Legal Egal Poem by gershon hepner

Halakhah says it’s not legal,
for a minyan to be egal,
God, with wings just like an eagle,
Tells guys: “Don’t daven with a gal! ”
But in the Workmen’s Circle Jews
ignore what God has said and daven,
guys tight with gals who are not loose,
or handpicked witches from a coven.
Oy veh iz mir, though it’s forbidden,
how many Angelenos now,
egalitarian, have written
within their Book of Life a “Wow! ”
for prayers in which they eagerly
together sit without mehitsahs
as they could do quite legally
were they just noshing kosher pizzas?

That’s how it goes now in the city,
where boundaries are being blurred;
but I say, “If the girls are pretty,
egal objections are absurd.”

Inspired by Nadya Strizhevskaya’s bat mitzvah at the Stiebel in the Workmen’s Circle on Shabbat Ha’azinu,5790, followed by a pot luck lunch at Rabbi Aryeh Cohen’s, five days before her voluntary exile from Los Angeles to find fame and fortune in Brooklym Heights, NY.’


10/11/08