Silence Between the Lines is a brief talk given by Rabbi Sarah Bassin as part of Saving Grace, an interfaith response to violence against women and girls presented by The Guibord Center in 2014.
“As a committed Jew, I come to ancient canonical stories with an assumption that I belong to them and they belong to me. I encounter them searching for Torah, that is, for redemptive teaching, and for zikaron, the collective memory that completes me, that binds me to all who ever have or ever will claim or be claimed by these stories. What happens, however, when I reach out to stories whose worlds do not permit me to enter, that exclude me or distort me? This is the first problem that confronts anyone who attempts to construct a theology of Judaism that includes all the people of Israel – men and women.”
Those words are not my own. They belong to one of the most renowned Jewish feminist theologians of our time- a fellow Angeleno- Dr. Rabbi Rachel Adler. When we face texts from throughout Jewish tradition… yes… there are examples of women. And as a religious feminist, it is a natural impulse for me to cleave to these stories for some sense of seeing myself. Yet to champion these stories alone washes over the silence and invisibility of so many other women in the tradition. It is this silence that is the violence against women. It is this silence of women in our text that models the silence of women in the face of violence today. It is the prevalent depiction of woman as object… as chattel that perpetuates the objectification of women.
In Genesis, we hear the story of Dinah. This only daughter of Jacob went out into the fields to be among her friends when she was taken by force by Shechem and raped. After Shechem rapes her, his father goes to Jacob to get permission for his son to marry Dinah. Jacob eventually agrees with conditions… but Dinah’s brothers Simeon and Levi are outraged. So they go out and slay Shechem, his father, and all of the males of their city. Throughout this story, we hear Dinah’s voice not once. Dinah not only suffers from the violence of the actual rape. She suffers from the violence of being silenced after her rape.
Sadly, this story is one that transcends time. The violent act is only the first abuse faced by the woman. It is followed by more violence- the violence of blame, of silencing, of heads turning not to see.
There is so much silence in the stories of Jewish tradition. Yet rather than abandon these texts, rather than absolve them of their moral responsibility, I choose to face them, engage with them, and draw out the voices not heard. There are women in this room who have felt what Dinah has felt. Let their words become Torah. In Jewish tradition, we understand the blank spaces between the letters of our sacred text are just as sacred as the letters themselves. As a religious Jew, I am drawn to these blank spaces, this silence… knowing that a more complete Torah lies within them as well.
Torah is a living tree, an evolving path. May we have the strength and wisdom to learn from the stories it tells and to draw out a fuller connection to the divine by reading the silence between the lines.
