When the death of Jewish feminist legend Gloria Steinem was announced, we were comforted by reading about the incredible work she accomplished in her lifetime and seeing her vast wisdom quoted all over the internet.
Equally comforting, we think, is reading about her longstanding commitment to the feminist seder she helped found. Though it’s not Passover time — in fact, we’re about to enter High Holiday season — there’s never a wrong time to appreciate the generosity, honesty and curiosity she brought to this tradition.
In 1976 in Manhattan, four women — feminists E.M. Broner, Phyllis Chesler, Letty Cottin Pogrebin and Steinem — got together for a seder with a specific purpose: to connect the women of the Exodus story to the fight for modern women’s equality.
That seder would endure for more than twenty years and inspire countless Jewish women to start their own feminist seders.
“Those of us who were there were altered,” said E.M. Broner, who has written extensively and in great detail about the ritual and its participants. Their circle later expanded to include many others, including Bella Abzug and Grace Paley.
“We were a tribe. We were a group of women who met once in innocence, achieved a spiritual bonding, and stubbornly continued meeting, planning and quarreling,” Broner wrote.
Broner’s 1993 book “The Telling” shares the story of this beautiful tradition and the women who built it — and it also offers a look at how Steinem’s grace and wisdom appeared at the seder table.
A slight misstep leaves Steinem relegated to wine duty
“The very first seder, Gloria arrived at Phyllis’s apartment with a cake, neatly bound and tied.
‘Is it a Passover cake?’ asked someone worriedly.
‘It’s from a very good bakery,’ Gloria said.
She did not know that Passover cakes are made from special ingredients.
‘Thank you,’ said Phyllis graciously, taking the box from Gloria’s hands, and putting it into her freezer until the eight days of Passover ended.
From then on, Gloria was assigned to bring Passover sanctified wine, though recently seltzer was added to her load.”
It was Steinem who helped keep the tradition going
After the first seder, the haggadah used, written by Broner and Chesler, was printed in Ms., the magazine founded by Steinem and Pogrebin — but Chesler’s name was omitted in error. The next seder almost didn’t happen, but Steinem and Pogebrin urged that they do it again.
“The first and second seders were revelatory, warm, lyrical, mythic,” Steinem said.
“Trust your own wisdom,” and other very good advice from Steinem
In 1988, the women decided to have “the daughters” lead the seder — their actual daughters, or a spiritual daughter they invited. At the end of the night Steinem shared advice that Broner likened to commandments:
“Trust in the wisdom of everybody.
There is no hierarchy.
We can learn from everyone.
Trust your own wisdom.
Follow your joy.”
“We think of having samplers, bumper stickers, posters made,” Broner wrote. After that seder, Steinem said: “I didn’t know how to be a mother until tonight. I wanted a mother so much, I couldn’t even admit it. I couldn’t hug an older woman. I thought I would dissolve. Tonight I have learned that I can be mothered by daughters and that solves everything.”
Plagues Steinem brought to light at the seder, from the political to the personal
Each year, like in many seders, the women added plagues to the original ten. In 1988, Steinem contributed: “One, I hope we can stop killing each other with our words. Secondly, almost all of our plagues are derived from not putting our center into ourselves, putting it into other people.” Later, she added, “I do not want to pass on to any daughter a feeling of having no center. I still have a hard time with that and an inability to get angry.”
“Thirdly, our history is a plague, lost and found and lost, without continuity. Fourthly there is a plague of books like ‘Men Who Hate Women and the Women Who Love Them.’”
In 1995, the plague she contributed was more personal: Nerve pain.
The seder founders — or “mothers” — looked at Steinem as their Moses
During the 1995 seder, Broner listed the guests as blessings, including “Those like Gloria, who has been our Moses for decades and now, at sixty-two, gets a free transfer in the desert.”
Promised Land wisdom: “We are of even tread”
“Gloria said that we were not nationalists but migratory peoples, that walking was our gait not crossing boundaries,” wrote Broner. “She spoke of baby monkeys who, when soothed with a walking gait, fell asleep, but if the gait were too slow or too fast, kept on crying. We are of even tread, I believe she meant, not tramplers putting our feet down too forcefully upon this earth.”
Steinem loved the biblical story of Ruth and Naomi
During a conversation about how biblical women are written as men viewed them, Steinem said, “Let us explore what would have happened if Deborah had said no to war, Miriam had said no when sent out of the tent, Sarah had refused her role.”
She continued, “I loved that story of Ruth and Naomi. ‘Wither thou goest, I go.’” Steinem’s mother, Ruth, told her the story as a child and emphasized to her that it was the only time a woman said this to another woman, instead of to a man — a story that’s hard not to connect to her origin story as a feminist legend.
“We have to prepare for happiness,” Steinem pronounced over the parsley
“We ate the parsley and Rachel Dobkins, a writer, spoke about greening as renewal,” Broner wrote about the 1996 seder. “We passed around the greens and spoke of the greening of hope. Gloria Steinem said, ‘We have to prepare for happiness. There is no happiness without the preparation for it.’”
We’re grateful for Broner’s book, which gives us a peek into one of the meaningful Jewish rituals Steinem created and partook in throughout decades of her life, and we’re grateful for the work Steinem did to create sacred spaces for all women. May her memory be a blessing.
New Year, More Kveller. A few dollars keeps Kveller joyfully, honestly free.
