There is a phrase that stayed with us long after the lights went up and the last attendees made their way home from the December 2025 Jofa Conference in New York City:
“Ashreinu, ma tov ḥelkeinu.”
“How fortunate we are, how good is our portion.”
That is what it felt like to witness the Jofa Conference come to life after months of planning, dreaming, and deep conversation about who we are and who we want to be. It is also the spirit we carry into this issue of the Jofa Journal.
Back to Our Roots: Communities at the Center
If there was one clear message that emerged from our planning process, it was this: Jofa’s most meaningful work happens in communities. Not just at conferences, not just in the pages of a journal, but in the shuls, schools, living rooms, and kitchen tables where Orthodox Jewish life actually unfolds.
That renewed focus shaped everything about the December conference. We built programming that was explicitly designed to send attendees home with something tangible: a concrete idea, a roadmap for a difficult conversation, a model to bring back to their rabbis or school principals or shul boards. We wanted every person who walked through the doors to leave not just inspired, but equipped.
The post-conference surveys confirmed that we hit that mark. One attendee wrote: “My goal is to utilize the information shared to take back to my own synagogue. We’re already talking about forming an Inclusion Taskforce and this was very helpful in having information, skills, and ideas to bring to them.” Another: “Got so many ideas of halakhically allowed things women can do in shul and thinking about which ones I can bring to my shul. YES!” And a first-time attendee reflected: “The audience found it extremely interesting, engaging and eye-opening. A lot of the questions had to do with: ‘how can we bring something like this to our own community?’”
One attendee, a first-timer and one of the relatively few men in the room, wrote that the conference reminded him that “progress comes from many directions,” and that the day gave him real strategies to bring back to his more traditional community, even if he would need to lead with the sources rather than the Jofa name.
This is exactly the conversation we hoped to start. It is also the animating spirit of this issue of the Jofa Journal. The pages of this issue are filled with voices from the field: educators, lay leaders, rabbis, and community members who are doing the daily work of building a more inclusive Orthodox world. Their wisdom is not theoretical. It is lived.
A Day That Exceeded Every Expectation
We had planned for 250 attendees. We welcomed 416 participants, and 51 speakers participated across 12 workshops and plenary sessions, filling eight hours of programming.
Many participants noted a shift in the conference’s tone and atmosphere: an openness, a feeling of possibility, a sense that the conversation had moved to a new level. One longtime Jofa participant named it “the best Jofa conference ever.”
The energy in every room was electric, alive with purpose and what Rabbanit Dasi Fruchter so beautifully named “sacredness.” A window into some of what unfolded:
Rabbanit Dasi Fruchter reframed the minyan conversation entirely, offering a new approach that tells people: whoever is here at the start of davening is enough. One attendee came away with her specific idea: “exploding davening—creating 25 leadership roles and sharing them equally.”
Rabbanit Bracha Jaffe described practical, concrete ways HIR (Hebrew Institute of Riverdale) makes space for women’s voices, from page announcements to using a flipped model that gives the main sanctuary to the women’s tefillah for a bat mitzvah. Her suggestion that women announce pages was highlighted by multiple attendees as a tangible first step for communities not yet ready for a partnership minyan.
Shoshanna Keats-Jaskoll ignited the crowd with her reminder that every single person in the room has a role to play in ending the agunah crisis. One attendee called that session alone worth “the price of admission,” describing it as “dynamic and impactful” with panelists whose “outward personalities, styles, and tactics in fighting on behalf of agunot are appreciatively different.”
Ann Pava shared that there are now 50 Orthodox women Torah leaders serving 50 communities, and that demand for women leaders today exceeds the supply.
The New Frontiers in Orthodox Communities session that featured emerging women leaders drew some of the conference’s highest ratings, with one respondent writing: “Loved the variation of the panel—a high school student, [a community leader], and a rabbinic leader of a congregation.” Another took away that “Sarna on using community organization strategies to build support for appointing female clergy” and [another speaker] noting that male rabbis have to engage in tzimtzum to make room for female clergy’s authority” were among the most memorable lessons of the day.
Rabba Wendy Amsellem guided women of all ages in lifting a Torah for hagbah for the first time. Multiple survey respondents called this experience out specifically as a highlight. Among those who did it: two 80-year-old women. One attendee wrote simply: “I got to try doing hagbah, which was fun.”
The closing plenary, featuring Rachel Goldberg-Polin and Jon Polin, moderated with reverence by Abigail Pogrebin, was the emotional and spiritual culmination of everything that had come before. Introducing Rachel and Jon felt surreal. We shared words that still resonate with us: “Fierce mothers like Blu [Greenberg] and Rachel remind us that women’s voices do not merely belong in the public square; they can shape the moral direction of our world.”
Rachel’s presence was electric and heartbreaking and somehow filled with hope all at once. She reminded us: “We all have our Esther moments. Sometimes they’re huge. Sometimes they’re just about what change you can make today.” Surveyed attendees called it “a zekhut to be in the presence of Rachel Goldberg-Polin and Jonathan Polin.”
One of the most meaningful moments for us personally was handing Rabba Anat Sharbat and Rabba Sara Hurwitz the inaugural Blu Greenberg Awards for Orthodox Feminist Leadership. Rabba Anat served as spiritual leader of Hostage Square in Tel Aviv, offering pastoral care to families in desperate situations. And because of Rabba Sara’s vision, over 100 women have now been ordained at Yeshivat Maharat. What a legacy!
What Comes Next
As Rivka Herzfeld, disability awareness educator and Jofa Board Member, reminded us at the conference: “The next steps to help the community don’t necessarily have to be steps. They can be accessible spaces. They can be pathways that allow everybody to join.” That spirit animates everything we are building.
The conference launched two initiatives that are already bearing fruit. The Jofa at Home program—a framework for bringing Jofa’s educational and community-building work directly into homes and local networks—drew five to six applications within days of the conference, including two high school girls from Atlanta who attended and immediately wanted to get involved. We have since launched with our inaugural cohort of 12 participants and could not be more energized by what we are seeing. We recently hired Rabbanit Goldie Guy as the inaugural Jofa Scholar to teach and lead this engaged group of lay people.
The Feminist Community Toolkit, developed in collaboration with Jofa Board Member Dr. Talia Hurwich and beautifully illustrated by our own Sarah Small was launched at the conference and is now available at jofa.org/toolkit. Titled “So What Happens During the Torah Reading?,” it is a step-by-step guide to partnership minyan tefillah: demystifying every role at the bimah, from the gabbaim/gabbaiyot to the leyners, to those called for aliyot, with original illustrations and a companion digital toolkit that includes audio recordings for leading key parts of the service. Whether someone is launching a new minyan, strengthening an existing one, or simply curious about how partnership tefillah works, this resource was designed to lower every barrier to participation. You do not need to live in a major city, belong to an established minyan, or have prior Torah-reading experience to step into leadership. You only need interest and the desire to build an inclusive Orthodox community.
A Living Community
We often speak about the Jofa community as if it is an abstract thing. But it is not. It is the 80-year-old woman lifting a Torah for the first time. It is the ninth graders who are eager to bring Jofa’s resources to their friends. It is the longtime attendee who has “been coming since the very first conference” and called this one “exceptionally well run.” And it is the person who wrote: “It was invigorating to be back.”
That is who we are building for. That is who we carry with us into every issue of this journal, every webinar, every Jofa at Home session, every college campus initiative, every fellowship, every program we are only beginning to imagine.
We are so grateful to everyone who showed up in December, who fills these pages, and who does the quiet, daily work of building a more inclusive and joyful Orthodox world.
Ashreinu. How fortunate we are.
