By Cantor Sharon Hordes
Cantor Sharon Hordes (Photo courtesy of Keneseth Israel Congregation)
When my sister and I were little, we loved travelling to Maryland to visit our grandparents. They would always have our favorite foods ready for us, take us to see the sights in Washington, D.C. and basically spoil us rotten. One of our least favorite parts of visiting them, however, was the scary portrait of our great-great-great grandmother hanging in my father’s parents’ basement. It was a larger-than-life, faded, sepia-toned image of an old lady, sitting in an even older wooden chair, her head covered, scowling at the camera with her fists clenched. For years I thought of her only as this stern, frightening ancestor – despite not having any other information about her, including why this giant portrait was displayed in the first place.
We are fortunate to have a professional historian in our family: my father’s brother, Dr. Stanley Hordes. Over the years, his dogged research has allowed us to connect a name – Rochel-Leah Cohen – to the grim-faced lady in the basement. And as it turned out, Rochel-Leah was also a pioneer in girls’ literacy. Back in the heavily Jewish town of Jakobstadt (then Russia, now Latvia) during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, she taught generations of boys and girls how to read Hebrew. Those students included a young girl — my great-grandmother Sara Wasserman – who grew up to marry Rochel-Leah’s grandson, my great-grandfather Harry Morewitz.
Just a few years ago, my sister shared the story of Rochel-Leah with our cousin, the award-winning (and incredibly prolific) children’s book author Jane Yolen, who had no idea that our shared ancestor was a respected Hebrew teacher at a time when women often didn’t have access to a formal education. Jane brought the story to life in a delightful picture book that was published last September, The Many Problems of Rochel-Leah (Behrman House). Although Rochel-Leah herself never left Jakobstadt to come to the U.S., her legacy lives on through numerous descendants who have made Jewish learning and amplification of Jewish voices a top priority.
I’ve been thinking about Rochel-Leah recently as I teach my latest cohort of adult Hebrew classes, including the preparatory class for the Adult B’nai Mitzvah. Just as has been the case before, many of my students are grown women who had little to no access to Hebrew schooling when they were younger. This has always puzzled me, since I do not know of any halachic reasoning for denying girls and women a Hebrew education. While there are verses in the Gemara (rabbinical commentaries) supporting the idea that women are not obligated to spend time away from their domestic duties to fulfil the mitzvah of Talmud Torah (the study of Torah), I could not find anything from the Mishneh Talmud prohibiting women from learning how to read and understand Hebrew. Sadly, I believe this is yet another example of scholars interpreting our texts to support gender bias.
I have long been inspired by these adult women’s desire to learn to read and translate the Hebrew prayers, and I have always enjoyed watching them work hard to master a skill they had been denied so long ago. Once my students are able to decode the letters and vowels and learn a few shorashim (Hebrew roots) for some of the main prayer vocabulary words, the meanings of the prayers and blessings start to rise off the page.
Rochel Leah will certainly be on my mind as I host the 2025 Women Cantors Network (WCN) conference here in Louisville this June 8-12. The WCN was founded in 1982 by a small but determined group of women who were trained as cantors but were not yet welcome to join the existing professional cantors’ organizations. Over the last 43 years, the WCN has been a place for continuing education, inspiration, music sharing, commissioning of new liturgical pieces, and mentorship. If you are interested in volunteering and/or attending some of the few events that will be open to the public, please let me know.
Learning more about my great-great-great-grandmother has enabled me to view that once-feared portrait through a new lens and a softer filter. I am proud to be her descendant and to carry on her mission of unlocking the doors of Hebrew mastery for anyone who is interested. If she were alive today, I wonder what she would think about the sheer numbers of female rabbis and cantors within the more progressive Jewish communities. Meanwhile, if you have always wanted to learn how to read Hebrew but were not given the opportunity, please contact me at shordes@kenesethisrael.com for more information about our Introduction to Hebrew for Adults class schedule.
Sharon Hordes is hazzan at Keneseth Israel Congregation