This large compendium tells you everything you wanted to know about davening but were afraid to ask. It is useful in clarifying what to say and how to move at every prayer opportunity, public and private, daily and seasonal. The book is, unfortunately, less helpful when it comes to women and prayer. The author observes, […]
The How and Why of Jewish Prayer Read More »
Elana Sztokman’s book The Men’s Section peeks across the mehitza of the partnership minyan to examine the ways in which men are affected by Orthodox feminism. Whereas the majority of feminist literature questions women’s changing roles, Sztokman aims to give men and women the language to explain masculine identity. She examines how men have been
The Men’s Section: Orthodox Jewish Men in an Egalitarian World Read More »
Editor’s Note: The third study guide in JOFA’s Ta Sh’ma series deals with the complex and emotionally fraught topic of a daughter’s obligation or permissibility to say mourner’s kaddish. Because the question has a long and fascinating history, this volume gives a more extensive presentation of sources than did its predecessors. The primary source material
A Daughter’s Recitation of Mourner’s Kaddish Read More »
Keep Your Wives Away from Them is a compelling anthology/ collection of stories by fourteen women who have come out as lesbian or transgender in a variety of Orthodox communities. The anthology’s greatest strength is that it allows the reader access to the authors’ personal thoughts as they negotiate the complex intersection between homosexuality and
Keep Your Wives Away from Them: Orthodox Women, Unorthodox Desires Read More »
David Hartman, a noted Orthodox rabbi and founder of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, insists that Modern Orthodox Judaism is, in some respects, frozen in suspended animation. It refuses to grow, despite new circumstances, moral imperatives, and logic—and, consequently, many people are hurt. A prime example is its failure to solve the problem of
The God Who Hates Lies: Confronting and Rethinking Jewish Tradition Read More »
In Fertility and Jewish Law, Dr. Ronit Irshai provides a scholarly and comprehensive review of the halakhic literature on the fertility related topics of contraception, abortion, and artificial reproductive technology (ART). Her clear analysis and explanation of the key issues in each of these sources is commendable. So, too, is her desire to analyze these
Fertility and Jewish Law: Feminist Perspectives on Orthodox Responsa Literature Read More »
I clearly remember first reading Milton Steinberg’s As a Driven Leaf (1939) when I was sixteen, after happily studying Talmud for five years. Up to then, the characters whose words I had parsed and whose intentions I had deciphered in the classroom were two-dimensional and without lives outside their opinions about the earliest time to
Rav Hisda’s Daughter Read More »
This luminously illustrated volume is both a literary and a visual commentary on the biblical passages dealing with Deborah, Ruth, and Hannah and also a deeply felt tribute to the memory of David Louis Band, the husband of Debra and the son of Arnold. It is clearly a labor of love on every level. Band
Arise! Arise! Deborah, Ruth, and Hannah: Illuminations and Commentary Read More »
Using the tools and methodology of qualitative sociological research, Yael Israel-Cohen plumbs the religious identities, strategies for effecting change, and aspirations for the future of fortyfive Israeli Orthodox feminists. Her interviewees are our Israeli sisters (and brothers, as some pro-feminist men are included) who are on the cutting edge of Modern Orthodoxy— in Kolech, Kehillat
