Jewish feminism

Jewish feminism is a movement that seeks to improve the religious, legal, and social status of women within Judaism and to open up new opportunities for religious experience and leadership for Jewish women. Feminist movements, with varying approaches and successes, have opened up within all major branches of Judaism.

In its modern form, the Jewish feminist movement can be traced to the early 1970s in the United States. According to Judith Plaskow, who has focused on feminism in Reform Judaism, the main issues for early Jewish feminists were the exclusion from the all-male prayer group or minyan, the exemption from positive time-bound mitzvot, and women's inability to function as witnesses and to initiate divorce.

According to historian Paula Hyman, two articles published in the 1970s on the role of women in Judaism were particularly influential: "The Unfreedom of Jewish Women," published in 1970 in the Jewish Spectator by its editor, Trude Weiss-Rosmarin, which criticized the treatment of women in Jewish law, and an article by Rachel Adler, then an Orthodox Jew and currently a professor at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, called "The Jew Who Wasn't There: Halacha and the Jewish Woman," published in 1971 in Davka, a countercultural magazine.

Agunah

Agunah (Hebrew: עגונה, plural: agunot (עגונות); literally 'anchored or chained') is a halachic term for a Jewish woman who is "chained" to her marriage. The classic case of this is a man who has left on a journey and has not returned, or has gone into battle and is MIA. It also refers to a woman whose husband refuses, or is unable, to grant her an official bill of divorce, known as a get. The problem of get-refusal became more widespread when Jews lived in countries where civil divorce was available, separate from religious divorce. Outside Israel, an agunah could obtain a civil divorce and remarry via civil marriage, as non-Israeli legal systems generally do not recognize the agunah status, but an agunah would not typically pursue a second marriage, since her first marriage is still valid according to halakha, therefore any other sexual relationships would constitute adultery from her first husband. Furthermore, according to halakha, any children born by an agunah are considered mamzerim (bastards). The earliest prenuptial agreement for the prevention of get-refusal was developed and accepted by the Rabbinical Council of Morocco on December 16, 1953 ("Sefer Hatakanot", Vol. 1, The Institute for Moroccan Jewish Tradition, Jerusalem). The prenuptial agreement gained further approbation in 1981 from Rabbi Shalom Messas, chief rabbi of Jerusalem ("Sefer Tevuot Shemesh", Jerusalem 1981). Following Rabbi Messas' involvement, the Rabbinical Council of America actively pursued this issue (“The RCA Commission: Solving the Problem of Gittin", Hamevaser, Vol. 22 No. 2, October 27, 1983). The latest in a series of RCA resolutions -- "that since there is a significant agunah problem in America and throughout the Jewish world, no rabbi should officiate at a wedding where a proper prenuptial agreement on get has not been executed”—was passed on May 18, 2006. In 2012 the International Rabbinic Fellowship (IRF), an international organization of (as of 2012) 150 Modern Orthodox rabbis, passed a resolution saying that, "IRF Rabbis may not officiate at a wedding unless the couple has signed a halachic prenuptial agreement. IRF Rabbis are further encouraged to participate ritually only in weddings in which the couple has signed a halachic prenuptial agreement. Ritual participation includes but is not limited to reading the ketubah, serving as a witness, and making one of the sheva berachot." This makes the IRF the only Orthodox rabbinical organization in the world to require its members to use a halachic pre-nuptial agreement in any wedding at which they officiate.

Beginning in the 1950s, some Conservative rabbis have used the Lieberman clause, named for Talmudic scholar and Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) professor Saul Lieberman, in the ketuba, requiring that a get be granted if a civil divorce is ever issued. Most Orthodox rabbis have rejected the Lieberman clause, although leaders of the Conservative movement claim that the original intent was to find a solution that could be used by Orthodox and Conservative rabbis alike, and that leaders of Orthodox Judaism's Rabbinical Council of America, and respected Orthodox rabbis, including Joseph B. Soloveitchik, supposedly recognized the clause as valid. Later, because some civil courts viewed the enforcement of a religious document as a violation of the constitutional principle of the separation of church and state, Conservative rabbis began to require couples to sign a separate letter, stating that the clause had been explained to them as part of pre-marital counseling, and that both parties understood and agreed to its conditions, recognizing that this letter would constitute a separate civil document, enforceable in a civilian court. However, many Conservative rabbis, including some on the movement's own law committee, had growing misgivings about the clause for religious reasons.

In 1968, by a unanimous vote of the law committee, it was decided that the Joint Bet Din of the Conservative movement could annul marriages as a last resort, based on the Talmudic principle of hafka'at kiddushin. According to Rabbi Mayer Rabinowitz, the Chairman of the Joint Bet Din of the Conservative Movement, just the threat of this action was sometimes enough to compel the former husband to grant a get.

In 1990 Agunah Day was established by ICAR - The International Coalition for Agunah Rights - to raise public awareness of the plight of the Agunah and galvanize action to solve the problem. It is observed on the Jewish calendar date of the Fast of Esther.

In 1995 the Israeli parliament gave the rabbinical court expanded legal power to sanction men who refuse to give their wives a get by suspending their driver's licenses, seizing their bank accounts, preventing travel abroad and even imprisoning those who do not comply with an order to grant a divorce; however, women's groups say the 1995 law is not very effective because the court uses sanctions in less than 2% of cases.

In 2004, Justice Menachem HaCohen of the Jerusalem Family Court offered new hope to agunot when he ruled that a man refusing his wife a get must pay her NIS 425,000 in punitive damages, because "[R]efusal to grant a get constitutes a severe infringement on her ability to lead a reasonable, normal life, and can be considered emotional abuse lasting several years." He noted that "[T]his is not another sanction against someone refusing to give a get, intended to speed up the process of granting a get, and this court is not involving itself in any future arrangements for the granting of a get, but rather, it is a direct response to the consequences that stem from not granting a get, and the right of the woman to receive punitive damages." This ruling stemmed from the Public Litigation Project initiated by the advocacy organization Center for Women's Justice as one of a number of successful lawsuits filed in Israeli civil courts claiming financial damages against recalcitrant husbands.

Israel and Jewish feminism

See also: Women in Israel

In 1947 David Ben-Gurion agreed that the authority in matters of marriage and divorce would be invested in the hands of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, and an agreement was signed stating that (among other matters), known as the "status quo letter." In 1953 the Knesset enacted the Rabbinical Courts Jurisdiction (Marriage and Divorce) Law, 5713 – 1953. Section 1 of the Law states, "Matters of marriage and divorce of Jews in Israel, being citizens or residents of the State, shall be under the exclusive jurisdiction of the rabbinical courts." The substantive provision of section 2 of this Law further states: "Marriages and divorces of Jews shall be performed in Israel in accordance with Jewish religious law" (din torah). However, a Muslim woman in Israel may petition for and receive a divorce through the Sharia courts without her husband's consent under certain conditions, and a marriage contract may provide for other circumstances in which she may obtain a divorce without her husband's consent. A Muslim man in Israel may divorce his wife without her consent and without petitioning the court. Christians in Israel may seek official separations or divorces, depending on the denomination, through ecclesiastical courts.

In 2006, Israel’s Supreme Court ruled that women should be allowed to deliver eulogies and that the burial societies, or chevra kadisha, should not impose gender segregation in the cemetery. The ruling was in response to an incident in Petach Tikvah in which a woman was stopped from eulogizing her father. However, the court’s ruling was not backed up by the Religious Services Ministry until 2012, when Israel’s Chief Rabbinical Council ruled that women can deliver eulogies at funerals, but that it is up to the community rabbi to decide on a case-by-case basis.

In 2010, Israel passed the Civil Union Law, allowing a couple to marry civilly in Israel if they are both registered as officially not belonging to any religion.

On September 28, 2010, the Israeli Supreme Court outlawed public gender segregation in Jerusalem's Mea Shearim neighborhood in response to a petition submitted after extremist Haredi men physically and verbally assaulted women for walking on a designated men's only road. However, in January 2011, a ruling of the Israeli High Court of Justice allowed the continuation of the gender segregation in public buses on a strictly voluntary basis for a one-year experimental period.

In 2013 the Israeli Orthodox rabbinical organization Beit Hillel issued a halachic ruling which allows women, for the first time, to say the Kaddish prayer in memory of their deceased parents.

Also in 2013, the Religious Judges Law in Israel was amended to say that at least four women must be included in the religious judges' nomination committee, including a female advocate in the religious courts, and that the total number of committee members shall be eleven.

Also in 2013, Israel’s Chief Rabbinate promised to remove the obstacles preventing women from working as supervisors in the state kosher certification system, and Emunah announced the first supervisor certification course for women in Israel.

Also in 2013, the Minister of Religious Affairs and Chief Rabbis issued statements telling ritual bath attendants only to inspect women who want inspection, putting an end to forced inspections of women at mikvehs.

In May 2013, after engaging in civil disobedience for over two decades, a judge ruled that a 2003 Israeli Supreme Court ruling prohibiting women from carrying a Torah or wearing prayer shawls at the Western Wall had been misinterpreted and that Women of the Wall prayer gatherings at the Western Wall should not be deemed illegal.

Jewish feminist theology

Various versions of feminist theology exist within the Jewish community.

Some of these theologies promote the idea that it is important to have a feminine characterisation of God within the siddur (Jewish prayerbook) and service.

In 1976, Rita Gross published the article "Female God Language in a Jewish Context" (Davka Magazine 17), which Jewish scholar and feminist Judith Plaskow considers "probably the first article to deal theoretically with the issue of female God-language in a Jewish context".  Gross was Jewish herself at this time.

Reconstructionist Rabbi Rebecca Alpert (Reform Judaism, Winter 1991) comments:

The experience of praying with Siddur Nashim [the first Sabbath prayer book to refer to God using female pronouns and imagery] ... transformed my relationship with God. For the first time, I understood what it meant to be made in God's image. To think of God as a woman like myself, to see Her as both powerful and nurturing, to see Her imaged with a woman's body, with womb, with breasts – this was an experience of ultimate significance. Was this the relationship that men have had with God for all these millennia? How wonderful to gain access to those feelings and perceptions.

Siddur Nashim was self-published in 1976 by Naomi Janowitz and Margaret Wenig. In 1990 Margaret Wenig wrote the sermon, "God is a Woman and She is Growing Older," which as of 2011 has been published ten times (three times in German) and preached by rabbis from Australia to California.

Rabbi Paula Reimers ("Feminism, Judaism, and God the Mother", Conservative Judaism 46 (1993)) comments:

Those who want to use God/She language want to affirm womanhood and the feminine aspect of the deity. They do this by emphasizing that which most clearly distinguishes the female experience from the male. A male or female deity can create through speech or through action, but the metaphor for creation which is uniquely feminine is birth. Once God is called female, then, the metaphor of birth and the identification of the deity with nature and its processes become inevitable

Ahuva Zache affirms that using both masculine and feminine language for God can be a positive thing, but reminds her Reform Jewish readership that God is beyond gender (Is God male, female, both or neither? How should we phrase our prayers in response to God’s gender?, in the Union for Reform Judaism's iTorah, [1]):

Feminine imagery of God does not in any way threaten Judaism. On the contrary, it enhances the Jewish understanding of God, which should not be limited to masculine metaphors. All language that humans use to describe God is only a metaphor. Using masculine and feminine metaphors for God is one way to remind ourselves that gendered descriptions of God are just metaphors. God is beyond gender.

These views are highly controversial even within liberal Jewish movements. Orthodox Jews and many Conservative Jews hold that it is wrong to use English female pronouns for God, viewing such usage as an intrusion of modern feminist ideology into Jewish tradition. Liberal prayerbooks tend increasingly to also avoid male-specific words and pronouns, seeking that all references to God in translations be made in gender-neutral language. For example, the UK Liberal movement's Siddur Lev Chadash (1995) does so, as does the UK Reform Movement's Forms of Prayer (2008). In Mishkan T'filah, the American Reform Jewish prayer book released in 2007, references to God as “He” have been removed, and whenever Jewish patriarchs are named (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob), so also are the matriarchs (Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah.)

In 2003 "The Female Face of God in Auschwitz", the first full-length feminist theology of the Holocaust, written by Melissa Raphael, was published. Judith Plaskow’s "Standing Again at Sinai: Judaism from a Feminist Perspective" (1991), and Rachel Adler’s "Engendering Judaism: An Inclusive Theology and Ethics" (1999) are the only two full-length Jewish feminist works to focus entirely on theology in general (rather than specific aspects such as Holocaust theology.) Thus, "Standing Again at Sinai: Judaism from a Feminist Perspective" (1991) is the first book of Jewish feminist theology ever written.

Orthodox Judaism and Jewish feminism

Haredi opposition to Jewish feminism

Haredi Judaism views all forms of feminism, whether in "Jewish" or non-Jewish forms as unnecessary, on the grounds that Torah Judaism believes in wholeness, in the valid claims of contrasting aspects: in being part of a society while remaining a unique people; in being part of a community while maintaining one's individuality; in being a full-fledged part of the world while also being a woman. The Haredi vision of womanhood can be summed up in King Solomon's poem "A Woman of Valor," which praises a woman for qualities such as wisdom, courage, creativity, business acumen, and the profound insight to recognize how to relate to individuals according to their specific needs.

Therefore there is no movement within Haredi Judaism to train women as rabbis. While most Haredi women receive schooling in Beis Yaakov schools designed for them exclusively, the curriculum of these schools does not teach Talmud and neither encourages nor teaches its female students to study the same subjects as young Haredi men in the Haredi yeshivas.

The most important thrust of Haredi education for girls and young women is to educate, train and encourage them to become wives and mothers within large families devoted to the Torah Judaism way of life. In some Haredi communities, the education of girls in secular subjects (such as mathematics) is superior to that of boys. This is partly because of the greater time devoted to sacred subjects in the case of boys, and partly because many Haredi women work in paid jobs to enable their husbands to engage in full-time Torah study or to bring in a second income.

Modern Orthodox Judaism and Jewish feminism

Modern Orthodox feminism, like its Conservative and Reform/Reconstructionist counterparts, seeks to change the position of women in Jewish law (halakha), life, and leadership. However, it differs in several key respects. Firstly, its stated approach accepts the Orthodox belief that Jewish law is divine in origin, and as such, Orthodox Jewish feminists say they seek change only in a manner that can be defended in terms of Jewish law, and try to work with, rather than against, the rabbinate.

Therefore, in conflicts between halakha and arguments from egalitarianism, Orthodox feminists say they have remained loyal to halakha, though this is disputed by other feminists and anti-feminist Orthodox Jews. Secondly, Orthodox feminism neither requires precisely equal roles between men and women, as has been the tendency in Conservative Judaism, nor does it seek to overthrow the religious tradition and substitute new sources and traditions, as has been suggested by Reform feminists such as Rachel Adler and Judith Plaskow. Rather, accepting the possibility that somewhat different approaches may be appropriate for men and women, Orthodox feminism generally seeks support for acceptable means to change women's halakhic status, a significant presence and role within the public communal service, and new, supplemental traditions, or the reinstitution of old traditions, of importance to women's lives and worship. Orthodox feminism tends to focus on specific, practical issues, such as the problems of agunah, fostering women's education, leadership, and participation, and arguments for involvement in specific rituals.

One reason for a different agenda for Modern Orthodox feminism is its need to focus on issues which became largely non-existent in liberal branches of Judaism prior to the appearance of Jewish feminism in the 1970s. These issues include the agunah problem arising from Jewish women's lack of power to initiate a religious divorce, problems of access to advanced religious education, and matters of physical access and personal comfort in matters of tzniut (modesty), such as, for example, the construction of mechitzot which eliminates the physical separation of men and women during services. (See Mechitza#Proper height of synagogue mechitza)

In 1997, Blu Greenberg founded the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance (JOFA) to advocate for women's increased participation in Modern Orthodox Jewish life and to create a community for women and men dedicated to such change.

Also in 1997, Gail Billig became the first female president of a major Orthodox synagogue, at Congregation Ahavath Torah in Englewood, N.J.

In January 2013 Tamar Frankiel became the president of the Academy for Jewish Religion in California, making her the first Orthodox woman to lead an American rabbinical school. The school itself is transdenominational, not Orthodox.

In 2013 the Israeli Orthodox rabbinical organization Beit Hillel issued a halachic ruling which allows women, for the first time, to say the Kaddish prayer in memory of their deceased parents.

Also in 2013, the first class of female halachic advisers trained to practice in the US graduated; they graduated from the North American branch of Nishmat’s yoetzet halacha program in a ceremony at Congregation Sheartith Israel, Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue in Manhattan.

Women in Jewish religious law, schools, and rituals

In 1955, the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards of Conservative Judaism declared that women were eligible to chant the blessings before and after the reading of the Torah. In the late 1960s, the first Orthodox Jewish women's tefillah (prayer) group was created, on the holiday of Simhat Torah at Lincoln Square Synagogue in Manhattan. In 1973, the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards passed a takkanah (ruling) allowing women to count in a minyan equally with men. Also in 1973, the United Synagogue of America, Conservative Judaism’s congregational association (now called the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism) resolved to allow women to participate in synagogue rituals and to promote equal opportunity for women for positions of leadership, authority, and responsibility in congregational life. In 1974, the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards adopted a series of proposals that equalized men and women in all areas of ritual, including serving as prayer leaders.

In 1972, a group of ten New York Jewish feminists calling themselves Ezrat Nashim (the women's section in a synagogue, but also "women's help"), took the issue of equality for women to the 1972 convention of the Conservative movement's Rabbinical Assembly, presenting a document on 14 March that they named the "Call for Change." The rabbis received the document in their convention packets, but Ezrat Nashim presented it during a meeting with the rabbis' wives. The Call for Change demanded that women be accepted as witnesses before Jewish law, be considered as bound to perform all mitzvot, be allowed full participation in religious observances, have equal rights in marriage and be allowed to initiate divorce, be counted in the minyan, and be permitted to assume positions of leadership in the synagogue and within the general Jewish community. Paula Hyman, who was a member of Ezrat Nashim, wrote that: "We recognized that the subordinate status of women was linked to their exemption from positive time-bound mitzvot (commandments), and we therefore accepted increased obligation as the corollary of equality."

In 1973, the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards of Conservative Judaism voted to count men and women equally as members of a minyan.

In 1976, the first women-only Passover seder was held in Esther M. Broner's New York City apartment and led by her, with 13 women attending, including Gloria Steinem, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, and Phyllis Chesler. Esther Broner and Naomi Nimrod created a women's haggadah for use at this seder. In the spring of 1976 Esther Broner published this “Women’s Haggadah” in Ms. magazine, later publishing it as a book in 1994; this haggadah is meant to include women where only men had been mentioned in traditional haggadahs, and it features the Wise Women, the Four Daughters, the Women’s Questions, the Women’s Plagues, and a women-centric “Dayenu”. The original Women's Seder has been held with the Women's Haggadah every year since 1976, and women-only seders are now held by some congregations as well. Some seders (including the original Women's Seder, but not limited to women-only seders) now set out a cup for the prophet Miriam as well as the traditional cup for the prophet Elijah, sometimes accompanied by a ritual to honor Miriam. According to Jewish feminist writer Tamara Cohen, the practice of filling a cup with water to symbolize Miriam’s inclusion in the seder originated at a Rosh Chodesh group in Boston in 1989. Miriam is associated with water because rabbis attribute to Miriam the well that traveled with the Israelites throughout their wandering in the desert. In the Book of Numbers, the well dries up immediately following Miriam’s death. Furthermore, some Jews include an orange on the seder plate. The orange represents the fruitfulness for all Jews when all marginalized peoples are included, particularly women and gay people. An incorrect but common rumor says that this tradition began when a man told Susannah Heschel that a woman belongs on the bimah as an orange on the seder plate; however, it actually began when in the early 1980s, while when speaking at Oberlin College Hillel, Susannah Heschel was introduced to an early feminist Haggadah that suggested adding a crust of bread on the seder plate, as a sign of solidarity with Jewish lesbians (as some would say there's as much room for a lesbian in Judaism as there is for a crust of bread on the seder plate). Heschel felt that to put bread on the seder plate would be to accept that Jewish lesbians and gay men violate Judaism like chametz violates Passover. So, at her next seder, she chose an orange as a symbol of inclusion of gays and lesbians and others who are marginalized within the Jewish community. In addition, each orange segment had a few seeds that had to be spit out – a gesture of spitting out and repudiating the homophobia of traditional Judaism.

In 1981 the Jewish feminist group "B'not Esh", Hebrew for "Daughters of Fire", was founded. As of 2011, this group meets for five days every year over Memorial Day weekend at the Grail, a Catholic laywomen's retreat center in Cornwall-on-Hudson, New York. There they, to quote Merle Feld, one of their members, "explore issues of spirituality, social change, and the feminist transformation of Judaism."

In October 1983, the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS), the main educational institution of the Conservative movement, announced its decision to accept women as rabbis and cantors. Paula Hyman took part in the vote as a member of the JTS faculty.

In 1997 Gail Billig became the first female president of a major Orthodox synagogue, at Congregation Ahavath Torah in Englewood, N.J.

In 2002, the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards of Conservative Judaism adapted a responsum by Rabbi David Fine, Women and the Minyan, which provides an official religious-law foundation for counting women in a minyan and explains the current Conservative approach to the role of women in prayer. In 2002, the CJLS adapted a responsum by Rabbi David Fine, Women and the Minyan, which provides an official religious-law foundation for women counting in a minyan and explains the current Conservative approach to the role of women in prayer. This responsum holds that although Jewish women do not traditionally have the same obligations as men, Conservative women have, as a collective whole, voluntarily undertaken them. Because of this collective undertaking, the Fine responsum holds that Conservative women are eligible to serve as agents and decision-makers for others. The responsum also holds that traditionally-minded communities and individual women can opt out without being regarded by the Conservative movement as sinning. By adopting this responsum, the CJLS found itself in a position to provide a considered Jewish-law justification for its egalitarian practices, without having to rely on potentially unconvincing arguments, undermine the religious importance of community and clergy, ask individual women intrusive questions, repudiate the halakhic tradition, or label women following traditional practices as sinners.

In 2005, the Kohenet Institute was founded by Rabbi Jill Hammer and Holly Shere. The Kohenet Institute, based at the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center in Connecticut, offers a two-year course of study to women who are then ordained as Jewish priestesses. “Kohenet” is a feminine variation on “kohan,” meaning priest. The Kohenet Institute's training involves earth-based spiritual practices that they believe harken back to pre–rabbinic Judaism; a time when, according to Kohenet’s founders, women took on many more (and much more powerful) spiritual leadership roles than are commonly taken by women today. A Jewish priestess may, according to Kohenet, act as a rabbi, but the two roles are not the same.

In 2006, the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards of Conservative Judaism adopted three responsa on the subject of niddah, which reaffirmed an obligation of Conservative women to abstain from sexual relations during and following menstruation and to immerse in a mikvah prior to resumption, while liberalizing observance requirements including shortening the length of the niddah period, lifting restrictions on non-sexual contact during niddah, and reducing the circumstances under which spotting and similar conditions would mandate abstinence.

In January 2013 Tamar Frankiel became the president of the Academy for Jewish Religion in California, making her the first Orthodox woman to lead an American rabbinical school. The school itself is transdenominational, not Orthodox.

In October 2013, Rabbi Deborah Waxman was elected as the President of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. As the President, she is believed to be the first woman and first lesbian to lead a Jewish congregational union, and the first female rabbi and first lesbian to lead a Jewish seminary; the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College is both a congregational union and a seminary.

In 2013 Malka Schaps became the first female haredi dean at an Israeli university when she was appointed dean of Bar Ilan University's Faculty of Exact Sciences.

In 2013 the Israeli Orthodox rabbinical organization Beit Hillel issued a halachic ruling which allows women, for the first time, to say the Kaddish prayer in memory of their deceased parents.

Women as soferim

A Sofer, Sopher, Sofer SeTaM, or Sofer ST"M (Heb: "scribe", סופר סת״ם) is a Jewish scribe who can transcribe Torah scrolls, tefillin and mezuzot, and other religious writings. (ST"M, סת״ם, is an abbreviation for Sefer Torahs, Tefillin, and Mezuzot. The plural of sofer is "soferim", סופרים.) Forming the basis for the discussion of women becoming soferim, Talmud Gittin 45b states: "Sifrei Torah, tefillin and mezuzot written by a heretic, a star-worshipper, a slave, a woman, a minor, a Cuthean, or an apostate Jew, are unfit for ritual use." The rulings on Mezuzah and Tefillin are virtually undisputed among those who hold to the Talmudic Law. While Arba'ah Turim does not include women in its list of those ineligible to write Sifrei Torah, some see this as proof that women are permitted to write a Torah scroll. However today, virtually all Orthodox (both Modern and Ultra) authorities contest the idea that a woman is permitted to write a Sefer Torah. Yet women are permitted to inscribe Ketubot (marriage contracts), STaM not intended for ritual use, and other writings of Sofrut beyond simple STaM. In 2003 Canadian Aviel Barclay became the world's first known traditionally trained female sofer. In 2007 Jen Taylor Friedman, a British woman, became the first female sofer to scribe a Sefer Torah. In 2010 the first Sefer Torah scribed by a group of women (six female sofers, who were from Brazil, Canada, Israel, and the United States) was completed; this was known as the Women's Torah Project.

From October 2010 until spring 2011, Julie Seltzer, one of the female sofers from the Women's Torah Project, scribed a Sefer Torah as part of an exhibition at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco. This makes her the first American female sofer to scribe a Sefer Torah; Julie Seltzer was born in Philadelphia and is non-denominationally Jewish. From spring 2011 until August 2012 she scribed another Sefer Torah, this time for the Reform congregation Beth Israel in San Diego. Seltzer was taught mostly by Jen Taylor Friedman. On September 22nd, 2013, Congregation Beth Elohim of New York dedicated a new Torah, which members of Beth Elohim said was the first Torah in New York City to be completed by a woman. The Torah was scribed by Linda Coppleson.

Women in Humanistic Judaism

Humanistic Judaism is a movement in Judaism that offers a nontheistic alternative in contemporary Jewish life. It defines Judaism as the cultural and historical experience of the Jewish people and encourages humanistic and secular Jews to celebrate their Jewish identity by participating in Jewish holidays and life cycle events (such as weddings and bar and bat mitzvah) with inspirational ceremonies that draw upon but go beyond traditional literature. Humanistic Judaism ordains both men and women as rabbis, and its first rabbi was a woman, Tamara Kolton, who was ordained in 1999. Its first cantor was also a woman, Deborah Davis, ordained in 2001; however, Humanistic Judaism has since stopped ordaining cantors. The Society for Humanistic Judaism issued a statement in 1996 stating in part, "we affirm that a woman has the moral right and should have the continuing legal right to decide whether or not to terminate a pregnancy in accordance with her own ethical standards. Because a decision to terminate a pregnancy carries serious, irreversible consequences, it is one to be made with great care and with keen awareness of the complex psychological, emotional, and ethical implications." They also issued a statement in 2011 condemning the then-recent passage of the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act” by the U.S. House of Representatives, which they called "a direct attack on a woman’s right to choose". In 2012 they issued a resolution opposing conscience clauses that allow religious-affiliated institutions to be exempt from generally applicable requirements mandating reproductive healthcare services to individuals or employees. In 2013 they issued a resolution stating in part, "Therefore, be it resolved that: The Society for Humanistic Judaism wholeheartedly supports the observance of Women's Equality Day on August 26 to commemorate the anniversary of the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution allowing women to vote; The Society condemns gender discrimination in all its forms, including restriction of rights, limited access to education, violence, and subjugation; and The Society commits itself to maintain vigilance and speak out in the fight to bring gender equality to our generation and to the generations that follow."

See also

• List of Jewish feminists
• Agunot
• Gender and Judaism
• Homosexuality and Judaism
• Jewish view of marriage
• Women in Judaism
• Ms. magazine rejects AJC advertisement honoring three Israeli women
• Orthodox Jewish feminism
• Jewish Women’s Archive

Notes

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZM05nJb3s7A

Further reading

• Feldman, Emmanuel. Template:PDFlink. Jewish Action, Winter 1999
• "Girls Just Wanna Be 'Frum': JOFA conference speaker says feminism lags at Talmud study programs in Israel", NY Jewish Week, February 2007.
• Anita Diamant. "Holding Up Half the Sky: Feminist Judaism", Patheos
• Melissa Scholten-Gutierrez. "An Ever-Evolving Judaism: Women Meeting the Needs of the Community", Patheos
• Jewish women and the feminist revolution, an exhibit of the Jewish Women's Archive (Flash interactive site)
• Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance (JOFA)
• Adler, Rachel. "The Jew Who Wasn't There: Halakha and the Jewish Woman," in Heschel, S. (ed). On Being a Jewish Feminist: A Reader, Schocken, 1983.
• Adler, Rachel. Engendering Judaism: An Inclusive Theology and Ethics. Beacon Press, 1998.
• Adler, Rachel. "Feminist Judaism: Past and Future", Crosscurrents, Winter 2002, Vol. 51, No 4.
• Greenberg, Blu. "Will There Be Orthodox Women Rabbis?". Judaism 33.1 (Winter 1984): 23–33.
• "Is Now the Time for Orthodox Women Rabbis?". Moment Dec. 1992: 50–53, 74.
• Hartman, Tova, Feminism Encounters Traditional Judaism: Resistance and Accommodation. Brandeis University Press, 2007. ISBN 1-58465-658-1.
• Hyman, Paula. "The Other Half: Women in the Jewish Tradition" in E. Koltun. The Jewish Woman: New Perspectives, Shocken 1976.
• Hyman, E. Paula & Dash Moore, Deborah. (eds) (1997) Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia. Routledge, ISBN 0-415-91934-7
• Hyman, E. Paula & Dalia Ofer. (eds) (2006) Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia. Jewish Publication Society CD-ROM
• Ner-David, Haviva. Life on the Fringes: A Feminist Journey Toward Traditional Rabbinic Ordination. Needham, MA: JFL Books, 2000.
• Nussbaum Cohen, Debra. "The women’s movement, Jewish identity and the story of a religion transformed," The Jewish Week, 17 June 2004
• Ozick, Cynthia. "Notes toward finding the right question" in Heschel, S. On Being a Jewish Feminist: A Reader. Schocken, 1983.
• Plaskow, Judith. "The right question is theological" in Heschel, S. On being a Jewish Feminist: A Reader, Shocken, 1983(a).
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