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Nov. 2, 2012
Challenges of female clergy
Montreal conference was billed as “Not your bubby’s Judaism.”
JANICE ARNOLD CANADIAN JEWISH NEWS
Cantor Heather Batchelor remembers the time when, as a cantorial student, she replaced an ailing chazzan at a Conservative synagogue in the United States.
“A woman, a macher in the congregation, came up to me and said, ‘I just have to ask you something,’” Batchelor recalled, prepared for a query like “Why’s a nice girl in a job like this?” But the woman continued, “Are you like a Size 2?” It’s not a question Batchelor imagines any male cantor would get.
Batchelor, who has been cantor at the Reconstructionist Congregation Dorshei Emet since 2010, was on a panel of female Montreal
Jewish clergy during Le Mood: The Festival of Unexpected Jewish Learning, Arts and Culture, sponsored by Federation CJA on Oct. 14. It was facetiously – although not without the ring of truth – titled Excuse Me, Miss.... I Mean Rabbi.
At Dorshei Emet, “one of the most progressive congregations in Montreal,” Batchelor was surprised when two congregants separately commented after her return from a cantorial assembly that she must have been the only woman there. In fact, the majority of those at cantorial school when she went were women.
Batchelor was joined on the panel by three clergy from Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom: Rabbi Lisa Grushcow, who was officially installed on Oct. 19 as senior rabbi, the first female to hold the post at the 1,000-member Reform congregation, her wife, Rabbi Andrea Myers, and cantorial soloist Rachelle Shubert, as well as Rabbi Sherril Gilbert, rabbi of the new B’nai Or Community Shul, affiliated with the Jewish Renewal movement. The fifth scheduled panelist, the temple’s outreach rabbi, Julia Appel, cancelled because she had just given birth.
Though women have been ordained in the Reform movement since 1972 and in the Reconstructionist since 1974, the Montreal Jewish community still seems to find female clergy an anomaly, the panelists concurred. The Ottawa-born, Toronto-raised Grushcow said that, in New York, where she served a large congregation for a decade, female rabbis, even lesbian rabbis, were no big deal, but she is learning that this is not the case here.
“Few say to me [directly] that it is an issue. They will ask, ‘How are people reacting? It’s a very traditional community, you know.’” The temple’s hiring her is remarkable in the wider context, she thinks, because female rabbis still face a “glass ceiling.”
“In the United States, at least, women tend to be hired as assistant or associate rabbis who often work with kids, but few are senior rabbis at a large congregation...,” Grushcow said. “Most, even the most liberal, still want a father figure.... A woman senior rabbi requires people to stretch their imaginations.” Batchelor added that congregations avoid “too many women” – if they already have a female assistant, they will usually not consider a female for the senior role.
Grushcow and Myers believe the fact that they are mothers – of two girls – “resonates” with other parents. When they see her in casual clothes, sitting on the floor at her children’s school, Grushcow said, “People do a double-take, they say, ‘You don’t look like a rabbi,’ but it opens things up.”
The maternal image can be a double-edged sword, Batchelor suggested. She has known female clergy who have not been hired by congregations because they were not good with children, while there is usually not the same expectation for men.
Shubert regrets the lack of understanding of liberal Judaism in the Montreal Jewish community. She often encounters Jews who feel they must remain in the same denomination as their parents, even if they do not care for it. When they do attend a service at the temple, they usually enjoy it, including hearing women lead it, she said.
Batchelor, a Minneapolis native, said Montreal’s Jewish community is “like going back 30 years,” compared to the United States. While this has positive aspects, “there is a question of how the community can grow more inclusive, more broad-minded.”
Some of the “nastiest” responses to her being a cantor have come from women, she said, even if they are not especially observant in the traditional sense. Asked if more traditional women find her “liberating or threatening,” Grushcow replied yes to both.
About serving the spiritual needs of all congregants, Grushcow said, “There’s not a men’s and a women’s Judaism,” she said. While she knows she is a role model for girls – one she wishes she had had growing up in Toronto – “I am just as responsible to the boys. I need to be their rabbi as much. It’s a balancing act.”
Gilbert said her shul, which is based at the Snowdon YM-YWHA, is attracting not only the unaffiliated or disenchanted, but also some Orthodox, including men. “They have not had the experience of a nurturing rabbi,” she said.
Montreal should soon have another female Jewish clergy member, it was noted, this time within modern Orthodoxy. Abby Brown Scheier is a student in the inaugural program at Yeshivat Maharat in New York, the first institution to train Orthodox women to be spiritual and halachic leaders. That class is scheduled to graduate next year.
Organizers said about 900 people, mostly young adults, participated in the second annual Le Mood, held at Espace Réunion. The 12-hour event was billed as “Not your bubby’s Judaism.” The goal was to provide an alternative look at Jewish life from a multitude of viewpoints and to be inclusive of all segments of the community.
For more national Jewish news, visit cjnews.com.
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