Other Tales: Museum Objects and the Engendering of Jewish Knowledge

Abstract

120 SHOFAR Fall 1995 Vol. 14, No.1 OTHER TALES: MUSEUM OBJECTS AND THE ENGENDERING OF JEWISH KNOWLEDGE by Paula Chaiken Paula Chaiken is the Education Coordinator at the Spenus Museum ofJudaica, Chicago. She also teaches a course on gender and Judaism to high-school students. "What can you tell me about this object?" I asked the group of high school students visiting Spenus Museuml from a Reform congregation in Chicago's northern suburbs as we stopped in front of an 18th century North African Torah scroll. A student described the Torah's appearance, explained its contents and discussed how it may have been used in communal worship long ago. "And what is special about the way in which a Torah is produced?" I asked. The students explained how a Torah is written with a quill and naturally-produced ink on parchment made from the hide of a kosher animal by a soler, a professional scribe. I elaborated, "The scribe works for a very long time to create a Torah. He may spend years working on one, as it has to be perfect." One boy looked puzzled. He was upset by my choice of pronoun and asked, "Does the scribe have to be a man?" "Well," I hesitated. "Traditionally, the soler is a man. Though there are many talented female scribes who write ketubbot (marriage contracts), I don't know of any recorded instances of a Torah having been written by a woman." 'Spertus Museum, Chicago, Illinois, is the largest Jewish Museum in the midwest. Its Judaica collection includes objects from 5,000 years ofJewish life, as well as the Bernard and Rochelle Zell Holocaust Memorial; The Paul and Gabriella Rosenbaum ARTiFACT Center, a hands-on children's archeological museum; and temporary exhibitions illustratingJewish art, history and culture. Other Tales: Museum Objects 121 His question sent us on a new journey. We had not set out to talk about the roles ofmen and women inJudaism but the museum experience made it possible. We continued our tour guided by the question. We came to a case containing another Torah from Westphalia, Germany in the late nineteenth-century. There was no synagogue there, so Moses and Zipporah Pagener housed the community Torah in their home. I explained how Zipporah Pagener had wanted to keep the Torah in a special place so she donated the finest cloth available, her wedding dress, to serve as a parokhet, a Torah ark curtain. The students heard this story as they looked at the piece of wedding dress. .As we admired the parokhet, one student asked, "How do we know Mrs. Pagener wanted to donate her dress?" "We don't," I answered honestly. And I thought to myself, "This is the difficult part. .As museum Visitors, we have the power to make the objects tell stories, which means we generally make them tell the stories we want to hear." I preferred to believe that Zipporah had chosen to give her dress out of love and commitment to the Jewish community because I don't want to believe that someone else made the choice for her. .As a group we pondered the question: Did Zipporah choose to give up her finest dress to cover the Torah or did she watch passively as her husband decided the Torah ought to be dressed better than she was? .As we arrived in front of the case filled with objects used on Shabbat the students felt confident that they understood women's obligations concerning the Jewish day of rest. "My mom lights the Shabbat candles every Friday," one girl called out. I told her that her mother is observing one of three mitzvot (commandments ) that women perform: lighting Shabbat candles, taking hallah (setting aside and burning a piece of the dough as a reminder of providing sustenance for the Temple priests) and going to the mikveh.2 Her friend commented that all of the pairs of candle holders in the case-from Poland, Israel, England-probably held candles which were lit by women in Jewish communities throughout the world. "And polished by them, too," I commented as we noticed the brass and silver. We arrived at the life-cycle section of the...