Rabbi Elazar said in the name of Rabbi Yose ben Zimra, “Greater powers of understanding were given to women than to men (Midrash Bereshit Rabbah 18:1).” This quarterly installment of my rabbinic musings is dedicated to women in general, and to three in particular – my mother, Shirley Shlachter, my wife, Beverly Post, and my daughter, Orli Shlachter. Recently, Orli turned twenty years old (NO MORE TEENAGERS!!) She’s working diligently on a degree in International Relations at University of Colorado in Boulder.
Being without teenagers inspired Beverly and me to host a Jewish high school foreign exchange student for the fall semester. Mauricio, who’s now back home in Rio de Janiero, joined us on a November visit to Boulder. Thanks, Orli, for arranging the weather so Mauricio could see his first snowfall!.. truly an opportunity for him to say “Shehecheyanu.”
This quarter, I have been busy offering blessings and conducting services both at HaMakom in Santa Fe and at the Los Alamos Jewish Center. On the somber side, I officiated at a memorial service for former refusenik Shulim Kogan. Joy balances sorrow, and I also had the privilege of leading an aufruf, calling up a bride and groom to the Torah on the Shabbat before their wedding. Perhaps less formal but thoroughly joyous was my rabbinic role at a pseudo-spontaneous renewal of wedding vows during a surprise party arranged by friend Steven for his bride of many years, Suzanne.
Beverly has been consistently supportive of my book-buying habit, but during the Thanksgiving week she and exchange-student Mauricio spent in New York, I did get a little carried away with online orders. Mauricio shlepped the heaviest boxes for me, including my new Artscroll Midrash Rabbah (cited above). It’s amazing how I always manage to find just the right gift for myself on Chanukkah! Other recent acquisitions include a handful of haggadot well in advance of Pesach, including facsimile editions of the Rylands Haggadah and the Kaufmann Haggadah. Neither of these books have the smell of my Mom’s seders, but medieval Jews probably didn’t know her recipe for Pesach bagels.
BOOKS: That November week on my own boosted my reading list as well, and with a focus on women, I tried the experiment of sticking exclusively to books by women these last three months. Notable highlights were some scholarly tomes (The Women of the Talmud by the late Rabbi Judith Z. Abrams, Women Leaders in the Ancient Synagogue by Bernadette Brooten, Between Worlds: The Life and Thought of Rabbi David ben Judah Messer Leon by Hava Tirosh-Rothschild), some contemporary fiction (Panic in a Suitcase by Yelena Akhtiorskaya, Textile by Orly Castel-Bloom, A Guide for the Perplexed by Dara Horn), a repackaging of some Talmudic tales (A Bride for One Night by Ruth Calderon), a graphic novel from Israel (Rutu Modan’s The Property), a spiritually and artistically beautiful book by my friend, Gloria Abella Ballen, entitled The Power of the Hebrew Alphabet, some Yiddish poetry (With Teeth in the Earth – Selected Poems of Malka Heifetz Tussman, translated and edited by Marcia Falk, Paper Roses by Rachel Korn), and to satisfy my newfound interest in Jews in China, Peony by Pearl Buck.
Thanks to my Mom for encouraging me to read, to Beverly for sharing our home with these books, and to Orli for letting me read to her nightly for several years. “Of making many books there is no end (Eccles 12:12),” but “A wonderful woman, who can find? Her worth is far above rubies (Prov. 31:10).”
B’Shalom, Rabbi Jack