Sermons

Boys’ Night Out – The Absence of Men in American Jewish Life
Rabbi Jared Saks
January 30, 2009

When Rabbi Sarah Messinger served one of her first congregations over 20 years ago, one of the young girls, who was four- or five-years-old, asked her one night at dinner, “Rabbi Sarah,” Rebecca asked, “can boys become rabbis, too?” We laugh, but perhaps it is no joke. When Rebecca Hoberman asked the question, women rabbis were her reality. Now, there exists the possibility of that question becoming the only reality. Over the course of this Shabbat, Rabbi Zimmerman and members of our Temple’s Sisterhood are spending time at Kol Isha, Sisterhood’s women’s weekend that occurs every two years. So, my male colleagues and I thought it would be a great opportunity – while the women are away – for me to address the role of men in American Jewish life, in particular in Reform Judaism.

To begin the process, I started with the website for Men of Reform Judaism, the Reform movement’s men’s group, formerly the National Federation of Temple Brotherhoods. I clicked on the heading “Jewish Men’s Journeys” on the site’s sidebar. Instead of information about the role of men in liberal Judaism, the history of Men’s Clubs and Temple Brotherhoods, I found instead what, in web design lingo, is called a place holder. If you’re not familiar with the lingo of web design, what this means is that where the headings and text will be one day, there is instead just filler written in gibberish. Perhaps this is mean to tell us that we men in Reform Judaism don’t even have anything that can be called a journey anymore. But I’m not so sure of that.

Women outnumber men in nearly all aspects of non-Orthodox Jewish community life. At Hebrew Union College, “the Reform movement’s seminary, 60 percent of the rabbinical students and 84 percent of those studying to become cantors are female. Girls are outnumbering boys by as much as 2 to 1 among adolescents in youth programs and summer camps, while women outnumber men … in a variety of congregational leadership roles” (Paulson) and at worship.

Some call this the feminization of liberal Judaism, but few would say this out loud. The notion of there being a “boy crisis,” as some call it, in liberal Judaism is a touchy subject, especially for feminist scholars. For thousands of years of our history, women were all but written out of the story. As recently at 40 years ago – “when women were not ordained as rabbis, when girls in the Conservative movement celebrate a bat mitzvah on Friday night [rather than Saturday morning], when Orthodox girls did not receive an education remotely comparable to that of their brothers, when women were not called to the Torah for aliyot or allowed on the bimah at all [in some places] – where were all the headlines proclaiming a girl crisis” (Rabbi Rona Shapiro, quoted in Fishkoff)?

But the issue may be that, rather than achieving equality, we have shifted our focus. Instead of broadening our scope beyond men to include women, we altered our attention from boys to girls. And the problem is bigger than we might think. Sylvia Barack Fishman, who authored a report titled “The Growing Gender Imbalance in American Jewish Life” for the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, points out that “As soon as you say that women dominate certain aspects of Jewish life, it sounds as if you’re saying ‘Let’s go back to the way things were.’” That’s not the point of her research, she says, but she reminds us that we need to look at what’s happening and be honest about it. So, what is happening?

The more we fail to engage Jewish men in religious and communal Jewish life, the less likely Judaism will be important to them at home. Women are usually the ones to set a home’s religious tone, but when a Jewish husband is “ambivalent at best, if not downright hostile to” Jewish tradition, due to his own lack of engagement in Judaism when he was younger, what chance does his wife stand of raising Jewish children, even if she wants to? He’s more apt to be a hindrance to his children’s Jewish identities. “Men’s decreased interest in Jews and Judaism walks hand in hand with apathy toward creating Jewish households and raising Jewish children” (Fishman).

Fishman writes that “the boy crisis in liberal Judaism is leading to a continuity crisis that will not be resolved until liberal Judaism finds a way to engage its boys and men” (Fishkoff). Liberal Jewish teenage boys lack the models of adult male commitment to Jewish life that they need to create their own connections to Judaism and Jewish tradition. But the effect that men’s involvement in Judaism is having on Jewish teenage boys is just the tip of the iceberg. “Diminished participation by men in Judaism threatens the health of the Jewish community” (Paulson).

In our Torah portion two weeks ago, Pharaoh decreed that every male born to the Hebrews in Egypt should be put to death. Even Pharaoh understood that an absence of men in Jewish life spelled an end for Judaism. Women alone were not enough to sustain a Jewish community. And this week, in Parashat Bo, we read of the tenth plague in which God strikes down all of the firstborn males in Egypt. This is the worst of the ten plagues, the one that finally gets us out of Egypt. It is worse than the water turning to blood, even though that would have left the Egyptians with no drinking water. It is worse than blight, which would have killed off all of the cattle, greatly reducing the food supply. God understood the power that reducing the number of males would have on the overall community.

The Reform movement, especially the Men of Reform Judaism, is making efforts to broaden our scope and encourage male participation in liberal Judaism once again. At recent Biennial Conventions, when our movement comes together as a whole every two years, there have been men-only worship services. Men of Reform Judaism has published a “Men’s Haggadah,” encouraging congregations to offer men-only Seders. But isn’t traditional Jewish worship already geared towards men – if not exclusively for men – especially in those shuls where women are relegated to a rear section or a balcony? Isn’t the Seder already men’s Seder? Perhaps, but if we don’t figure out how to attract men back to Judaism, then “the stereotypical portrait of a Seder table with the man of house leading the service may look out of place to the next generation of liberal Jews” (Fishkoff).

Fishman’s research uncovered that “Jewish men with connections to Jewishness often had memorable male role models when they were growing up. Interview participants talked about fathers, uncles, and family friends who embodied for them a positive male Jewishness. Sometimes they remembered these men in religious settings, such as synagogues or family religious festivities. More often their memories had secular locales—card games, Jewish resorts, basketball. Occasionally one mentioned a rabbi or teachers, but family members were much more frequent touchstones. However, we do not know if these same men are providing positive male role models and memories for their own children, because few of them spoke about creating those memories” (Fishman).

So, we might have taken a side path, but we are still on the journey; we are still headed in the same direction. And we know that however we are involved in Judaism, we Jewish men ensure that Judaism continues to exist. We serve as Jewish role models for Jewish boys and we need to continue to do that, not only in our Temple life, but also in the ordinary things we do. We need to explore again those things that Judaism offered us for so long that kept us interested for thousands of years. How can we bring them back without narrowing our view and excluding women? What are the things we aren’t doing that would get you, your son, your father, your brother to come back to Temple life? I see this need as I work with our youth, but I can’t bring them back alone, nor can Rabbi Glaser or Cantor Abelson. Pharaoh understood the value that each Jewish male played in the Jewish community. God knew the impact of removing only the firstborn males from a society. We’re on this journey together, we’re all headed in the same direction, and we can’t get there unless everyone’s involved. Shabbat Shalom.

Bibliography
Sue Fishkoff in “Where have all the young men gone?” http://www.jta.org, May 7, 2008.

Sylvia Barack Fishman and Daniel Parmer, Matrilineal Ascent/Patrilineal Descent:  The Gender Imbalance in American Jewish Life, Brandeis University, 2008.

Michael Paulson, “Where have all the men gone?” Boston Globe, June 22, 2008.