Our Daughters, Our Sons, Our Torah: Shekalim

Shavua tov! This is the first of occasional posts on my new Times of Israel Blog. I expect to write about the nexus between secular and religious experience. I had some incredible “Godwink” experiences yesterday that I write to share today. I am excited!

Yesterday was Shabbat Rosh Chodesh Adar Shekalim and, also, March 1, 2025, aka the beginning of Women’s History Month. Parshat Shekalim contains the intricate details about building the portable mishkan, tabernacle, i,e, the dwelling place for God which we contribute to from our hearts. By contrast, the census, i.e. whom counts is per half shekel, the namesake of the Shabbat. The census is required, not voluntary. In Jewish law, just as American jurisprudence, after the Bill of Rights, each person is supposed to count the same and have the same opportunities. The Torah text does not include women in the census. In 2025 thankfully, girls and women count. We must continue to!

It was a gorgeous Shabbat Rosh Chodesh Service at our multi-ethnic Conservative synagogue on Long Island, New York. There was a bar mitzvah and a gorgeous Hallel, and three Torah scrolls! One in a magnificent silver tik, two on wood etzei chayyim. The bar mitzvah boy was well-prepared by the clergy and his family. He did a fabulous job on his Torah reading, haftorah and speech to the congregation. He had even learned a trop system from the Yeroushalmi system to honor his patriarchal Middle Eastern heritage. His and his family’s evident pride was palpable in his words to the congregation as he spoke of his pride in his Judaism, family trip to Israel, and the congregation’s shared joy in throwing candies and collective ululations. “Kee lee lee.”

To sweeten our kehillah’s reciprocal joy there were two young women– each unrelated to one another, or to the young Bar Mitzvah– who each, also, read Torah yesterday morning from that very bimah. One young teenager read the Rosh Chodesh torah reading, perfectly, using yet another trop system, beautifully rendered. The third young woman, also a teen, read a pasuk in the more familiar Ashkenazi trop, beautifully. The rabbi announced afterward that she was commemorating the fifth anniversary- to the day- since her bat mitzvah reading on March 1, 2020. How wonderful!

Sitting with my own family, unrelated to any of these hardworking eager young people or their families, I remarked to myself, “thank God!” How many other places can all three of these families encounter one another? How cool is this?”

Around me, I heard the audible commentary in the pews on what each person sounds like, and looks like, and was wearing like, whose families they are from. “These are amazing!” “They are gorgeous!” “They are wonderful!” “How handsome!” “How pretty!”

It is an awesome thing to lead – and not a little awesome – to be up there, after all! How amazing to have the support of the community for our sons and our daughters to learn and to lead. Particularly when there are so many places where women are not permitted and other places where neither men nor women value learning.

After the service concluded, I was blessed to speak to the youngsters and offered them a blessing.

“Read your pasuk every year. Know that, just as after October 7 the antisemites are trying to stop Jews from living and after the Holocaust the deniers say it didn’t happen, the best thing we can do is to keep learning and reading in public. Soon it could be said that there were no Jews in Israel, or no women at the kotel, or no women on the bimah. My grandmothers read tehillim. My mother reads Torah. I read Torah, My son and daughters read Torah.  You can read Torah. Don’t let ignorance or antisemites wipe us all out. We all count. You count.”

RYS