Personal Narrative

Rupture and Repair: Responding to Breaches of Trust in Rabbinic Authority

I was honored to be invited to spend a Shabbat as resident scholar at Kesher Israel in Washington, D.C., shortly after that community was catapulted into the Jewish media spotlight. Kesher’s rabbi, Barry Freundel, had been charged with serious allegations that besmirched his role as a spiritual leader and violated the trust of his congregants.

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Bigger Isn’t Always Better

Geffen Feldman

It was one of those challenging situations that we religious Jewish professionals often face. During my aveilut, a client invited me to make a presentation in Lansing, Michigan. I was excited for the opportunity, but, as always during that year, made my acceptance conditional on having a place to say Kaddish. “Before I can agree

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Hair Covering: An Issue in the Workplace and Within Oneself

Clock Work

Orthodox girls are raised to be Orthodox women, and Orthodox women get married and, in some circles, cover their hair. Buying a long flowing wig is almost a rite of passage. I decided to cover my hair because my husband asked me to. His mother, sisters, and sisters-in-law all cover their hair, and in his

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Architecture as a Profession for a Nice Jewish Girl

Geffen Feldman

How does anyone choose a career path? Family precedents, inspiration from a teacher or mentor, a chosen course of study, or even an opportunity that opens new doors—any of these can be decisive. At the age of sixteen, for no discernible reason, I decided I wanted to be an architect. I loved art, but ever

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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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Message from the Executive Director

Geffen Feldman

Dear friends, I am excited to take on the role of executive director of JOFA and to work with a dedicated board of directors, an incredible professional team, and passionate lay leaders to advance the work of this vital organization. One of the great blessings of my life is that I have always been surrounded

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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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You Want Me to Teach?

Geffen Feldman

My teaching experiences began in May of last year when my synagogue’s youth group was planning to do a joint tikkun leil Shavuot program with one of the synagogues in the neighborhood. They wanted teenagers to teach—not only to their peers, but to the adults there too. The theme chosen for the tikkun was supposed

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Zakhar U’Nekeivah Bara Otam: Learning from Male and Female Teachers, Teaching Male and Female Students Differently

Geffen Feldman

For many years, in the girls’ Tanakh classes that I taught at a Modern Orthodox day school, I would help my students learn how to write and deliver a d’var Torah, which one student would present each Friday. The girls would sit and listen attentively to the speaker and then raise their hands to ask

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