Shoshana Fershtman’s drash, October 23, 2020

On Matriarchs

The first woman to light Shabbat candles was our matriarch Sarah. Sarah would light the candles on the eve of Shabbat in the tent she shared with Abraham, and the candles would miraculously burn from one Friday to the next. The light of Sarah's candles greeted the many guests that visited their tent throughout the week.

Feminist scholar Savina Teubal demonstrates how the actions of our foremothers in the early stories of Genesis reflect that the first female ancestors were priestesses acting according to laws that governed the matriarchal cultures from which they emerged.[1] It is through the matriarchs that the decision is made as to whom the covenant would be transmitted. The Bible story reflects Sarah’s innate authority to decide that Isaac would receive the inheritance. In these matters, God tells Abraham, listen to Sarah.

This priestessly authority is also reflected in the story of Rebecca, whom God entrusts with ensuring that the covenant is passed down to her second son, Jacob. Teubal suggests that Rebecca’s actions evidence the matriarchal power over lineage descent—a power reflected in the continuing Jewish tradition of matrilineal descent.

According to midrash, when Abraham’s servant, searching for the true beloved of Isaac, sees Rebecca at the well, the sacred waters, guided by the Shekhinah, jump into her vessels so that she has abundant water to offer to both the servant and his camels, the servant knows that he has found a worthy partner for Isaac. Rebecca carries the energies of the Feminine Presence, overflowing with kindness.

When Sarah passed away, the flames of her Shabbat candles were extinguished. A few years later, when Isaac saw that the Shabbat candles of his prospective wife, Rebecca, had the same miraculous ability to continue burning throughout the week, he understood that she was Sarah's righteous successor, and he wed her happily.

When Rebecca and Isaac’s son Jacob meets Rachel, it is also at a well, again symbolizing the presence of the Shekhinah. The text tells us that Jacob rolls away the stone that blocks the cistern, indicating that he is opening the channel for divine love to flow between them, and through them, to their children. Rachel later dies an early death because of her actions in protecting the statuary of the sacred feminine that she takes from her father’s home.

The loss of Rachel, the spiritual matriarch of this generation, has profound consequences. In a beautiful midrash, Rachel is seen as forever standing on the road to Bethlehem, where she died, weeping for her children, a symbol of the Shekhinah mourning for the children of Israel in exile. Rachel weeping for the loss of their connection, their exile from Her.

Women’s power declines in the later chapters of Genesis. Many of us grew up in a time when the sacred feminine was in exile, and often had strong reactions to the patriarchal nature of the tradition, where women could not be rabbis, or cantors, or in a time when young women were not bat Mitzvahed.

Tonight we honor two women who are claiming their connection with the tradition in a way that was not available to them when they were coming of age as women. In order for this to happen, a complete revisioning of our tradition had to, and has, and is taking place.

Despite the challenges of patriarchy, Sharlya was able to carry the light that flowed to her from the first candles lit by our mother Sarah, and to transmit the light of the tradition to her daughters. Sharlya acknowledged that traditional women’s ways of transmitting Judaism were from “from the cradle to the table” -- in the ways mothers  pass Judaism to their children through love, through feeling, and of course, through food—nourishing us in ways that bypass the thinking mind.

Sheridan wrestled deeply and with great integrity with the patriarchy in the tradition. Yet somehow the music of her own soul’s connection to Judaism grew loud enough for her to hear it. She has brought the music of her struggle, and pain and beauty, to bless and shape our community.

The Talmud describes the words of the Torah as black fire written on white fire. The written words of Torah are the black fire; the white fire is the consciousness with which we interpret them. We live in a truly amazing time—the first time in our collective history that is being transformed by the white fire of women’s wisdom offering new meaning and insights into the black fire. Tomorrow we will hear these beautiful women, mother and daughter, taking their place in the shel-shelet, the chain of souls of Jewish women, interpreting Torah from the depth of their own lived feminine wisdom.

 In the many centuries that women could not actively participate in temple life, they expressed their spirituality through composing tekhines, prayers, a tradition that originated in the Jewish communities in Germanic, Ashkenazi lands in the early middle ages. In honor of Sharlya and Sheridan’s bat Mitzvah, I’d like to offer words from this tekhine for candlelighting:

May those we nurture light the world with Torah and good deeds. Hear the prayers I utter now in the name of our mothers Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, Leah, Bilhah, and Zilpah. May Your light, reflected in these candles, surround us always. And let us say, Amen.

[1] Savina Teubal, Sarah the Priestess: The First Matriarch of Genesis