This is the sermon/d’var Torah I gave Saturday morning on this Independence Day Weekend. We must continue to exercise our Jewish values. It’s our right!
This past weekend we marked a landmark decision. Not that one. Title IX allowing for equality in women’s sports. I remember that one very well. More than I remember Roe v Wade—although I remember all the NOW rallies, I attended in my youth—and have my mom’s button collection to prove it.
Title IX meant that suddenly I had to take shop as well as home ec in Middle School. I did a better shop of making a bowl out of walnut than sewing a purple dress. I learned “lefty lucy righty tighty.” Title IX meant that girls could run cross-country in high school. I was on the first team together with Mimi and Janet. (Never the fastest I would add and an all Jewish team) Running track and cross country are my rights as a woman, as the interview the Billie Jean King illustrated on PBS this weekend. She was talking about how Carl Schultz argued for such things by using the character of Lucy. Billie Jean King said she always preferred Lucy to Peppermint Patty. I cried while I listened to the interview.
Who can play which sport against whom is still being debated this summer as we have seen in the swimming world with transwomen. They say it’s complicated.
The early seventies, “72-’73, the year we moved from Evanston to Grand Rapids, held such promise for women. The possible ratification of the ERA. Title IX. The ordination of women rabbis. The Supreme Court ruling on Roe v Wade. All things we celebrated. All things as a family continued to worry about now that we were in this more conservative community.
The fact that we celebrate Title IX the same weekend that Roe v Wade fell as the law of the land is unsettling to say the least.
I am angry. Not strong enough. Outraged. Enraged. Engaged. This is not new for me. I’ve been working on these issues for more than 50 years—before Roe v Wade came before the court. It was what my mother did. I believe it is what the Girl Scouts did with their somewhat scandalous poster of a pregnant Girl Scout in her Junior uniform and the words of the Scout motto, “Be Prepared.” This vintage poster is available on Etsy for $600.
In the simplest of terms. Women need to have autonomy over the bodies. All of these decisions are between a woman and her doctor. You’ve heard that before.
What you may not have heard is that a woman’s right to an abortion is sanctified by Jewish law. I’ll provide the sources for that later in case you need to argue it somewhere. Thus overturning Roe v Wade violates the First Amendment. It violates what had also been true in this country, that there was a clear, documented separation of church and state. We thought we were guaranteed freedom of religion. We thought we had a voice in our nation’s governance. I thrilled with Jewish trips to Washington to demonstrate and to speak to our elected officials. Rallies to save Soviet Jews, Darfur, Voting Rights, the International Violence Against Women Act, the Million Mom March. We were making a difference—and exercising our freedom of speech and our Jewish values.
Except maybe not. In the early days of this country, the Puritans came here for religious freedom. Their freedom. If you didn’t agree with them, you were shunned. They sent their own children to found the town of Duxbury, MA because they hadn’t had the same religious, fervent, born again experience they had had. It was called “the half-way covenant.” They were only “half-way” Christians. Later Puritans sent Roger Williams away from Massachusetts Bay colony to found Rhode Island. We all know the stories of the Salem Witch trials. When we did colonial re-enacting in Chelmsford, we learned that neither of us could have voted in 1775 because you needed to be a white, male, Christian land owner.
Despite Washington’s letter to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport RI, https://www.facinghistory.org/nobigotry/the-letters/letter-george-washington-hebrew-congregation-newport-rhode-island and the work of Alexander Hamilton on the Constitution, there has always been an undercurrent in this country on protecting the rights of white, Christian men.
That undercurrent hasn’t changed much. If anything, it has gotten stronger. This becomes even clearer with the recent three Supreme Court rulings. The first of these rulings was about Maine and how to provide education in mostly rural communities that do not have public high schools. On the surface it seems innocuous enough. However, in the decision itself, the Bangor Daily News reports:
https://www.bangordailynews.com/2022/06/27/politics/supreme-court-maine-private-school-oversight/
“In an opinion signed by the court’s six-person conservative majority, Chief Justice John Roberts reversed a federal appeals court ruling in favor of Maine and remanded the case to that court for reconsideration. He wrote that Maine’s requirement for private schools to be “nonsectarian” to receive funding violated a First Amendment right to free exercise of religion.” This one isn’t over yet, and is going to be fought in the courts over whether those religious schools can accept the money if they discriminate against the LGBTQ+ community.
So again, I am angry. Still not strong enough. Outraged. Enraged. Engaged.
Monday’s ruling about the coach that prayed on the 50 yard line after football games further erodes the separation of church and state. https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/coach-kennedy-wins-supreme-court-case-praying-football-games-students-rcna35478 While he said he prayed as a private person, others have said they felt coerced to join him. That would be the establishment of religion in a public school. When I was growing up in Grand Rapids at the time 85% Dutch Reformed, we had people who prayed as part of sports in public school. I remember one such prayer session that I was excluded from as a Jew and consequently was not allowed to try out for volleyball, It was uncomfortable to say the least. This ruling will lead to many more students feeling marginalized. Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists. Atheists. This is another topic I have fought for many years, including a protracted fight with the Lowell City Council, started by Father Gordon White of blessed memory over the use of the Lord’s Prayer every meeting. We argued that the Supreme Court had previously ruled that this type of prayer was not permitted. It was unconstitutional.
This new Supreme Court ruling may have done more to erode my rights than even the ruling about Roe v Wade. It may have set back separation of church and state and set up a loss of religious freedom for anyone who is not Christian.
So again, I am angry. Still not strong enough. Outraged. Enraged. Engaged.
Now let’s go back to the issue of overturning Roe v Wade. Jews rarely agree about anything. But on this one there is shocking unanimity. 83% of American Jews want reproductive choice. 83%.
From a Jewish halacha/law perspective it is pretty simple. Jews regard a fetus as a potential life and the life of the mother takes precedence. There are arguments that permit abortion to protect the life of the mother—whether that is physical or mental.
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg of the National Council of Jewish Women provided a full, annotated, source sheet: https://www.sefaria.org/sheets/234926?lang=bi
In Exodus we learn that if there is a fight and it causes a woman to miscarry, the damages are only monetary. This is not a capital case. This is not considered murder. In Yevamot 69B, a tractate of the Talmud we learn that “If she is found pregnant, until the fortieth day it is mere fluid.” Not a child. Yet.
In Mishnat Oholat7:6 we learn: “If a woman is having trouble giving birth, they cut up the child in her womb and brings it forth limb by limb, because her life comes before the life of [the child]. But if the greater part has come out, one may not touch it, for one may not set aside one person’s life for that of another.” Again, as gruesome as this 2000 year old text is, we see that the life of the mother comes before the unborn. Now that’s precedence. Life begins when a fetus takes its first breath or is half way out the birth canal or when its head emerges. That’s what Jews argue about. Until then it is a potential life, to be protected to be sure, but not ahead of the mother’s life.
Overturning Roe v Wade won’t eliminate abortion—it will force women to find solutions, abortions, that are less safe, dangerous.
One of the greatest problems with some of these bills are those that prevent abortion for rape or incest, for those women whose babies will not be able to be carried to full term, for those women who might miscarry and now could be charged with a crime. For the physicians who might be chaged with a crime.
According to the March of Dimes, “For women who know they’re pregnant, about 10 to 15 in 100 pregnancies (10 to 15 percent) end in miscarriage. Most miscarriages happen in the first trimester before the 12th week of pregnancy. Miscarriage in the second trimester (between 13 and 19 weeks) happens in 1 to 5 in 100 (1 to 5 percent) pregnancies.”
I was lucky. As far as I know I never miscarried. I didn’t need an abortion even after being raped. No one makes the decision to have an abortion lightly. I have sat with women through the years. One story still haunts me. As a rabbinical student I was a chaplain in a Catholic hospital. A young woman had gone to NH for a legal abortion that did not require parental permission since she was an incest victim. The NH facility missed that this was an ectopic pregnancy. She was bleeding out. The CATHOLIC hospital did what was medically necessary. She was distraught. This Protestant teen wanted to be reassured from me, the Jewish chaplain in a Catholic hospital whether she was going to hell for aborted that child. I learned a lot that day but I often wonder what happened to that teen.
We are already beginning to hear similar stories. One haunting one from Texas which I cannot give you the full source on, the fetus was undergoing epileptic seizures in utero. The doctor explained that the child would do this for the rest of his life and recommended termination. It was scheduled. And then cancelled with the new Texas law. The mother shot herself to death. Make no mistake, we will her more stories like this. People will die.
As Rabbi Ruttenberg sums up her source sheet. Our access to reproductive health care is guaranteed not only by the Fourteenth Amendment ━ the right to equality and privacy ━ but also by the First Amendment’s guarantee that no one religion or religious interpretation will be enshrined in law or regulation.”
So again, I am angry. Still not strong enough. Outraged. Enraged. Engaged.
On this Fourth of July weekend, celebrating our freedoms, I must remain engaged. I must continue to speak out. To find my voice. After all, as mother, I owe it to my daughters and granddaughters—even those yet to be. As a rabbi, I owe it to the Jewish people. Let me be clear. Part of that responsibility lies in a pastoral role. If you are a woman who feels they need an abortion, for physical or mental health reasons, for whatever reason, I will sit with you and hold your hand as you navigate this new world. If you are a parent or a grandparent whose daughter or granddaughter needs one, I will help you find safe access. If you are a woman who is brokenhearted over where we have come, I will allow you to be angry, outraged, engaged. And then help you find ways for you to be engaged.
After all Psalm 30 says:
What profit is there if I am silenced
What benefit if I go to my grave.
Will the dust praise You?
Will it proclaim Your faithfulness?
No, on this Fourth of July weekend, I need to exercise my voice so that the rights of women are protected. That is what our tradition demands.