The Significance of a Tambourine: Betsy Teutsch Speaks at Brandeis with Lori Lefkovitz & Susan Weidman Schneider

On September 27, many of us had the pleasure of watching, on Zoom, a celebration of the Jewish Feminist Alumnae Gifts to Brandeis(University) Archives.  (You can watch the program at that link.)

This program was really a celebration of Jewish feminism’s evolution in the U.S., featuring the contributions made to Jewish feminism, and to the archives, by three Brandeis alumnae: Dr. Lori Lefkovitz, whom many of us know as the wife of former GJC Rabbi Leonard Gordon; Susan Weidman Schneider; and GJC’s (and Dorshei Derekh’s) own Betsy Teutsch.  Betsy, a trailblazer in Jewish feminist art, donated to the archive an assortment of her signature tambourines.  These tambourines are unusual in that many of them are painted with illustrations of Jewish women (think of Miriam and the other women playing their tambourines and dancing to celebrate the crossing of the Red Sea).

On reflection, Betsy reports that she found participating in this program especially meaningful as “an opportunity to reflect on how life choices are often a combination of ‘roads’ available at the time we seek a way, what map we have available to give us access, and what roads just haven’t even been built yet.”

In 1974, when Betsy graduated from Brandeis, there were few Jewish feminist role models.  The U.S.’s first female rabbi ordained by a seminary, Sally Priesand, had just graduated in 1972.  Jewish Studies programs were few and far between, and Women’s Studies programs were even harder to find.

Although Betsy had majored in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies, she didn’t know anything about Jewish artists. The Jewish Catalog, which was then hot off the presses, contained instructions on how to make Jewish objects; but nobody was yet creating tambourines as Jewish ritual objects, much less as Jewish women’s objects.  

During the 70’s and early 80’s, Betsy focused on creating ketubot (marriage certificates), other certificates, announcements, and invitations.  She also illustrated Michael Strassfeld’s “TheJewish Holidays.”  In 1986, she and her husband, Rabbi David Teutsch, moved to Philadelphia, joined GJC, and eventually became founding members of Minyan Dorshei Derekh.  In the late 80’s the Reconstructionist Prayer Commission invited her to create art for the movement’s new prayerbook.

In the early 90’s Betsy heard about an upcoming invitational art show, curated by the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, called “And the women danced.” She thought of the tambourine as a possible image for Jewish feminism, created one, and submitted it. According to Betsy, although her tambourine wasn’t accepted for the show, some of the students who worked on the show recognized the tambourine’s potential.  Commissions followed, and their numbers increased rapidly. 

At this point she was painting each instrument by hand on parchment.  Because the parchment tended to shrink after it was fitted to the frame and painted, Betsy found a company that could make tambourines with synthetic heads and could also print her images onto them.  She eventually came up with about 12 different designs, most with feminist themes.  Some were sold through Jewish organizations; the GJC Little Shop also sold the tambourines.  They became popular because women had never seen themselves on ritual objects before. Also, as Betsy pointed out, who typically buys all the gifts? 

In the infrequent images of Jewish women in Jewish art over the years, up through the late 20^th century, women had seldom been distinguished from one another by age, attire, and the like. Often they appeared static.  Betsy, on the other hand, likes to represent Jewish women as individuals -- different in attire, facial features, body type, color, and age – and in action and interacting with one another.  One of her tambourine designs features a woman soaring over the Wall in Jerusalem; others show women dancing at the Red Sea.

In all, Betsy sold about 11,000 tambourines.  About 10 years ago, she decided to stop and turned to other pursuits.  However, her tambourines remain ubiquitous, indicating changes in Jewish women’s status as reflected in art.  Yet another GJC member has impacted modern American Judaism far beyond this congregation!

(Betsy notes that GJC members Dr. Kathryn Hellerstein and Penina Berdugo were students at Brandeis at the time that she too was a student there. In fact, in 2016 Hellerstein was a Fellow at the Hadassah Brandeis Institute, which hosted the event.)

~Ruth Loew