O pinion
Teaching Torah: Making Room for More Voices
BY AVIGAYIL HALPERN
MANY OF MY fellow rabbin-
ical students and friends are
enthusiastic about a new
strategy for elevating women’s
voices in Torah study into the
beit midrash this fall.

The Kranjec Test — named for
Pennsylvania’s Danielle Kranjec,
the Jewish educator who created
it — holds that collections of texts
known as source sheets must
include at least one non-male
voice. It’s the Jewish studies
equivalent of the well-known
Bechdel test for film — in which
movies pass if they include two
women having a conversation
about something other than men
— and it quickly gained currency
among my colleagues.

On paper, I perhaps ought to
have leapt at this new frame-
work. I have been committed to
women’s Torah study since I spent
summers during high school
studying at the Drisha Institute,
one of the first institutions in
America to open the doors of
Talmud study to Orthodox
women, and I wrote my under-
graduate thesis on finding new
modes for feminist Talmud study.

I’m currently blessed to spend
my days immersed in full-time
Torah study as a rabbinical
student, and questions of what
feminist and queer Torah are and
ought to be are at the forefront of
my interests.

And yet I balked.

My reservations
were primarily practical. My current
Torah learning involves intense
study of Jewish law, and for the
course of Jewish history, the vast
quantity of received wisdom on
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM areas like kashrut and Shabbat
simply has not included writing by
people other than men. I worried
that adding texts in those areas
to meet the Kranjec Test would
amount to tokenism at best.

My instinct was to look at
the absence of non-men’s voices
with clear eyes. Yes, it’s a canon
written by men! That problem
can’t be solved, I thought, by
pretending that’s not the case.

I am not the first to point
out that the problem is not a
failure to include existing voices
in the Jewish canon but the fact
that these voices don’t yet exist.

Rabbi Becky Silverstein and my
teacher Laynie Soloman made
this argument in their response
to the original article proposing
the Kranjec Test. Some of my
Orthodox women friends
argued that meeting the test
would require turning too often
to texts from outside the tradi-
tional rabbinic canon. Rabbi
Michael Rosenberg framed that
criticism, which he ultimately
argues against, in his writing
about the Kranjec Test, as “Does
such a source sheet send the
message that ‘Torah’ is for men,
and ‘supplementary materials’
are for non-males?”
I also had another concern:
Learning Torah as a queer
woman is already at times hard,
and teaching it can be harder.

There are the inevitable moments
of hurt and alienation that
come from loving a vast body
of wisdom that was not created
by people who share some of
my most fundamental experi-
ences. Along with that comes
the workaday burden of sexism
I face as a young woman trying
to hold the attention of a class-
room: interruptions, a student
implying that I’m unqualified
and the whole genre of experi-
ence so familiar to so many of us.

Should I now make that
process even harder by also
taking extra time and energy
to seek out a source I other-
wise would not have and try
to integrate it into my work? Is
this not an additional ask for
those of us who already strain
so much for our Torah? And, on
another level, would my voice as
the teacher then be made invis-
ible? After all, I was contributing
to the Torah I offered by putting
it together and teaching it, and I
am a woman: Did I really need
to put another non-man on the
source sheet on top of that?
In the middle of all this
thinking, I looked around and
realized I had unwittingly been
adhering to the Kranjec Test
without meaning to. At my
yeshiva, we start each day of
Zoom learning with a 10-minute
dvar Torah on the parshah from a
student, and every other Tuesday
it was my turn. The first time,
I posted to Facebook looking
for specific sources about the
few verses of Lech Lecha I was
planning to speak on. A friend
recommended a recorded sermon
from a woman teacher, and her
Torah was exactly the insight I
had been seeking. Two weeks
later, preparing to teach my 10
minutes on Chayei Sarah, I was
at a loss looking at the commen-
taries on the page of my Chumash.

I turned to the bookshelf behind
me and pulled out a book of
essays on the parshah, and again
the crystallizing insight I needed
came from a woman.

After that, I committed to
myself that each turn I had to
teach on the parshah, I would
include the voice of someone
who was not a man in my dvar
Torah. I made this commitment
gently, tentatively — every time
I told myself, “Well, I’ll see what
I can find, and if it becomes too
hard, I won’t hold myself to it.”
And every time I was able to
turn up exciting, fresh Torah
with minimal difficulty.

The parshah is doubtless the
easiest area in which to find
Torah teaching from women
and other non-men. Thank God,
there is such a wealth of weekly
divrei Torah by people of all
genders across every stream of
Judaism, and the weekly parshah
See Halpern, Page 27
JEWISH EXPONENT
KVETCH ’N’ KVELL
Interfaith Relationships No Call for Celebration
AS WE SETTLED IN to the read the Dec. 10 issue, we
were surprised and disappointed that there was such a large
[article] (“Interfaith Couples Navigate Unusual Holiday Season”)
highlighting the diversity of intermarried couples — a sizable
percentage of whom were celebrating Chanukah and Christmas.

Is this really a call for celebration?
If the author was trying to write a “feel good” story it may
have had the reverse effect. Jewish people make up a very small
percentage of the U.S. population, especially in comparison to
those celebrating non-Jewish holidays. Due to this, it is just so
much easier to be part of the mainstream religious celebrations
and that is what so many of these couples will do. And studies
show that couples who raise their children with both religions will
very likely no have Jewish grandchildren, so who are we kidding?
Perhaps the Exponent will soon be listing baptisms, confir-
mations, et cetera and will still be calling itself “The Jewish
Exponent.” Let’s not bring out the champagne just yet.

We no longer feel there is a reason to continue to read or
support the publication if the publication paints a picture so
anathema to the tenets of Judaism.

Bette Klein | Philadelphia
Torah Illuminates Current Context
I fully agree with Rabbi Jason Bonder’s notion that each year we
read Torah and may well find something new, a Chidush, in the
stories (“Same Words, Different Meaning,” Dec. 24).

I agree, too, that the context provided by the year 2020 or
any other year potentially changes one’s reading. Still, any given
context may be understood differently by different readers.

For me, someone who has been disturbed greatly by the outgoing
administration, in general, and by the president’s behavior, in
particular, I read it differently. My reading of Joseph’s dreams —The
Sun and the Moon and the Eleven Stars are bowing down to me and
an analogous agrarian one in which sheaves bow down to him —
are symptomatic of what occurs when one child (Donald?) is favored
by a father (Fred) who had to himself be the chosen one (achieved by
any means), in both birthright and blessing.

Joseph’s inner world is one where others have no particular
existence, no subjectivity, except in their relationship to him.

The dream’s faceless dancers, representing the brothers, are just
nondescript stars or sheaves and are not permitted, in the dreams,
to interact. They are not seen as persons in their own right.

Years ago, a psychiatrist in a class I was teaching asked me
for a book on parenting. I suggested that she read Torah and
wonder about the sequelae of the showing of favoritism and that
she might consider doing just the opposite. Joseph’s tormenting
of his brothers — both before and in Egypt — serve as proof for
me of the toxic effects of such parenting, just as the “Presidency
of a Chosen Rich Kid Who Would be Emperor” convinces me of
the dangers of preferential parenting, in general. l
Howard Covit | Elkins Park
STATEMENT FROM THE PUBLISHER
We are a diverse community. The views expressed in the signed opinion columns and let-
ters to the editor published in the Jewish Exponent are those of the authors. They do
not necessarily reflect the views of the officers and boards of the Jewish Publishing
Group, the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia or the Jewish Exponent. Send
letters to letters@jewishexponent.com or fax to 215-569-3389. Letters should be a
maximum of 200 words and may be edited for clarity and brevity. Unsigned letters will not be
published. JANUARY 7, 2021
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