"But Can She Chant?"
White, Barbara
"But Can She Chant?" "Look, a lady chazanV It was the second day of Rosh Ha-shanah, and the elderly man was surprised to see a woman wearing a kittel in the hall of the synagogue. "Are you the...
...That year, girls who were at least thirteen had been allowed to carry the Torah...
...One final word...
...Nervous...
...Here, too, whatever you find comfortable and reasonable will undoubtedly prove provoking to someone else...
...I didn't...
...We could not yet do these on the High Holidays...
...If no one else would do it, there was always me...
...Are you the chazanV he wanted to know...
...Obviously, much depended on how the first step was implemented...
...Making the best of a bad bargain, I decided to use my musically trained ear to nudge and coax my untrained voice along...
...5. Be prepared not to recognize yourself...
...6. Find out what you don't know that you don't know...
...Gradually, more and more women were willing to appear on the bimah, and gradually, men became more and more used to seeing us there...
...Somewhere in the middle of this process, I chanted my first haftarah, the first adult woman in our congregation to chant one...
...Armed with hours of preparation and weakened by a month of insomnia, I stood before a congregation of 750 people...
...If I had anticipated any of this, I would never have opened my mouth for that first haftarah...
...There were cries of "Now...
...If you decide to wear a tal-lit, do you choose a wool one with black stripes, a silk one with blue stripes, or a crocheted one with apricot stripes...
...I suppose the older men had objected to this also...
...2. Start out with a solid core of insufficient knowledge...
...Finally, in the fall, the congregation voted...
...Probably none of it will come directly to you...
...Though I never had a bat mitzvah, I now lead services frequently...
...Women would be allowed to open and close the ark and to tie and dress the Torah in preparation for its return to the ark...
...For example, the Rosh Hashanah musaf begins with a very beautiful prayer, the Hineni...
...I wondered how this would be looked upon by the "regulars," the older men who came to services every Shabbat morning...
...I solved the problem by taking voice lessons...
...I'll say...
...Even if you attend services regularly, you will be surprised at what you have never noticed...
...You really should have one," the rabbi had said, "but the older men would never stand for it...
...But I was prepared...
...Yet, thanks to my new-found commitment, my interest in chanting haftarah portions, and an encouraging husband, I began doing more and more on the bimah...
...One woman really liked that," a friend reported...
...The first occurred when I was twelve...
...We have lost surprisingly few members as a result of it...
...I had long wanted to do a haftarah portion, but that was the extent of my ambitions...
...I could read Hebrew fluently, and I remembered melodies easily...
...She had just opened the ark for the first time in her life, and her eyes shone with tears...
...But that could come later...
...When my husband and I joined, our congregation allowed participation only by girls on the night of their bat mitzvah...
...Inevitably, at least once in each service I led, my voice would emerge thin, flat, and horrible...
...It will give you the courage you need to go ahead...
...A woman leading services has to make some decisions that men do not face...
...I often think of one older woman who was helped down the steps of the bimah by my husband...
...It was "Give her a kiss for me...
...I find that my intensive preparation for leading one Rosh Hashanah service carries over into a better understanding of the entire High Holiday liturgy...
...My husband was then gabbai, which meant that he was in charge of congregational participation in the service...
...The normal response is, "Thank you," not "Yasher koach...
...Yet, by last fall, only some of the newcomers to our congregation were surprised by either my kittel or my davening...
...We now have complete equality for women in our services...
...So, presumably, was everyone else...
...If anyone had predicted this six or seven years ago, I would have scoffed, and a majority of my Conservative congregation would have hit the ceiling...
...Even in the most congenial of congregations, you may experience some negative reaction if you are breaking new ground for women...
...At each step, opposition grew less...
...I remembered two Simchat To-rah services...
...For the following Simchat Torah, when I was thirteen, only boys and men could carry the scrolls...
...After you have performed any honor, whether it is opening the ark or leading a service, anywhere from one to 200 people will shake your hand...
...I need not have worried...
...He now gives me his own kisses...
...I had thought myself immune to bimah fever...
...Both the demands and rewards of participation are particularly great on the High Holidays...
...There were numerous meetings and endless discussions...
...I must admit some sympathy for those who feel I am tampering with the text...
...Get someone knowledgeable to show you when to come in, when to read silently, when to face this way, when to walk that way...
...One who did not was a man in his eighties who often led services and whose initial protests One woman's experience leading public prayer Barbara White at the idea of women on the bimah had been quite vigorous...
...I not only sing better, I sleep better...
...For me, the initial discussion on women's participation released a torrent of memories...
...A crucial part of that first vote was a provision that the congregation would meet every six months to consider further action...
...I remembered the bat mitzvah I had not had and which I had tried to convince myself did not matter...
...In June of 1972, I marked my thirty-sixth birthday by chanting my first haftarah...
...Those first two months, I certainly did more than my share to help the congregation become used to seeing women on the bimah...
...The more traditional among them may say, "Yasher koach," which means "May your strength increase...
...Prodded by my memories, I suddenly discovered that I was a Jewish feminist...
...No more late-summer insomnia...
...The rewards of participation are there, whatever you do...
...In the nonprofessional sense of the word, I was...
...Or so I thought...
...My husband told me of his reaction...
...In 1974, I led my first Rosh Hashanah musaf...
...After many hours of practicing my version of the Hineni, I find it somewhat of a shock to hear it chanted as written...
...eral press...
...Were they ready to accept me...
...I found my resistance as low as anybody's...
...It is unquestionably a personal prayer...
...Almost every Saturday morning, Howard would find one or two women willing to go up on the bimah to open the ark or tie the Torah...
...Before I could become too pleased, my friend went on to report that the man next to her thought my changes were terrible...
...I had by then adjusted to my status as a Jewish woman...
...For the most part, we changed and grew and held together as a congregation...
...It seems that I chose my congregation wisely after all...
...This worked—to a point...
...3. Pick your congregation wisely...
...Every six months, another step or two was added —Shabbat morning bat-mitzvah ceremonies, aliyot for special occasions, opening the ark on the High Holidays...
...Many of them came only on the High Holidays and had never before heard a woman lead a service...
...I consider it not so much a performance as a special way of praying with the rest of the congregation...
...For me it is a key that unlocks new meaning each Rosh Hashanah...
...I had come to services regularly...
...I had even majored in music in college and, for a time, had been a professional musician...
...A more general question is whether to wear a kipah and/or tallit...
...This is the one prayer where the leader prays not on behalf of the congregation, but on his, or in my case her, own behalf...
...They have been tremendous...
...I have had relayed to me second- and third-hand complaints about my voice, my hair, and my shoes...
...4. Have a thick skin...
...and cries of "Never...
...I enjoy leading services...
...But it was an abstract, theoretical sort of feminism...
...She thought it showed you really understood what you were praying about...
...Originally, these men had been very much opposed to increasing women's participation in services...
...My picture had appeared in the local Jewish paper, and I had even been mentioned in the genBarbara White is a freelance writer in Washington, D.C...
...They seemed to have accepted the Shabbat morning bat mitzvah...
...However, in the spring of 1971, the issue of women in services surfaced full force...
...One minor area you may want to know more about is the handshake...
...I began with several advantages...
...Unfortunately, I was a pianist...
...If you plan to lead services for the first time, you need to learn more than the melodies...
...I no more wanted to catch up on missed Jewish opportunities than I wanted to make up for not having learned to roller skate...
...For both the curious and the eager, I offer the following rules for becoming a "lady chazan": 1. Set a limited goal—and forget to stick to it...
...Don't feel you have to make it all the way to "lady chazan...
...As a singer, I was strictly an amateur...
...They make me wonder what I haven't heard about...
...When I finished, several of the "regulars" rushed up to congratulate me...
...I therefore use the feminine form of all the Hebrew nouns, verbs, and adjectives that apply to me...
Vol. 2 • September 1977 • No. 9
