Rabbi Gabriel Kanter-Webber
1 When my wife gave birth last August, I was by her side. And twice – twice – the medics asked me for permission to do things to her (change a catheter, take a blood pressure reading, whatever). Manuella was lying right there, in pain but perfectly conscious, yet two different medics, male medics of course, ignored her and asked me to decide what they could and couldn’t do to her body.
2 I found that utterly astonishing – and told them so. But what I didn’t tell them is that they were walking in the footsteps of this Shabbat’s parashah, Tazria, which deals with the subject of childbirth and begins with the words: דַּבֵּר אֶל־בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל לֵאמֹר, speak to the children of Israel thus.ii A 19th-century commentator, the Malbim,iii analyses the various places in which that phrase appears across the Torah, and he concludes that, by default, the commandments which follow it do not apply to women. Rather, it should be understood literally: בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל meaning not, as I translated it just now, the children of Israel, but more precisely, the sons of Israel. Even though what follows is all about pregnant women, the text is addressed to their husbands, not to the women themselves.
3 Of course, we’re all familiar with language that excludes women. There are still countless English laws on the statute book phrased in terms of “he”.iv Indeed, the Plaut chumash used so commonly throughout Progressive Judaism overuses the word “he”, for example in describing the punishment for “he who strikes his father or his mother”,v even though the same punishment would apply equally to a woman who did such a thing.vi Now, the usual excusevii for this is that ‘the masculine embraces the feminine’ – however, as Rabbi Rachel Montagu has said:viii
[T]here is a time and a place for everything in this life – but I don’t think any of us would encourage the male to embrace the female physically during our services, and so why should they do so in the language we use?She also quotes what is perhaps the most ridiculous example of the genre of masculine language embracing the feminine: a biology textbook informing its readers that “man, being a mammal, breastfeeds his young”.ix
4 And now we come to the Garrick Club. As is now notoriously well-known, the Garrick Club – a private members’ club attended by almost all of the men who hold positions of political and judicial power in this country – has rules which bar women from membership. Except… they don’t. All the rules actually do is repeatedly use the word ‘he’: “No candidate shall be eligible unless he be proposed…” and so on.x
5 But surely what’s good for the goose is good for the gander? If the word ‘he’ in antiquated criminal laws so obviously includes women that we don’t need to bother updating them – a position espoused by many of the senior judges who are members of the Garrick – then why does the word ‘he’ in the club rules not also include women?
6 Leaving the technical legal argument aside, the moral argument against excluding women is, of course, unanswerable. How can any woman (or any female barrister) have confidence that her case is being judged fairly by a judge who is happy to be part of a club that bars people like her from entry? How can the leaders of the Civil Service promote equality and diversity with any sense of sincerity when they choose to spend their leisure hours in an environment that actively rejects those values?
7 And then there’s the issue of the glass ceiling. All of the networking that goes on inside the Garrick, all of the gentlemanly conversations, all the contacts that are being made, constitute opportunities that exclude half of the population.
8 But I think the most significant point is the fact that equality and diversity benefit us all. Inclusion is fantastic for those who are included, but it’s fantastic for everybody else as well. Think how impoverished Progressive Judaism would be if the ban on women rabbis was still in force. Think how much less welcoming we would be to the Jewish community of modern Britain if every single rabbi was a bearded man (yes, I appreciate the irony of my making this remark).
9 Quite simply, in society, everybody is connected. Everybody is affected. Everything that affects one person affects everybody else. And that is one of the key ideas of the biblical law of ‘impurity’ that is the focus of Parashat Tazria. The scholar Mira Balberg illustrates the principle as follows:xi
[S]uppose that Jill was walking in the street and happened to stumble over a rug that someone had left there. If the rug was impure (for instance, if it was made impure by a corpse or was trodden on by a menstruating woman) and Jill had direct physical contact with it, Jill also becomes impure. But how can it be known if the rug was impure? To answer this question one would have to trace every single person who happened to touch the rug since it was made.Everything is connected. The ripples of one human event will inevitably reach other humans.
10 And that, ultimately, is how the Malbim explains the ostensible exclusion of women from the laws of childbirth. He concludes that, rather than the phrase דַּבֵּר אֶל־בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל לֵאמֹר being used to exclude women, it is being used to include men. Childbirth is not a matter just affecting women. Rather, it impacts men as well. Biblically, it affects their purity status, because they will inevitably come into contact with their wife post-partum.
11 But on a modern, social, level, we must also conclude that childbirth is something affecting everyone. Flora’s birth certainly affected me! Yet this is exactly why we need to listen to women’s voices when it comes to childbirth, both on the micro level (don’t ask me whether you can change my wife’s catheter, ask her) and on the macro level (what sort of support is needed in terms of parental leave?), because without that insight, society will get it wrong and keep getting it wrong.
12 The fact that we can realistically compare the Garrick Club – an institution that exists in 2024 – to the ingrained misogyny of religious texts from early antiquity should shame every one of its members into resignation.
I LEVITICUS 12:1-8
II LEVITICUS 12:2
III MALBIM, TAZRIA 1
IV BY WAY OF A RANDOM EXAMPLE, SEE THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND PUBLIC ORDER ACT 1994
V EXODUS 21:17
VI SEFER HA-CHINUCH 260
VII SEE EG THE INTERPRETATION ACT 1978 S 6(A)
VIII RACHEL MONTAGU, “INCLUSIVE LANGUAGE IN THE LITURGY” IN SYBIL SHERIDAN (ED), HEAR OUR VOICE: WOMEN IN THE BRITISH RABBINATE (COLUMBIA, SOUTH CAROLINA: UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA PRESS, 1998; REPR OF ORIGINAL 1994 BRITISH EDITION), 161-169: 161.
IX IBID: 162.
X HAROON SIDDIQUE AND AMELIA GENTLEMAN, “‘NOTHING IN THE LANGUAGE EXCLUDES ADMISSION OF WOMEN’: KC ISSUES OPINION ON GARRICK CLUB RULES”, THE GUARDIAN (21 MARCH 2024): HERE
XI MIRA BALBERG. PURITY, BODY AND SELF IN EARLY RABBINIC LITERATURE (BERKELEY: UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS, 2014): 36-37.
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