Leading Prayer in a Feminine Key

As a girl, before I had ever even heard of feminism, I believed that we women behind the mechitzah were superior to the men because our God was more abstract. Prayer in the women’s section was much more spiritually demanding, and therefore it was religiously superior and brought us closer to God. We did not need to stand before a physical Ark—we were called to do more. This thought both shielded and shaped my religious life, and it aligned well with the theological landscape in which I was raised—a world where God has no body or form.

The first time I led the Kabbalat Shabbat prayers—oh, the insult I had carried for years: that a small boy could lead this prayer, while I was forbidden—the excitement was immense. I feared I wouldn’t find the right tone, that the nusach—that musical “mother tongue,” the scale and patterns that allow a prayer leader to improvise the flow of prayer like jazz—would fail me. I feared my prayers would ring hollow, or be off-key in more ways than one.

Discovering that the nusach flows naturally through my veins was a priceless gift. To be precise: I discovered that the nusach is not a product of conscious study but an echo of childhood voices—a foundational experience at the base of my being that rises within me, even when my heart is awash and my spirit rages. Something that had been waiting patiently within me for decades now found expression. I discovered that I was (also) a part of the tradition, not merely an immigrant to it.

When I discussed the idea of leading prayers with a close friend, more conservative than I, she said: “It’s your right, I understand you,” then added: “But it does nothing for me. Give me my corner in the women’s section, a prayer leader with a pleasant voice and nusach, and that is enough for me.” As the conversation continued, however, she suddenly recalled how “as a seven-year-old girl, I would take my summer piqué blanket, wrap it around me like a tallit and stand before the mirror in my room, behind a closed door, singing ‘Anim Zemirot.’” This is the first song children sing at the lectern in the synagogue, a song that is part of boys’ initiation into communal prayer and leadership.

I discovered then that leading communal prayer exposes parts of me I am not used to exposing, and that my heart still trembles and hesitates.

I thought then about how dreams, aspirations and hopes are pushed aside when reality refuses them, and how rare it is that someone gets the opportunity to return to them and realize them later in life. I also wondered to what extent my own surfacing of these experiences allows for a similar process in other women, just as my conversation with my friend awakened early memories in her. (And perhaps such an awakening may be too painful a process for those who will never be able to realize it?)

About 20 years ago, when I lived in the religious settlement of Efrat, I fought alongside other women for our right to dance with the Torah scroll in the synagogue as part of the celebratory Simchat Torah prayers. In the end, we lost, because only 62 percent of the congregants supported us, while the bylaws stipulated that such a change required a 66 percent majority. Following a halachic ruling from the settlement’s rabbi and an exhausting struggle, we organized a Simchat Torah celebration for women outside the synagogue, in the courtyard of the local elementary school. Someone generously offered us an invalid Torah scroll with which to dance.

I remember how, during that prayer, I drew my strength from a three-year-old girl named Shakked, who had come to dance with her mother and who watched me as I held the Torah scroll with warmth and love. What did she know of my trembling and anxious heart, which felt that maybe, after all, this really was “unnatural”?  Shakked is 23 today, and I am still writing for her.

I Gave More Than I Intended

About ten years ago, I joined Hakhel, a Religious Egalitarian community in Jerusalem, and I began a slow, gradual process of religious growth. At every stage, anxiety, resistance and tension rose up within me, and I thought to myself: Damn it, I’m in my fifties—how much longer? Only after some time did I admit to myself that all of these were signs that I was in a new and unfamiliar space. I asked myself: When was the last time you did something for the first time? 

In the first year, I was invited to give a class on Shabbat Shuvah, the Shabbat that falls between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur,  and the following year, community leaders suggested I read the haftarah for Rosh Hashanah from the Book of Samuel—the chapter about Channa, whose “lips moved but her voice was not heard.” I couldn’t help but think: I am Channa, and my voice is heard. I decided to study the cantillation marks—the musical notation of the biblical text—with a woman named Meital, who is the same age as my children. For her, reading from the Torah is a matter of course, while for me, it required intentional effort and exertion, as if I were a bar mitzvah boy. I remember the moment in the synagogue on Rosh Hashanah morning when I discovered that although I had prepared well and mastered the reading of the haftarah, I had not prepared the special melody for the blessings over the Torah on the High Holy Days. I realized then that I am a migrant; there will always be small (but essential!) details that I miss. I will always be “foreign,” never a native.

The following year, I delivered the sermon between the Kol Nidre prayer and the rest of the Yom Kippur evening service. I spoke from the heart, in a role which in the synagogues of my childhood was performed by the community rabbi. And now it was me up there, standing before the community. What is it in me that seeks spiritual leadership? Had I dreamed of it at a young age but then given up? What of the fact that I had no rabbi, that I never prayed in a yeshiva? After all, many of the synagogue-goers long for sermons like those they heard in yeshiva, for prayers like those they experienced before they had to worry about kids or about earning a living. I imagine them remembering and longing for a unity that can be found only in a great song of testosterone-fueled yearnings.

Was I sent to open their hearts, to transform them into a community that sings and prays together, or was I standing at the front of the line, knocking on the gates of heaven so that the Master of the World sees me first?

The year after that, I was invited to lead the Kol Nidre service itself. I was preparing for this prayer—one of the most sublime of all the holiday prayers—when suddenly questions began to plague me. God is indeed in the details: What is the correct pace? Where should I pause? How will I know if I’m starting on the right pitch to reach the height and the crescendo of the closing words, “ushvuatana la shvuot”? 

When I finished praying Kol Nidre—this short Aramaic passage is sung three times, very slowly—I was drained. I felt that I had given more than I intended to give. Leading prayer involved surrendering parts of my soul, the very existence of which I had never shared with anyone, parts whose presence I’m not even sure I had acknowledged to myself. I discovered then that leading communal prayer exposes parts of me I am not used to exposing, and that my heart still trembles and hesitates. I further discovered that the transition from being “just one of the crowd” to being the prayer leader creates different and contradictory interactions between the private and the public realms. On the one hand, it demands a certain withdrawal from being a private individual, but on the other, it sometimes necessitates a deeper entry into my innermost soul. 

What does being the prayer leader take from me? And what does it give? How can I describe the seam and the movement between the personal and the communal in those delicate moments when a woman stands up to lead the congregation in prayer? 

To this day, I am astonished by the process of the prayer leader shifting back to being simply a member of the community. This transition is very difficult for me. Personally, I need moments of transition.

The Prayer Leader’s Contract with the Congregation

A few years later, I sang one of the Selichot (penitential prayers) on Yom Kippur eve to the melody of the contemporary song “Dugit Nosat” (“A Small Boat Sails”). Natan Yonatan’s lyrics—“If all her sailors do not awaken, how will the little boat reach the shore?”—echo the prayer’s call for the awakening of the soul and perhaps even hint at Jonah in the belly of the fish, whose story we read on Yom Kippur afternoon. The song’s uncanny and threatening imagery—sailors in the heart of the sea—combined with the childhood melody, strikes a hidden chord in the soul. 

Yet, I worried: Too many long moments were passing before the congregation recognized the tune. Would I be able to sense the congregation’s reaction to my choice? Are the worshippers just participating against their will, or are they surrendering to the melody? In those moments, how does the contract between a prayer leader and her congregation change? Was I sent to open their hearts, to transform them into a community that sings and prays together, or was I standing at the front of the line, knocking on the gates of heaven so that the Master of the World sees me first? Behind every technical consideration lies an invitation to a deeper internal examination: When is a musical flourish mere pretension and arrogance, and when does it uplift and ennoble? All the while, I was terrified that I might suddenly fall silent.

A different year, approaching Simchat Torah, it became clear to me while humming on the way to synagogue that, when I lead the Prayer for Rain, I would weave the traditional nusach with the “secular” melody of “To the Water Cisterns.” Naomi Shemer’s tune would hint at the return of the post-holiday routine just around the corner, but it would also offer an opportunity to elevate the secular nature of the song into the realm of the holy. Indeed, the hundreds of women, men, and children standing behind me during that Simchat Torah rain prayer carried me upward. I knew the congregation felt the different layers of the choice of this song, even if they couldn’t put those layers into words. Not for a moment did I forget the magnitude of the privilege of leading the prayers, and I thought constantly: May our prayers be heard.

Prayer and Politics: Elevation to the Spiritual

In early 2023, we were in the midst of the protest against the proposed reforms to Israel’s Supreme Court. Everyone knows my position on the topics of the day—I would regularly send (altogether too many) messages in group chats to encourage people to attend the protests. One Shabbat, my turn came to deliver a short Dvar Torah after the service (no more than seven minutes!). Despite the temptation, I felt quite clearly that I should not say anything political. The community needed a shared experience. The Sabbath asks us to rest from our struggles. I shared thoughts that had percolated within me for years regarding the haste of the redemption from Egypt and the hope for a different redemption, one in which “you shall not go out in haste.”

Before the Dvar Torah, the gabbai asked me to lead the section of the prayers surrounding the removal and return of the Torah scroll from and to the Ark. As I recited the Prayer for the Welfare of the State in the nusach imprinted in me since childhood, I felt the words strike a new chord within me. All the frustration, the political dread, and the tension in the pit of my heart poured into the prayer. “Protect her in the wings of Your grace.” This prayer is not for political victory, but for grace. The Holy One desires our well-being, and my sincere heart is worthy of Him. For a moment, I existed wholly within my petition. Powerless, I said, “Send Your light and Your truth to the state’s leaders, ministers and advisers,” and I felt that I was my prayer. You might ask, what is the difference? What happened in that moment that could not happen in a private prayer for salvation from distress? Well, it is just not the same.

At the words “And establish them with good counsel before You,” I stopped. It felt like an eternity, though it was likely only two or three seconds. I needed to be present in that moment, with the words and the intention. I knew they were transient—here and gone within but a moment. I discovered then a new sense of what it means to be a prayer leader, for me: Even if I have a political stance, it doesn’t matter during prayer. As a community, we are more than the sum of our ideologies. Paradoxically, the ancient tradition of prayer can help us see each other anew as human beings who carry pain and yearning, longing and the expectation of good. Prayer can shift real-world anxieties into a spiritual space, larger and higher, within which the entire community can take part. We can thus recall the fullness of our being and our faith which precedes our political identities.

Paternal Law and Maternal Voice

A few years later—last summer—I was asked to lead the evening prayers on Yom Kippur eve. (Three months in advance! Who can think about Yom Kippur in the middle of the summer holidays?) I wanted to wear a kittel—the white cotton robe worn by prayer leaders on the High Holidays, which simultaneously symbolizes the purity of angels and the shrouds of the dead. (The word is Yiddish in origin, deriving from the German for “robe” or “gown.”) How proud I was as a girl when my mother allowed me to iron my father’s kittel on the eve of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Now, I thought it was important for me, and for women in general, to have a kittel to neutralize the baggage of female sexuality. Everyone, men and women alike, should wear white during the High Holiday prayers. (All the while, a thought crept in: I am a mature woman, a wife, a mother and a grandmother, a public figure and a community member. Even asking if wearing a kittel fits with “modesty” felt like it both diminished me and insulted the tradition itself).

Attempting to conceptualize what happens between the prayer leader and the community of people praying requires the use of feminist theories.

In the end, I wore a white dress. And what of the tallit? Wrapping myself in a tallit had always been difficult for me—I often went without it when leading prayer on Friday nights, even when the option of using a “feminine” tallit was available. On the other hand, I felt that praying Kol Nidre on Yom Kippur eve without a tallit would be a mistake. The wrapping is protective; it constitutes a kind of partition. I bought a thin white scarf and asked my father, then 92 years old, to tie the tzitzit (fringes) on it. I had a vivid childhood memory of him tying fringes for himself and my brothers. Now, as my father tied the fringes to the four corners of the scarf, the tremor in his hands was evident, and I was moved by the thought of that tremor being woven into my new tallit.

The prayer was held in a courtyard. Hundreds of worshippers assembled—men, women, children and elders. I stood by the shtender (lectern) and paused. I closed my eyes, as if disconnected from the hundreds of people around me. I went more slowly than usual, because the heart needs its due. One of my children had been in the midst of a personal crisis, leading to sharp tensions with me and the rest of the family. A few hours earlier, on the eve of the holiday, I sent him a pre-holiday greeting, and he lashed out at me in anger. As I arrived at the synagogue, I was fighting back tears.

I stood before the lectern and looked inward, settling into my body, asking God to grant me success, and I began the festive melody that opens the service. I knew that I needed to exert myself and raise my voice—the courtyard was large, a massive crowd had gathered, with many children—but the act of raising my voice brought me to tears. I stopped again and again to compose myself , knowing that the congregation was with me.

I wanted to stop and scream: I am not some righteous woman weeping in prayer; I am a mother who feels distant from her child! You don’t understand—something here is getting mixed up, misunderstood, or at least, misperceived. How can you pray for the community when your private soul is in turmoil? Or perhaps it is just the reverse: Perhaps my distress was a fitting engine for standing before a congregation. Maybe this is how it has always worked, and it is only our gender-biased imagination that makes us see rabbis as occupied with the Jewish people while I, in my smallness, am occupied only with the trifles of what goes on inside my home? Is this thought itself linked to my being a woman?

More generally, what should be done with the public, communal power granted to me by virtue of my role as a prayer leader? With the appreciation of my friends, or perhaps their reservations or hostility, shaped by the personal choices I made in leading?

Attempting to conceptualize what happens between the prayer leader and the community of people praying requires the use of feminist theories. The synagogue is a space marked by the primordial distinction that identifies masculinity with culture, order and the “Paternal Law,” and femininity with nature, emotion and chaos. In the synagogue, this distinction goes unnoticed—it is transparent and taken for granted. Yet here I am, standing before the Ark, carrying within me the liturgy and the prayer book, the duty of precision in the nusach, and my father’s internalized voice. At the same time, the emotional capacities of a mature woman, capable of bearing the exposure of her vulnerability, do not simply disappear.

For a moment, the Channa that is me seems to undermine the character Channa, mother of the prophet Samuel. Channa’s prayer for a child, whispered in private, wholly feeling, leads the High Priest Eli—representative of law and ritual gazing upon her—to believe that she is drunk. Perhaps what we need now is for a woman to hold the symbolic order, the “Paternal Law,” together with the semiotic order—the pre-linguistic emotion—and give expression to the “Maternal Voice”? Perhaps what we need is a woman who could bring relationships—what Carol Gilligan called an “ethics of care”—into prayer itself? Perhaps the very confusion between the Logos of tradition and emotional Pathos, woven together without choosing one over the other, is part of the “repair” (tikkun) that prayer requires?

At the conclusion of the holiday, a member of the community wrote to me: “Our society needs leaders who are willing to share emotion and vulnerability. We must not be Sparta.”

Leading and Weeping

During the High Holidays of 5786 (2025), after two years of war, I read the haftarah for the second day of Rosh Hashanah: “Truly, Ephraim is my dear son, a darling child. I, indeed, speak of him, and I remember him still. My heart yearns for him, I will receive him back in love, says the Lord.” Rachel, the mother of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, was there in the synagogue. So too were Oshrat and Effie Shoham, who only months before had lost their son, Yuval. We did not yet know when the hostages would return. A moment before the haftarah reading, I saw the Torah scroll that the Goldberg family had donated to the synagogue, and from which we had just read. Attached to the Torah’s velvet mantle was a coarse beige rectangle of fabric that immediately evoked masking tape, upon which the number of days the hostages had spent in captivity was written, alongside Jeremiah’s words: “There is hope for your future, says the Lord, and your children shall return to their own border.” The Torah’s mantle was crying out to me as it was returned to the Ark.

The community was well acquainted with bereavement, and I too was going through an almost unbearable private crisis. I was sobbing, barely able to read the words, and time and again the congregation waited patiently for me to gather my strength. “Ephraim is my dear son,” “Rachel weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are not.” “Keep your voice from weeping,” I read, weeping.

At the conclusion of the holiday, a member of the community wrote to me: “I felt that you stood before the congregation as a Shelihat Bechi—a weeping prayer leader—for us all. A noble and necessary role in the High Holiday prayers.” I replied that I was fortunate to have a place where I could afford myself the chance to be this way in public. She responded, “It isn’t about ‘affording yourself’—it is about leading. It provides an opening for every worshiper to reach a deeper and more authentic moment, in a situation where many people struggle to bridge religious formalism and their inner spiritual life. Our society needs leaders who are willing to share emotion and vulnerability. We must not be Sparta.”

In that moment, I learned something new: The community needs a prayer leader who weeps. Someone who trusts the community enough to break down within it, who mingles her private pain with the public grief of the nation—because that is life, woven together. She can embody collapse, if only for a moment. The community knows that its steadfast and composed leader has not disappeared for good. She has retreated for a moment to give space to the heart, and from within that fracture, she will stand up and return.

What should I call what I do? I feel uncomfortable with the word Chazzanit (female prayer leader). Perhaps it is because of the diminutive suffix “-it.” For a moment, I am able to hear in the Hebrew verb lehitchazzen (to be a prayer leader) the word chazon (vision) and the internal dynamics that the word chazzanut (leading prayer) can take on.

Or, perhaps, am I a “master of prayer (ba’alat tefillah)? This is the traditional term for someone whose very soul is present in the moment of leading communal prayer—they are deeply and emotionally engaged, though they may be lacking in musical virtuosity. But is the process I have described one of “mastery” or “ownership” (ba’alut) over the prayer? How is this mastery acquired? Is this not too pretentious a term? What of the term Shlihat Tzibbur (prayer leader, literally “emissary of the community”)—am I “sent” (nishlahat)? Rather than a marginal inconvenience, the difficulty of finding the right term, a word that could perfectly convey the pangs and experiences of my heart, encapsulates the entire issue.

Today, looking at myself from a broader perspective, I realize that sometimes it is specifically a person who has traversed great distances from the heart of religious life who can blaze a path inward. The girl I was, praying behind the opaque mechitzah, has not disappeared. She is present still within the woman who today stands before the Ark. Sometimes in a white dress, sometimes wrapped in a scarf that bears the trembling of my father’s hands intertwined in its fringes, and with a heart choked with worry for my children and for the country. I have learned that to lead a congregation in prayer you must indeed have skill, but at its core stands ultimately neither charisma, nor musicality, nor confidence. Rather, at its core, leading prayer means being willing to expose the depths of your heart, to become a conduit for the congregation. An essential part of this agreement is taking a posture of emotional, spiritual and religious fragility—one that allows the congregation to sense its own brokenness and sometimes, I think, perhaps also that of God.

Translated by Levi Morrow