Yet another reason to love academia

The room I'm in right now, in Bobst Hall  at Princeton University, has four long tables arranged in a rectangle, with a podium behind the front table, the top of the rectangle.  About 25 people sit around, a bit less than half of whom are prominent professors in rabbinics (Yale, Princeton, U Penn, University of Chicago, Tel Aviv University, and JTS are represented), and the rest of whom are graduate students in rabbinics from around the world (America, France, Austria, Germany, and Israel).  This is a 2-day conference entitled, "The Rabbis and Others in Conversation" - meaning, the ancient rabbis of talmudic literature and the "conversations" represented in the literature  between them and various non-rabbis (right up my dissertation league).  

There are as many women as men.  

Everyone is polite.

There is fervent discussion of everyone's ideas, agreeing, disagreeing, suggesting further research, asking and answering questions.

Many of the women are beautiful, and they are also full-voiced and smart, and many of the men are soft-spoken.

The ages span from about 25 to about 70.  

Some are religious Jews, some are secular, and some are Christian.  And some are something else.

Over breakfast, lunch, and dinner we discuss the papers, or Hebrew grammar, or sports.

No one is belittled.  No one is exalted.

But mainly it's the women.  They are beautiful and smart and strong - old and young - and that's just the way it is.  It is all as it should be.  There is a fantastic feeling of equality and freedom.  Gender is in the room in a comfortable way, not in a way that puts any of us into a box.  Smart women are not desexualized, and intelligent men are not macho.  It is not all about power - who has it and who doesn't and how it's wielded.  This room is about collegiality and learning.  And there are an equal amount of men and women, scattered together around the table.

This is not how it always feels in academic environments, and certainly not in the field of rabbinics.  But sometimes it feels this way, and today is one of those days.  It never feels this way in other environments though, at least not in Jewish ones.  I love academia.  I love being a part of this world.  This is the world in which to cultivate the freedom and equality, particularly regarding gender but also regarding religious orientations and other matters, that I've described at this table in Bobst Hall at Princeton.

Hoorah!