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Now, on to the show…

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Nahanni: Welcome back to Can We Talk?, the podcast of the Jewish Women’s Archive, where gender, history and Jewish culture meet.

Melissa Werbow: I will generally tell people who try to call me rebbetzin that I will not answer to that word. Being known as Mrs. Rabbi is, uh, demeaning to my own training and professional identity, so I don't like it. It just feels a little patriarchal.

Sylvia Mowshowitz Orenstein: I think of myself very often as the rebbetzin, because I love this community. You know, in a way I'm bringing—continuing the legacy that my husband left. And that's—I think that it's a wonderful thing to have that opportunity to feel that you are part of the community in a very deep way. And I think that's what a rebbetzin means to me.

Nahanni: In this episode of Can We Talk?, we’re looking at the changing role of the rebbetzin—the rabbi’s wife. Women have been rabbis in America for just over half a century—a milestone we marked last year.  But for as long as there have been rabbis, there have been rabbi’s wives—and they have often served as leaders, too. 

Later in the episode, we’ll speak with the spouses of three rabbis. But first we’ll talk with Shuly Rubin Schwartz.  She’s the chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary, a historian, and the author of The Rabbi’s Wife: The Rebbetzin in American Jewish Life.  She’s also the daughter of a rabbi, the mother of a rabbi, and was a rebbetzin herself from 1979 until her husband’s death in 2004.

Before Shuly wrote her book about rebbetzins, she had been grappling with a question: What did talented, dedicated Jewish women do in the era before they could become rabbis?

Shuly Rubin Schwartz: Of course, the answer was right there in front of me, since I was the daughter of a rabbi, and therefore the daughter of a rebbetzin. And it became very clear to me that in the era before women could become rabbis, many women who felt a sense of calling to serve the Jewish people, who were Jewishly learned, who were capable and interested and wanted to share their love of Jewish life and Jewish learning with others, that many of them married what they wanted to be.

The way I see it, marrying a rabbi, and here I'm talking, I would say, especially rabbis who had big public role—heads of institutions, but also, uh, congregational rabbis—gave women a platform, gave them a status, and gave them an instant audience for their talents. Often that audience was focused on the women of the congregation, but not always.

Nahanni: Can you share an example?

Shuly: Well, sure. I think I will start with the one closest to home. Uh, as chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary, I think a lot about the role that not only my predecessor, Solomon Schechter, played, but his wife, Matilda Schechter, played in creating this wonderful institution. Part of his success can be attributed to the community that he and his wife created at the Jewish Theological Seminary. Their home was open every Shabbat. Students came and spent time there, and that created the religious atmosphere that was essential for rabbinic training.

Matilda Schechter was responsible for the JTS sukkah. Also she, like many other rabbi's wives, created a Women's Auxiliary, and that organization became a catalyst for Jewish women to become more educated Jewishly so that they could create a Jewish home, rear Jewish children. So through that kind of gendered lens, um, she was nevertheless able to greatly increase the knowledge level and capabilities of American Jewish women.

Nahanni: And I mean, that platform could also come with some societal expectations. I mean, you write about in the book that, like, women could be, you know, they could be admired for having certain roles and also criticized for maybe getting out too far in front of their husband.

Shuly: Yes, it was—it was a difficult balancing act. I would say women, um, for much of this time, were most successful when their strengths conformed to gender norms. If you create an exemplary home and you entertain and you have children and you're a model mother whose children are exemplary and you teach the women in the sisterhood, then you can achieve a great deal. And many women achieved even beyond that as well.

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Sylvia: My name is Sylvia Mowshowitz Orenstein. My husband graduated from the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1960, so I've been a rebbetzin since 1960. Uh, unfortunately he passed away in 2013. So I've been a rebbetzin a long time. And I learned how to be a rebbetzin, actually, because my mother was a rebbetzin. Both my grandmothers whom I knew were rebbetzins. Actually, in my family, we have seven generations of rabbis—whom we know about. My daughter is the seventh generation, but she's not a rebbetzin, she's a rabbi, and her husband is the rebbetzin.

Now, my mother was absolutely the best rebbetzin that ever lived. She was magnificent. She really cared for the community in an extraordinary way. My mother was a mathematician. But she took her job, as it were, as a rebbetzin very seriously. There was one gentleman who had multiple sclerosis and was bedridden, and she read to him every week. She went to his house and read to him. But she did that for so many people.

The expectation when I became a rebbetzin was that I was going to be part of the congregation. I was going to, you know, have the scholars-in-residence for the weekend. And I would be… I was going to give the book reviews and things like that. And I would teach something.

The second day of Rosh Hashanah we had open house. And I would bake cookies and cake all through August, you know. In the evenings, we had hundreds of people come through the house. I felt that I had a real obligation—an obligation that I really treasured—to the synagogue. I never missed a sisterhood meeting or something like that. I didn't want to miss them.

I mean, I became a lawyer, and the congregation was very supportive of all that. I was almost, uh, hesitant to tell them that I was in law school, and I got this incredible feedback from the women in the congregation.

I really never considered that I might be a rabbi. That was not within the realm of possibility as far as I was concerned. There were very strong gendered positions. My husband was the rabbi; I was the rebbetzin. My father was the rabbi; my mother was the rebbetzin. My grandfathers were the rabbis’ my grandmothers were the rebbetzins—although I must say that my mother, I think that she could have been—she was a great mathematician, and I do think that my father didn't want her to have a separate career. He really didn't want it. Very unlike my husband, who encouraged my career. Maybe I was lucky to be in the first wave of rabbis’ wives who could be rebbetzins and something else as well.

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Nahanni: Sylvia’s daughter Debra was in the first wave of women who became rabbis. In 1983, Debra joined the first class that ordained women at the Jewish Theological Seminary of the Conservative movement. By that time, the Reform and Reconstructionist movements were already ordaining women.  As more and more women became rabbis in the 1970s and 80s, the role of the rebbetzin began to change.

Nahanni: What happens to the role of rebbetzin during that time and how people see that role?

Shuly: It's a fascinating story. In the 70s, as the impact of second wave feminism begins to be felt in the Jewish community, women who loved being rebbetzins, who loved the role, who felt successful in the role, uh, often felt devalued. They felt they needed to justify why they weren't going out and seeking careers of their own.

Other women felt liberated. They never liked the role, so they were happy that society was saying, “Yeah, you don't need to do this. They only hired your husband, they didn't hire you.” Whereas definitely in the earlier periods—and why I titled one of the chapters of my book, “Two for the Price of One”—that was definitely the expectation.

Nahanni: Expectations have changed as women have become rabbis. Today, the vast majority of Orthodox seminaries still do not ordain women.  But some Orthodox communities are professionalizing the role of rebbetzin.

Shuly: This is very important in the Chabad world, right? We know that the couples that go out there in the world to set up, uh, Jewish communities on college campuses, around the country, around the world, they have annual conventions, separate conventions for the men and for the women.

And Yeshiva University, now, since that is a part of Orthodoxy that has leaned in on not ordaining women, they have greatly enhanced the training of the rabbis’ wives and again, bring them together annually.

There are wives in the Orthodox world who get paid for some of what they do. And there are some synagogues that give a salary to both. The couples, young couples, that go on out to college campuses from the Orthodox Union, both of them draw a salary. So it has changed, but in a different way.

Nahanni: Can we go back and talk about the word rebbetzin—the origin and how its connotations have evolved?

Shuly: Sure. So, we know rebbetzin is a Yiddish word, so, um, you know, it has a long history in Jewish culture. And even before there was a term, there are certainly stories in the Talmud of the wives of the rabbis.

Women were often revered for their piety, for their learning. Many rabbis’ wives were also rabbis’ daughters, so they often would be learned in their own right. Um, and then there are also jokes, rabbis’ wives who were the butts of jokes and, um, disparaging remarks. So it kind of was a double-edged sword, I would say.

Nahanni: Mm-hmm. I mean, it seems like such a, you know, you talk about them being revered and learned and I mean, it seems like almost getting so close to something and yet not being able to touch it.

Shuly: In the era before women could become rabbis and in the era before, as we would say, women's consciousness was raised, or societal consciousness was raised, I don't think that rabbis’ wives felt deprived because they were close to the power that their husbands had, but couldn't have it in their own right. I think most of them felt lucky that they got way closer than most of their peers, because they were part of a two-person career, and they could have a tremendous impact on their own.

Nahanni: Do you identify with the term rebbetzin yourself?

Shuly: That's a great question. Um, in my era, most of the rabbis’ wives shunned the term rebbetzin. So this would've been in the ’80s—in the ’80s and ’90s. By the ’80s and ’90s, the term rebbetzin really highlighted the fact that it was a derivative career. Women of my generation certainly didn't want to feel that we were involved in something where anything we did was just simply reflected glory of our husband's career.

I felt very comfortable being involved in the synagogue, because I cared about participating in synagogue life and having the kind of impact that I could have because I was married to the rabbi. So I didn't embrace the term rebbetzin as my identity, but I certainly didn't, um, shun it as some of my peers did.

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Melissa: My name is Melissa Werbow and I live in Washington, DC. I am a Jewish educator and happen to be married to a rabbi and the parent of three kids.

I have one friend who I allow to call me rebbetzin, and I know he does it with love and a little bit of teasing. But I have a really negative reaction to that word. If I was married to somebody with any other job, I wouldn't be known by that person's job title.

The way I like to say it, is that I have no role as the spouse of a rabbi, but I have every role as an active member of a congregation. And every time that he was job searching, when we would go for interview weekends, I would say, “He's looking for a job, but I'm looking to join your shul.”

And I have been blessed to be in congregations where the spouses of the rabbis who came before were really good at establishing boundaries and making clear that the synagogue was paying their husband's salary—in all of those cases they were male rabbis—their husband's salary and not their salary. And I think that really made a space for me to pick and choose the things that I want to do and the things that I don't want to do.

Some of the job of being a rabbi is to be a cheerleader for Jewish life. And so the way that the rabbi's own family participates in Jewish life is an exemplar for how to kind of live the best, most engaged Jewish life. And so people want to see how you're doing that.

We—for most of my husband's career, we've had a relatively young family. And so they are the little kids who are running up on the bimah and calling “abba” across the room. And that's adorable and I think it also creates in people this sense of connection and wanting to be close to that.

We think it's really important to stop by every table and say hello and ask people questions. And you know, I try and remember when somebody tells me that they're going to visit their grandchildren, when I see them again, to ask them how the visit was or, you know, how the graduation went. And I think that makes people feel really close to you, whether they actually know you very well or not.

There are communities I've been a part of where, you know, I would bump into people in the grocery store and I would notice that they were looking to see what was in my shopping cart. I don’t know what they were hoping to find. [laughs] I buy tampons and, you know, toothpaste just like everybody else. I'm not sure what they thought was gonna be in there.

I think there are times where it is really hard to live your life so publicly. I struggled with infertility and lost eight pregnancies in the course of having my three children. Most of those were later, and so everybody knew I was pregnant and, um, it was just so much harder when you have people coming up to you at kiddush, multiple people, saying, “How are you feeling?” And I didn't know if they had heard I was pregnant or they had heard that I had lost a pregnancy. And so there's a certain, um, giving up of privacy that is hard.

And then the other thing that is complicated is that my friends are also my husband's boss, because there are 325 members of his congregation and all of those congregants vote on his contract. You know, I can't complain about him when he's being annoying because I, you know, I'm talking to someone who's going to, I don't know, make decisions about his career. And so that is also like a—I think that's a weird, uh, situation that doesn't happen in other kinds of marriages and professions.

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Nahanni: Does the rebbetzin have a role today? Or, is there a role for the spouse of a rabbi today?

Shuly: I think the role for the spouse of a rabbi, in some ways, is the role of any spouse who loves their spouse. But, I think that there is an additional dimension. We know that Judaism is not just stuff that you teach. Judaism is a way of life. It encompasses so many aspects. And, uh, we see the importance of the roles that rabbis' wives play because we see that today. We see it in Chabad, we see it on college campuses.

There is no question that the rabbinate benefits from it being a two-person career. When there is a couple involved, it feels more like home. Only nowadays it can be a same-sex couple, it can be a couple where a woman is a clergy and the spouse is a man.

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Yoni Friedman: My name is Yoni Friedman. For the past ten years, I've lived in Shepherd Park, a community in northwest Washington, DC. My wife, Maharat Ruth Balinsky Friedman, has served as a member of the clergy at our local shul, Ohev Shalom. For the first eight or eight-and-a-half years, uh, she worked together with Rabbi Shmuel Hertzfeld, who was the senior clergy, and for the past year and a bit as the sole clergy.

I've done different things in the community. But it was always, you know, because I wanted to, not because the community had expectations that I would do it. When we first moved here, we did not yet have children, and I also happened to be—you know, I grew up Orthodox—an experienced leyner or, you know, someone who reads, can leyn from the Torah, and I'm also, you know, a regular minyan goer. So, certainly starting out, what was most useful that I could do for the community was to attend daily minyan and to leyn, and also to contribute to the Torah study culture of the shul.

Once we had kids, I think I was much less engaged. My role was really watching— you know, looking after the kids on Shabbos and holidays and during shul programs so that Ruth could do her job. You know, Ruth was the first graduate of Yeshivat Maharat.

Nahanni: Yeshivat Maharat is an Orthodox women’s rabbinical school in New York that began ordaining women in 2013.

Yoni: You know, there were other women—not many, but some other Orthodox women who've had clergy roles before her. But it's basically, it was a pretty new role when we came here. And she was, you know, the first Orthodox woman from Maharat hired at a shul. And so, you know, we kind of have some fun with it and so, playing on rebbetzin, I took on the title of “rebbitzman,” and it's also our license plate is R-B-T-Z-M-A-N, rebbitzman. So, definitely get shoutouts driving around town when people see the rebbitzman license plate.

So, within shul it definitely is a big part of my identity. I mean, one challenge certainly is, you know, I will go to minyan as I’m needed, but our default is, and the default for years, is that Ruth goes to shul. So from my own kind of personal religious perspective, you know, my whole life I went to minyan. And it's been, you know, certainly since we had kids and someone had to stay home, so for the past seven-and-a-half years, you know, religiously, at times, it has been challenging since I'm not engaging in shul, you know, ritualistically the way that I always had and, you know, kind of assumed I would.

One challenge certainly is, I think, being a member of the clergy, or a congregational rabbi, is challenging. And so being the spouse and watching your spouse have to deal with all that is challenging.

For most of my time, being the spouse has been really wonderful. For a couple years, I chaired the dessert committee for the gala, and I had a blast doing it. I love baking and it was a lot of fun. There was always kind of, like, this meta layer to it also because things like, you know, things like running desserts for the gala is the kind of thing that you would expect a rebbetzin to do. And so I'd always kind of do it on one level cause I enjoyed it, but on a sort of other level because I enjoyed the idea of doing it, you know, the idea of playing that role.

You know, like, yes, I watch the kids and so I'm not in shul. Right? And that's not the traditional role of a man. But I neve,—I've never questioned that oh, therefore I'm less of an Orthodox Jew or less of a man, or not fulfilling my responsibilities. Some Orthodox Jews might say that I have not fulfilled my responsibilities as an Orthodox Jew for much of these past ten years.

But I've never felt personally deficient and I've always been just over the moon about putting her in a situation to do something that very few women have gotten to do.

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Nahanni: Thank you for listening to Can We Talk?, the podcast of the Jewish Women’s Archive.  In this episode we heard from Shuly Rubin Schwartz, chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary and author of The Rabbi’s Wife: The Rebbetzin in American Jewish Life. We also heard from Sylvia Mowshowitz Orenstein, Melissa Werbow, and Yoni Friendman. Special thanks to Aviva Orenstein for help with this episode.

Our team includes Jen Richler and Judith Rosenbaum. Our theme music is by Girls In Trouble. You also heard Tiny Putty from Blue Dot Sessions.

You can find Can We Talk? online at jwa.org/canwetalk, or wherever you get your podcasts. Please help us spread the word by sharing this and your other favorite episodes with your friends.

I’m Nahanni Rous. Until next time.

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