Every morning, during the Shacharit prayer, 14 blessings known as Birkot Hashachar, the morning blessings, are recited. In the version prayed by Orthodox Jews, there is a blessing where men thank God for not having made them women. Orthodox women, on the other hand, instead pray: “Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the Universe, for having made me according to Your will,” a formula dating back to the 14th century CE. Melissa Scholten-Gutierrez asks: How can I thank God for having created me according to His will, when I cannot pretend to understand the intentions of why or how God acts?

The obligation to recite these blessings is stipulated in the Talmud, some in tractate Berachot 60b and others in Berachot 6:23, where it says: “Rabbi Yehuda used to say: A man is obligated to recite three blessings each day… (one of them) for not having made me a woman…” The Orthodox explain that men recite this blessing not because they are intrinsically superior to women, but because they are obligated to fulfill a greater number of commandments, and are therefore grateful to God for this sacred duty. From positions like this, they argue that the tradition of reciting this blessing should be respected and maintained.

But not everyone agrees. Yoel H. Kahn says that, in Southern Europe, in the 14th and 15th centuries, women adopted a more assertive stance and, instead of the original phrase, would say: “who did not make me a man” or “who made me a woman.” By 1872, the original blessing, along with others, had been removed from Reform Judaism’s prayer books, and it no longer appeared in the 1895 edition of the Union Prayer Book. In Conservative Judaism, in the 1873 Siddur Avodat Yisrael, men said, «Who has imposed upon me the obligations of a man,» and women said, «Who enables me to win hearts for You, through motherhood or womanly devotion.»

In 1946, the Conservative movement published its prayer book for Shabbat and Holidays, where the wording was changed to read, «Who has made me in Your image.» The committee that drafted the new siddur was headed by Rabbi Robert Gordis, who explained in an article that the committee originally intended to eliminate this blessing (along with two others), but that «deleting the three preliminary blessings was unsatisfactory because they contained significant religious values ​​that needed to be preserved.» The new phrase, which Gordis attributes to Rabbi Max Gelb, has become the new text used by non-Orthodox movements since the mid-20th century.

The phrase «for not having made me a woman» is a text that many consider misogynistic in its content and also assumes that the person holding the book is a man. Elana Sztokman tells us that a 1471 siddur, housed in the library of the Jewish Theological Seminary, contains an alternative text. In this 15th-century siddur, the blessing reads: «Thank you God for having made me a woman and not a man.» According to JTS Professor David Kramer, the siddur was produced by the scribe and rabbi Abraham Farissol for a groom to give to his bride. It seems that the issue of equality for Jewish women is still unresolved. And thinking of our women, it would be better to say: «Blessed are You, Lord, our God, King of the Universe, for having created the woman.»

By Marcos Gojman.

Bibliography: Chapter by Yoel H. Kahn in “My people´s prayer book: Birkhot Hashachar”, articles by Elana Sztokman, Melissa Scholten-Gutierrez and other sources.