The Lilith Blog

October 7, 2020 by Rebecca Sassouni

I Had Planned a Midlife Hair Makeover— Then Covid Showed Up

Dear Reader,

In the midst of a terrible season, allow me some self-indulgence.

During the winter of 2020 before the world derailed with Covid-19, I was 49 years old, facing my 50th birthday with a mix of excitement and resignation. Certainly, I was glad to be healthy, in an intact marriage, with growing wonderful children, and a full roster of friends, family, social engagements, community service, and even a resuscitated second act after retirement to practicing as an attorney in solo practice.

The Lilith Blog

May 13, 2019 by Rebecca Sassouni

Why I Started—and Then Stopped—Wearing My Tallit

Seven years after beginning to wear a tallit during prayer, I decided to stop. It was not easy to begin to take on the mitzvah wearing a tallit. Neither has it been easy in the nearly two years since I stopped.

When I wore a tallit, it was an outward manifestation of my inner conviction that women and men are made in God’s image, equal, and equally obligated to the mitzvot. As I selected and wore each of my beautiful tallitot, I felt nestled in these powerful convictions. I also felt nimble as I’d twist and braid the tzitziot on my own tallit as I had my grandfathers’ and my dad’s as a child.  Hoping that my son and daughters would someday feel connected to Judaism and mitzvot, too. I first began wearing tallit the year of my eldest children’s b’nai mitzvah.

When I chose to refrain from wearing the tallit, it was the result of the creeping realization of my own naivete: My personal convictions notwithstanding, men and women are not treated equally, are not equally safe in synagogues or the world-at-large. Wearing tallitot conspicuously marked me, exposing the vulnerability of my most deeply held beliefs while living through reactionary times where minority beliefs are so readily misconstrued, denigrated, and marginalized.

The Lilith Blog

January 8, 2019 by Rebecca Sassouni

The Persian-Israeli Singer Who Makes Me Feel Whole

Growing up in the 1970s in Queens, New York, as the first-born daughter of Jewish immigrants from Iran, I was unable to articulate how I felt different from the other kids in my public elementary school: I could tell my teacher, Mrs. Rice, loved me, but I had never been called “bubbeleh” before. There were plenty of Jewish kids, but none whose families, like mine, ate rice during Passover. The other kids spent their time at sleepovers and sleepaway camps my parents would not allow me to attend. One afternoon, in 1979, after the Iranian Revolution, as a bunch of us walked from school to Hebrew school at the synagogue up the street, I felt the sting of my differentness, when a boy I had known for years turned to me angrily and hissed, “You, Iranian!”

The upheaval of that revolution scattered tens of thousands of Iranian Jews away from their country, most to the United States or Israel.

The Lilith Blog

September 20, 2018 by Rebecca Sassouni

Why I Didn’t Talk for The Duration of Yom Kippur

Jews throughout time and space have a practice of atoning during Yom Kippur by refraining from eating and drinking for 25 hours. From time to time, including this year, I choose to add to my dietary fast by voluntarily abstaining from speech, too.

Evidently this practice is called Taanit Dibbur (a speech fast), but I only learned that after I had already adopted the practice about five years ago. (You can find out more with a Google search.) I am not a rabbi or Torah scholar, but I am a mom, wife, daughter, sister, friend, attorney, writer, trustee and advocate. Thus, words and speech are the very stuff of my life. Like most stuff, words can accumulate, get cluttered, and need to be purged from my mental space. For this reason, taanit dibbur is a valuable clarifying spiritual exercise I highly recommend.

The Lilith Blog

February 2, 2018 by Rebecca Sassouni

Why I Became Fascinated by a Teshuvah on Women and Mitzvot

Ever read something you knew was arcane but been fascinated by it nevertheless? Maybe you even wanted to discuss deeply like when you were back in school, not just as a shallow “share” on a social media post? Well, that was me about three and a half years ago when I read Rabbi Dr. Pamela Barmash’s 30-some-odd page teshuvah (legal opinion) on Women and Mitzvot. Yeah, I said I was excited by a long legal treatise. Occupational hazard of being me, a literate Jew, a philosophy minor, English major, with a J.D. Anyway, Barmash’s holding was at once simple and revolutionary: women were never properly exempted, excluded, or prohibited from-time bound mitzvot. The relegation of women to second-class status was a colossal misreading of Jewish texts. 

The teshuvah asks if Jewish women are responsible for observing the mitzvot from which they have traditionally been excluded. Barmash argues both retrospectively and prospectively that women are in fact responsible to observe mitzvot. 

If you’re wondering why I found the teshuvah interesting, wondering why I thought anyone else would want to discuss it, I’d certainly understand. After all, on the one hand, many Jews don’t feel particularly bound or obligated to mitzvot, so what difference does the teshuvah make? On the other hand, many Jews who abide by mitzvot are so entrenched to years of their genderedness that they would not necessarily be inclined to discuss or be persuaded by it either. Personally, I fall into the former category, feeling bound like the definition of “Rebecca” and like my family before me to mitzvot. I feel tethered to Judaism even as I know it is hard to reconcile with humanism, feminism and modernity. This tension I feel between being both bound and bothered makes it pressing for me that women count in a minyan, be included in the Amidah and recite the Shema. I take no comfort in the theology which patronizingly tells us that women are on a pedestal, so close to God, that they need not bother with mitzvot.

Perhaps unsurprisingly—after the high of my initial epiphany—I read the teshuvah a couple times and put it away.

About a month ago, an opportunity arose which brought the document to the fore of my consciousness again: A few friends were discussing whether and how to do a second Shabbat-appropriate woman-themed event timed to coincide with women’s marches all over the world January 20, 2018. Last year, the group had hosted Rabbi Abby Sosland to address us. This year, I debated with myself whether to raise Rabbi Barmash’s 2014 teshuvah to the group. After all, it was three years old, I hadn’t heard anything about it since, and it was a little arcane. My bolder self rose to the fore, and I suggested inviting her. Lo and behold, the others agreed. Even more miraculously, when we wrote to Rabbi Barmash—out of the blue—she agreed to make the trip to address our group and congregation as a scholar-in-residence during Shabbat.