A Woman’s New Place at the Seder Table

Claire Stein isn’t a rebel, but this Passover the 73-year-old Laguna Niguel woman will alter her Seder table rules. She will lay out a cup of water honoring Moses’ oldest sister, Miriam, on Wednesday night.

“We’ve never done this before, but we’re going to do it this year,” Stein said. “One cup for Elijah, but also one for Miriam.” Stein added that if her “very Orthodox” grandfather were alive, he would as soon skip the tradition as stand for that. She expects it to surprise her husband and sons, but said her three daughters will be “thrilled.”

Four hundred miles away in Berkeley, Miri Haruach, thirtysomething and secretary for the Orthodox congregation Beth Israel, will take a firebrand approach: She and about a dozen other women will hold their own Seder, or ritual Passover meal, at which they will tell stories of their travails, put out a cup of water for Miriam--but not Elijah--and personalize the biblical struggle of the Exodus, which they say hasn’t spoken enough to women.

They will read from a feminist version of the Haggada--the prayer book used for the Seder. And Haruach will do what many Jewish women increasingly have done in the last few years--put an orange on the Seder table: a saucy retort for an elderly Jewish man who, legend has it, many years ago said women rabbis made as much sense “as an orange on a Seder table.”

Passover, an eight-day commemoration of the deliverance of ancient Hebrews from slavery in Egypt, begins Wednesday evening. Like a growing number of other women outside traditional feminist circles, Stein and Haruach are adapting the holiday’s rituals to honor Miriam.

According to Jewish tradition, Miriam kept up the spirits of the fleeing Israelites and was rewarded by God with a miraculous well that traveled with them to help them survive as they wandered in the desert. As she has become more prominent during Passover, so has the marketing of--and debate over--one of the Bible’s most prominent female characters.

“Jews in general are increasingly including this practice in their Seder rituals, but rabbis are also including these kinds of new rituals,” said Rabbi Laura Geller of Temple Emanuel in Beverly Hills, who has seen Miriam become a more common part of her congregants’ Seders in recent years.

On Sunday, Geller’s congregation held its annual feminist Seder, which has prompted participants to take some of the newer practices to their own homes.

“Miriam’s inclusion is a piece of a much larger history of trying to get women’s experiences included within the full text of Jewish experience,” Geller said.

But Orthodox Rabbi Daniel Bouskila of the Sephardic Temple in Westwood said that to include Miriam in the Seder and mention her in feminist Haggadot undermines a celebration that should honor God, not individual heroes.

In the traditional Haggada, Moses is never mentioned--for a reason, according to Bouskila. “It says in the Haggada: ‘We were taken out of Egypt, not by the force of angels, a magician or the power of an individual, but through the power of God,’ ” he said. “The Haggada was brilliantly laid out. Not including Moses was a conscious decision. . . . So how can you include Miriam?”

Yet her growing popularity is evident in the latest edition of The Source for Everything Jewish, a catalog of Judaica that offers a dazzling array of Miriam products: ornate cobalt glass Miriam cups, a Miriam tambourine Seder plate, Miriam matzo trays, Miriam prayer shawls and a Miriam serigraph.

When Sunshyne Hoeschen, 42, of Huntington Beach decided to celebrate Miriam this year for the first time, she ordered her Miriam cup from one of several Internet sites devoted to the heroine.

Even more traditional stores carry Miriam-related accessories.

“Starting last year, there was more of a demand for Miriam cups,” said Shahrok Ghodsi, who owns the Golden Dreidle in Costa Mesa with his wife, Julie. “I’m here to meet people’s needs, whether they’re traditional or nontraditional.”

At some revised Seders, whether in Jewish temples or at home, cups of wine are being put out for other women: the two Egyptian midwives who struck a blow for inter-ethnic caring by subverting the Egyptian pharaoh’s order to kill all Hebrew babies at birth; Yocheved, the mother of Moses; and Batya, the daughter of the pharaoh who adopted the prophet.

An additional cup is put forth for those who have “been left nameless” by historians and scholars--”our grandmothers, our aunts, our mothers, our sisters,” according to a Seder liturgy from the Jewish Feminist Institute.

“This trend [to include Miriam and other women] has a solid foundation in history,” said Allen Krause, a Reform rabbi at Temple Beth El in Aliso Viejo. “This means listening to over 50% of the human population.”

Still, some worry about the ultimate effect on religious ritual.

“Not being a legalist, if someone at my Seder wanted to have a cup for Miriam, I would not be against it; I’m all for being egalitarian,” said Rabbi Bernie King of Temple Shir Ha Ma’Alot and president of the Orange County Board of Rabbis. “I would not initiate it, but I would not oppose it.”

But “if the Seder plate becomes just another battleground to score a point, well, that I object to,” he said.

Rabbi Benjamin Geiger of the Orthodox Beth Jacob Congregation in Irvine called putting out a cup of water for Miriam “a misguided desire to place women at the forefront of the Exodus.”

“For women to want to take an active role in spirituality is a positive thing,” he said. “But to thrust the Seder into the political arena pains me.”

There’s no denying that many women see Miriam as a great equalizer amid ceremonies that at times seem like an all-star cast of Jewish patriarchs. But people like Geller say Moses and the other patriarchs will get their due anyway, without any prodding.

It’s a desire for balancing that is increasingly driving some women to alter their Seders at home.

If the celebration of Miriam continues to pick up steam, it could be because of women who don’t necessarily read from feminist Haggadot, set oranges on the Seder plate or much care whether God is referred to as he or she.

It could be because of women like Hoeschen, who will lay out a cup for Miriam as an example for Sadie, her 8-year-old daughter.

“I’m doing this for my daughter, so that as she grows up and as I open her eyes to things, she realizes how lucky she is to be a woman,” said Hoeschen, who said she has never felt particularly slighted as a woman.

Or women such as Stein. “The Seder is a family-oriented kind of thing,” she said. “We have small grandchildren, and whether they’re boys or girls, they need to know about the role women played in that time. When I was growing up, the emphasis was never on women. . . . For me, this is quite refreshing.”