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‘Just call me morah’

Yehudis FishmanYehudis Fishman, teacher and scholar, is one of those rare individuals who has two birthdays.

Her physical birthday — she marked her 70th this year — fell most recently on Sukkot, which happened to coincide with a gathering planned by her own Boulder Jewish community, which had just emerged, damaged but undaunted, from the late summer floods that devastated the foothills city.

The broadly diverse Boulder Jewish community, ranging from Orthodox and chasidic to Renewal, with a generous portion of Conservative and Reform in between, opted to combine their flood observance with Fishman’s birthday.

After the traumatic flood experience, which witnessed Boulder Jewry coming together in a remarkable way, it was an entirely appropriate gesture, since Fishman not only teaches, but has cultivated many friendships at virtually every congregation and chavurah that calls Boulder home.

In the 14 years that she has been a popular, even beloved, teacher in Boulder, Fishman has become a link between the community’s divergent camps, a person who constitutes a human bond between them.

She also has what she calls a “spiritual birthday” — the 9th of Kislev — which she marks every year, but much more privately than her physical one.

That was the date when Fishman, as a young woman, met Rabbi Menachem Schneerson, the fabled Lubavitcher Rebbe.

It was somewhere around 2 o’clock in the morning, she recalls, and there was a long line of Jews waiting to see him, all of them realizing that the spiritual leader would only have time to speak to each of them for a minute or two.

Fishman had compiled a fantasy list of spiritual questions she would love to ask the rebbe, knowing that it was unlikely to happen, but when her time came and they had exchanged a few words, he asked her, in Yiddish, whether she had any questions for him.

Yes, she replied, she did. And the rebbe provided answers to all of them. It was an hour later when she emerged from the room.

“When I came out,” she says today, the memory still fresh, “everybody was in awe.”

Especially Fishman herself.

“It was probably the most powerful moment in my life,” she says, describing Rabbi Schneerson as kind, saintly and wise.

“I think psychologically he was like a father figure to me, renowned for his intellect and for his caring. If I could pick anybody in the world, after my father was gone, whom I could trust in that way, he would be the person. He had infinite patience.”

The experience, says the soft-spoken Fishman today in her book-crammed Boulder apartment, charted the course of the rest of her life.

Despite the impact of the Lubavitcher Rebbe on Fishman’s life, she was not born and bred in the Chabad world.

Rather, she was raised in Boston by parents whom she describes with a smile as “traditional greenhorn.”

“My mother bought kosher food but she didn’t keep two separate sets of dishes. She would go to services but not necessarily obey the laws of Shabbat.”

Her parents, however, did send their daughter to Maimonides, a respected modern Orthodox day school, and to Jewish overnight camp.

“I saw that people weren’t just studying about Judaism,” she says. “They were actually living like this. That had an impact on me.”

So did the fact that both of her parents were physically disabled. Her father, who was hearing- and speaking-impaired, passed away when Yehudis was 10. Her mother had cerebral palsy and needed help walking.

It gave her “a sensitivity or empathy for people who are in distress on any level, not necessarily just physical handicaps, even animals that are suffering,” Fishman says.

“I think when I was growing up I might have thought of myself as almost having survivor’s guilt in the sense of being born healthy.”

That sensitivity remains with her to this day, influencing her work as a teacher and her ability to interact comfortably with differing Jewish denominations.

After Maimonides, Fishman studied at Beth Jacob Teachers Seminary in Brooklyn, Clark University and Worcester State College, from which she graduated in 1962 with a major in psychology and a minor in philosophy.

In those days, she admits, “teaching was the last thing in my mind. I was more of a dreamer. Somehow I just got into teaching and felt like it was my destiny. I think my first job was assistant kindergarten teacher and I found myself playing with the blocks longer than the kids. I thought, I could enjoy this.”

She was passionate about both Jewish and secular subjects. Teenage crushes on two teachers — one who taught Tanach and another who taught literature and mythology — may have influenced her open approach to learning.

She finds nothing contradictory in loving both sacred and secular subjects.

“You can see from my books that I’m interested in everything,” Fishman says. “I have books all over the place, in every room. I went more in the Jewish direction but I was still interested in the secular — philosophy, psychology, literature.

“My mantra, when I speak occasionally, is, show me anything interesting in the world and I’ll show you its roots in Judaism.”

Although “I hate labels personally,” Fishman says she feels most closely aligned today with the chasidic movement, specifically what she calls “inclusive chasidic.”

“There are some chasidic groups that are very exclusive and keep with their own philosophy,” she says, “while I feel myself more accepting and connected with all branches of Judaism.”

Through the 60s, 70s and 80s, Fishman taught in the Boston area, at such schools as the Beth Pinchas women’s studies program, New England Chasidic Center and the Torah Academy in Brookline. She earned honors and praise for her work with all of them.

In 1987, she made a radical change in her career, coming to Santa Fe to direct the new Jewish Learning Center for adults and to teach in the Santa Fe Hebrew Day School.

She credits Rabbi Adin Steinsalz for giving her the advice to head for the Land of Enchantment. It was the 9th of Kislev — her spiritual birthday — when he told her: “For my own personal soul satisfaction, I should be in Israel or New York, big Jewish communities, but if I wanted to do the work of the Baal Shem Tov or the rebbe, I should go to a place where there are less Jewish teachers, where it’s more needed.”

Although Santa Fe is a very Catholic city — “a church on every corner,” she says — she found its air of mysticism and small but growing Orthodox Jewish community fascinating and challenging. A bit of a mystic herself, Fishman found it intriguing that Santa Fe lies on the same longitudinal line as Safed, Israel’s kabbalistic holy city.

Over the next decade, however, the Orthodox experiment in Santa Fe began to fade. Some of the community’s more active members moved to Israel or Colorado and in 1999, Fishman followed suit.

She was invited to become the spiritual leader of Boulder’s then-new Orthodox congregation, Aish Kodesh, one of the first women to hold such a post.

As spiritual leader, Fishman spoke during services, arranged services and handled many of the pastoral duties usually performed by a rabbi.

“I was kind of both the rabbi and rebbitzin at the same time. I prepared the kiddush and also did the dvar Torah. The only things I didn’t do was read from the Torah or lead the services.”

The position lasted about a year, until Aish Kodesh hired Rabbi Gavriel Goldfeder, but by then Fishman’s extensive Jewish knowledge had already become well-known in Boulder and Denver, resulting in a host of teaching positions at the Boulder Jewish Day School, Menorah, the Conscious Learning Community, Hebrew High, Stepping Stones and several synagogues.

Today in Boulder, Fishman teachers fourth and fifth graders and adults at Conservative congregation Bonai Shalom, adult classes at the Reform congregation Har Hashem and various classes at Nevei Kodesh, a Renewal congregation.

Her teaching range is remarkable, covering everything from death and dying to classic Torah to Kabbalah to Jewish cooking. Much of what she teaches involves the chasidic perspectives that influence her own thinking and beliefs.

Fishman usually worships at one of Boulder’s Chabad groups or at Aish Kodesh, but she is a familiar face at Bonai Shalom, Har Hashem and Nevei Kodesh as well.

“Sometimes I hang out at Bonai because I like the people there,” she says. “I don’t participate in the davening but I stay around for kiddush and the Torah discussion they have afterwards.”

Fishman has no problem visiting, and often learning, in congregations that are far from the Orthodox mainstream.

And they, in turn, seem to have no problem welcoming her.

“One of the advantages of being a woman,” she says with a smile, “is that I don’t have a beard or present a threatening presence in anybody’s else’s congregation. I just kind of slip in.”

She does not do so unadvisedly, however.

“I had a mashpi’ah, a chasidic adviser, who was very, very strict but also very open and understanding about Jewish life. I asked him one time if I was even allowed to go in [to a Reform or Conservative synagogue]. He said if there’s a possibility of having an impact, an impression, on a group of people or even one individual, I could go there.”

Which is not to say, she qualifies, that she goes to liberal congregations as some sort of stealth Orthodox missionary.

“That’s not really on my mind,” Fishman says. “First of all, I don’t think there’s one place in Boulder that’s absolutely perfect for every Jew. I’m talking about more of a personal kind of impact.”

She doesn’t have to accept the theological tenets of Reform or Conservative Judaism to accept or respect the people who follow them, Fishman says.

“I can be friends with them and learn from them too,” she says. “We once had a panel here in Boulder about Judaism and I gave an example about blind people touching different parts of an elephant and thinking that’s what an elephant looks like.

“I don’t think anybody has the whole idea nowadays of what Judaism ideally could be. I appreciate what everybody has to contribute without agreeing necessarily with their religious position.”

That even includes Renewal Judaism, which sometimes goes so far as to incorporate ideas from entirely non-Jewish faith traditions.

Describing herself as “very close” with Boulder’s Reb Zalman — Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, the founder of the movement — Fishman says she has considerable respect for his work.

“I personally would draw much more limits as to which aspects of these cultures I would feel comfortable with,” she says of Renewal’s flirtations with Buddhism, Christianity and other religions.

“But you know, I was close with Shlomo Carlebach, too. I remember a year after his passing we had a gathering. Everybody said, well if you could inherit one thing from Shlomo what would it be? To me it was just love of Jews. That’s what I want to inherit from him.”

Fishman illustrates her point by recalling an episode from her Santa Fe days, when on one Yom Kippur she visited both a traditional and a Renewal-style congregation to say shana tovah to her friends.

Later, when they compared notes, members of the congregations were somewhat nonplussed at how she managed to make both visits.

“One of them said, ‘well, she teaches Kabbalah, so maybe she can be in more places than one.’”

Fishman’s fondness for the place she’s in now — Boulder — is obvious, although she can be direct when discussing its strengths and weaknesses.

“One of the primary weaknesses,” she says, “is that there is not that multigenerational solidity that you have in Denver — grandparents, parents and children all kind of building in the same community and working together, supporting each other. It’s more floating in Boulder.

“Part of the difficulty at Aish Kodesh is that people would drift in from other congregations but they wouldn’t necessarily commit themselves to a steady membership there.”

She is also upset that the Boulder Jewish Day School folded recently, leaving what she considers an unacceptable void in the Jewish community’s foundation.

“I was heartbroken when the Jewish day school closed. I taught there for several years. That is a primary need of a Jewish city and until that happens again I don’t think Boulder is going to be on solid ground Jewishly.”

Among Boulder’s strengths, Fishman says, is the JCC, especially its “Shmoozers” forum in which community members meet to discuss the community’s needs and services.

“I don’t know what other community has this kind of forum, but it should be a model for other cities. Each person has their own name tag and the group they represent; since I am not specifically representing any particular organization, mine says: (my choice and loved by everyone else) ‘Yehudis Fishman: Free Agent; working for G-d.’”

Fishman is also enamored of the Boulder Jewish community’s inherent spirituality which she sees as its strongest characteristic, more striking even than its intellectual nature.

“It’s somewhat similar to Santa Fe,” she says. “When people asked me why I went to Santa Fe, I said, ‘There’s a part of me that’s more comfortable with the seekers than with the finders.’

“I feel that people who are seeking are more open. There’s a closed-mindedness sometimes when people think they’ve found their comfort zone in Judaism and don’t want to explore further.”

When asked what Boulder Jewry can teach the rest of the American Jewish community, Fishman’s answer comes immediately.

“After the flood, especially, people were so helpful to each other. Bonai was totally washed out so the school now is at the Jewish Community Center, and the offices are at Har Hashem.

“On Simchat Torah, Bonai and Har Hashem had this beautiful outdoor dancing, just together. It’s that sense of support of each other, as Jews, as community, in a way that I don’t know would exist in bigger cities.”

Despite her vast knowledge of Torah, Talmud, Kabbalah and many other things Jewish, even despite the fact that she has led an Orthodox congregation, Fishman has no desire to carry the title of rabba, maharat or any other name denoting female rabbi.

She prefers the moniker morah — Hebrew for teacher — which leaves out all rabbinical implications.

Nonetheless, she knows that she’s a trailblazer in Orthodox Judaism, even — in a way — something of a feminist.

“I’m a feminist in the chasidic sense that there is the position that feminine qualities and women in general are on a higher, naturally spiritual level,” she says.

“But I am not a feminist in the sense of pushing for more active involvement in services, which would veer toward Conservadox or some edges of modern Orthodox that include women in some aspects of the service.

“I would not be comfortable with that, not because I don’t think women are good or capable, but because I think the strength of a woman is more inward. The more she can develop that the more she can affect her community in a positive way, rather than looking for outward expressions.”

She does not want to be known as a “rabbi,” Fishman says, because she thinks the responsibilities that accompany the title don’t go along with the feminine gender.

“It’s not because the Torah says no,” she says. “It might be good for some people but in general I feel that a women’s strength is more in her inwardness and inner spiritual qualities. The more she’s pushed into a public domain, there’s a possibility of losing that.

“I go along with saying that women are having more and more involvement in public roles and if they can do it and still maintain their inner sense of connection, fine, but I don’t think they should be pushed into that or denigrated if they’re ‘only’ a homemaker.”

But is Fishman’s own example as a teacher, scholar and leader encouraging Jewish women to push for more involvement?

“You say the devil is in the details,” she replies. “I say G-d is in the details. It depends on who it is, what the context is.”

She does not agree with the position of Women of the Wall or its leader Anat Hoffman that women should pray, and read from the Torah, in the same way that men do at Judaism’s holiest site.

“I don’t believe that somebody like her [Hoffman] can justifiably, from a Jewish position say, ‘Because I’m doing this you can do that.’ Women have always been teachers and students, even in the chasidic world, sometimes especially in the chasidic world, but again, it wasn’t pushed.

“If a women feels that she has that desire to be in the public domain, that’s fine and I think it’s good for Judaism, but I think it has to be within a halachic framework. I don’t think anybody can act Jewishly without having a higher authority to consult.”

All that said, Fishman accepts as fact the idea that the role of women in Judaism is evolving.

“I think it is. It’s moving to this place where it says that the feminine will be a higher manifestation of G-d than the masculine. But again, I think it always has to happen within the structure, the framework of halachic Judaism.”

The role of women in Judaism, specifically from a chasidic perspective, is the subject of a book that Fishman has been writing for at least 50 years.

“I have students who are grandparents now asking what’s happening with my book,” she says.

That great unfinished book is not the only thing she’s written. Fishman has a decidedly creative side which has manifested itself over the years in poetry, plays, songs and painting.

“That’s the part of me,” she says, “that is not so fulfilled with teaching.”

Such pursuits might be fairly unusual for an observant educator, but Fishman characteristically makes no apologies. She rejects the notion of some religious people that the creative arts are frivolous distractions.

The fact is, she says, she usually incorporates her creative pursuits into her teaching and has discovered that they only enhance the education she hopes to impart.

She quotes Rav Kuk (Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kuk, 1865-1935) as saying: “Messianic consciousness will rise on the wings of secular literature.”

Fishman agrees, and in a statement that might be used to sum up her entire career and life, says: “I feel creative expression is some form of Divine inspiration.”

Copyright © 2014 by the Intermountian Jewish News



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IJN Assistant Editor | [email protected]


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