The Women’s Tefillah Group of Raritan Valley, based in Highland Park and Edison, New Jersey, has been meeting regularly for more than thirty years. Most of our current membership has been a part of the group for at least a decade, and we are a close-knit and supportive bunch. We love to celebrate together, and […]
A Women’s Tefillah Group Faces the COVID Year Read More »
As the product of a certain time when all feminists were branded as bra burners or worse, I have often felt discomfort with the term “feminist.” Whenever I have spoken about Jofa—and I have, frequently and approvingly, over the years—I have qualified my remarks by saying that I think the word “feminist” in the organization’s
My Feelings Have Evolved Read More »
A core task of scholarship is to rescue from obscurity works of merit that have been overlooked. It is to just such a task that Dr. Julia Schwartzmann turns in publishing The Path of Moses, an essay dealing with the position of women in Jewish religious life. She makes the case admirably on behalf of
The Path of Moses: A Scholarly Essay on the Case of Women in Religious Faith 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 »
My mother, z”l, died almost forty years ago; my father, z”l, four years ago. Although, figuratively, there has been a tenfold improvement between then and now in the status of women saying Kaddish, we still have a long way to go Forty years ago, even in the Modern Orthodox community in which I lived at
Women Saying Kaddish: Are We There Yet? 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 »
Ayear ago on Purim, when we visited our youngest children and grandchildren in Nashville, Tennessee, we participated in that community’s first women’s reading of Megillat Esther. My daughterin-law, Cara, learned her chapter by using Jofa tapes. In a strong, beautiful voice—and perfect trop—Cara passionately sang out the words accusing Haman of planned genocide against the
Journeying to the Center of Public Jewish Life Read More »
Twenty-five years—the blink of an eye as Jews count time. Who would have imagined so many gains in twenty-five years, building on the first twenty-five yet advancing far beyond expectations? Who would have envisioned 3,300 women in Jerusalem’s Binyanei Ha’umah joyously celebrating the Hadran, the completion of the daf yomi cycle, and representing many more
Distinctive and Equal: A Paradigm for Orthodox Feminism Read More »
In 1997 I attended the First International Conference on Feminism and Orthodoxy in New York City. It was the precursor to what was to become the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance. I arrived with a friend and, despite all the hype, my expectations were fuzzy. But I left that groundbreaking two-day, 1,000+ attendee gathering with a
Jofa: The Next Twenty Five Years 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 »
