be raced through rather than reflected upon.

Do you have a favorite prayer? What is it? Why?

Jane Austen’s Persuasion reveals both a self-conscious and often ambivalent regard for tradition aggravated by an impulse to cast a skeptical eye upon everything. And yet, the manner in which this, her last novel, oscillates between reflection and action, between rationalism and idealism, between external rituals and internal motives, calls to mind the customs and practices we associate with the month of Elul.

I like the idea of Elul – the month leading up to Rosh Hashanah, during which we stop and take stock. I like the idea of the Kabbalistic tradition, which imagines us – socially as well as spiritually – achor el achor (back to back) at the beginning of Elul and panim el panim (face to face) at the end of the High Holy Days. I like the idea of retrospection, introspection and resolution. And I like the idea of prayer – of avodah she’balev (service of the heart) – that is communal and personal, relevant and respectful to all.

Consider the Source

שנה טובה