By Suzanne Braun Levine
Esther M. Broner, who died this month at 83, was a true woman of valor – generous to her friends, nurturing to her children, and devoted to the dignity of women. She wrote 11 books of fiction and non-fiction – all with a mystical subtext, was a philosopher, a witch (the good kind), and a believer in ritual.
One of her greatest achievements was the creation of a Feminist Seder and “The Women’s Haggadah” to go with it.
The following ”translation” – it is really a transformation – of the biblical description of a Woman of Valor demonstrates how effectively she saved the best of traditional wisdom and made it meaningful to women everywhere.
A Woman of Valor
Who can find a wise woman? For her price is far above rubies.
Those in her house safely trust her for she heeds the words of her children,
She works alongside her beloved, but outside the walls of her house,
Outside the gates of her garden, she hears the cries in the city,
The cries of women in distress She is their rescuer.
She rises at dawn to organize. She rises before light to make orderly the day.
She stretches out her hand to unchain the chained woman,
The woman without recourse, the women not paid their worth on this earth.
She travels back from the city to the shade of her garden.
She casts off her fine linen of purple and crimson.
Clad in dignity and compassion, she seeks peace in the household,
The ways of peace in the city.
Of praise she is worthy.
Many women have done wisely
But she, my beloved, inside or outside of her garden wall,
Is the most precious of them all.
— Interpretive translation by Esther Broner
Remembrances of Esther by Letty Cottin Pogrebin, author activist, and feminist, who participated in just about every Feminist Seder Esther conducted (she is the woman leaning on a pillow in the photo above) in The Jewish Daily Forward: “Esther Broner, Activist, Author, Mother of the Women’s Seder, Is Dead at 83.”
“Esther M. Broner” (Obituary) by Kathryn Kish Sklar, The Jewish Women’s Archive.