it's all in how you say it

[cellio]

A fellow congregant called and asked me to be on the steering committee (read: board) of the sisterhood.

What I thought: Having a sisterhood (and brotherhood) is anathema to an egalitarian congregation. If we say that men and women don't have assigned roles, why on earth would I want to help perpetrate an organization that tries to go backwards by (re-)assigning those roles? It's not like our sisterhood and brotherhood are trying to move past conventional gender roles -- the women handle babysitting during services and serve cookies and coffee afterwards, and the men hold barbeques and talks by investment bankers. Feh! I want none of it! And not just because babysitting and serving coffee aren't my thing! There's a higher principle here. How can I help you see this?

What I said: I'm flattered, but no.

Comments

[geekosaur]

I think I'd want to raise that issue somewhere more productive than my LJ, actually. (But then, I feel much the same way about it... at least in part because if it were my choice I'd rather be watching the kids and serving the cookies and coffee. :)

[goljerp]

Hmm... I guess my current shul doesn't really have a sisterhood/brotherhood. At least, not that I'm aware of. So we have staff people who arrange the childcare/childrens services; kiddush is organized by different people (men and women) each week, and speakers (investment bankers and otherwise) are organized by the adult ed or orther committees at the shul. No great loss, as far as I can tell...

[mamadeb.livejournal.com]

I don't think I've ever been a member of a synagogue with a "Men's Club" or a "Sisterhood" (that's all both of the synagogues I've been a member of, which is not a statistical sample.) Although, Jacqueline Lichtenberg *did* joke about having one during Shabbat morning services at Chicon in 1991 ("I have a message from the Sisterhood.")

In my old synagogue, the kitchen in both the old and the new building was on the men's side, so there was an informal all-male "kiddush club" who set got things ready and ferried things out. This included the rabbi, who made a nice cholent. However, the synagogue itself was basically run for years by the "Special Events Committee", which is largely female and headed by the rebbitzen. The board itself is mixed, and is now taking a more active role in things, which is good.

In my current one, there is a board and there is a "Chesed Committee". The board is mixed, with rules about which gender fills what roles (president *must* be male, vice president *must* be female. This, oddly enough, was not a factor in our old, Lubavitcher run shul, where we even asked a woman to be president. Wisely, she declined. Shul president is a hard and thankless job.) Anyway, the board is mixed.

This is unusual where I live in that most synagogues, as near as I can figure, don't *have* boards. They're owned by their rabbis, called by their rabbi's names. ("Where are you daavening tonight?" "I'm daavening by Goldwasser's. You?" "I thought I'd go to Rosenblatt's.") And these rabbis are fairly autocratic.

The chesed (kindness) committee, which notifies members of shivas and births and provides meals and hospital visits, does seem to do the job of the Sisterhood. It is, in fact, largely female - I'm on it, as my husband is on the board - but there are a couple of male members as well.

It does seem odd that an Orthodox synagogue, which is determinedly non-egalitarian in its services, is more so behind the scenes.

[jducoeur]

Out of curiosity, how old is the congregation, and the sisterhood? I tend to think of these as the sorts of artifacts one finds in older (read: more than a couple of decades) organizations.

This is the kind of issue I think about a lot, being active in the Masons, where gender roles are very strictly enforced. IMO, it's one of several cultural artifacts that are killing the organization, since it looks a tad weird to most younger people. But the idea that different genders are supposed to have different roles is an ancient and pervasive meme, and widespread doubt about it is still very new. So most folks over 50 have it set deep in their bones, and can't really shake it...

(One of the very first decisions I made about my Mysteries project was that it wasn't going to pick up the male-only fraternity thing from Masonry. Which reminds me: I still owe my journal a writeup of that project, to maybe spur further work on it...)

[tangerinpenguin.livejournal.com]

It's not clear to me that forming subgroups along arbitrary distinctions like gender is necessarily bad - many congregations (of whatever stripe) have groups for singles, or 20/30 somethings, or people in certain types of professions.

The big problem I see is when you start to associate certain programs or authority with those groups, especially because of the arbitrary distinction (the "sisterhood" always organizes babysitting, the youth fellowship always serves at dinners, the men's group always does the spring repairs, etc.)

In that sense, did you consider taking the position and "highjacking" the group toward more productive goals? You could wind up with a useful group if it got out of its ruts - even something as simple as trading traditional stewardships with the men's group for a month in the interest of building tighter bonds between congregants (which can be a non-threatening way of introducing the otherwise unthinkable :-))

To some extent, if this group is bringing value to its active membership (and you suggest it does), you would need to balance making big waves with a responsibility to the existing constituency (if only in self defense.) But there are good arguments if someone's offering you a leadership position in something you think isn't productive (but isn't going away as part of a larger group that's important to you) to take the opportunity to influence it in what you believe to be a more valid direction.

or... you could work to change it...

[(Anonymous)]

Hi, I'm JeanneGrrl's (http://www.livejournal.com/users/jeannegrrl) husband and "chairman" of our synagogue's Men's Club..
(Seth (http://www.livejournal.com/users/sethcohen/) and Karen (http://www.livejournal.com/users/ksnell/) are also members there.)
So... after less than a year of being members I was asked onto at least two board-level committees (that I can remember). Then I was asked to assume the Men's Club role. (I guess I'd made it quite clear that I wasn't just along for the ride at this synagogue. I was going to be active and I was going to make myself known. That must come from my desire to make whatever I invest my time in live up to its potential.) They called the role "President" but I call it "Chairman" for at least two reasons:
1. I wasn't elected, and
2. As an unelected one-man operation, it's more like a committee chair than a President of some organization.
Anyway... I accepted the position because I figured I could do it, but most importantly, I knew that with the reigns in my own hands I could buck trends. I told "the powers that be" that I wasn't going to make the Men's Club another venue for siphoning cash from its members, I wasn't going to force it to work if the demographics didn't warrant it, and I was going to recommend it be shut down and its assets distributed if good programming wasn't enough to keep people (men) interested and involved. And, oh yeah, except for some events that are just more fun or appropriate, socially, to do with guys (like a Steaks, Cigars, and Scotch dinner, and Lady's Night Out In-shul Babysitting) my programming was going to be egalitarian.
They were fine with all of my conditions.
Our synagogue is blessed with tons of programming considering that we're barely more than 500 families. One of the things the Men's Club had become and seemed to still be was a home for orphaned projects. What it seemed the synagogue needed was a Programs Coordinator and not a Men's Club for that. And the situation implied that it might be necessary to hire such a person full time as a synagogue employee to do all that.
What I'm learning from this experience, you may be able to use: that being involved is the only way to change anything and, perhaps more importantly, that even in egalitarian congregations there can be a role for a group that is just for men or just for women. There are differences in the genders and often these groups are the only social outlets for many members of the congregation. In fact, in many congregations, there are people who involve themselves in sisterhood/brotherhood/Men's Club, who otherwise don't get involved in anything else and this is often such persons' identification with the congregation. They don't even come to services except for the High Holidays, and usually only for 3 days of them.
While the demographics of our synagogue doesn't seem to be supporting a Men's Club, I don't begrudge that we have a sisterhood. It might be the only Jewish identification some people have.