From a Woman in need of Women 🙂

In the Jewish religion, men congregate to pray 3 times a day. They need at least 10 men to recite various prayers, though often crowds are much much larger.

There is no such obligation for women.

As a grade-school child, I held the passive understanding that it was because men need men- Gd knew that men wouldn’t go off and congregate without prompt, and He, therefore, put one in place for them. I figured women just… didn’t quite need that.

But recently, as a married woman with a child (thank You, Gd!), I’ve been thinking about this more and more. Women and my community aren’t often gathering the way I feel they ought to. Most women are at home, whether tending to a home or children or filling time with their job online.

Don’t women need women too?

My husband and I were talking this evening, and he was talking about how men used to thrive because of their dedication to their missions. Those missions often had them away from their wives and children for most of every week, or at very least most of every day.

“Men used to be home really infrequently,” he said.
“Yes,” I replied, “That was when women had women.”

Let me explain.

Back when the Jews were given the Torah, men were commanded to congregate with men. But at the time, women were a tribe of their own! Women didn’t need encouragement or reason, women were their very own people, in a sense!

Women birthed their children in a room of women.

Women post-birth were supported by women.

Women raised their children and families surrounded by women.

Women lived breathed and died surrounded by their fellow female friends.

But this reality is no longer.

As we women challenged the norm of the uneducated maiden who swept the floor and married the man her father chose the moment she received her womanly rite of passage, I believe we lost one of the most valuable things we women have ever held as our own.

We lost our prioritization of communing as a people. We lost our female tribe.

Various sources throughout our Jewish texts state that it was in the merit of righteous women that the Jewish nation was redeemed from Egypt. Many of these sources go on to say that the final redemption will be in the merit of us women, too.

We are at our strongest when we’re together. We women need each other to support one another and to rise up into the tribe of women who will change the world forever.

I sit here in thought, alone in my home with my sweet daughter asleep in my arms. Every day I wonder how to gather this tribe, and many are the days that I go to sleep feeling no closer to that goal.

I invite you all to comment, message, or otherwise let me know if you have any advice for me. Perhaps you’ve encountered the same yourself, or perhaps you live nearby and desire this tribe too. (I live in Tzfat, Israel, but I’d be DELIGHTED to meet other women no matter where.)

I bless us all to find our people, to empower them and to be empowered by them, to inspire them and to be inspired by them. I bless us all to search for what we yearn for and never to stop searching until we find it. I bless us all to see the final redemption, in the merit of us holy women, speedily and in our days.