What Would Biblical Women Do: Women of Valor
The following was submitted by Alessandra Wollner, a writer and community organizer based in Oakland, CA. Learn more at www.alewollner.com
How do you value yourself? Do you value yourself?
The month of Elul arrives with a list of demands. Search your hearts. Peer into your soul. Take unflinching inventory of the ways in which you have missed the mark.
Elul, clear on its directives and rife with opportunity for recalibration, is an ideal moment to devote time and energy to envisioning the highest, most noble versions of ourselves. During this month, we can also make moves towards re-upping our supplies of self-love.
On Friday nights before the Shabbat meal, it’s a tradition in some Jewish households for a husband to sing a song of praise to his wife called Eshet Chayil. Translation: Woman of Valor.
Eshet Chayil describes the “ideal” woman — trustworthy, physically strong, generous with her funds, and fiercely devoted to her family. When it comes to homemaking, she’s got skills. A Woman of Valor starts to grind before sunrise and drops truth like a bomb. Reverent to the Divine, she holds it down with business acumen and superb sartorial sensibilities.
Like all of Judaism’s ancient texts, Eshet Chayil has its flaws. Most glaringly, this song defines a “good woman” very narrowly, seeing her merit only in the roles of wife, mother, and homemaker. But let’s not throw the baby out with the patriarchy, you know? There’s opportunity here.
The word chayil is most commonly rendered in English as “valor.” But there are a few other translations worth mentioning — “noble,” “forceful,” “mighty,” and “valiant.”
Paired with the word “woman,” each of these adjectives conjure the exemplar of an unmistakably badass feminist — a woman who knows her mind and her heart and acts as a warrior for light. A noble/forceful/mighty/valiant woman can hold herself up — and, if, need be, others too — with phenomenal strength. Ideally, also does all this fed by a wellspring of self-love.
But we can’t get to self-love without self-awareness. And we can’t get to self-awareness without introspection. That’s where Elul comes in.
Elul offers the opportunity to create our own standards of valor, independent of our partners, our children, or anyone, really. This Elul, as you consider where you fell short, consider also how you stand tall.
Well Circle Activity: The 21st Century Woman of Valor
Lead a group discussion about what it means to be a Woman of Valor in this world. Begin by having everyone in the group freewrite for 5-10 minutes. Move to sharing out the character traits everyone jotted down.
Go around the circle and share stories about women in each of your lives who exemplify Women of Valor.
Look to the sphere of pop culture and discuss where Women of Valor show up. (Beyoncé’s “Run the World” come to mind?)
For a more in-depth engagement, print out the traditional Eshet Chayil translation and, as a group, update the poem, radically reimagining the laundry list of ways women walk through the world today, with valor.