The Intersectional Barbie Dream Minyan: A Minyan for our Times
Sept. 21, 2016
By Amy Powell with Jen Taylor Friedman
The first "Tefillin Barbie" debuted 10 years ago, the work of Jen Taylor Friedman, one of the first soferot (female ritual scribes). Recently, Friedman brought us an updated version for our times: The Intersectional Barbie Dream Minyan.
"In the intervening time, I've learned big words like 'intersectionality,’' and Mattel has got it together to make Barbies of different skin tones and body types," Friedman said in an online post, where she launched the now viral photograph and Facebook post of The Intersectional Barbie Dream Minyan.
The "Intersectional Barbie Dream Minyan" points to the Jews who are still excluded, "not intentionally but effectively, from our communities. Barbies of many different ethnicities, wearing tallit and tefillin, are having a Torah reading."
Friedman explained:
"All the Barbies are wearing long denim skirts and three-quarter length sleeves. That's how I’ve been making Tefillin Barbies for 10 years now. They're also all wearing tallitot. One of the Barbies isn't wearing tefillin, and she's wearing a jaw-length sheitl. Perhaps she put her tefillin on before she left home, or perhaps she just doesn’t do tefillin at this point in her life.
"Some of the Barbies are Black, some of them are Brown. Some of them are tan, some of them are pale. Maybe some of them are Sephardic and some are Maghrebi and one is an adult convert and one was adopted and converted as a child. One of them has blue hair. One of them has red hair, and one of 'them has red highlights.' Nobody in this minyan ever says 'But where are you *really* from?' or 'But surely you weren't born Jewish.' Some of them are what Mattel calls 'curvy.' Some of them are short.
"One of the Barbies has a white cane and dark glasses. You can’'t see her Braille siddur in the picture. She doesn't need it right now anyway because they're about to do hagbah. Another of the Barbies is sitting down because she has mobility issues and chronic pain. Another one has depression, and another one has hearing issues, but you can't tell which ones.
"Two of the Barbies are married to each other. One of the Barbies is trans.
"One of the Barbies couldn't afford a set of tefillin for herself, and the community helped out. Some of these Barbies didn't go to college, or were the first in their families to go to college. One of them works in construction.
"All the Barbies are deeply conscious that they're all awfully young. The artist has not the skill to repaint Barbie faces to make them look older, nor to make their hair grey.
"In principle, Kens are welcome in this minyan, but today they're outside fixing breakfast, which is why you can’t see them."
Jewish businesswoman Ruth Handler, launched the Barbie doll in 1959. According to the Jewish Women's Archive, it started out as a fashion model toy and over the years became everything from astronaut to Olympic medalist to Hollywood movie star. In the '80s, she joined the multicultural movement and was depicted as African-American, Latina and Asian. In Handler's 1994 autobiography, "Dream Doll: The Ruth Handler Story," Mrs. Handler wrote, "My whole philosophy of Barbie was that through the doll, the little girl could be anything she wanted to be. Barbie always represented the fact that a woman has choices."
Friedman noted that choice plays an important part in the Dream Minyan.
"No, I do not think the only acceptable mode of observance for Jews is tefillin-wearing. Art is contextual," she noted.
Amy Powell is HBI communications director.
Jen Taylor Friedman is a Jewish scribe, scholar and educator. She is a former HBI Research Award recipient. She presently has five Torah scrolls to her credit, as well as an assortment of all the other things Jewish scribes do. She has an MA in Jewish Studies from McGill, in which she wrote a history of the material culture of tefillin. She is notorious for having created Tefillin Barbie, who has been featured in several quite serious publications describing 21-century Judaism. She has trained a number of Torah scribes in various parts of the world to write Torah scrolls of their own, and she is getting very good at long-distance calligraphy teaching. She lives in Montreal with her partner and their histrionic dog.