Happy purim

[liv]

So a couple of weeks ago I helped run a bar mitzvah in our synagogue. And we ended up getting a write-up in the Jewish Chronicle, a newspaper that exists primarily so that British Jews can call eachother to point out that someone they know is in the JC. Anyway I somehow get referred to as Professor, which is very embarrassing indeed. (In the UK Professor is a title of merit, not a job title, it's very bad to be called that when you haven't earned it.) But it's also the case that here a picture in a national newspaper, showing me, who most people will correctly presume to be female, [pretending to] read the Torah in an Orthodox synagogue. Where up to now we have been small enough and provincial enough to be pretty much under the radar with our shockingly egalitarian ways.

This has led to the Chabad rabbi from Manchester phoning everybody he has contact details for, railing about how terrible it is to let a woman read the Megillah, the ceremonial scroll of the book of Esther for Purim. I don't know where he's coming from halachically, considering that reading Megillah is the one thing that even most gender-essentialist sources say that women can do, but there you go. He's been threatening that the community will be cursed if they do this very important mitzvah wrong, and also trying to bribe people by offering to hold a break-away service in the pub and buy everybody drinks if they come and listen to his reading instead of my gender-inappropriate one.

My lovely community were unanimously loyal to me, partly because we don't like random Chabadniks showing up and trying to cozen the community away from our synagogue. And at least in part because everybody prefers my fun dramatic reading where I do all the dialogue in silly voices and give snarky summaries in English and make Haman talk like Nigel Farage, over the rabbi's very fast mumbly chant in a thick Yiddish accent. I am so tempted to dress up as the Chabad rabbi next year, with a false beard, and offer people cheap vodka and sawdusty excessively parve cakes, but maybe that wouldn't be in good taste. But this is another chapter in an ongoing saga.

In fact I dressed up as a backwards person, wearing a mask on the back of my head and a jacket and shirt buttoned at the back, plus my hair in a ponytail over my forehead, which caused much amusement. It was a smaller purim than we sometimes have, as several of our regulars are away and most parents didn't want to bring children to a weekday evening event. We did have an Elsa and a mummy, who both found presents they wanted in my bag of kids' presents, so that was something. Reverend Malcom Weisman turned up, not particularly in his capacity as minister for small communities but just because he was on the way home from Lancaster and wanted to drop by and hear Megillah, and he was very supportive.

And then I went out for meal at the local Italian that was offering a mid-week deal, and on to Hector Garcia's for a cocktail instead of dessert. Their special was a tiramisu drink, made of kahlua and vodka and cream and flavoured with vanilla and chocolate. I like cream-based cocktails, and I liked sitting in this somewhat chain-ish but pleasant tapas bar drinking my dessert and drunk-texting people to say I love them. Some of my friends were especially lovely and said they'd have a cocktail that evening, so I was sort of virtually drinking with friends instead of by myself. And I do love all the people I said it to, and I don't have to be drunk to say so, just I was in a particularly sentimental mood, having successfully run an event and settled down to relax with alcohol.

Also thanks to kass for pointing to Purimgifts and explaining how to navigate the AO3 page for it. I've been having a lot of fun browsing through stories that are either midrash, or are in fandoms I'm familiar with. I particularly enjoyed In the citadel of Susa, a Vashti POV take on Esther.

Comments

[jack]

Yay, I'm glad you managed the costume! And still sorry about the Chabad guy, I hope he finally gets bored of harassing you :(

[liv]

I found a cheap mask in the crafting supplies bit of The Works, which means if I can hold onto it in future years it's available to decorate.

And yeah, I hope the rabbi wanders off and concentrates on people who actually want his help.

[randomling]

On the theme of Purim-themed fannish things you might also be interested in adarcrack!

[pseudomonas]

Fun!

[liv]

Ooh, awesome, there is an actual Purim Torah community here! Thanks so much for pointing to that. (I'm not really knowledgebable enough to write Purim Torah, but I love reading it.)

[ceb]

Good grief, what an arse. I'm glad your community is so lovely!

(Also, nom, tiramisu cocktails)

[liv]

My community are the most lovely, and I am so touched that they are so loyal even when someone is trying this hard to turn them against me.

[wychwood]

Happy Purim! I'm sorry you have to deal with people being jerks - hopefully there will be some people who saw the photo and learned something about ways to be Orthodox, as well as the problem ones. I'm glad your community is loyal (and so they should be, after all you've done the last few years!). But it sucks that people think it's OK to behave like that. Really.

[liv]

Thank you! The rabbi doesn't have my contact details, and I have impressed very strongly on the community that this situation should continue. So I don't get any direct attention from him, I just hear about him pestering everybody else. I think it's possible that the article in the newspaper will bring positive attention to the community, reaching people who either didn't know there was a synagogue here, or who assumed that the fact it's Orthodox meant they wouldn't be welcome. We'll see.

[pseudomonas]

I'm so glad your community has stuck with you!

[liv]

Me too, I feel really appreciated.

[owlfish]

And here I was thinking you'd achieved a stealth promotion! I have confidence that you'd let us know if you were ever award a professoriate.

[liv]

Well, quite. I feel really really uncomfortable being called Prof in a national newspaper when I'm so very not.

[seekingferret]

Happy Purim! (See my new Purim beard in the icon.)

[liv]

Purim beard! Yay! Happy Purim to you too.

[seekingferret]

Thanks.

Also, I'd stake my reputation as a guesser of anonymous fic authors that daegaer wrote "In the citadel of Susa".

[liv]

I wouldn't take that bet, as soon as you said that I thought, yes, it looks very like a daegaer fic. Though I didn't know she was still around.

[kass]

Oy, how obnoxious of your local Chabad rabbi. But props to your community! Your reading sounds grand.

Also, so glad you are digging Purimgifts! There is almost always some good Megillah of Esther fic in this ficathon, for obvious reasons. I've written a bunch of different takes on Esther and Vashti and the megillah over the years myself, though this year I went in a different direction... *grin*

[liv]

I am totally excited for the Purimgifts reveal so I can find out what you did write :-) Chag sameach to you, and thank you for reminding me of the fic exchange.

[angelofthenorth]

Happy Purim.

Bloody annoying Rabbi...

[liv]

He is pretty annoying, but I feel extremely touched by my community being so loyal, so yes, I'd call that a happy Purim overall.

[davidgillon]

Must admit my reaction was 'Professor? Wow, I had no idea!"

And also "wow!" to the Chabadniks, but in an entirely different way.

And I'm not sure a tiramisu cocktail counts as skipping dessert ;)

[liv]

Not exactly skipping dessert, just drinking it instead of eating it. There may also have been some rum truffles in the ceremonial meal after the service, and there may also have been a glass of nice Italian red with the meal I had. So I didn't quite get to the ritually required level of ad lo yada, unable to tell a blessing from a curse, but I had fun.

And yes, so very not a professor. Cursed lazy journos!

[davidgillon]

the ritually required level of ad lo yada

How come Catholicism, for all it's reputation for 'whisky priests' and the like, doesn't have any feast days that involve the congregation getting ritually hammered!?

Feeling cheated...

;)

[angelofthenorth]

I thought that was St Patrick's, St Joseph's and any other Red Letter feast days in Lent :)

</ cheeky methodist>

[davidgillon]

Hah! St Paddy's is a good point, though it wasn't really a thing when I was growing up (and that was in a community with a lot of Irish tinker families), St. Joseph I've never even heard of as a feast day.

[lethargic_man]

This has led to the Chabad rabbi from Manchester phoning everybody he has contact details for, railing about how terrible it is to let a woman read the Megillah, the ceremonial scroll of the book of Esther for Purim.

Good grief. Well done to your community for ignoring him.

I don't know where he's coming from halachically, considering that reading Megillah is the one thing that even most gender-essentialist sources say that women can do

Yes, quite. Do your community know this (rather than assuming you're just bending the rules because there's no one else with the skill)?

Reverend Malcom Weisman turned up, not particularly in his capacity as minister for small communities

Is he still doing that? He must be in his eighties by now!

[liv]

I've tried to make it very clear to the community that there are some interpretations of some sources that say women can read Torah, but that the normative opinion is that they shouldn't, whereas women are definitely permitted to read Megillah. But I'm not sure how much sinks in; they think celebrating Shavuot is some kind of weird Reform custom, since nobody remembers ever doing it before I came along, while they think I'm meshugge frum for insisting on a (egal) minyan for Kaddish, so I'm not sure how much is getting through.

Rev Weisman is indeed still being small communities minister, and actively visiting small shuls and J-socs, and I believe he's still chaplain to the armed forces, too. He's quoted in the linked JC article as saying I shall keep going until I drop. Amazing guy, I feel really honoured he listened to me read Megillah!

[merrythebard]

Hooray for your community being supportive, for dramatic reading with silly voices, and for you. And happy Purim! :-)

[liv]

Thank you! It's lovely how all my friends celebrate with me.

[naath]

Huzzah for your community, and boo for the Rabbi being all rude :(

[liv]

Thank you! They really are a great community, I'm so pleased they keep asking me back to read their Megillah every year.

[ayebydan]

What a stuck up git. I'm glad to hear your community rallied behind you. Hopefully he will be the one looking right an arse with no mates in the long run.

[liv]

Thank you for being supportively angry on my behalf! I don't think it's likely the rabbi will end up with no mates, the Chabad community tend to be very very supportive of their leaders. I just hope he finds a more fun hobby than pestering a community that don't want him.

[princessofgeeks]

You are awesome.

[liv]

Well, gosh, thank you! What a lovely thing to say!

[cremains]

This infuriated me from afar. Regarding halakhah, that has never been persuasive to Chabad, so they can hardly be expected to care about it; and in their yeshivot they waste such massive amounts of time learning Tanya and the works of the so-called Rebbe that they are brutally uneducated by the standards of the rest of the Orthodox world. What is tragic is that since they are misogynists, many liberal and secular Jews will regard them as being authentic and knowledgeable anyway.

Somewhat following from the comments of lethargic_man -- I feel sometimes that feminist Jews think that if a Jewish practice is feminist, it must not be real, or that if halakhah says something egalitarian, it must be a minority opinion or a wacky re-reading of something more "hardcore," and that's a terrible shame. I wish so much that I could convey to the women in my own community that they do not have to choose between halakhah and equality, but even the loudly egalitarian ones seem to think they are doing it wrong, only that it doesn't matter that they do it wrong.

[liv]

That's unfortunately a really succinct way of putting it: since they are misogynists, many liberal and secular Jews will regard them as being authentic. You're right, I shouldn't be surprised when Chabad people make up random traditions in place of halacha, that's what they do. But the real problem is not that they do that, but that everybody thinks they're authentic because they wear funny clothes and because misogynist Judaism is seen as more real than egal Judaism.

So yeah, much sympathy on walking the halachic-egal line. I'm mostly of the persuasion that I'd rather be egal than halachically right myself, but I've ended up in an Ortho community and I respect their traditions and hashkafa. And I know halachic-egal is possible, so I'm trying for that as best as I can in the circumstances.

[withagreatlove]

That fanfic was great! I want to read the rest of it!

I saw that picture of you in the JC and feared for your community and your position in it. Am not surprised by the Chabad Rabbi's response. As infuriatingly stupid (and undignified) as it is, never mind that. I just hope there aren't further repercussions. And as I was reading your account, I thought, 'wait a minute, he's protesting you reading the Megillah? Which is actually halakhically permissible even to the most stringent of opinions?' I had expected him to aim for your Torah reading or service leading. Oh well.

The professor bit I noticed too and quite the faux pas to get it wrong but it was still lovely to see the picture and the commentary, even if it was presented with a bit of 'novelty factor'. It's nice to hear about Jewish life above the Watford Junction!

Kol hakavod!

[liv]

Thank you so much for your support. I know you are very aware of the problems of publicity in a community that is very fishbowly and gossippy. I would in a lot of ways have preferred that article didn't happen, or at least if they focused on the bar mitzvah boy and not on my role leading the service; they could've just said I was his teacher. But I didn't have any control over that. And I do hope that the article will attract at least some positive attention, cos it's such a problem that the Jewish media tends to ignore communities outside the London commuter belt. Just people knowing that we exist, and we're not a tragic tale of a dying community, might well balance out the problems due to the press noticing that I'm kinda female.

The Vashti fanfic is amazing! There is in fact a sequel out, and I think there might be a third part.

If seekingferret is right that it's daegaer, she's a great writer. Christian Bible scholar, really good at drawing out the characters and context of the stories, not so much working in midrashic style. I remember she wrote the sweetest David / Jonathan years ago, totally text-faithful and totally romantic, which I can't now find, but there's this Esther fic where the megillah comes about as the result of a devil meddling in Persian affairs. Really explores the dark side of what it means when each maiden spends one night with Ahasuerus, the bit we kind of skim over when we tell the kids it's a beauty context.

[lilacsigil]

They like you better than free drinks! That's a magnificent endorsement.

[liv]

IKR? I'm really really touched that they are so loyal.

[silveradept]

I don't know the tradition well enough to make a substantive comment, other than it sounds like the rabbi harassing you is behaving in ways that would make Fred Phelps beam with pride.

That said, women reading scriptures and a big costume party sounds like an excellent way to celebrate a (High?) Holy Day.

[liv]

The normative tradition is that a woman wrote (some of) the book of Esther, therefore women are obligated to read it, therefore a woman may read on behalf of a mixed community. But that's never really been the point for Chabad. And they're not quite as aggressive as Westboro, though probably about equally homophobic.

Purim is not a High Holy Day, it's a small festival which is important in that it's mentioned in the Bible. And yes, you're supposed to celebrate with reading the book, a costume party, food and drink (and giving change to beggars and giving gifts, which I didn't mention in my post).

[silveradept]

Thanks for the information. It sounds like a great festival to have.