Orthodox Feminism – Page 9

Can a Religious Woman Play Premier League Basketball? The Naama Shafir Story

Naama Shafir is easy to spot when she is playing point guard for the Elitzur Ramla women’s basketball team: She is the only player wearing a short-sleeved T-shirt under her basketball jersey. Shafir made headlines in Israel in 2011 when, as a member of the Israel’s national women’s basketball team playing in Europe, she insisted […]

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Orthodox Feminist Activism Through Film: An Interview with Nurit Jacobs-Yinon

Geffen Feldman

Nurit Jacobs-Yinon is an independent filmmaker and owner of Aluma Films, in which she focuses on documentary projects, new media, and video-arts. Nurit’s artistic work has a unique point of view on the Orthodox–feminist–art nexus. In addition to filmmaking, Nurit is an artistic director, judge, and lecturer at various film festivals throughout Israel. She also

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Enchantress: A Novel of Rav Hisda’s Daughter

Geffen Feldman

Maggie Anton’s latest novel, Enchantress, may be set in ancient Talmudic times, but it grapples with modern feminist themes. It is the story of Hisdadukh rising in her profession as a harasheta (sorceress), negotiating difficult relationships with other women in her field, as well as with her strong-willed husband, Rava. Hisdadukh and Rava struggle with

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On Being a Sandakit

Geffen Feldman

Editor’s note: This article first appeared in the Spring 2012 issue of the JOFA Journal. When my daughter had her first child, a boy, sixteen years ago, she called and asked me to fill the role of sandak, or, in my case, sandakit. I was excited to take part in this ceremony, as I remembered

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Doing Hoshanot from the Women’s Side of the Mehitzah

Geffen Feldman

I held up the etrog, inspecting it not only for the black spots that my father taught me would render it unkosher, but also for an overall esthetic appearance that would appeal to me personally. (Bumpy, hourglass shaped, green, and pitomless are my preferences.) And so it went with the branches of the lulav, the

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Women Learn Daf Yomi from a Woman

Geffen Feldman

Six mornings a week, rain or shine, a diverse group of women in central Israel, aged thirty to fifty, gather together for forty-five minutes to study Talmud. Each of the participants brings her own unique perspective to the table. One member of the group is an interior designer who always finds the aesthetic beauty in

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The Road to Wearing a Tallit: Why This Orthodox Woman Wears a Tallit

Geffen Feldman

Author’s note: This article has been updated and expanded from a piece I wrote nearly a decade ago. I will never forget the first time I saw a woman wearing a tallit. I was twenty-seven years old, living in Israel, and attending the first International Conference on Women and Judaism. I came early, stumbled into

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The Values and Strengths that Orthodox Jewish Women Bring to the Workplace

Geffen Feldman

As a lawyer and professor of business law, I have found that women bring their own brand of values to an employment setting. (Of we do!) In fact, it was due to my prior experience in the workplace that I cultivated the value-added skill of navigating halakhic sources to support women’s leadership roles within Orthodoxy.

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Adventures of an Orthodox Feminist in Academia

Geffen Feldman

“Is it even possible to be an Orthodox woman historian?” The first time I was asked this, I laughed. It had never even occurred to me— then—that it was a serious question. I was a graduate of a Bais Yaakov high school and an elite liberal arts college, enrolled in the top women’s history Ph.D.

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A Part in the Play: The Female Orthodox Semikhah Student Who Didn’t Want to Become a Rabbi

Geffen Feldman

I never saw myself as a feminist. That’s because I never had to. I was born in the 1980s in Paris into a secular family. I was raised by an old angry Romanian intellectual (my father) and a nurse/social worker who was really a hidden intellectual (my mother). I never had to be a feminist

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