Chana Pasternak
Posted on | November 3, 2008 | No Comments
Director of Kolech–Religious Women’s Forum
The men always express themselves, and they are heard, but the voices, especially of religious women, aren’t heard. And all religious responsibility has been for men, very little for women. It’s time women should be heard.
What does it mean to be a religious woman?
For me it is to be obligated to your belief, to yourself, to your country, and to a feminist agenda. Together these things are hard. There are contradictions between religion and being a mother, between working outside and raising a family, between your obligation to your family and to yourself.
I was raised in a Cheredim school; my parents were ultra-Orthodox. When I was 18, I decided to go to the university. My family was angry, and my high school teachers turned their heads when they saw me like I did something horrible against humanity.
My parents survived the Holocaust. My father lost his first wife and three kids. For such people, that their only child, a daughter, should go out to live another life wasn’t easy. But that’s what I decided, that’s what I did, and that’s what I do.
I opened myself and found a terrific world, so interesting, so fulfilling. I share beliefs of possibility with my friends: to live together and make a better community because, most of all, we are human beings who must live together.
You call yourself a feminist.
To be a feminist is to see the need of every woman, to give space to every woman to live by her belief and her way of thinking. Every woman responds differently. If an Arab woman or a Jewish woman is happy to have ten children, that’s fine. I don’t like the way extreme feminists say, “You shouldn’t have children, you should think about yourself.” The real feminist way is to let every woman feel happy with herself.
To be a feminist is to be able to give space to every woman to live by her belief, her tradition, and her way of thinking. Women should be fulfilled, and as feminists, we must respect that different things fulfill different people.
Is that Kolech’s mission?
Yes, our organization supports religious women in gaining freedom. If a woman doesn’t want to have so many children, we have rabbis that allow them not to have so many. We hold informational sessions about women’s rights and freedoms. We support women when they want to divorce and encounter problems at the rabbinical court.
Divorce is one of the big issues we work on. Men have the support of the rabbinical court when they want to divorce, but women must gain permission of their husbands. As things stand, men have the power to refuse to free their wives. We try hard to help those women, to support them, and to free them. In some cases, it has taken ten or even fifteen years for a woman to get the divorce. It’s painful because she cannot start a new life with someone and eventually, she’s about 35 years old and she cannot have any children.
We also work on violence against women in the Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox communities. Sexual harassment is as much a problem as in the non-religious communities. However, many religious women don’t want to go to the police—they want to get a solution inside the community. To raise awareness on this issue, we organized a convention where rabbis and women organizations sat down together and made a list of how a religious rabbi should behave with female students. We also counsel sexual harassment victims, providing them with support and empathy.
Is Kolech just for religious women?
While a lot of our participants are Cheredim women, we also have many non-religious women coming to our activities. I’m happy about this, as I see Kolech as the house of the Jewish woman. And from that point, the Jewish woman can make many connections with women from other beliefs to build a strong women’s movement.
What are the qualities of courage?
Courage is what I did as a girl, when I went out to work despite the way I was brought up. It was much easier to stay with my family, to get supported, to get married at 18 or 19 years. It was very easy, very warm, and very familiar, but I decided that it didn’t suit me.
It took courage to face myself with all the things that I was raised with to see what’s right for me and what is not right. I was able to see the point of other people with different beliefs and ways of life. It took courage to find myself listening, because I was raised that you cannot listen to somebody that thinks or says something that is different than you believe or think.
Listening to others has given you many important friendships.
Yes, I found so many good friends, including an Arab woman who is one of my closet friends. We share the same problems. We share beliefs of possibility: the possibility to live together, the possibility to make a better community, and the possibility to make it better for my people and for her people. Most of all, we have the common understanding that we are human beings who might live together and share things and make a better world for all our children and grandchildren.
Are you different than other women?
I am a woman so I am the same, but I am different in that I’m not afraid. I scream out, and I’m proud of it. I shout, “Equality!” Like a woman should be in the rabbinical court, but no women are Orthodox rabbis. Every morning I say, “Wow, God, help me today to do something to improve equality.”
So we speak to rabbis and say they are an important part of the religious community, but unfortunately, they are not very brave. Our belief is, there are “seventy faces to the Torah,” and to go to the extreme translation is not accepted by us. There are wise women who know their Torah, and who are able to teach different things than many rabbis say. It’s impossible that women should be prisoners by authority. These women are much more brave than the rabbis.
You have a personal relationship with God?
We are good friends. At least, from my side! I don’t know about His side. I am thankful He forgives me, because I have many questions and I get so angry. I’m sure He helps me to fulfill my agenda and the agenda of many women.
Pasternak emigrated as a young child from Romania with her ultra-Orthodox parents, survivors of the Holocaust. She attended a conservative school but broke from social strictures at age 18 to attend Bar Ilan University. A feminist, Pasternak directs Kolech, founded in 1998 to combine egalitarian concepts with religious traditions. Kolech strengthens the voice of religious women, including in the rabbinical courts.
