One year ago, I spent a weekend in New York City’s Upper West Side with three friends. Shabbat morning presented a dilemma: I preferred a congregation with a mehitza, but my friends preferred an egalitarian service. We compromised on a synagogue with a mehitza, a Rabbanit, and hazzaniot for specific prayers. I sat with my
Emerging Voices: In Pursuit of Spirtuality: Looking for My Comfort Zone Read More »
Recently, a congregant, told me about an exchange she’d had with her daughter. To the usual question of “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Eliana, age eight, replied, “I want to be a Torah scholar.” After a moment’s thought, Eliana added, “Can girls do that?” “Of course they can,” her mother
What’s in a Title? The Roles of Female Religious Professionals Read More »
Checking the clock to be sure that Torah reading had already taken place that Thursday morning (which would mean that while I was in the hospital, just hours after my daughter’s birth, my husband had been called to the Torah to name our first child) I called my mother to tell her my first baby’s
Every Appelation Tells a Story: Naming a Daughter Read More »
My name never fails to elicit a response. On one extreme, I am told, “I don’t even know how to think about how to begin to pronounce that,” and on the other, I hear, “Oh of course, I know your parents.” But what interests me far more are those responses that fall somewhere in the
Growing Into the Legacy of Beruria Read More »
I have recently been thinking about the use of women’s names in Orthodox Judaism. It began last year when I made my annual call to one of our supporters to ask for a pledge for JOFA. As we spoke, she told me how she had taken on the commitment of saying kaddish after her mother
Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother Read More »
As I sit down to write this article, we are in the midst of a unique time period in the Jewish calendar. A few short weeks ago, on Pesach, we celebrated the birth of our nation by recalling the period of enslavement and the ensuing salvation by God. We retold the story of a people
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Staring into the pages of my Tehillim, it occurred to me that I had just reread the same verse several times. It was four in the morning on Shabbat, and I had a few hours until someone would come to take over my shift. Inside the large tent, police officers mingled and nibbled on the
I Will Watch Over You Read More »
As a young married woman (and I was young) in the Syrian Jewish community of Brooklyn in the late 1960s, I do not recall going to funerals. Once a body was prepared for burial, there was a tradition of women wailing very loudly as the deceased was driven past the house to the synagogue where
Mourning Practices in the Syrian Jewish Community Read More »
It is very hard to believe that it is almost a year since Nathaniel’s passing. I still feel his presence throughout the day and miss his warm, smiling face and upbeat outlook. When Nathaniel died, we in his immediate family said kaddish for the shloshim, the thirty-day period of mourning. My husband Ruvan, our children
A Mother’s Kaddish Read More »
Last year, I was privileged to attend my sister’s birthing of her first child. I stood at her bedside, gripping her hand as she labored, while both the nurse and the doctor encouraged her with “push!” She was straining so hard that blood vessels looked like they would burst with her effort. The baby’s head
Mourning the Loss of a Baby Read More »
