Wearing My Tallit: Thoughts on The Hidden Agenda

The most special moment is when I put my tallit on. I need space to do it. Not just because it is so big - but because I need to feel separate' from other people. As I stretch it out in front of me, I feel small, a little hesitant and excited too. Then, when I hold it for a few moments over and around my head, I feel totally sheltered - as if from a storm raging just a few feet away.

That feeling is broken as I take my tallit from my head and let it fall on my shoulders: I am connected to things again; to the people around me -and yet not in the same way I was a few moments earlier. In some way the whole process of putting on and wearing my tallit is a differentiating, a secluding experience, ensuring that my task as an individual standing before God remains distinct and necessary even as it is an integral part of the whole. The community's relationship with God can never be a substitute for my relationship with God - even as we are all sureties for one another.

But there is another issue entangled here: whatever personal meaning wearing a tallit may have for me in establishing and maintaining my relationship with God, my tallit is infused with external, very specific Jewish meanings which force me to ask: what am I doing when I wear a tallit or, more precisely, when I wear tzitzit? What am I doing, as a woman and as a Progressive Jew, when I undertake this, or indeed any other mitzvah?

As I see it, the Progressive debate on the performance of mitzvot seems strangled in false dichotomy. On the one hand there are God's Commandments - the preserve of the Orthodox for whom they are binding on all Jews (unless they are public, timebound ones - in which case Jewish women are exempt ...). On the other hand there is personal choice' - the privilege of the Progressive Jew: each individual (and that includes female individuals too) is in a position to choose what she or he will or will not do Jewishly-speaking. But what does personal choice' mean? Why do individuals choose' one practice or another? If we accept that we are making our personal choices within a religious framework, then the question arises for each individual: what impels me to perform this ritual and not that one? What am I doing when I perform a ritual that I have chosen to do?

Personal choice assumes personal gratification. Am I simply gratifying personal needs when I choose to light Shabbat candles, to make kiddush and havdalah, to wear a tallit? Clearly, these particular acts have special significance: they are Jewish acts. Do I perform them simply to participate in the celebration of Jewish communal existence? Do I get a kick out of rehearsing the elaborate rules and regulations of a very special club? Is the performance of Jewish acts on the part of Progressive Jews like myself simply an indulgence both on a personal and a communal scale?

There has to be more to it than this but the more' is complicated by the implications of being a Progressive Jewish woman. As a woman I am aware of the extent to which the mitzvot defined as God's Commandments have been mediated and interpreted by men who have devised special provisions to ensure that God's Commandments do not conflict with the domestic and nurturing obligations they have assigned to women. So what is the alternative for a Jewish woman claiming her place as a Jew within the community and trying to reach God - trying to work out her individual relationship to God?

For a relationship does involve reaching out - on both sides - and is demanding and commanding at the same time. To speak of personal choice' in the context of such a relationship is meaningless. Do I choose to acknowledge a friendship with somebody one day and choose not to acknowledge it the day after? Relationships involve mutual commitment. So when I light Shabbat candles or make kiddush or havdalah or wear a tallit, I do so in the context of a commitment - my commitment to God, God's commitment to me - I am commanded to do them. But why am I commanded to do Jewishly identifiable acts and not others? Because although God may not operate within a Jewish structure, I do. I am commanded to acknowledge God and I do so Jewishly. The structure of my commitment to God is a Jewish structure.

This is not to say that it is a complete or perfect Jewish structure. It is a structure devised by and largely for Jewish men, a structure which I, as a Jewish woman, am struggling to make more fully Jewish by participating in it and bringing my own experiences with me. This is a very Jewish process: the transformation of elements drawn from the past in the context of the needs of the present which include my needs. I hope our Jewish structure can expand to include them.

Elizabeth Sarah