Women's  Lib

by

Esther Rechtschafner

 

When I collected information for my article Research on Cherkassy, I found some interesting information on a roll of microfilm from the Melitz newspaper (the first Hebrew newspaper published in Russia). This newspaper had a section that told of interesting occurrences in various Jewish communities. I did not use the information found in this column in my article, for I did not find the incident that was described there to be a nice story about the Cherkassy community. Now I realize that I may have made a mistake.

The story is as follows. The organization of the prayers for the High-Holidays, particularly Yom-Kippur, did not suit many of the community members. It seems that something was crooked. This caused a bit of quarreling in the community.  Something had to be done about it.

And on Simchat Torah something was done about it. When the hakofot began, all of a sudden, and at the exact same time, all the women of the community threw their husbands’ Etrogim, that had been used for Sukkot, at particular male participants. This way, the women had their say in how they believed that the community should be run.

Now it is obvious that this action was well planned. It may well have been one of the first instances of "Women's Lib".