Rabbi's Chayva's Chat

When the Barbie movie came out, I was a little busy (it was just before High Holy Day season), so you’ll forgive me that I saw it for the first time on New Year’s Eve. I was never a Barbie girl myself, but appreciated its pithy articulations of the challenges of being a woman - “cotton candy for modern feminists,” as a friend described it. I’ve experienced many of the contradictions they described, both in my personal life and in rabbinic life, and I know I’m not alone in that.

Yet as much as I felt seen by America Ferrera’s scripted rants, the film left me feeling ambivalent. For all of its clear articulation of feminism, its presentation of masculinity never grew into something nuanced and mature. Perhaps that’s too much to ask of one movie and they should make a sequel, but mature conversations about gender identity and mutual understanding will not wait for a sequel. So, of course, I looked to Torah.

This week, in Parshat Shemot, we meet our new hero, Moses, though we don’t know him by name until he has grown up and been brought into Pharaoh’s daughter’s household (see Exodus 2:10). Moses quickly presents several personality traits: he acts against injustice, both in the abusive Egyptian taskmaster (Exodus 2:12) and in the Midianite shepherds who will not let women water their flocks (Exodus 2:17). He has a sense of curiosity and wonder in seeing the burning bush, humility (and perhaps insecurity) in being called to God’s service, ability to step into leadership and take Pharaoh to task, and willingness to question and wrestle with God.

We might want to add other traits to the list. I encourage us to have these conversations; to let femininity and masculinity be parts of a whole rather than mutually exclusive, and respect to be elevated above pride. And if you haven’t yet seen “Barbie,” I do recommend it.