Don’t call me rebbetzin

I'm just married to the rabbi, say many wives of Cleveland's spiritual leaders

We think we know the "typical" rebbetzin: the unpaid and often unthanked arbiter of the synagogue's social, educational and domestic currents. She's kept on a pedestal and at arm's length. Even if she has her own career, she's expected to be the model Jewish woman, setting the standard for female congregants in dress, decorum, hospitality, housekeeping, childrearing and spousal devotion.

She attends all the women's activities, but she's never really "one of the girls." She can't confide in anyone, especially not about her husband. She's all alone, but she is expected to be grateful and honored to be in that position.

Rebbetzin like that haven't existed for over 40 years, and they probably were never quite as we remember or idealize them.

"Many talented women who felt a calling to serve Jewish life married rabbis," says Shuly Rubin Schwartz, associate professor of Jewish history at the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) in New York. "It gave them status, a respectable career, a place of authority in the Jewish community." The daughter, mother and widow of rabbis, Schwartz has long been interested in what Jewish women with a religious calling did in the days before women were allowed to become rabbis themselves.

'Larger-than-life' rebbetzin

Many early 20th-century rebbetzin were more than the traditional helpmate, supporting their husband, entertaining, hostessing. "Several worked as a team with their husbands, strengthening American Jewish life all over the country," says Schwartz, whose upcoming book The Rabbi's Wife: Rebbetzin in American Jewish Life focuses on three powerful rebbetzin in the 1920s.

Rebbetzin often were Jewishly educated and trained, some by their rabbi-fathers, some at the Teacher's Institute of JTS, where women could get an extensive religious education, explains Schwartz. That generation of rebbetzin taught classes, led women's prayer groups, gave sermons and invocations, and organized other women to become more active in Jewish life.

The years between the First and Second World Wars saw the rise of what Schwartz calls the "larger-than-life" rebbetzin. A premier example is Cleveland's own Rebecca Brickner, wife of Barnett Brickner and the mother of Rabbi Balfour Brickner. Barnett was the rabbi of what is now Anshe Chesed Fairmount Temple (Reform) for 33 years, from 1925-1958.

"Rebecca Brickner was an absolutely amazing rebbetzin," says Schwartz. Fervent Zionists, she and her husband made separate trips to Israel; while her husband was in Israel, Rebecca took over his job, delivering sermons to his congregants. During one of her husband's absences, she even selected a new head of the religious school.

The lives of early 20th-century rebbetzin are really about how women attained power when they couldn't get it directly, Schwartz explains. When the culture frowned on the combination of marriage and career for women, these women "found meaningful careers through marriage."

Paradigm shift

In the 1970s, however, there was a sea change in the way people began to view rebbetzin and in the way rebbetzin viewed themselves. With the women's movement and the widespread entry of middle-class women into the workforce, new professional careers (outside the traditional teacher or nurse) were open to women. Once rabbinical schools began accepting and ordaining female rabbis in the mid-1970s (a development greatly supported by many prominent rebbetzin), marriage was no longer the only n or even the primary n path for women who sought leadership roles in the Jewish community.

"Instead of admiring rebbetzin, (the community) felt more ambivalence about the role," says Schwartz.

Rebbetzin themselves began to vent, in writing, their frustrations with the constraints of the role. Articles with titles like "Rabbi's wives: The case of the shrinking pedestal," "Please don't call me Rebbetzin," and "I married a rabbi" began appearing in the mid-1970s in magazines like Moment, Journal of Reform Judaism, and even Women's Day.

Hampered by expectations

Silvia Tennenbaum's 1978 novel Rachel, the Rabbi's Wife shocked readers with its unvarnished portrayal of the life of a rebbetzin. Rachel, a wife, mother and, by profession, artist, chafes at the expectations her husband's Long Island congregation has for her behavior and appearance. Rachel isn't cut out to be a traditional rebbetzin; she doesn't like to cook, entertain, or pay condolence calls, and she has little aptitude for social niceties.

Rachel can't even pretend to like her husband's bourgeois, materialistic congregants. She wants to be accepted for who she is, a woman who would rather be painting in her studio than discussing art at a Hadassah meeting.

When her husband's contract comes up for renewal, Rachel is directly pressured by congregants to be more of a traditional "rebbetzin," a leader in the temple, a joiner for her husband's sake, if not her own. And when, in the end, Rachel's husband loses his pulpit, one of the congregation's complaints is that Rachel hasn't even tried to meet their expectations.

Today, probably few congregations would go so far as to fire a rabbi because his wife insisted on having her own life. While the penalty for nonconformity is much less severe these days, the tacit pressures put on the rabbi's wife haven't lessened that much.

"In every era, including the present one, rabbis' wives experience a lot of tension between their public and private lives," Schwartz acknowledges. "Rabbis' wives lived in the limelight, and that's what gave them the status, but it could also be very painful because there were expectations they couldn't always meet."

The stereotype of the traditional rebbetzin still casts a shadow over the lives of many women who marry rabbis. Every single one of the Cleveland women this reporter contacted, even those who declined to be interviewed, acknowledged the unique pressures inherent in being a rabbi's wife.

The rabbi's wife wore what?

Even those rabbis' wives who consciously and vocally reject the traditional rebbetzin role feel they can't fully escape the sense that the whole congregation is watching, even judging them. Anecdotal evidence suggests that every woman married to a rabbi will be exposed at some point to comments about her suitability for the role of rebbetzin, whether the comments are made face-to-face, overheard, or carried second-hand by her husband or friends.

That scrutiny can catch even seasoned rabbis' wives by surprise. Rita Shtull, a Hebrew lecturer at the Siegal College of Judaic Studies, was married to Rabbi Jacob Shtull, who led Congregration Shaarey Tikveh (Conservative) for nearly 35 years. In her early days as a rebbetzin, Shtull recalls once attending a congregant's funeral, wearing her everyday winter coat, a vivid orange.

"As I approached the funeral, I suddenly realized people were looking at me, whispering 'What is she wearing?!'" The memory brings a mischievous smile to her face.

To the surprise of younger wives of rabbis, those unspoken rules of dress and comportment do linger on. One Cleveland-area rabbi's wife in her 30s (who asked not to be named) says she's heard through the grapevine that some members of the congregation don't like it when she wears pants to shul.

"I just don't get people's curiosity about me, about what I wear." she says. "I (want to be) just another participant in the community."

The clothing issue is a prime example of the public/private tension in the lives of rabbis' wives. Historically, says Schwartz, some have resolved the tension by remaining behind the scenes, dressing and behaving with unobjectionable propriety, and using tact, rather than argument, to influence the outcome of synagogue issues.

Don't call me 'rebbetzin'

Some women today are honored by, and hope to live up to, the title of rebbetzin, but many others find it overwhelming or off-putting, implying a level of Judaic knowledge or commitment they don't possess.

Still other women feel that a term identifying them though their husband's profession is ultimately a negation of their own worth as individuals.

"Oh, no, not a rebbetzin!" Nili Adler says, in mock-horror, when I call for an interview. After some hesitation, she decides, "I really don't want to be interviewed in that capacity." Adler is the director of Hebrew studies at Siegal College. She also happens to be married to Rabbi Moshe Adler, part-time rabbi of Beth El-The Heights Synagogue (Egalitarian/Traditional) as well a lecturer at Siegal College and Akiva High School.

One rabbi's wife consented to be interviewed only if her name were not revealed. Still, she took time to explain why she feels "I don't want my name in any article that has the word 'rebbetzin' in it."

"Most younger women I know who are married to rabbis find the word 'rebbetzin' incredibly offensive," she explains. "The word implies that we have no identity outside of our husbands, that we don't have meaningful lives in our own right."

Some congregations still think of the rabbi and his wife as a "two for the price of one" bargain. These congregations interview the rabbi's wife along with the rabbi n sometimes openly, sometimes subtly.

The wife of one local rabbi confided that before her husband took his current job in Cleveland, "we specifically said no (to a job offer) because they interviewed me also," she said. It wasn't a formal interview, "but you could tell from the questions they asked" that they were trying to evaluate her potential contribution to the synagogue. "I don't receive a paycheck from the temple," she says. "I have my own career."

It's become more common, Schwartz says, for women today to claim, "I'm not a rebbetzin. I'm just married to a rabbi, and when you're hiring him, you're not hiring me."

'I am rebbetzin, hear me roar'

Even women who want to embrace the traditional role of rebbetzin can find the role mystifying, in part because the role is in flux.

When Rita Shtull married in 1951, "I didn't have a clue what it was to be a rabbi's wife," she laughs. "And I can say with equal honesty that my husband didn't know what it was to be a rabbi!"

Today, one rabbi's wife in the New York metropolitan area writes an anonymous blog (web log) called "Renegade Rebbetzin" (the tagline: "I am Rebbetzin, hear me roar."). Her entries document her frustrations with the changing parameters of her role.

Although it's a role she chose willingly, the Renegade Rebbetzin never imagined that for congregants, her identity would be so fused with her husband's. "I don't want to be defined by my husband's profession, and the term rebbetzin tends to bring to mind, in some circles, a kugel-baking, European-accented 'baby machine' who has not been to college, does not wish to work outside the home, and in life seeks solely to serve, to empathize and to be an appendage to her husband," she writes.

The Renegade Rebbetzin also worries about how much of herself she can let her congregants see. What would they think if they knew that "I not only watch plenty of television, but I bought 'Pirates of the Caribbean' just so I could drool over Johnny Depp (and) Orlando Bloom?"

Never 'one of the girls'

It's particularly ironic that while the rabbi's wife struggles to preserve her identity n her passions and quirks and hobbies n from the expectations of the congregation, she also has to come to terms with the fact that no matter how much she conforms to their expectations, she'll never be one of the gang.

Helen Eisenberg, wife of retired Rabbi Frederick Eisenberg of Temple Israel Ner Talmid (Reform), admits that being a rabbi's wife affected her interaction with people n but in a good way. "I guess I knew that people treated me in a certain way because I was the rabbi's wife. They were nice, helpful. We were special."

All the same, Eisenberg did come to understand that there were times it was necessary to keep some distance from congregants. "There were probably some people I should have kept further away" than I did, she admits. "But you learn from those mistakes."

"People tend to put the rabbi and his wife on a pedestal," confirms Shtull. "They stop telling dirty jokes when you walk into a room."

Lubavitcher rebbetzin

Devorah Alevsky, who with husband Rabbi Leibel Alevsky runs the Chabad House of Greater Cleveland, may be the closest approximation of a traditional rebbetzin in Cleveland. While the traditional rebbetzin no longer exists in Reform, Conservative or even Modern Orthodox synagogues, Schwartz believes that she is still a force in the Lubavitcher community. Lubavitch women take on leadership roles as shluachim (emissaries) only in concert with their husbands. They go out into the world as a team to spread the joys of Judaism.

Alevsky finds the role of women in the Chabad world to be quite liberating. She explains that girls get the same education as boys, and "we're trained from a very young age to take on leadership roles." The mother of ten children (most of them girls), Alevsky has seen eight of her offspring grow up to run Chabad houses in places as close as Solon and as remote as Shanghai and Argentina.

The team concept is so dominant in Chabad that it is difficult for Alevsky to talk about the role of the rabbi's wife without recasting the questions. When asked about the Orthodox "dress code" Chabad women follow, for example, Alevsky replies, "What you call a (mandatory) 'dress code,' I call (choosing to) 'dress Jewishly.'"

Some of Alevsky's students n she teaches Torah classes and runs women's seminars on a number of topics n call her Rebbetzin. But "mostly, we're informal n they call me 'Devorah.'"

Inclination, not obligation

Between Rebecca Brickner and the Renegade Rebbetzin came a generation of women, now in their late 60s and early 70s, which includes Rita Shtull and Helen Eisenberg. These women went about quietly recasting the role of rabbi's wife, following their own dreams while not travelling too far from their husbands' sides.

"Some rebbetzin were among the first supporters of ordination for women," says Schwartz, in part because the introduction of formally trained female leaders left reluctant rebbetzin free to pursue other paths. "Some thought, 'Great, I'm free. I'm going back to school to have my own career.' They felt liberated," contends Schwartz.

Both Shtull and Eisenberg taught full-time in public schools for most of their married lives. They raised children (Shtull had four, Eisenberg three) and did only as much as they wanted to do n want being the operative word here n to fulfill the role of rebbetzin.

In London, Ontario, where her husband had his first job as rabbi, Shtull was mentored by a congregant who "told me when I needed to wear a hat." Shtull recalls the woman taking her aside to warn her that in February, Jewish women in London all start wearing straw hats, an idiosyncratic fashion Shtull could hardly have anticipated.

A Hebrew teacher, Shtull became involved in Shaarey Tikvah's educational programming. Her pet project was educating the congregation about women's rights n "raising awareness and encouraging women to exercise those rights."

Her other activities, like attending Sisterhood meetings, she did from inclination not obligation. "There was no explicit expectation of the rabbi's wife, nothing more than would be expected of any Jewish woman," Shtull recalls. "When I was absent (from shul), they knew I had four young children and a job. They never expected me to attend every event.

"And more importantly, my husband didn't expect me to," she adds.

Eisenberg enjoyed being a rebbetzin and was surprised to hear the negative feelings younger women have about the word and the role. She liked the built-in community and the opportunity to engage with congregants at a meaningful level. "Offensive? My contemporaries and I never saw (the term rebbetzin) that way," she says. "I enjoyed it. My husband wanted to make a difference in people's lives, and I wanted to join him. I fell right into it."

In the early years of their marriage, when her husband was a rabbi in the Air Force, "we were very involved in the lives of those young men," Eisenberg continues. As a rebbetzin you have the opportunity to be "totally involved with people. You know them through their ups and downs, their pleasures, and unfortunately, their tragedies."

'I'm a regular person'

Ariella Reback, 33, is an attorney and the wife of Rabbi Edward Bernstein of Congregation Shaarey Tikvah (Conservative). Like many mothers of young children, Reback is trying to have it all n career and family n and she has begun looking for part-time work that also will allow her to spend time with her young children.

Reback participates in the congregation by contributing to social and educational programming for young families, which fits her own situation right now. "I try to be a presence and be friendly" at temple, she says, and she doesn't feel the congregation expects more of her.

"I'm far from being the model rebbetzin," she insists. "I'm a regular person with regular problems."

Like Eisenberg, she is pleased when her position as the rabbi's wife gives her the opportunity to do something good for people. When she's approached with problems, "I try to direct (congregants) to my husband, because he has the training for that." But she does think there are times when it's helpful to congregants "to have me to talk to, too."

When a couple was planning their recommitment ceremony, for example, Reback asked the wife if she'd like to go to the mikvah. "That turned out to be an important part of the ceremony," she says with pride.

Andi Getz, the wife of Rabbi Steve Segar of Kol HaLev (formerly the Reconstructionist Havurah) met her husband when he was in rabbinical school in Philadelphia. At the time, Segar's primary interest was education (in which he has a master's degree), and they came to Cleveland when Segar took a teaching position at The Agnon School. Over time, Segar's interest shifted toward clergy-related duties, and he became the full-time rabbi at Kol HaLev.

"It happened by degrees," Getz explains. "So I had time to get used to being 'the rabbi's wife.'"

Getz describes her role in the Kol HaLev community as "very comfortable." She enjoys informal and ad hoc tasks that draw upon her capacity for compassion and care (she's a social worker currently taking time off to "do the mom thing"). For instance, when a community member needs help, she might organize meals, childcare or other support.

"Because Kol HaLev is a small congregation, people know me and know my strengths and are happy to let me be who I am and do what I'm doing," Getz says. Approachable and low key, she can often be found seated on the ground, playing with her three young sons, during services and other programming.

Many n though not all n rabbis' wives we interviewed felt empowered, as individuals, to set their own parameters with their husbands' congregations. Reback credits her ease with her role to her friendships with other rabbis' wives. "I was fortunate that I knew a lot of other women who happened to be married to rabbis in the New Rochelle area," where the couple lived before coming to Cleveland. Reback learned "there were a lot of different models" for what a rabbi's wife's life can be like.

"The role of rebbetzin," she adds, "is what you make of it."