Az Nashir Haggadah: Opportunity for Women Expanded |
When I went to Israel in 1987-88 looking for female role models, I met a woman writing a book about female Torah scholars in Jerusalem. It had 12 chapters and one of the women profiled was starting a school—consisting of herself and 12 students. The whole concept of scholarly religious women was not incredibly well developed; the expectation was still that women developed themselves religiously without text study, in other ways, through other mitzvot. Fast forward to 2026 and the school started by Malka Bina, Matan, has in cooperation with one of its students and alumni published a Haggadah with art in multiple categories all by learned women in the Israeli religious world. There is a place for these women and they are using their learning to teach others and claim and stake out a space for themselves as authoritative interpreters of the tradition.
Rachel Sharansky Danziger one of its three editors writes that the Haggadah’s “aim must be to force the readers to constantly reexamine their own world in relation to the story so that they are not transported elsewhere but are transformed here.” She continues, “the Haggadah invites us to do goes further: by challenging us to wrestle with the fragments, make connections, and draw meaning, it liberates us too – from our former assumptions, our former horizons, even our former selves. It is because the Haggadah won’t let us lose ourselves in the story that it compels us to participate in its retelling, and in the process, transform ourselves.” The notion that we are capable to transform ourselves and that the Haggadah is helping us do important personal and communal work carries through its pages.
Well known scholar Dr. Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, one of those profiled in the 1990 book is still teaching at Matan and writes here of the notion of “Pesach in a time of vertigo” and the panic-haste of the Israelites leaving Egypt, her translation of hipazon( Exodus 12:11) She says that the inability of the Israelites to listen to the messages of God through Moses in Exodus 6:9 because of hard labor are an important part of the story. She writes, “this not-listening(Exodus 6:9) is itself a symptom of hipazon: of the dissociated experience of the people at this moment. But it is just because of this moment that we must tell the story: Out of this was created Torah for all generations.” The difficult parts of the story are also the formative parts, she explains, quoting Walter Benjamin and Virginia Woolf and Kafka and poet Hayim Nachman Bialik to make her point.
I was particularly struck with the “story craft insights” of Rachel Sharansky Danziger throughout the text. For Shefokh Hamatekha: There is a Place for Dark Emotions, Danziger writes, “By giving voice to rage and resentment, the Haggadah helps us contain the darker emotions that stories of suffering inevitably awaken.It offers language for our fury and then redirects it, asking God to act, to bear the weight of vengeance for us.” This is such a healthy way of being aware of our completely human emotions and how the Haggadah is a container for all of them, angry and celebratory. Ms. Sharansky Danziger suggests that it is only after we have been “unburdened” that we are able to move forward to the celebratory songs of Hallel. The parallel essay by Rabbanit Nechama Goldman Barash evokes the emotions of feeling protected she felt as a child holding her Zadie’s hand, “feeling protected by his faith that, in that moment, God was guarding us- and that we could cry out these verses without fear.” This sense of the importance of emotions both in the section calling for wrath against those “who have not known you”(Psalms 79:6) as well as elsewhere is one of the characteristics that enables me to feel this Haggadah fulfills the promise of what it means to have learned Jewish women who are masters of the text and teach from a stance of knowledge as well as placing a value on an emotional connection with the rituals and their meaning.
Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik has said, in the words of Rabbanit Rebecca Linzer, that “true freedom requires mastery over all three dimensions of time – past, present and future.” Rabbanit Linzer speaks of the seder as both a chance to “relive the story of our people” and “anticipate the ultimate redemption.” All of this cloaked in a sense of protection, right from the very name of the holiday.
I love the reassuring aspects of the Haggadah, Tamar Weissman’s piece on “We Began as Idolaters” expressing, “the Haggadah reassures us: destiny comes not in a single leap but through process.” We shouldn’t feel all change happens at once, only over time which is why the Haggada’s story stretches back to Abraham worshipping idols and not just with Egypt is an affirmation that we are able to transform our past, rather than erase it, as Weissman writes. There is something very calming about seeing all these female authored words of Torah accompanied by poetry and visual art that attempt to reach different aspects of our personalities and emotions.
And perhaps it is that gentleness that is so appealing. There is no sense that one of the things written is more true than another – the three editors wrote sidebar pieces from three different approaches, story craft( Sharansky Danziger), educational (Rabbanit Anne Gordon) and psychological(Shira Lankin Sheps, MSW). This balance of the importance of approaching the Haggadah from different perspectives so that each reader can find something that appeals to her( or him) is sure to make this Haggada a coveted addition to every seder table.
Dr Tanya White writes of the tale of the five rabbis as a tale of hope. Why? They specifically chose to come to the home of Rabbi Akiva in Bnai Brak, not that of the head of the Sanhedrin in Yavneh. Rabbi Akiva was the one who could move the others, as White writes, “they were taught that even when we think it is dark, dawn may already be breaking somewhere beyond the narrow confines of our vision. Sometimes, when we are enveloped in unimaginable grief, we need another to remind us that hidden within the darkness lies the seed of renewal, waiting to be uncovered.” Perhaps that sense of renewal is one of the many reasons that Passover is the quintessential spring holiday, its rhythms so closely mirroring those of the season we describe it as, hag ha’aviv, the holiday of the spring.
Spring embraces possibility – growth is arriving soon. The person of Rabbi Akiva as well has the vision to look forward, as White reminds us, “Hope demands a particular lens,” and telling us of Akiva that “where others saw only despair, he saw possibility.”
Vanessa Ochs’ 1990 book Words on Fire: One Woman’s Journey into the Sacred, shows a world where learned women in Israel are an anomaly and a rarety. Instead, in this Haggadah, they are a community, a bounty, a numerous gathering. I met Ochs in the late 2000’s in St Paul, MN where she was speaking and after many years, she inscribed the book. She wrote, “So wonderful to meet you again in a world in which opportunities for women have expanded.” Her words have become even more true with the publication of the Haggadah, a partnership of the Shvilli Center and Matan and with the inclusion of so many writers, poets and artists. The editors – Anne Gordon, Sharansky Danziger and Lankin Sheps are all to be commended. This is a sampling of the insights and work found here – get a copy and go and learn.