Shelley Lindauer
Closing Statement

I hope you have found this conversation about the value of single gender groups within the congregation to be informative and persuasive.  For ninety-four years more than 500 women’s groups have provided support to their temple communities.  Rather than positing “why have a single gender group”, think for a while and ask yourself “why not”?

Below is a listing of some of the activities and programs our sisterhoods undertake for their congregations on a yearly basis:

Annual financial commitment to temple
Bnai Mitzvah Gifts
Book Clubs
Caring Community
College Care Packages for Jewish Holidays
Family Bingo Night
Fundraising
Judaica Shop
Passover Seder
Purim Baskets
Purim Carnival
Rosh Chodesh
Scrip Fund sales
Support of Brotherhood Programs
Women’s Seder
Womens retreat
Youth Gorup Funding

Here are additional comments sent to Eilu V’Eilu by our subscribers:

To provide an example of side-by-side programming for women and men, Olin-Sang-Ruby Union Institute offers both a Father/Son weekend (next one is in May) and a Mother/Daughter weekend that will be scheduled again in the fall. Both are featured on the OSRUI website, osrui.org.

Jerry Kaye
Director, Olin-Sang-Ruby Union Institute

It is interesting that there is a discussion of the need and values of Brotherhood and Sisterhood. What is missing and has been forever in our movement is discussion on the senior members of our congregation. At Temple Beth Orr, our B & B group (Balubus and Balabasta) is dying out. This group was formed by members in their 60s more than 25 years ago for the purpose of sociability, education (most meetings are of Jewish context and all meetings begin with a d’var Torah) and volunteerism within the congregation. We are now in our 80s, some are in their 90s and today’s 60+ congregants have no interest in joining us, but there will be a void when there are too few of us to continue.

We are of a generation who understands the need to support a temple long after our children have completed their education. We are a close knit group concerned for each other. We are the great-grandparents of the synagogue. Yesterday at a rededication of Temple Beth Orr, I threw out the gauntlet to the children to form a Junior-Senior group. The friendships that develop and the commitment to temple that remains are of so much value. It is a dear and precious legacy we want to pass on. It is my belief that sisterhoods, brotherhoods and youth groups with the temple family unite rather than fragment our movement. We are proud of the accomplishments of all.

Sylvia Jaffe
Temple Beth Orr
Coral Springs, Florida

Dayenu! My n’shamah’s (soul) most cherished concept is that of humanity, never a designation of gender. My congregation’s philosophic mission is to focus upon each and ever n’shamah, inner contemplation benefiting and encompassing the contribution of the whole for the benefit and support of each. Adonai needs not to know gender.

Rosalind Hall
Port Jewish Center
Port Washington, New York

Well, the issue of gender is clearly a lot more complicated than any of the groups that rejected separate worship imagined. Both your Eilu V’Eilu responders are in favor of separate gender groups for certain things, which sheds interesting light on orthodoxy’s struggle to worship both separately and together. More than any Orthodox community, this Eilu V’Eilu gives me renewed respect for the gender separate aspects of Orthodoxy, which are frequently dismissed by other Jewish denominations.

Judy Montel
Beit Shemesh

Doug Barden
Closing Statement

Many decades ago, the men and women of Reform Judaism organized separate auxiliary organizations that cater to congregants based upon gender…Do we still need such groups?

The short answer: Absolutely!

The slightly longer answer:
You can’t always gets what you want
But if you try sometimes, well you just might find
You get what you need.  (Rolling Stones)

In my 2005 monograph Wrestling with Jacob and Esau, Fighting the Flight of Men, I made the following statement:
There has been a failure to distinguish gender stratification from gender differentiation within the Movement. Rather than focusing, appropriately, on eliminating gender stratification, that is, the uneven distribution of leadership positions, power and related rewards of kuvet (prestige,) a considerable amount of Movement effort has been mis-spent on eliminating any and all signs of gender differentiation. There has been a refusal to acknowledge there may be significant male and female spiritual differences. Such a refusal is actually at odds with, if not outright, anathema, to the ideals of genuine feminism.

Taken to the extreme, this well intentioned but misguided position has led many of my professional and lay colleagues to reject support for single gender groups within their congregation.  In theory, there was a blanket condemnation of any kind of single gender organization but for a host of social, cultural, and yes, political reasons, men’s groups suffered considerably more than women’s.

Brotherhoods are now dealing with several generations of young men who have grown up never experiencing the value of fellowship.  Many men under the age of 35 have spent their entire lives in co-ed situations—whether it is the sports field, their Hebrew school, their college dorms or their work place—all they have ever known are co-ed situations.

Little in our society encourages young men to affiliate with other men, except in competitive sports (and we could include the armed forces, which while co-ed, does not often market itself as such). The loss of formal organized groups is particularly damaging to men’s ability to maintain relationships with other men. Men rarely call up their male friends just to check in—they have to have a reason. They may have one or two good friends, often from their college days, but they often find it difficult to keep in touch. Overwhelmed with work and the challenge of carving out time for their spouse and children, men struggle to nurture and sustain their male friendships.  

Women, with or without a formal, organized group, find the company of women invaluable. They seek out friends, they nurture their friendships, they keep their friendships alive for decades; in short, along with leading busy lives in home and in the workplace, women find the time for their friends. Yes, the females of Generation X, Y, and Millennium also experience a great deal of co-ed interaction, but unlike their male contemporaries, they also find the time to be just with other women.

The current members of brotherhood know the value of brotherhood, the value of fellowship.  They know it can make a difference in their lives. Brotherhood’s challenge now is convincing a younger generation that there is a true value in participating in a men’s-only setting—for their own personal growth as contemporary Jewish men.

Convincing men they need brotherhood is not going to be easy. Will it require local brotherhoods to engage in some serious soul searching, and re-thinking their primary mission and role within the congregation? Will it require offering a different spectrum of men’s-oriented programming that will better resonate with a new generation of men than perhaps the traditional service to temple projects? The answers to these questions are all Yes, and the national MRJ organization is working with our affiliates to initiate these kinds of changes.

Not for one moment do those of us who have the good fortune of being a part of the brotherhood movement question the extraordinary value of fellowship, of finding time to be with other men, to be with our brothers. A younger generation of men may not think they want brotherhood, but I will emphatically tell you, they need  brotherhood!

What has been happening to brotherhoods and men’s clubs for the past thirty years within our Movement is a microcosm of what has been happening in the larger American society and the lack of value it has placed on the continued existence of men’s places. With that in mind and in the hope of keeping the gender related discussions on-going, I would like to highly recommend  four books to any lay or professional leader who wants to get a handle as to what prompted the disappearance of  ‘men’s only’ places in the last quarter of the twentieth century. These books, along with my comments on them, may be found in the Resources section of the current Eilu V’Eilu volume.

I welcome corresponding with anyone who wishes to keep the conversation going. I can be reached at dbarden@urj.org.  

Doug Barden, MRJ Executive Director