Many Orthodox men, especially here, have become inured to this phenomenon, and simply scroll past. Some mock the “angry women” who post about it. A thread on why that’s dangerous for Judaism, with some help from Dr. Ada Rapoport-Albert z”l and the women of the Sabbatean movement: https://twitter.com/hannahlebovits/status/1358773385917046784

1/The name Shabtai Tzvi conjures up the image of a megalomaniac who declared himself the Messiah and declared certain Jewish laws no longer in force. What most people don’t know about his movement, which numbered in the tens of thousands, is that women played a large role in it.

2/In her book Women and the Messianic Heresy of Sabbatai Zevi, 1666-1816, the late Professor Rapoport-Albert traces this history. It began shortly after Shabtai publicly declared he was the Messiah (he believed it since 1648) in his native Izmir, Turkey on Rosh Hashana 1665.

3/For context: When SZ returned to Izmir after building a reputation in Cairo, Jerusalem, and Aleppo, and meeting his right-hand man Nathan of Gaza, he already had followers in Izmir. They blew shofar and cheered at his announcement, and facilitated his becoming community leader.

4/That winter, they began to claim prophecy that SZ was Messiah. A particularly large wave of mass prophesying occurred on Dec. 17, 1665, when men and women, boys and girls alike claimed this with Scriptural verses. The key here is that SZ did not reject the “prophetesses”.

5/In Jewish tradition, there are 7 prophetesses. But they are far outnumbered by male prophets, in Scripture and rabbinic texts, which suggests that there were 1.2 million. And it was likely harder for a woman to prove she received prophecy (see Jud. 13:11) due to this imbalance.

6/And the even the one prophetess whose prophecy is recorded, Chuldah, is chastised by the rabbis for her “arrogance” (Megillah 14b), and said to have merited to prophecy only because of the righteous actions of her husband (Pirkei D’R. Eliezer 33). Not exactly a warm reception.

7/So it was a big deal that SZ believed women when they said they prophesied. Obviously, he had his own incentive to believe them, but it nonetheless empowered them. As well as women and girls in Rhodes, North Africa, and even Germany, who came forward in the ensuing months.

8/Throughout the Ottoman Empire, from Constantinople to Salonica to Corfu, entire communities, including their rabbis, were convinced by the prophecies of young girls. Even Immanuel Frances, himself an anti-Sabbatian polemicist, acknowledged the prophecy of SZ’s wife Sarah.

9/And the prophecies continued even after SZ’s conversion to Islam in 1666, and his death in 1676. R. Yaakov Emden, the foremost anti-Sabbatian in history, verified that young Frankist girls who didn’t know Hebrew uttered Zoharic prophecies in fits of tremors, then forgot it all.

10/The truth is, R. Chaim Vital, top student of the Arizal, wrote many unquestioning testimonies of women prophesying in Jerusalem, Safed and Damascus c. 1600, which ARA spends a whole chapter on. But the illegitimacy of the Sabbatian & Frankist movements practically erased them.

11/They were further erased by a darker side of Sabbatian history: the sexual promiscuity they believed was a tikun (rectification) for a broken world. By focusing on “prophetess” Hayah Schorr in his testimonies, R. Emden gave the impression that women were leading this activity.

12/What R. Emden ignored, however, was that in some instances the messianic fervor was actually inspiring women to ascetic piety, something that had always been limited to men. Many of the women who claimed prophecy were actually practicing sexual abstinence. In the words of ARA:

13/“It released women from the inherently sensual, corporeal, material nature by which rabbinic tradition had always defined them and made it possible for them for the first time to be perceived in terms of ‘spirit’ and ‘form’, terms that would normally apply exclusively to men.”

14/Another thing that was erased: the gender egalitarian efforts of SZ. It began on a Shabbat in December 1665, when he interrupted services in the Portuguese shul in Izmir, where most of his detractors davened, and called up both men and women to the reading of the Torah.

15/Per anti-Sabbatian R. Moshe Hagiz, SZ continued this practice by calling 7 women to the Torah on Shabbat. After his death, the Polish Sabbatian ascetic Judah Hasid brought a Torah scroll to women’s shuls (weibershul), perhaps so they could read from it or at least kiss it.

16/Interestingly, R. Yaakov Emden writes that none of the local rabbis of the towns where Judah Hasid passed through contested this, “because the masses of people, both men and women, follow him devotedly.” And RYE himself submits that Judah did some good by inspiring repentance.

17/But ultimately RYE concludes, on the basis of a weak proof from the Talmud, that Judah should have been ostracized for his actions. Not for allowing women to read from or kiss a Torah (which he does not claim), but merely for preaching to women. We’ll get back to this later.

18/Finally, Sabbatians were the first to teach women Kabbalah, as per RYE and R. Moshe Hagiz. Here too, RYE decried the practice on the basis of alleged immorality by a single person, Moses David of Podhajce, who met with married women (as did R. Yonasan Eybeschutz, FWIW).

19/Why is this all important? Well, all of these reactions made an impact. In Hasidism, which to some extent replaced Sabbatianism in parts of E. Europe, women’s spirituality was even more limited and policed. Women who claimed prophecy were subject to dehumanizing exorcisms.

20/I’m not a Sabbatian, and I have no desire to revive a misguided, destructive movement. But I can’t help but notice that anti-Sabbatian responses recall what happens today: women are held responsible for men’s sexual misbehavior, and their religious lives suffer as a result.

21/What do I mean? The belief that women’s pictures shouldn’t appear in Haredi media is rooted in concerns of pritzus (promiscuity), & the fear that men will masturbate. Not unlike RYE’s belief that female prophecy was rooted in promiscuity, as his focus on Hayah Schorr suggests.

22/And with the help of his narrative, which, with the exception of his attack on R. Eybeschutz, was considered authoritative by rabbinic consensus, everyone forgot about R. Vital’s prophetesses. A female Baal Shem Tov would have never been accepted, and was likely impossible.

23/But here’s the kicker. RYE’s prohibition on a man preaching to women didn’t hold. Nearly all Jewish sects do it now. Why? Not because it benefited women. If it did, why weren’t other practices, like teaching them to read Hebrew, preserved as well?

Because Jewish men make all the important spiritual decisions. Men realized they limited women’s spirituality so much that women couldn’t teach even basic Torah to other women. So naturally, they decided to teach women themselves. Guess who changed that? A woman (Sarah Schnirer).

If I may add to @HannahLebovits’ tweet, this is how men dominate Judaism: by trading spiritual capital only with each other. They never have to answer to women. They don’t even have to base their rules in halacha (as with the women’s photo policy and RYE’s anti-preaching policy). https://twitter.com/hannahlebovits/status/1359493656969949188

26/It doesn’t matter that 2 6-year-olds now have to think about the fact that there are people out there who think their faces are sin-inciting objects. It doesn’t matter they can’t express their spirituality like boys can. They are just the latest victims of the boys’ club.

And before you say: “they have Instagram!”: IMAGINE if the thousands of Jewish girls+women sharing recipes, outfits, health tips, mental health awareness, art, music and more in the tightly connected Instagram community had the spiritual capital to create non-virtual communities!

28/So read Mishpacha or don’t; that’s your business. Just know this: every time you defend the policy, or laugh about the “angry women” with the guys, you might be contributing to the spiritual silencing of an entire generation of young women.

29/And look, I get the scrolling past it. I do that too for other things. But if you actually subscribe to these media, the cognitive dissonance will only last so long. That’s how cognitive dissonance works. Eventually you’re going to defend the policy, or just stop caring.

30/So what can you do?
1. Write to Mishpacha or other publications about the policy
2. Consider unsubscribing if you feel strongly about it. You can read everything online.
3. Spread the word to people who aren’t aware
4. Support women-run publications like Nashim Magazine!

end.