On Monday night, March 10th, I will be participating in a historic event being held at Temple Sinai.  This year the URJ press came out with a women’s commentary on the Torah, and on the 10th we will be celebrating its publication with a night of teaching by many women leaders of the Contra Costa Jewish community.  This commentary is significant not only because women wrote all of the essays and commentary on the text, but also, and maybe even more importantly, because the commentators strive to find the lost women’s voices of our tradition hidden within our most ancient text.

I have been studying the text in preparation for the session I will be teaching, and I have discovered that the Torah has come alive for me yet again with the aid of these beautiful commentaries.  I will be teaching from B’shallach, the portion in which the Israelites cross the sea of reeds into the Sinai desert.  This is a text I have studied and chanted many times, and a part of the Torah that I love deeply.  I chose it precisely because I am so familiar with it, so that I will push myself to connect to it in a new way through this new publication. After just a few preliminary hours of study, I have learned so much about this text that I thought I knew so well.  Let me give you an example:

After the Israelites successfully cross the sea, Miriam, Moses’s sister, leads the women in singing, dancing and playing instruments in celebration of their victory.  In most translations of Exodus 15:20, we read: “Then Miriam the prophetess, Aaron’s sister, took a timbrel in her hand, and all the women went out after her in dance with timbrels.”  In the women’s commentary, this is the translation we read: “Then Miriam the prophet, Aaron’s sister, picked-up a hand-drum, and all the women went out after her in dance with hand-drums.”  The difference between translating the word tof as hand-drum instead of timbrel, or even tambourine, may seem slight, but it is actually quite significant when looked at in a historical context.

According to the women’s commentary, tambourines or timbrels are not found archeologically until the Roman period, almost a thousand years later.  By contrast, the hand-drum is the only percussion instrument mentioned in the bible, and archeological evidence suggests that it was mainly a woman’s instrument.  The mention of percussion in various biblical texts (such as Psalm 150) implies that rhythmic accompaniment was an essential part of ancient Hebrew music.  So, translating tof as hand-drum is not only historically accurate but also a way in which to highlight the role that women played in our musical and liturgical history.

This is just one of many ways in which we will seek to explore this text on the night of Monday, March 10th.  Please join me and many other teachers and scholars for a night of learning and exploration of the Torah.  It promises to be a beautiful and exciting night!