From earliest times, Jewish history is studded with intriguing information about the roles of women in their communities, but often these fascinating nuggets are submerged texts that are not easily available. One exception is the Book of Genesis. Even the casual reader can discover that in biblical times mothers often named their children. We read […]
Pirkei Imahot: The Jewish Women’s Reclamation Project Read More »
Last Spring, as part of a class project at the University of Pennsylvania, I embarked on a study of its first-year Orthodox Muslim and Jewish female students. Tradition in both these religions dictates that women live either in their fathers’ or husbands’ homes. For both Orthodох Jewish and Orthodox Muslim women freshmen, college is the
JOFA on the Campus The View from U of P: Muslim Women, Orthodox Jewish Women and Myself Read More »
Not only in our individual lives, but also as Orthodox feminists, most of us experience various periods of satisfaction, despair, hope and pride. At times, any of us may view our individual situations or emotions as purely personal: gratification for an advanced level of Jewish education; a sense of isolation in the inability to say
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In 1986, when the Women’s Tefillah Network was formed, the number of women’s tefillah groups could be counted on one hand. There are now at least 55 women’s tefillah groups in existence world-wide. It is safe to say that women’s tefillah is one of the fastest growing institutions in Modern Orthodoxy today. Women’s tefillah groups
Women’s Tefillah Groups Grow and Face New Challenges Read More »
This discussion is excerpted from the author’s Women, Jewish Law and Modernity: New Opportunities in a Post-Feminist Age (Ktav Publishing House), which has a more extensive presentation of the halakhic arguments. There is a widespread custom of arranging special meals in honor of a new bride and groom during the first week of their marriage
Women’s Participation in Sheva Berakhot Read More »
Civilized discourse and the creative exchange of ideas set the tone for the First International Conference of the Religious Women’s Forum, held July 14-15 in Jerusalem. The 1000 halakhically committed women and 150 men who participated were encouraged by the changes that have already taken place in the Modern Orthodox landscape in Israel. These changes
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The mishna in the Talmudic tractate of Kiddushin, page 29a, states “…and all positive, time-bound commandments (mitzvot aseh shehazeman gerama), men are obligated [in] and women are exempt [from].”1 The gemara acknowledges that there are exceptions to this rule when the Torah (either explicitly or through the interpretation of the Oral Law) states that women
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In recent years, there has been a great deal of conversation about women’s spirituality. I have often wondered what this new term means, finding little discussion of it in the sources. Traditional definitions of women as interior and men as communal seem to reflect neither innate truth nor current reality. So what is women’s spirituality
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In the Torah, women are major players whose actions often chart the paths of Jewish destiny. Beginning with Eve and then Lot’s daughters, followed by Sarah, Hagar, Rebecca, Rachel, Leah, Tamar, Yocheved, Miriam, Zipporah, and many others, each can be said to have affected the course of our history. But when we leave the biblical
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Now that Orthodox Jewish women have the ability to access Torah on a high intellectual level, they have begun to inquire if they too could participate in certain synagogue rituals surrounding the sefer Torah. Would halakha permit them to dance with the sefer Torah on Simkhat Torah? Could they carry the sefer through the women’s
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