Rabbi Yael Tischler, the latest graduate of the Leo Baeck College, gets a hug from Rabbi Dr Charles H Middleburgh at her ordination, his last event as Dean of the College
The final scene of Shtisel, the gentle Israeli TV series about a widowed Charedi father and his dreamy, artistic son, both of them seeking love, captures them sitting at their kitchen table surrounded by ghosts. Viewers see the father Shulem’s late wife, who has appeared as a ghost in previous episodes, along with his mother, who dies midway through the series, as does his son Kive’s wife, who also joins the ghostly dinner party.
Or at least I thought that was the final scene when I watched it.
In fact there is one more scene. As the clatter of ghostly cutlery on dishes fades out, the scene switches to a hospital, where Shulem’s fierce, determined granddaughter Ruchami gives birth to a baby in defiance of doctors’ advice not to get pregnant due to her frail health. The baby issues its first cry as Ruchami looks on with radiant joy. End of series.
I experienced a slight twinge of disappointment that the show continued after Shulem’s meal with the ghosts of his past; he and his son were the protagonists of the series, not his granddaughter, and I felt that it should have ended with him.
But I know enough about how writers manipulate an audience to understand what the showrunners were doing: They were giving us an ending of hope, not sadness; looking to the future, not the past. Aging Shulem Shtisel is the past, his son Kive may be the present. His granddaughter Ruchami is the future. The future is female.
Two Leo Baeck College events in the week (and a bit) running up to this week’s double Torah portion, Mattot-Masei, mirrored that double ending of Shtisel.
On 2 July, the College held a retirement lunch for Rabbi Dr Charles H Middleburgh, its longtime Dean and Director of Jewish studies, on the 40th anniversary of his ordination. By his own calculations, Charles has taught 127 of the rabbis who have graduated from the College – more than half of all rabbis to receive ordination from the seminary. He personally ordained 15 of them.
And then, four days later, the College ordained the 220th rabbi in its 70-year history, Yael Tischler, in a celebratory service where she was presented by her husband (also a rabbi, also a Leo Baeck College graduate) and her daughter, who is now the child of two rabbis. Yael led the congregation in song – and complimented us on our semi-spontaneous harmonies.
During the service, I played a little game with myself: How many rabbis can I see in this room without turning my head? The best I managed was 13, in a prayer hall which contained at least 30 rabbis, two cantors and more than half a dozen student rabbis.
And what a range they were: At least three married couples of rabbis. The co-chief executives of the new Movement for Progressive Judaism. Retired rabbis (or rabbis emeritus, since what rabbi ever really retires?). At least three rabbis nursing their newborn babies; the first woman to be ordained as a rabbi in the United Kingdom, still going strong and choosing to work as a teaching assistant for a student rabbi.
Yael’s ordination was officially Charles’s last event as Dean of the College before he becomes Dean Emeritus (since what educator ever really retires?), and in perhaps an unconscious echo of Shulem Shtisel’s meal with ghosts, he led the Mourner’s Kaddish, naming many of the great rabbis and professors who built and sustained the College over the decades. But, happily and deservedly, Charles is looking forward to a celebration of his own soon after his retirement, rather than living among the ghosts of the past.
The principal of the College, Rabbi Professor Deborah Kahn-Harris evoked a remarkable chain of tradition before her final blessing of the congregation. Yael Tischler, it turns out, is the fourth in a chain of women being ordained by women. She was ordained by Rabbi Kath Vardi, who was herself ordained by Deborah, who was ordained by Rabbi Sheila Shulman, zichrona l’vracha.
Which does, finally, bring us to this week’s Torah portion, the double portion of Mattot-Masei. They are the final two sections of the Book of Numbers, and, like the final episode of Shtisel and this year’s Leo Baeck College ordination, they look both backwards and forwards, and they foreground the importance of women in our tradition.
The last few chapters of the Book of Numbers have a valedictory tone; historical-critical scholars of the Bible as literature argue that the Torah originally ended with Numbers and that Deuteronomy is a later addition by another hand or hands.
At the end of Numbers, the Children of Israel have at last come to the end of their 40 years of wandering in the desert, and the long first section of Masei recaps in mind-numbing detail each stage of the journey, each march from campsite to campsite. (Indeed, Masei means ‘Marches’.) The generation that left Egyptian slavery as adults has died out, including Moses’s brother Aaron, whose death is retold here.
But after looking back over the Israelites’ marches, Masei looks forward to what will happen when they settle in the land God is promising them, including their establishment of cities of refuge for people who kill accidentally – an escape valve of sorts from what might otherwise become a cycle of vengeance.
And finally, the closing verses of Masei return to the brave, outspoken women we met last week in Pinchas, the daughters of Tzelophchad, Mahlah, Hoglah, Noah, Milcah and Tirzah. Famous for petitioning Moses – and God – successfully to inherit their father’s land when he dies with no sons, they return at the end of Numbers when their male relatives ask for clarification of the decision. Moses rules that they must marry within their tribe so their land remains within the clan, so they marry their cousins.
Rabbi Yael Tischler did not mention the daughters of Tzelophchad in her ordination address on Sunday, but she evoked the many generations of women who have not been heard in Jewish history:
‘All of you who ever cried, “Has God not spoken through us, as well?!”
I came to draw you up
To put things to rights
To weave your stories into Our Story
To add you to the constellation of people who matter.
I came to draw YOU up
Each one of you here
Because silence is not a phenomenon of the past
And everyone has an untold story
I came to draw you up
So that the once-thick blanket of tradition can become a tapestry of possibility.’
And there Yael ended her address, ending as our Torah portion and the Book of Numbers end, ending as Shtisel ended, celebrating women, looking back at how we got where we are, looking forward to where we are going in the future – just as the Leo Baeck College does.
Richard Allen Greene is a student rabbi at the Leo Baeck College and a student representative on its Board of Governors.
The views expressed in this D’var Torah do not necessarily reflect the position of Leo Baeck College.