Wearing a Tallit For Women To Further My Expression Of Belonging and Sharing In The Community

I became involved in the Reform Movement in my late teens. At first I was delighted just to be able to sit in the main body of the synagogue and feel part of the service and have an occasional aliyah. However, as the years went on I began to feel that I was not quite a full member yet. I was allowed into the group' but could not yet wear the club's colours. Women never formed 50% of those called up, let along 100% as was common on some weeks for the men.

As a Jew, fully committed to Jews and Judaism, I not only wanted to feel that full commitment but be seen to fulfill it, to be counted as an adult with totally equal status in Jewish life. I was told that this was already the case but my experience told me otherwise. I was equal only in a narrowly confined area which had already been defined for me by others.

To see half the community at prayer wearing a kippah and tallit, and the other half accepting they could not, seemed odd to say the least when all those present were supposed to be on an equal footing.

I began to wear a tallit and kippah to further my expression of belonging and sharing in the community, to state my position as a healthy and positive member of the kelal, prepared to wear the tallit as a cloak of responsibility with pride and joy.

Over the past seventeen years that I have worn a tallit it has come to symbolise many more things to me. To wear a tallit with a group of other people is to visually unite, to lose concerns over dress, to merge as a whole with one voice. A bringing together of mind and body to the oneness of prayer - a loss of ego.

Wrapping myself in a tallit concentrates my mind, it is a constant reminder throughout the service of my purpose.

The tallit is like a cocoon allowing for the possibility of deeper change from within while separating off from the outside world. It makes me feel special, as I believe it could for anyone who wears it with true kavanah, totally irrespective of the sex of the wearer.

Dee Eimer

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