Female Orthodox Rabbi breathes new life into Hanukkah Yiddish tales

Miriam Udel

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I had the pleasure of interviewing Rabbi Miriam Udel on my program and wanted to share her work and Hanukkah tale with Jewish RI readers.

Miriam Udel is the Judith London Evans Director of the Tam Institute of Jewish Studies and associate professor of Yiddish language, literature and culture at Emory University, where she studies the Jewish encounter with modernity. She is the author of several books. Her newest just-published book is “Modern Jewish Worldmaking Through Yiddish Children’s Literature.”  Dr. Udel, who uses the rabbinic title “darshanit” (interpreter), was ordained in 2019 as part of the first cohort of the Executive Ordination Track at Yeshivat Maharat, a program designed to bring qualified mid-career women into the Orthodox rabbinate.

Explain your focus on Yiddish literature, specifically Yiddish children’s literature.

“Yiddish was not the heritage language of all Jews, but it was the heritage language of Ashkenazi Jews, and that accounts for most of our American demographic. So, there's a sense that there is something precious in our families that has been lost and accessing the fruits of Yiddish culture is a form of repair. This is part of what my work facilitates. A universal question every culture has is, ‘how are we going to transmit our heritage to our children, to the next generation?’ That interest in those questions is really what guided me toward researching and translating Yiddish children's literature.”

Are there children’s Yiddish Hanukkah stories?

“In the rabbinic tradition, we have a lot of different ideas and articulations of what this holiday is. We have the story about the oil lasting and the spiritual miracle that that represented. We have a story in the books of Maccabees about military conflict and an improbable victory as underdogs. We have stories about Jewish resistance to Hellenization and preserving Jewish culture, and when we talk about the modern West, we have additional stories.

We have a kind of lived experience of what it means to be celebrating this winter holiday, with its quiet candlelight, against the backdrop of living among majorities who are celebrating Christmas.

And so, all of these elements combine and are represented in Yiddish children's literature.

When I think about Hanukkah, the first stories that come to mind for me are a pair of tales that I write about in my new book about little boys who are kind of at the social margins of their schools that they attend. Now, when I say schools, I mean the very informal elementary education situation that took place in the home of the teacher, which was known as the cheder/kheyder meaning room, because it was in the main room of the teacher's house. And two authors with Hanukkah stories are Sholem Aleichem, who may be a household name, because he wrote the stories on which “Fiddler on the Roof” is based, and Isaac Bashevis Singer, who is our only Yiddish writer who won the Nobel Prize in Literature and was a very prolific author.”

Please share a Hanukkah tale.

“A Hanukkah Eve in Warsaw” by Isaac Bashevis Singer is about a dreamy boy, at the very edge of his peer group, who is a stand-in for the actual remembered childhood self of the author. He is allowed to walk home alone from school on the first night of Hanukkah. He manages to get lost, and when he’s finally found and dragged home, his father extends unexpected grace on account of the holiday. Sometimes family is the greatest miracle of all.

As adults, we can really see that it’s a story about generational divergence, because the father is very traditionally pious, he's a rabbi, and the son is already showing signs of heading for a different kind of future than what his parents are raising him toward. And so, the reconciliation conversation that takes place at the end of the story really shows the generations diverging, while also trying to stretch their way toward each other to maintain a sense of connection.

I think it's a great story because it has this kind of simple reading for kids. It's just a very pleasant, atmospheric story about observing Hanukkah, but it also has this deeper level.”

You are an Orthodox female rabbi which is rare. Please share that process.

“As of June of this year, there are 100 of us. We celebrated the graduation of our 100th graduate and we hail from all over the world including Australia, France, England, and soon, from Latin America.

We are at the liberal end of Orthodoxy, a group some people refer to as Open Orthodox.

I am not a pulpit rabbi. I conform better to the model of the scholar-rabbi, but some women do lead communities, including two in the Philadelphia area.”

What led you to become an Orthodox rabbi?

“I did not set out to become a rabbi. I became increasingly observant when I was in high school, and landed in the Orthodox community, in high school, and then kind of solidified that when I went to college and started gaining more of an educational foundation, learning Hebrew really well, and then studying Jewish texts.

It's something that I continued after college. I went to Israel for a couple of years so that I could study at a higher level. Part of my self-understanding was that as an Orthodox woman, I could not be a rabbi. That didn't exist at the turn of this century, which is when all of this was happening.

I was still teaching at Emory University when a new institution has come on the scene, Yeshivat Maharat. They were training and ordaining women as Orthodox clergy.

I started those studies in 2016, and we graduated in 2019 as the first class in a program specifically for mid-career women with the necessary textual skills.”

So, what is next for you?

“I would like to bring Yiddish back into the American Jewish mainstream in a more thoughtful and informed way. Yiddish is the repository of our hopes, dreams, values and methods – for how to…raise mensches and be ethical, upstanding people, and I want us to have the fullest possible access to that repository.”

PATRICIA RASKIN, owner of Raskin Resources Productions, is an award-winning radio producer, business owner and leader. She has served on the board of directors of Temple Emanu-El, in Providence. Her “Positive Living with Patricia Raskin” podcast can be heard on voiceamerica.com.