Holy Days And Women’s Empowerment

by Ruth Messinger, president of American Jewish World Service, for The Jewish Week

Each year when I sit in synagogue during Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur, I’m struck by the complex stories we read about biblical women and by the wisdom these stories offer about ensuring the dignity of women and girls today.

The past year was one of paradoxes. At a time when Sheryl Sandberg, Malala Yousafzai, Wendy Davis and countless others reinvigorated conversations about women’s leadership, health and safety, rape and sexual violence continued to escalate all over the world. As I try to grasp these contradictions, I’m reflecting more deeply on what our High Holy Days readings illuminate about the condition of women and girls over the millennia.

To start, consider Sarah, Hagar and Hannah, female protagonists we meet in the Rosh HaShanah liturgy. In the eyes of the biblical narrator, the significance and self-worth of these women are defined solely by their ability to have children — in particular, sons. Yet each of these women exercises agency in different, albeit complicated, ways.

Initially, Sarah is unable to birth a child. Frustrated that God has not fulfilled the promise of giving her and her husband, Abraham, “as many offspring as there are stars,” as it says in the Bible, Sarah takes matters into her own hands. She chooses her handmaid, Hagar, as a surrogate mother and instructs Abraham to impregnate Hagar, so that Sarah can have the son she desperately wants.

Sarah eventually is able to have a biological child of her own, Isaac.

Hannah, also struggles to bear children but handles her infertility in a different way: She prays. Hannah pours out her heart to God and, ultimately, God answers her prayers by giving her a child.

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