How do we make sense of the suffering of the COVID-19 pandemic within a Jewish framework? Rabbi Dr. Erin Leib Smokler has gifted the broadly defined Jewish community with a compilation of essays by a diverse range of authors offering a variety of thought-provoking ways in which we can understand our modern plague. Torah in […]
Torah in a Time of Plague: Historical and Contemporary Jewish Responses Read More »
Teachers are urged to be lifelong learners. My career, infused with professional development, a few degree programs, and some independent study, has modeled that practice for my students. Studying made me a better teacher and helped me understand the process my students live every day. New lessons were thrust upon educators in March 2020; we
Teaching in a Pandemic Universe Read More »
At the “To Be a Jewish Woman” religious feminist conference, sponsored by Kolech in Jerusalem in 1999, I interviewed Blu Greenberg, the founder of Jofa, about her vision for the “bloodless revolution” she had described at the conference. She asked for my thoughts about the conference and the issues raised, and I shared my concerns
Gender Awareness and Jewish Education Read More »
In this retrospective, I will draw on my decadeslong experience working with agunot, first as a New York City trial attorney and then as the founding director of Get Jewish Divorce Justice (GJDJ) in Los Angeles (since 2012) to analyze the emerging solutions both from secular law and from within the Orthodox or Israeli rabbinic
Solutions to the Agunah Problem: Looking Back Twenty-Five Years Read More »
The founding generation of Orthodox feminists believed they would not see Orthodox women rabbis in their lifetimes. They sowed the seeds and dreamed dreams for their great-granddaughters. Amazingly, in 2009, all that changed due to the courage of Rabba Sara Hurwitz, Rabbi Avi Weiss, and their team of supporters. Since the founding of Yeshivat Maharat,
The Next Frontier in the Orthodox Female Rabbinate Read More »
Some 40 years ago, when I was about to give birth to my daughter, my husband and I asked our rabbi whether he could help us create a ritual to welcome a baby girl, similar to a brit milah for a boy. The rabbi responded: “We have enough rituals. There’s no need for any more.”
You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby? Maybe… Read More »
A more extensive discussion of this topic by the author appears in Yeshivat Maharat’s Keren Journal, Volume 4 (2023), which can be found at https://www.yeshivatmaharat.org/keren-journal-volume-4. Ask any yeshiva-educated child, or most adults, whether women are valid witnesses under Jewish law, and they will likely answer that women are “pasul l’eidut”—invalid to testify. However, the reality
Can Women Be Witnesses in a Beit Din? Read More »
A few years ago, during Sukkot, I had a conversation that deeply impacted me. After struggling to fit our family into the small sukkah on our Jerusalem terrace, a non-observant relative asked, “I thought women don’t have to do this—why are you inconveniencing yourself and your daughter?” At first taken aback, I eventually replied, “When
The United States Constitution protects parents’ rights to dictate their children’s religious upbringing. But what does a court do when divorced, divorcing, or otherwise unmarried co-parents disagree about the religious upbringing? First, the easy answers: Family courts throughout the country apply a “best interests of the child” standard to custody and child-rearing determinations. Courts assess
Clashing Religious Beliefs, Custody, and the Constitution Read More »
Jofa’s work has always been rooted in the dichotomy between halakhah as a system of law and the lived experiences of women in the Jewish community. Our work has focused on this tension as it relates to issues like the laws of Jewish divorce vs. the real life experiences of women who are trapped as
Between the Halakhic System and Lived Experience Read More »
