Anthology Examines Women’s Experiences in Jewish Life

BINGHAMTOM, NY — When Rivkah Slonim was a new bride, the Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, of righteous memory, assigned her and her husband Aaron to serve as a bridge to Judaism on a large and important American university campus. The decision was unexpected. Rivkah Sternberg came from a Chasidic family that could trace its roots at least as far back as the Maggid of Mezritch. She was a bit of a rebel, articulate and outspoken.

Aaron Slonim had arrived from Israel, from a Hebron family, a bookish yeshiva student in a black suit. He didn’t speak English. It worked out. The Binghamton campus of the State University of New York to which they were dispatched became one of the model outposts of Chabad-Lubavitch’s Jewish outreach.

If Jewish campus life changed as a result of their presence, then campus life had its impact on Rivkah Slonim, who serves as co-director of Chabad-Lubavitch of Binghamton, a buzzing educational and social center where more than 300 students show up each Shabbat for her homemade challahs, hot meals and the opportunity to schmooze with her and her husband. On this liberal, intellectual campus, even as Slonim explained and defended Judaism in light of the burgeoning feminism, she worried that women really did wind up with “the short end of the stick.”

And so on a visit back to New York City, she headed for the kitchen of her grandmother, who had played such a formative role in her life. When she opened the door, she found both grandparents: her grandfather, wrapped in his tallit and tefillin, completing his morning prayers and her grandmother concentrating on her prayers as she fulfilled the biblical commandment of setting aside a portion of dough.

“Both were immersed in loving conversation with the Creator,” writes Slonim. “Neither one of them was thinking about self-actualization or equal opportunity. They had achieved.”

Article continued (Chabad.org News)