The first time Delphine Horweiler saw a dead person was years before she became a rabbi, in the infamous dissection room she attended as part of her medical studies in Jerusalem. For several days she operated on the hand of one body, and what ultimately shocked her was not the appearance of the inside of the body, but rather what was revealed to her eyes when the sheet moved, revealing the meticulous pink nail polish on the deceased's fingers.
The realization that just a few days ago the body was so alive that it had anointed its nails with black was a startling reminder of the fragility of the partition separating the living from the dead. In a sense, the same terrifying closeness of death continues to occupy her to this day, accompanying, as a rabbi, the dead and their relatives.
"A big part of my work as a rabbi ends up being in those moments of death," Horweiler said in an interview I conducted with her during her visit to Israel. "I also accompany bar mitzvahs, weddings, conduct Shabbat receptions and so on, but I have known for years that what happens in cemeteries, hospitals and mourning homes is at the heart of my job.
"Living with Our Dead - Essays for Consolation", Delphine Horweiler, from French: Rotem Atar, Locus Publishing,
"In those moments, there's a strong sense of doors opening, that you're between worlds, between times, between generations. Man tries to connect the unconnected puzzle pieces of his life. When I stand in this doorway, I use the tools of tradition that allow me to speak not for myself but for something bigger than myself – to remind us that we are expressing something that existed before us and will continue to exist after us."
"Is the Bible misogynistic? Yes, but if you want I'll prove to you that he's a feminist. Would you like me to prove to you that the Bible is Zionist? I can. And I can prove to you that he opposes Zionism. There are many voices in Jewish texts."
Horweiler is not about death itself. "I think you can't talk about death. When people talk about death, they say terrible and ridiculous things. When you enter a house of mourners, you always hear phrases that you want to scream: 'He's in a better world,' or 'The good guys go first.' Who has ever been comforted by such sentences? It is better to be silent. The only thing we can talk about is life, and that's the best thing to do at shiva. There are satieties that are passed with laughter or stories about the bad cooking or the boring monologues of the deceased, and that to me honors the life that the dead lived. There is a tendency to make the dead holy. I think it's even stronger to remember how human they were."
Jokes about the father's grave
Her book "Living with Our Dead - Essays for Consolation," which is currently being published in Hebrew, describes a series of such meetings she held as a rabbi, with those who died and with those who remained behind. The book, which became a bestseller in France, sold 300,<> copies there and is now being adapted into a television series.
"One of the stories that didn't make it into the book is about the funeral of an elderly woman who was a grandmother beloved by her grandchildren and baked a lot of cakes for them. At the funeral, I saw that one of the granddaughters, 14 or 15 years old, had prepared a speech, a folded page, and motioned for her to approach the microphone. She approaches, and she opens the folded page and recites: 250 grams of butter, 4 eggs, some chocolate... It was her grandmother's chocolate cake recipe. To me, it's much more correct than saying, 'She was a woman of valor,' etc."
"Judaism exists in several voices." Women of the Wall, Photo: Naama Stern
On another occasion, not long ago, she accompanied a man whose relationship with his dead father was difficult. "When I wanted him to tell me about him, he had nothing to say except that he liked to tell jokes. I asked him if he wanted to say a eulogy about him, and he said that all of a sudden, he wouldn't be able to speak at the funeral.
"But at the funeral itself, after I spoke, I felt it open. I asked him: Do you want to talk? And he came over to the closet and started telling dirty jokes, and everyone was on the floor, and I, as a rabbi, try not to laugh. I think at that funeral he was his father's son. It's as if he said: I'm like him, too, telling jokes. It was very powerful."
Some of the people who contact you are completely secular. What are they looking for in Jewish tradition at this moment of death?
"I think Judaism has wisdom about mourning. We have, unfortunately, historical experience on the subject. I would even say that Jewish intelligence is a fractional intelligence. There is a lot of fracture in Jewish tradition: the Temple is broken, Moses breaks the tablets, we secrete part of the challah, at a wedding we break a glass, when a child is born we cut a small part of it, and when we earn we give tithes - in Judaism there is a constant consciousness of fragility, imperfection. This makes Judaism unique and makes it have a special power in relation to loss.
"It's also what allows me to be there in the cemetery with the families of the dead – not only do I know how to stand and talk without collapsing, but I know that I'm completely broken myself. The fracture of the families of the dead exists in me, resonating, I know where it breaks for them because for me too."
Employees the ownership
Today, Horweiler runs a bustling synagogue and a popular beit midrash in the heart of Paris that accommodates 350 participants each month with waiting lists, but her path to the rabbinate was not a given. Although she had always been interested in Jewish thought, in her youth she never imagined that this interest would lead her to the Rabbinate. "I grew up in a traditional family, my grandfather was an Orthodox rabbi, and I never imagined that a woman could step into this position. It took me years to imagine it was possible."
"The Temple is broken, Moses breaks the tablets, part of the challah is secreted, at a wedding a glass is broken, when a child is born a small part of it is cut, and when you earn you give tithe. In Judaism there is a constant consciousness of fragility, imperfection."
At the age of 17, she immigrated to Israel alone, "out of Zionism," and began studying at the Faculty of Medicine in Jerusalem. "For me, immigrating to Israel to study medicine was supposed to be the answer to my Jewish identity. I grew up in a family of Holocaust survivors, with a strong narrative of victimhood, and I felt that immigrating to Israel and becoming a doctor would be a corrective continuation of history. To this day, I think that medicine and the rabbinate have many things in common, because you find yourself alongside people in crisis and you listen to their story as a sacred story that requires guidance and healing."
Why did you leave?
"Everything exploded with Rabin's assassination. My Zionism, my presence in Israel, my medical studies. I was in my third year standing in the square that evening - to this day it's hard for me to talk about it. I said to myself, it is inconceivable that the ideology of the murderer is called by the same name as what brought me to Israel. It is inconceivable that he calls his ideology Zionism. It's the opposite of everything I believe in. I have come to understand that Israel is not an answer for me – it is an ongoing question.
"My Zionism is not the Zionism of a landlord, it is not a Zionism of ownership, of 'it belongs to us,' it is the opposite of that. I believe in the Judaism of Groth, where even when you're at home you're never at home. In the Bible it is written that God says, 'For I have the land, for you live and dwell with me,' God is the sole owner of the land, but the dominant Zionist speech in the land has become a narrative of landlords, of 'this is ours.'"
Rabin Square after the murder, photo: Moshe Shai/Archive
Wasn't it possible for you to live in Israel as a foreigner, out of opposition to this discourse of ownership? There are other people in Israel who share this view.
"How many years have it been since then, 28? On this visit, for the first time, I hear things like this. Israelis turn to me and tell me that they feel like strangers or strangers in their country. I could have stayed in Israel, but then I was far from the normative narrative. Many people, whom I love, see the Zionist project as coming home, which makes Diaspora Jewish identity a crippled, half-developed identity. I speak Hebrew quite well, but there is no language in the world where conversation is more difficult for me than in Israel. There is a wall of misunderstanding between me and many Israelis I meet, who grew up with the Zionist narrative of coming home.
"I was amazed that Ben-Gvir chose the slogan 'Who are the landlords here?' In Leviticus it is written, "As the deed of the land of Egypt, which you dwelled in, you shall not do, and as the deed of the land of Canaan, which I bring you, which you shall not do" - and what are the deeds of the land of Canaan? Idolatry for husband. And that's what's happening in Israel: ownership is being processed. The criticism of ownership is, in my opinion, the most relevant issue. Until now I've been kidnapped, told that it's a Diaspora Jewish position, of someone who doesn't understand history, who doesn't understand that in order to survive you have to be strong, etc., only now suddenly something has opened."
Room for another thought
After leaving medical school following Rabin's assassination, Horweiler returned to France and became a journalist on French television, but continued to be interested in Jewish thought. "I was told that if I wanted to study Talmud at a high level as a woman, I had to go to New York, and when I went I discovered the world. I discovered the power of non-Orthodox Judaism, which is the majority in the United States."
She received her rabbinical ordination in 2008 from Hebrew Union College, which belongs to the Reform movement, but Horweiler has reservations about her classification as a Reform rabbi. "People put a 'reform' sticker on me. I don't need a sticker, I'm Jewish. I believe in Jewish pluralism, I believe that Judaism exists in several voices, that it needs Orthodox and non-Orthodox voices. The way Judaism is defined as Reform implies that there is a normative Judaism and a different Judaism. I am not 'another Judaism.' I am a Jew who grew up in Orthodox Judaism, and then discovered the non-Orthodox world and developed within it."
When they write about you in the Orthodox press, they put a lot of it in quotation marks. They call you "Rabba."
"They believe that there is a right way and a wrong way, and in my opinion this way is contrary to Judaism. Judaism has always spoken in several voices. The Talmud says, 'These and these are the living words of God.'"
About three years ago, the newspaper Makor Rishon organized a video conference between Rabbi Eliezer Melamed, the rabbi of Har Bracha, and her. They talked for about an hour about different conceptions of Judaism and love of Israel. "I think it was a very good conversation. But in its wake he had a lot of trouble - his books were taken out of meetings, etc. I want to talk to everyone, but I know that walls are being built within the Orthodox world – it's kosher, it's not kosher. I believe in this discourse, and I will not cancel anyone, even though they cancel people all the time.
"In conversation with the Orthodox, it is often revealed that the critical difference between us is not kashrut, halacha, etc., what really separates them is that they are convinced that they are the real Judaism, and I am convinced that they are not – and that neither am I. That's a significant difference. I think there is no such thing as authentic Judaism, Judaism is always nourished by internal discourse.
"In the sources themselves you can find almost any idea. Can you ask me, is the Bible misogynistic? Yes, I will prove to you that he is misogynistic. But if you want me to prove to you that he's a feminist, I'll prove that to you too. Do you want me to prove to you that the Bible is Zionist? I can. But I can also prove to you that the Bible opposes Zionism. I can prove to you that the Bible and the Sages open the gates to the stranger or to another, and I can also prove to you that they close the gates to the stranger and to the other. The Jewish texts have many voices, they are not homogeneous and do not promote one Judaism, they validate many voices within Judaism."
The book describes an incident in which one of the deceased relatives calms those present at the funeral by telling them, "Don't worry, she's a secular rabbi," and Horweiler wonders how to refer to this absurd nickname. "At first I jumped, but I understood exactly what they meant – that they would get a different eulogy than the one they're used to hearing. I won't talk about halachic matters, I'll talk about Jewish culture, our connection as French to the Republic, etc.
"I meet a lot of Jews in France who tell me they don't identify with the positions of the Orthodox institution, but if you live in Bordeaux, in Nancy, there's nothing else. They tell me: I have a problem that my wife doesn't sit next to me, but I go because I have no choice, so they get into the statistics of those who go to Orthodox synagogues."
In fact, the secularism of the republic is for her an enabling space. "There is something brilliant about the promise of a secular space free of beliefs. Secularism is like a frame, it is empty, like the void at the root of the Hebrew word secularism. Space is not empty in the sense that it has no beauty or power, but that there is always free space for movement, for other thoughts."
Compared to the stuckness of the "full cart"?
"Exactly. Religious Orthodoxy is built on a game without empty space, it is impossible to move, nothing changes, the method is ostensibly the same as two thousand years ago. In fact, the system is alive, and a lot has changed. But the narrative is that the system remains as it was. But a method that doesn't change is empty, just a method that moves alive."
"Living with Our Dead - Essays for Consolation", Delphine Horweiler, from French: Rotem Atar, Locus Publishing, 172 pages
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