Hatam Soferet

aw cuteness

2009-12-16T06:17:52Z

Jewish Week mention - sweet article, and would you believe I'm one of the optimistic voices for once?!

In the spirit of Chanukah, I’ve polled more than a dozen prominent Jewish women about miracles, about the brightest moments in the news since last December, especially those which illuminate new frontiers for Jewish women. But many of my sources, normally an eloquent bunch, hesitate to respond...

When the author polled me, I'd just had email that started "Hi, I'm the new scribe on the block," and I was all pleased and happy about that, but I'd also spent a lovely day writing Torah at Hadar, and I was all pleased and happy about that too. So it was jolly nice to be asked "hey, what's good?" at just that moment.

Nice.

And yes, it uses the dreaded phrase "first soferet." In a bid to stave off the inevitable hatemail: please remember that journalism doesn't really do in-depth explanations of subtle points that detract from the thrust of the story and need lots of feminist-historical consciousness. I emailed and requested less hyperbole, and I expect the editor will think it too minor to be worth bothering with. They generally do. Please read this post. Thanks.

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other note on ny times article/soferot generally

2009-11-08T16:21:20Z

Further to previous post squeeing about Julie.

Her primary teacher is Jen Taylor Friedman, a New Yorker born in Britain who is just 30 but among the very few women to have completed an entire Torah. According to Ms. Wolf, she may indeed be the only one who has ever done so.

"I’ve never seen a source that says otherwise," Ms. Friedman said in a telephone interview. "But 'ever' is a big word, and Judaism has been around for a long time."

As ever, I would be charmed to see a source which says otherwise. There's bound to be one somewhere. We know we've had female copyists, general non-ritual scribes, and I've had one source sent me which speaks of a woman who wrote a chumash; it is possible to interpret that as "a sefer Torah for ritual use," but yeshiva-educated scholarly-rabbi friend RHCY says it means a regular book-type chumash, and he generally knows what he's talking about. We know women have worked on repairing Torahs, both many generations ago and within the past twenty years. Writing? Don't know.

A Torah's a big, expensive thing, right? Before the late twentieth century, if you were somehow in the Torah trade - married to a sofer, or something - and you somehow got the skills and materials and free time and you wrote a Torah, you weren't going to tell everyone about it! because then your Torah would have no market value. Scribes have never earned much; you can't afford to throw away a whole Torah like that. You're going to pass it off as your husband's and you're going to sell it.

Of course that isn't very proper, because technically it wouldn't be fit for ritual use, pre-gender-egalitarian congregations - that's why it has no market value - call it economic necessity, call it feminism, call it what you will, Judaism is a religion of human beings, not of saints. Of course it's happened. It'd be pretty darned remarkable if, in the whole of Jewish history, no woman had ever written a Torah. If nothing else, that would mean that I, me, Jen, possess some quality that no other Jewish woman has ever had, and that's preposterous.

What I have is the luck to live in a generation where I could write a Torah openly, as part of a community that was happy and excited about that. That's what's unusual about this generation of female scribes. Not that we write Torah, but that we're part of a world that can accept that.

This perspective rarely comes across in articles, you understand. Journalism doesn't really do in-depth explanations of subtle points that detract from the thrust of the story. For practical purposes, the simplified version does the job - conveys what is exciting without needing lots of feminist-historical consciousness.

This is why Julie's Torah project is arguably more exciting than mine. We've got the whole "gosh look a vagina wrote a torah" thing out of the way, and we can get on with the important thing, which is "gosh look, a Torah."

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Hooray nice articles about Julie!

2009-11-08T15:47:23Z

Yay Julie, in the New York Times!

Ms. Seltzer’s performance — an admittedly odd word for what she’s up to, and one she doesn’t like — at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco [is] unique and compelling...

As the central element of a new exhibition, “As It Is Written: Project 304,805,” a simply and elegantly organized introduction to the fundamental role of the Torah in Jewish life, she is creating a new holy scroll.The work is indisputably artful, but it’s not intended to be expressive. The idea is to copy exactly; writing a Torah is less an act of creativity than of sublimation.

“I know the museum sees it that way, but if I thought this was a performance, I wouldn’t be able to do it,” Ms. Seltzer said.

And indeed, in that very denial lies the art in her performance. Watching her impossibly steady hand, the deft maneuvering of the quill (each of the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet requires its own separate technique) and the inexorable progress of the text across a column and down a page yields a palpable sense of ancient ritual that slows your breathing, and you can’t help seeing that she is communing deeply with the text as she copies it. The writing is an act of faith...

What I like best about this is that she's in the paper not for being A Woman Coo Ur Gosh, but as A Torah Scribe Doing Something Unusual who just happens to be a woman. That is tremendous. That's the world I want to be part of - where women doing things isn't remarkable just because they're women.

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Women Too Dumb To Come In Out Of Rain, new study finds

2009-10-01T00:08:05Z

Study Finds Women Wear Shoes That Cause Pain, says the New York Times.

What's next - Study Finds That Dog Bites Man?

Here's the money quote:

“I think women need to really pay attention to how a shoe fits, and realize that what you’re buying could have potential effects on your feet for the rest of your life,” said the paper’s lead author, Alyssa B. Dufour, a doctoral student in biostatistics at Boston University. “It’s important to pay attention to size and width, and not just buy it because it’s cute.”

This has essentially nothing to do with the study, which was an exercise in data analysis showing significant correlation in women between wearing of stupid shoes and foot pain. There was no corresponding data for men because most men don't wear stupid shoes.

So, Ms Dufour. You really have to be careful how you talk to journalists, because this one just made you sound like a privileged little arse: Stupid wimmins, if they'd just do like I'm telling them - with my study and my biostatistics - they'd feel so much better! Why don't they just do it my way? It's all so simple! Women are obviously really stupid!

Journalists love headlines like "Women Too Dumb To ~~Come In Out Of Rain~~ Wear Comfortable Shoes." So next time a journalist asks you about your work, remember that, eh? I'm deliberately giving you the benefit of the doubt and assuming you didn't mean to be horrifically patronising (because I'm nice like that) with your little quote there.

Maybe - next time - emphasise that women, by and large, aren't totally masochistic and they aren't totally stupid, so if they're buying shoes which hurt, maybe there's a reason.

Maybe give the journalist some clues, like this: what kinds of shoes are women expected to wear at work? what kinds of shoes are women expected to wear if they want to be "pretty"? what happens if you aren't "pretty"? what kinds of shoes are widely available to people on low budgets? isn't it funny that women are willing to put up with foot pain? why might that be? isn't it interesting that men don't seem to wear the kinds of shoes that hurt them? why might that be?

As is, the journalist and the editor need a good kick in the behind. As do you, if you actually meant to sound like a patronising arse - a kick from something with really pointy toes. An example of when painful shoes are worth it.

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