Torat Imecha: Torah Study as an Act of Mother-ing

On Friday night, my 4 year old son asked me: “Why did you become a rabbi?”

So I spoke to him of my love for Torah. I then told him that when I was a little girl, they didn’t let women become a rabbi. His immediate response was: “Why? That’s so mean!”

I laughed -so astonished and delighted that something that to me seems so controversial to me seems so obvious to him.

But over Shabbat, I kept pondering the moment, and I realized that rabbi-ing has transformed my mother-ing in ways I wouldn’t have anticipated. The sheer love that my child has for Torah stems from being in a house where Torah is studied regularly -not just as a ritual practice, but also as a professional commitment.

My 4 year old son always asks me what I did in the Beit Midrash. He speaks about “Mommy’s Beit Knesset” to refer to the various synagogues he’s been shlepped to if I am giving a speech or a lecture. He has studied the Shulchan Aruch and the Talmud, because those are the books he’s seen me open up in order to answer complex halachic questions, and he was curious, so I read him a few lines -and half translated, half summarized, to make things a little bit more age-appropriate.

I believe that my entire way of thinking, as a person and especially as a mother, trying to instill love of Torah in my children, is impacted by my Torah studies. It suffuses how I talk to them about everything, from a snail we see on the sidewalk, to why we make kiddush. It shapes how I interact with them, including how I choose to react to the more challenging parenting moments. I see so much of my role as creating a Torah of chessed, starting in my home, spreading to my community, and to the wider world.

There is a strand of contemporary Orthodox rabbinic literature that focuses on the tension between Torah study and motherhood, urging women to give up the former as a prerequisite for fulfilling the latter, and framing motherhood as the ultimate religious obligation -even though women aren’t technically halachically obligated either to procreate or to teach their children. In fact, halachically speaking, that is the man’s obligation.*

But in truth, if we do believe that women are the spiritual foundation of the Jewish home -as this rabbinic literature claims – then we should want women to learn Torah at the highest level. We should want women who spend time in the Beit Midrash, so they can act as a model for their children. We should want women who are paid to study and to teach Torah, so they can devote appropriate time to it, so that their children can see their mothers at home, constantly immersed in Torah.**

It is only when we allow women who wish to do so to study Torah on a professional level, and encourage them to have careers as Torah educators and community leaders, that we can truly begin to revive the concept of “Torat Imecha”*** – the Torah of your mother -not as an abstract concept, but as a real-world phenomenon that can inspire the next generation of Jewish children.

*Shulchan Aruch, Even Haezer, 1:1, 1:13, Yoreh Deah, 245: 1-5.

*But also: women’s Torah study is valuable in its own right, regardless of their marital/parental status. Too often, our community only has space for women leaders if they are (heterosexually) married and/or have children. There are many reasons to support women’s Torah study unrelated to parenting. I spent many years not knowing if I would ever become a mother. I am thankful to God every day for my 3 miracle children. I know many women Torah scholars who are not married, or who are married without kids. In addition, in a world where not everybody gets married or has kids, it is especially important to provide girls with role models of how to live a life of meaning without marriage or kids, against a society that tends to value them based on marriage/motherhood.

*** “Listen my son, to the morals of your father, and do not abandon the Torah of your mother”.  (Mishlei 1:8)