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by Rabbi Geela Rayzel
“And Miriam took her timbrel out and all the women danced.”
1984. Toronto. While driving after studying and continuing to reflect upon a little-known verse of Torah about Miriam the prophetess, suddenly it felt like the heavens opened. The verse became a multi-stanza song that was “revealed” to me. I had to pull over to write it down. Having created only two small songs earlier, this to me was a “spiritual experience” showing me a glimpe of my calling, This experience empowered me to receive, write, shape, and record rivers of women’s music—my own, and also eventually with the a capela ensemble MIRAJ.
That first Miriam song also fueled my excitement to search for more Jewish women’s and feminist musicians, composers, and music-- songs that spoke to the times: where feminism and Judaism began to so strongly wrestle and dance with each other. That song lead me to Rosh Hodesh group celebrations, feminist seders and to my sisters of song. Debbie Friedman and many more singer/songwriters were emerging, too, all brimming with the excitement of new music, new midrash, new books, new ritual, and the new poetry of women’s voices filling the wide gaps in our tradition regarding the lives of Jewish women and children.
Why so many gaps? Contemporary Judaism has emerged from patriarchy, where many aspects of Jewish law and tradition suppress “kol isha—a woman’s voice in song order to supposedly lower their allure. The power to decide halachah, Jewish law, lead services, conduct rights of passage, was also reserved for males until Jewish feminists found allies among our men, developed widespread activism, and gradually it is the case that women are being granted equal religious rights across the spectrum of Jewish life.
In 1985, the B’nai Or Jewish Renewal organization, now named ALEPH, held a gathering called a Kallah in Radnor, Pennsylvania. This gathering brought together many people from across North America and the world, Included were many songwriters who connected deeply over the need to share and increase the range of Jewish spiritual and feminist music for services, ritual and activism. I remember someone running to get me to come hear Sherry Pelicrow, now known as Rabbi Shefa Gold, sing her inspiring, yearning song of resistance to patriarchy: “ Behind the Mehitza” and “No More Big Daddy.” I was moved to tears to hear my same theme for women’s equality echoed in the songs of others. That song sharing went late into the night, the intense feeling of partnership in the Jewish women’s revolution was almost overwhelming.
We began adding feminine names of the divine to ritual and prayer, especially Shechinah, the term our scriptures and sages use for God as imminent, present. Later, like the Kabbalists, the divine feminine became very important in our work. New Jewish music becomes needed naming ceremonies for girls and rituals for ordaining women rabbis, cantors, rabbinic pastors and maggidot, Jewish sacred storytellers. The lives of Jewish women in Torah, Talmud, and Jewish history become the focus of graduate studies, doctoral dissertations and books. Our souls surge toward representing the torah of Jewish women’s lives and stories in song. Songs for our relationships and bodies are needed and come to me and others—songs about naming our children, infertility, miscarriages, the onset of menstruation, and when the times came, menopause. Songs emerged, too, for our sisters in Torah—love, loss, rape, death, acting for the good and justice and so much more.
Gender-balanced music has also become helpful as the range of Jewish worship, ritual and practice continues towards full gender balance and inclusion. And, more recently, as consciousness of gender as a full spectrum increases, so too, has the call for compositions with gender neutral lyrics. Accordingly, our collection continued to expand with the times.
Early on, some of us began to produce our own recordings. These became calling cards, making our efforts and Jewish feminism more visible. I also began to collect pieces from songwriters who only had one or two compositions, Friends who helped me to shape the early collection were Linda HIrschhorn, Rabbi Sue Levi Elwell, Aviva Cantor and Shelly Mann. We began to talk of a Jewish feminist song book, each securing emerging pieces, in any form available-- some even scribbled on scraps of paper. The project then languished. I went to Israel for a year, then rabbinical school, and began having children. I starting singing with MIRAJ, in ensemble with Juliet Spitzer and Rabbi Margot Stein. We learned to compose together and to record professionally. Then came more life and more delays.
The richness of Jewish women’s and Jewish feminist music created by Jews across the spectrum of gender has exploded during my lifetime. Influences range across folk, jazz, reggae, hip hop, choral, rock, and the modes and tropes of Hazzanut. Feminist songwriters are drawing from the cultures of their home countries, as well as from their Ashkenazi, Sephardi, and/or Middle Eastern roots.
One day, out of the blue, in 19?? 2??? I receive an email from Sarah Ross, a doctoral student in Germany explaining that she is studying my music and wants to come visit me. She comes to America and tells me about her research on Jewish feminist music. We spend an afternoon together. I show her my boxes, files and piles of collected song sheets, old tapes, brochures, and other related items. She is excited about the collection, and I feel happy to know someone as interested and excited as I when it comes to the evolution of the genre of Jewish women’s and feminist music.
A year passes and Sarah returns. This time she stays for a week. Sarah couldn’t have picked a better week, as I have a studio date for recording, a MIRAJ rehearsal, and a Shabbat Unplugged, a band of soulful musicians, performance and a Saturday morning service to lead at the synagogue I served; all places where my music would be heard.
That week we spoke non-stop about the history of Jewish women’s music. I show her my yet unpublished collection of Jewish women’s songs from the early 80s. We dream together of getting it published.
For at least a decade we speak long-distance about plans to publish Sarah’s thesis on Jewish feminist music and this songbook with it. We begin to get the music notated and into publishable order.
We work with Cantor Ron Fishman, of blessed memory, on standardizing the sheet music. In the meantime, a new generation of Jewish feminist music is unfolding and so we increase the collection again. Sarah’s thesis is accepted for publication, but by now our collection is too large for full inclusion within it.
When Ron Fishman is murdered by one of his tenants in the fall of 2014, we are devastated by the loss of a dear friend and collaborator and think all is lost, as our body of sheet music was primarily in his possession. Unaware of this situation, around the same time, my friend and colleague, Rabbi Goldie Milgram, makes contact to ask how publication is going with our volume of sheet music. Goldie founded and heads the non-profit publishing house, Reclaiming Judaism Press, which had just had a book she co-edited honored by the National Jewish Books Awards. She explains our body of work could become just the sort of book that would fit her organization’s mandate: to publish needed new resources for Jewish learning and living.
When it is discovered that Pam Hitchock received Ron’s computer after his death, she works with Goldie to rescue our files. At that point we sign with Reclaiming Judaism Press. As Editor-in-Chief for the publishing house, Goldie, a long-time friend, classmate, and sister-in-this-revolution joins the volume team as a co-editor, created a formal jurying and publication process--and with her passion and zeal and commitment to the project, creates a plan to expand the initiative to include a juried process and composers from around the world, adds showcase concerts, seeks out a formal archive to access the collection, and more. Now it is finally debuting and seeing the light of day!
As project founder, I want to express gratitude to everyone who contributed their music towards making this initiative possible. Some generously offered us their entire bodies of work in appreciation for the historical importance of documenting the restoration of Jewish women’s voices, visions, views, and values to Jewish life through the composition of Jewish music. We also intend to create ensembles of the contributing composers to offer workshops and concerts at Jewish conferences, schools, camps and organizations worldwide. We pray this volume will be acquired, equally so, and also given as gifts to every generation now and forward. As I write this, human rights are still widely threatened in the year 2020 and it is evident that we must be vigilant to celebrate and uphold gender inclusion at all times, in all places, and for all time. Please join us.
Rabbi Geela Rayzel
(c) 2020 Reclaiming Judaism Press
Seeking and Soaring ...
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