On the last day of Passover, the Yizkor prayer helps us memorialize our dead. On Pesaḥ 2020 I recited the prayer in the solitude of my living room, slowly mouthing the words. Ostensibly I was reciting the Yizkor prayers for my father, a Holocaust survivor who died twenty years ago, and for all his family […]
I didn’t expect to say Kaddish with any regularity. When my father, Morris Robinson, died in late January 2020, I intended to recite only the three Kaddishes at the end of the Shabbat davening each week and, instead, focus on helping raise my three young children. At the shivah minyanim at my parents’ house, however,
Kaddish, in Retrospect Read More »
On Performance and Mikveh During COVID-19 My first encounter with the mikveh was at 27, when I met with my converting beit din for the last time. I had never seen the mikveh before I immersed that day, having only heard bubbe meises from my unmarried female friends. Unsure of what to expect, I found
When COVID-19 broke out, most mikva’ot closed, but many women’s mikva’ot remained open. I remember hearing some who were angry that women’s mikva’ot weren’t closing as well, saying that it was too much of a risk for women to go out and that rabbis should find kulot (leniencies). I didn’t agree then, and I still
An Appreciation for Mikva’ot Read More »
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 »
In this retrospective, I will draw on my decadeslong experience working with agunot, first as a New York City trial attorney and then as the founding director of Get Jewish Divorce Justice (GJDJ) in Los Angeles (since 2012) to analyze the emerging solutions both from secular law and from within the Orthodox or Israeli rabbinic
Solutions to the Agunah Problem: Looking Back Twenty-Five Years 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 »
Some 40 years ago, when I was about to give birth to my daughter, my husband and I asked our rabbi whether he could help us create a ritual to welcome a baby girl, similar to a brit milah for a boy. The rabbi responded: “We have enough rituals. There’s no need for any more.”
You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby? Maybe… Read More »
Jofa’s mission is to expand women’s rights and opportunities within the framework of halakhah, to build a vibrant and equitable Orthodox community. A key element in furthering our mission is the Devorah Scholars Program, which was incubated at JOFA in 2020 and was designed to support Orthodox shuls in North America as they hire Orthodox
Spotlight on Devorah Scholars. Read More »
In January 2024, the Jofa and Maharat mission to Israel met with a number of Israeli leaders, including Rabbi Seth Farber, founder and director of ITIM; Sarah Evron, CEO of the Religious Kibbutz Movement; Dr. Michal Prins, a sexual intimacy counselor to religious couples; Sharon Laufer, who identifies fallen women soldiers and prepares them for
Halakhic Considerations Raised by the October 7th War Read More »
