Jofa’s work has always been rooted in the dichotomy between halakhah as a system of law and the lived experiences of women in the Jewish community. Our work has focused on this tension as it relates to issues like the laws of Jewish divorce vs. the real life experiences of women who are trapped as agunot; the traditional Orthodox views of ritual obligation vs. women’s desired participation in mitzvot; male-dominated paths to ordination vs. the efforts of rabbaniyot to be included in the rabbinate; and many more areas. Law scholar Robert Cover characterized this duality within all societies as “Nomos and Narrative.” He argued in his groundbreaking work on the topic, written over forty years ago, that the law is mediated in the tension between the system of law and the narratives created by communities that add their own legal meanings to the law. He suggests that judges should take these narratives into account when interpreting the law to lead to a “redemptive” approach to law.
Cover made his appraisal of the nature of lawmaking in civil society more than a decade before the first Jofa conference in 1997—and yet the resonance of his model for our work is remarkable. This issue of the Jofa Journal cuts to the very heart of this tension in halakhah, with its presentation of the various legal challenges that are unique to women in Judaism, including get, the beit din, iggun, the rabbinate, and custody battles regarding religious upbringing.
In these pages, you will find two timely accounts of contemporary halakhic issues related to the beit din: Rabbanit Leah Sarna discusses the approach and procedures of the International Beit Din, which, using a humanistic approach, takes personal narratives into account when issuing judgments. Rabba Ramie Smith and Shoshanna Keats Jaskoll discuss the lack of transparency in the get process and show how the Rate My Beit Din website tries to address the problem.
You will also find articles that consider the more theoretical and philosophical underpinnings of halakhah, with Rabbanit Gloria Nusbacher’s piece on the limited instances in which women’s testimony is accepted in Jewish courts, and Shana Strauch Schick’s article on the different approaches of the Bavli and Yerushalmi regarding women’s obligation in mitzvot. You will also learn about the impact of secular law on halakhic issues, in Esther Macner’s presentation of the use of California’s coercive control law to help agunot and Susan Weiss’s discussion of using tort law against get-refusers in Israel.
And you will read two first-person accounts of women who had personal involvement with less well-known aspects of law. Cynthia Katz discusses how her various identities as a lawyer, woman, and Jew of Color led her to seek justice by providing immigration services to people who were forcibly displaced from their countries of origin. Rabbanit Bracha Jaffe describes how her experiences as a chaplain in a women’s prison led her to a greater awareness of the humanity and tzelem Elokim of incarcerated women.
As stated in Pirkei Avot: “The day is short, and the work is plentiful” (Pirkei Avot 2:15).
I hope that you will join me in our important work to build more equitable communities by reading and heeding the call of the personal and communal narratives shared in these pages
