Over more than a decade of listening to women rabbis, I have come to appreciate a deceptively simple truth: what we say matters, but what we do matters more.

As the rabbis taught, “It is not study that is most important, but action” (Pirkei Avot 1:17). And as Ruth Bader Ginsburg observed, “Real change, enduring change, happens one step at a time.”

In many ways, the progress has been remarkable. Ideas that once seemed controversial—even fringe—have moved into the mainstream of Jewish communal life. Issues such as pay equity, paid family leave, workplace culture, sexual harassment, and rabbinic well-being are no longer peripheral concerns. They are now part of our communal conversation.

That progress is real. It deserves to be celebrated.

Yet in more than a decade of documenting the real lived experiences of women and others in the Jewish community, I have learned that agreement is not the same as implementation. Policies do not automatically become practices. Statements of values do not automatically become workplace cultures. And institutional commitments often fail to translate into lived experience.

Today’s challenge is no longer convincing people that equity matters. It is ensuring that our commitments are reflected in lived experience.

In this work, I have often found myself returning to a single Jewish imperative: Sh’ma (listen).

Over the years, I have come to appreciate how critical listening is. It is how we understand the experiences of others. It is how we learn whether our institutions are living their values. It is how we discover the gap between our intentions and their impact.

But listening is not an end in itself.

Sometimes........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)