The Hindu Business Line : Woman with a skullcap

For Rabbi Naamah Kelman, it was all about joining the family business. After all, ten generations had been rabbis, so why couldn’t she, she reasoned.

When Naamah was growing up, women did not become rabbis, they were expected to marry them.

Aditi Bhaduri

She turned heads at the Jaipur Summit of Interfaith Women Leaders, concluded some weeks before the bomb blasts. She was the only one to sport a skullcap, and a woman at that! But considering the ease with which she handled the stares and attention, Rabbi Naamah Kelman, Israel’s first woman Rabbi, must be extremely familiar with the curiosity she arouses. As she probably is to the applause that greeted her opening sentence at the panel: “...And God created them man and woman…”

So what was it that made this articulate and confident woman, born and raised in New York, choose this unusual vocation? Simple, points out Rabbi Naamah, “I wanted to join the family business!” A descendent of “ten generations of rabbis from her father’s side, all of whom were men”, Naamah “changed the paradigm” in her family.

New York was seeing a “tremendous activity in the civil rights movement, in the feminist movement” when she was growing up. “I came from a home which believed passionately in civil rights movement, in embracing the other and interfaith dialogue. I moved to Israel when I was 21 and there I have been involved in education, in civil rights, in community rights, in feminism,” she says.

Living in Israel since 1976, Naamah is working in community organising and Jewish education, seeking a “progressive Judaism”. She’s a founder of the first Progressive Day School and involved with the ‘Mazorim’ Spiritual Care/Israeli Chaplaincy, Rabbis for Human Rights, MELITZ, and the Tali Education Fund.

The struggles

But it has been tough work and a lot of struggle and determination. “Traditional, orthodox Judaism does not allow for women rabbis, there is total inequality. Men are advocated to perform all the rites, to participate in all prayers, women are literally put behind the curtains, the barriers, they are considered the wives, the mothers, the daughters and limited in what they can do. They are considered as property from the homes of their fathers to the property of the homes of their husbands.

That’s the most traditional Judaism and even in modern circles, the tradition has very pernicious and bad influence. Even in secular families, women see themselves as less, they don’t see themselves as having a voice, and they shun participation because they believe the religion doesn’t want them,” she says.

But Judaism went through a huge reformation about 150 years ago, through a huge change in Europe, and that began a more democratic, more progressive Judaism and “I come from the more progressive trend called Reform Judaism that began in 1840s in Germany and then moved to USA and Reformed Judaism has been over the years granting women rights, although the first woman to ever become a Rabbi was just in 1972 in America. So we are really talking about past 35 years of a revolution in Judaism.”

When Naamah was growing up, women did not become rabbis, they were expected to marry them. “I was supposed to marry one. That’s what all the women in my family did — they married rabbis. That’s what women did, they were never rabbis.” She too ended up marrying a rabbi and at 53 is a mother of three today. But she also became a rabbi in her own right.

In Israel the Reform Movement was born in the 1970s. “…there wasn’t a movement to speak of… Only in 1986 did we have a real budget,” she explains. “Then I was the first woman to apply.” And in 1992 she became the first woman rabbi ordained by Jerusalem’s Hebrew Union College, where she now directs the Year in Israel Programme.

But opposition to her rabbi-hood continued. Till this day, Reform Jews, Reform Rabbis face discrimination and subordination in Israel, where the Orthodox Rabbinate controls religion. “I cannot perform weddings, divorces and be recognised. We have synagogues, schools but we are fighting for a different kind of Judaism. Israelis are often either totally secular or orthodox. There is very little middle ground and so there is a fight all the way. But now, it’s also hard for men, for Reformed Rabbis who are men. My brother is a rabbi and he has to fight some of the fight. But I have a double fight, being a woman and a rabbi.”

The teachers

So what does being a rabbi entail? “It’s being a kind of teacher, and I perform certain rituals like marriage, divorce, conversion, burial. The State does not recognise marriages that I do. But we have a system where people can fly to Cyprus, get married and it’s an internationally recognised marriage, and I do the Jewish wedding. At a burial, the orthodox will do the rituals, go away and then I will speak. So we have found all these ways to get around it, and we are fighting all the time to change it, to get women to come in the forefront,” she says.

Interestingly, but perhaps not surprisingly, her greatest inspiration has been her father — Rabbi Wolfe Kelman. “When I think about him, sitting here, I find him the most loving guru, caring, who lit the light in everybody and said everything was possible for women. He was a great model for me, how to teach, how to share, how to empower. He has been a great inspiration, and as far as becoming rabbi, my greatest teacher.”

There have also been some women, great teachers, along the way too, “who showed me that things could be different”. And then there was religion too: “God is manifest in female aspects, called the Schechina among Jews, along with male and present in women and men equally.” So in India, the concept of Shakti, the female divinity latent in every human being, is appealing and not strange to her.

In fact her name is full of symbolism. Naamah is said to be the name of the wife of the Biblical Noah. Yet, while the divine ordination was to save ‘a pair of each kind’ — male and female, successive male interpretations of Judaic holy texts make no mention of Noah’s wife.

And so feminism and religion merged well together, there was no conflict.

Role for religion

And that is why, Rabbi Naamah, feminist that she is, remained within religion and challenged traditions from a woman’s perspective. She, unlike many others, did not leave religion altogether and become ‘secular’.

“I was brought up to be a religious person, a reformed religious person. I am a descendent of the tradition of dialogue. And I felt that destiny and history met and I could become a rabbi.” Moreover, she feels religion has a positive role to play in people’s lives the world over. It offers “hope and promise”.

As a rabbi, and in order to carry on the “tradition of dialogue” that she inherited from her family, Naamah also participates in numerous interfaith and inter-religious dialogues, believing pluralism to be essential in a world “where we are more enmeshed and responsible for each other’s wellbeing than ever before”.

Dialogue, she says is the ability to “hear the cry of the other, to literally reach out, and act, intervene; to build a partnership with someone who may actually even be your so-called sworn enemy”. This, she feels, has the power to change the course of history. “In Dialogue, we see the human face of our adversaries. The God I believe in commands us to see every human being as created in the image of God.” And then, looking up at the tranquil Jaipur twilight sky, she says, “In our Shalom I hear your Om.”

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