Women in Jewish Tradition

This talk is dedicated to the investigation of the unique doubts raised in rabbinic literature concerning women: doubts stemmed from rabbinic understanding of female physiology, and doubts raised as a result of Rabbinic perception of women's motivations for action. We will examine how are these doubts reflect Rabbinic ambivalent notions towards female body and sexuality, and their complex attitudes towards women as a distinct social group.

Beit Ya'akov in Poland between Neo-Orthodoxy and Ultra-Orthodoxy iris brown (hoizman) Every haredi child knows about Beit Ya'akov (Bais Yaakov), the extensive network of haredi educational institutions for girls, ranging from kindergartens to vocational teacher-training seminaries. Equally well known in the haredi community is the story of how Beit Ya'akov began. Its founder, Sarah Schenirer (1883-1935), is often labelled the 'mother' of all haredi women 1 and has become an iconic figure-the only woman in haredi society to have inspired a foundation myth. However, recent investigations into the history of Beit Ya'akov reveal a much more complex picture than the standard haredi narrative would allow. In contrast to the myth, which celebrates Schenirer as sole founder and director of Beit Ya'akov from its inception until her death, we know that others made significant contributions to the success of the institution. First among them were Dr Leo (Samuel) Deutschländer (1879-1935), who set the organization on a sound financial and pedagogical basis and thus spearheaded its rapid expansion, and Dr Judith Rosenbaum (later Grunfeld; 1902-98), 2 one of his collaborators.

Author: Shmuel Safrai
Publisher: CBE International

Today, public worship can take place in a synagogue only if at least ten adult Jewish males are present. Women do not qualify as part of this quorum. Furthermore, women are separated from men within the synagogue: women worship in an e z r a t n a s h i m , a balcony or section with a divider located beside or behind the men's section. Things were considerably different in Jesus' day.

The following paper by Rabbi Raymond Apple first appeared as a chapter in Matnat Eliyahu: Essays for Eliyahu Honig, Mandelbaum Studies in Judaica No. 15, published by Mandelbaum Publishing in association with Australian Friends of the Hebrew University, 2011.

Resumo: Este artigo visa a elaborar uma breve análise da evolução do status feminino entre os hebreus/ judeus no período do primeiro e do segundo Templos. Fazendo uso do texto bíblico como fonte principal de informação, mas buscando alternar visões diversas e até contraditórias dos espaços e tempos da mulher no cotidiano do trabalho, do estudo e da religião. O trabalho faz um recorte de tempo amplo por pretender observar as continuidades e as alterações de concepção dos direitos e da participação social e religiosa da mulher em um vasto período. Percebe que a diversidade de atitudes tem certa coerência: as mulheres na sociedade tradicional e patriarcal eram mais participantes e atuavam no espaço público mais do que vieram a atuar no período posterior ao cativeiro da Babilônia (586-536 a.E.C.), 1 também denominado período do segundo Templo (c. 589 a.E.C. -70 d.E.C.) Palavras-chave: mulheres, Judaísmo, religião.

a n d r e a l i e b e r Fanc y S ch man c y A nx i e t y M a v e n, or 'the Maven' as she is affectionately known to her online readership, is self-described in her online profile as an Orthodox Jewish woman living outside Brooklyn, 'helping to bring Moshiach [the messiah] in her own special way'. A mother of five children, all under the age of 10, she is a ba'alat teshuvah 1 who embraced Orthodoxy as a young adult. She left college to attend yeshiva when she became observant. Since 2005 she has maintained an anonymous online diary, a web log or blog, where she chronicles the daily joys and frustrations of her life. 2 At times the Maven writes self-consciously about Jewish values and the expectations of her community; at others she reflects deeply on the range of feelings she struggles with as a young woman, wife, and mother. Most of the time, however, the Maven's readers will find her writing about the most mundane aspects of daily life: 6.59 a.m. Monday

I received a Newhall Teaching Fellowship to offer this course in Spring 2015 at the Graduate Theological Union. This course will offer a framework on ways to assess women and gender in the Second Temple Period. Examining how Hellenistic authors mold representations of biblical women gives insight into their conceptions of the ideal woman as well as the place of women in Jewish history. Hellenistic discourse on women and gender is grounded in biblical interpretation and everyday life and, as such, has the potential to shed light on the tumultuous debate between what may be deemed problematic, acceptable, ideal, and anomalous in respect to women’s behavior. In order to understand the nuance behind some of their literary decisions, it is necessary to understand the historical context of the period in which it was written and how it may or may not conform to larger mores in the Greco-Roman world. A deeper understanding of the complex nature of gender roles in the Second Temple period opens up new possibilities that problematize the gender polarities advocated in the didactic expansions of later texts.

This essay examines medieval and early modern Jewish reverence for the holy deceased and fear of the dangerous dead themselves or those who had the knowledge to manipulate spirits. I focus specifically on the relationships of women to the dead and to women as members of the dead (both holy or dangerous) in Ashkenazi (Germanic or Northern European Jewish) culture. I maintain that women's own death, especially martyrdom, granted women a degree of holiness and authority that they lacked in life, or as individuals unassociated with the dead. Furthermore, recognition of women's interest in and involvement with the dead increased in the Ashkenazi world during the early modern period. Despite continued disapproval from some circles, men and sometimes women themselves, actively encouraged women's devotion to the dead.

Dvora Baron is recognized as the first Modern Hebrew woman writer. Nevertheless, she is largely unknown in German-speaking countries. A Tel Aviv publisher included her short story Shavririm in a collection of the same name in 1949. Yet, this story did not appear in German until 40 years later, titled Lichtschimmer, translated by Mirjam Pressler. No German commentary or analysis of this short story exists. This lack of interest is surprising, given that current fiction from Hebrew women writers appears in German immediately after publication in Hebrew, and is widely discussed. Has this writer nothing to say to us? What is the message of Shavririm? Is it a short story of inferior quality? Alternatively, is Lichtschimmer a bad translation? In this article, I discuss Baron's biography and elucidate her historical and cultural background. I explain what she has in common with and what differentiates her from contemporaneous male Yiddish and Hebrew writers. To demonstrate the quality of the story and the translation, I analyze Shavririm and Lichtschimmer. Thus, I also show the challenges of translating her texts. The main goal is to identify Baron's possible messages to the original Hebrew-speaking, but also to today's German-speaking readers.

The ordination of women as rabbis is a relatively new phenomenon in Jewish communities worldwide, but especially in the State of Israel. Israel’s non-Orthodox movements began to ordain women as rabbis only twenty years after the first woman rabbi was ordained in the United States. Today, women rabbis continue to confront deeply rooted cultural concepts and stereotypes while seeking to reshape the place of women in Judaism.In this article, I shall analyze and interpret Israeli women rabbis’ shared experiences as extracted from their life stories, using folklore research tools. Analyzing these stories using the narrative-package model revealed their commonalities with Vladimir Propp’s fairy-tale narrative structure.
The content of these narratives by pioneer Israeli women rabbis emphasizes the deconstruction of gender roles in Judaism and in Israeli society, even as new structures are being established, enabling women to take religious leadership functions upon themselves. The narrators are aware of the numerous challenges they face, but most of them are deeply motivated to continue exerting their influence in different areas of Israeli society.

This chapter examines the genre of nineteenth-century Hungarian Neolog Jewish women's prayer books. It argues that the prayer books must be read in the context of emancipation and the increasing secularization of Hungarian society. It also describes the creation of prayers that sanctify a vocation of motherhood and child-rearing, which charged mothers with passing Jewish identity on to their children in the home. The chapter talks about Neolog prayer books that imagine the Jewish mother as a bulwark against secularization and simultaneously invest mothers with the power to recreate tradition in the face of emancipation. It points out how mothers are idealized and entrusted with the past for the sake of the future, enabling fathers to become part of public life outside the home.

Thesis Abstract
This dissertation examines the differences between the feminist Jewish movement and the Jewish feminist movement within the realm of Jewish education. Its aim is to understand the necessary process to address a perceived need for change in Judaism, be it from a secular perspective or from within Jewish tradition itself, and how to practically impact that change. Feminist Jewish theology has contributed to the evolution of the political culture of traditional Judaism by attempting to redirect Jewish movements towards feminist goals. While consequential transformations appeared in the liberal Jewish movements, as they increasingly became detached from the halakhic process, it became difficult to address these changes within the more conservative movements. Hence, feminist Judaism, the movement that hoped to grant all women equality in the realm of Judaism, in a manner backfired against the Orthodox women, since they are the most vulnerable to halakhically intricate situations. In order to explore the role of feminist Jewish theology and its impact on Judaism, this thesis analyzes liberal feminist Jewish works on feminist theology as well as books, articles and interviews from the Orthodox side and its understanding of the feminist issue. Subsequently, Orthodox women who believed in the values of Feminism as well as the intrinsic value of Halakhah, became leading forces in the effort to subtly shift power from the hands of the all-male ruling Jewish body, the rabbis, to the hands of educated and inspired women. In the process, feminist Jewish thinkers and Orthodox Jewish women have, each in their own way, dramatically contributed to the improvement of the traditional Jewish landscape, as women now hold positions historically only held by men, hence redefining Judaism in an evolutionary – not revolutionary – manner, and benefiting women like never before.

Jerusalem to Brooklyn. This novel also emphasizes queerness and feminism as radical forces, placing the militarized landscape of Jerusalem in conversation with the casual sexism and homophobia experienced by the city's everyday citizens. Threaded throughout the text is an overarching story of hope, even as Sasha removes herself from the narrative.

This article examines the image and representation of women in Judeo-Spanish (Ladino) popular music. It seems that the observation of the folklore scholar Galit Hasan-Rokem, who claims that popular folk culture is a multiple-voice culture, expressing, among others, feminine perspectives, is reinforced when examining Judeo-Spanish folk songs. The Ladino musical tradition is a feminine genre, sung and transmitted by women. Furthermore, in her article, " Text-Tiles: Reflections of Women's Textiled World in the Judeo-Spanish (Ladino) Poetic Tradition, " Michal Held breaks down the word 'textiles' into 'text-tiles,' " text that depict and decipher the Sephardic woman by building layers of meaning."  The article offers a close comparative reading of four popular songs that portray the world of Sephardic (Judeo-Spanish) women, and relates to the dialectic between private and public spheres, "women's work" and feminine identity.
https://wjudaism.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/wjudaism/article/view/29734

Toledot Yeshu, or “Stories about Jesus,” have been transmitted by Jews for centuries but have only recently begun to garner significant scholarly attention as part of a tradition of anti-Christian polemic. This paper contends that the varied depictions of Jesus’ conception in the Toledot corpus reflect the intracommunal issues of forced conversion, apostasy, and over-familiarity with non-Jews. The theme was neither new to the Toledot nor a product of the late-antique and medieval contexts that Jewish stories of Jesus first circulated in. Rather, it echoes biblical representations of, and admonishments against, illicit relationships with non-Jews which ancient authors commonly depicted through a typology of sexual promiscuity. It is only when viewing Toledot presentations of Jesus’ conception in light of both contemporary events and the Jewish biblical literary tradition that we are able to grasp their previously unnoted functions as 1) Jewish self-criticism regarding inter-communal relations; and, 2) a didactic warning to future generations against making similar mistakes.

In this article, which follows a previous article titled ‘Shehecheyanu I – An example of misunderstanding and misapplication’, I discuss the laws pertaining to the recitation of Shehecheyanu at a wedding and I challenge the common custom of a groom reciting Shehecheyanu over his tallit (and his bride!). Within the article I examine the writings of those halakhic authorities who endorsed the recitation of Shehecheyanu at a wedding, and note that all these opinions presumed that this blessing would be recited by both bride and groom. I offer this as an example of auto-customisation (which is a term I have coined to describe the process of maintaining customs with little regard for their logic and their symbolism) and then refer to the rulings of Rabbi Hayyim David Halevy who identifies a suitable way in which both bride and groom can recite this blessing on their wedding day.

This paper reexamines a fragmentary Aramaic letter from the Yedaniah communal archive in Elephantine. The document, TAD A4.4, tells a tale of intrigue involving burglaries, arrests, and failed diplomacy. Many details of the letter escape us because the text is incomplete, but it is clear that five men and six women from Elephantine were seized at the gate in Thebes. Scholarly treatments have tended to discuss the women’s presence at Thebes as an ancillary fact, as if they were merely wives and daughters along with their men on a business trip. This paper analyzes the internal evidence of TAD A4.4, brings to bear contemporary material from Elephantine, and proposes alternatives for the role of the captured women. I argue that TAD A4.4 provides further insight into the roles of women in Elephantine and discuss how and why their roles might differ from those implied in biblical texts of this period.

‫הוא‬ ‫בדנר‬ ‫אביעד‬ ‫ג',‬ ‫מחזור‬ ‫בוגר‬ ‫סטודנט‬ ‫למשפטים‬ ‫באוניברסיטת‬ ‫בר‬ -‫ולומד‬ ‫אילן‬ ‫לרבנות‬ ‫להסמכה‬ ‫זכות‬ ‫הנשים‬ ‫לבחור‬ ‫ולהיבחר‬ ‫למוסדות‬ ‫ציבור‬ | 309 ‫ו‬ ‫לבחירות‬ ‫עצמה‬ ‫אישה‬ ‫מציגה‬ ‫כאשר‬ ‫ואף‬ ‫מזאת‬ ‫גדולה‬ ‫קבלה‬ ‫לך‬ ‫אין‬ ‫בה‬ ‫בוחר‬ ‫הציבור‬ ‫שאישה‬ ‫הלכתית‬ ‫מניעה‬ ‫כל‬ ‫שאין‬ ‫לי‬ ‫נראה‬ ‫ולכן‬ ‫זה.‬ ‫בכגון‬ ‫מניעה‬ ‫שאין‬ ‫יודה‬ ‫הרמב"ם‬ ‫בה.‬ ‫שיבחר‬ ‫הציבור‬ ‫את‬ ‫ותיצג‬ ‫לבחירות‬ ‫עצמה‬ ‫תעמיד‬ ‫דתית‬ 36 ‫זכות‬ ‫הנשים‬ ‫לבחור‬ ‫ולהיבחר‬ ‫למוסדות‬ ‫ציבור‬ | 311

As part of the laws of war promulgated in Deuteronomy the Torah regulates the status of a female prisoner of a foreign war, referred to as eshet yefat to’ar or “beautiful woman” (Deut. 21:10–14). Seeking to moderate the violent repercussions of the lustful encounter between the victorious army, drunk with power, and the helpless enemy women, and to set limits to the license to rape female captives, biblical law stipulates a complex ritual whose purpose is to turn the foreign woman into the captor’s lawful wife. In effect, the law of the beautiful captive proposes a unique model of conversion that links the forced change in the woman’s cultural and religious identity to the forced change in her marital status.This model is in strong tension both with the Bible’s recurring ban on marriage to foreign women and with other biblical models of conversion, which are not unique to women, and which allowed foreigners to integrate into the social fabric in a more processural and organic manner.
These foci of tension, alongside the ritual and performative aspects of the law of the captive woman, have received extensive and variegated treatment in biblical exegesis, midrash, and the halakhic literature throughout the ages. The biblical law lost its practical force in post-biblical Jewish culture, which was not a warrior culture, but a rich exegetical discourse developed instead. The “beautiful captive” came to function as a cultural fantasy of total otherness (religious, ethnic, and gender), through which commentators and halakhic decisors formulated and affirmed the Jewish collective identity.

Español/English
Este artículo aborda el estudio de las representaciones y percepciones sobre el cuerpo femenino judío que se producen en la intersección de nociones e ideas que sobre menstruación/emisión genital, maternidad e (im)pureza ritual circulaban en el occidente europeo durante la Edad Media. Para ello analiza qué aporta el concepto de (im)pureza ritual, y la legislación creada en torno a él, a las formas en que los judíos medievales definieron el cuerpo femenino, y en qué medida fueron esos discursos compartidos por las propias mujeres.

This essay explores the representations and perceptions of the Jewish female body, derived from the confluence of notions and ideas about menstruation/genital discharge, childbirth and ritual (im)purity, which circulated in the West during the Middle Ages. It analyzes how the concept of ritual (im)purity, and the legislation derived from it,  contributes to the ways in which Jews defined female body, and whether (and if so, in what measure) those discourses were shared by women themselves.

The article examines female gender roles in the Mountain
Jewish communities of the Northern Caucasus, based on travel notes
of travelers and researchers of the XIX century. The author questions
the validity of the wide-spread view of Mountain Jewish women as
oppressed and downtrodden, proposing to analyze the Mountain Jewish
communities not within the “classical” framework of Orientalism and
Ashkenazi values, but issuing from the power patterns of gerontocracy
and patriarchy and considering specific customs and rituals related to
gender status and gender roles in the abovementioned communities.

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For over two decades, orthodox Israeli women have been creating theatre despite traditional Jewish reservations against it and despite the fact that theatre involves a certain degree of exhibitionism rather than the tsniut (modesty) demanded of them, particularly in the public sphere. 1 A source for Jewish thought about tsniut is Micah 6:8 "Walk humbly with thy G-d" as interpreted by Rabbi Eliezer in Tractate Succah 49b of the Babylonian Talmud, whose explicit application of this as a principle to both public and private spheres is then further elaborated in halacha (religious law), in terms of dress, speech etc. This article highlights the unresolved inherent contradiction between theatre and tsniut, and how orthodox women negotiate and combine modesty with theatre performance. It focuses on two case studies of groups of orthodox actresses who have performed before mixed audiences (men and women), thus pushing the dilemma of modesty to its limit. It shows how their choice not to appear only before their own gender influenced their acting and impacted the concept of modesty in various ways ranging from being stricter than the rabbis to overlooking certain norms of modesty in order to perform and engage in political activism. Our research shows that many orthodox Jewish actresses and audience members disregard the assumption of aesthetic distance between performers and character; they do not accept the possibility of being like "peacocks on stage and modest offstage" (as one non-religious actress puts it). In this article, we explore the twofold considerations of modesty among orthodox actresses: concern for their own personal modesty, and for that of the audience. So far there has not been much research on this phenomenon. Reina Rutlinger-Reiner's earlier research on orthodox women's theatre in Israel, conducted between 1998 and 2002, being a precedent. This qualitative research included formal, in-depth interviews with performers, directors and educators; spontaneous interviews and "theatre conversations" recorded or jotted down in a field journal; videotapes, texts, and press reviews. Based on this research, which was updated in 2006 and led to her book The Audacity of Holiness,2 we began a joint research project focusing on the inherent contradiction between modesty and performing onstage. Our aim was to examine the difference between secular actresses' and orthodox actresses' concepts of theatre in general and of tsniut on stage in particular. One of the conclusions from our research is that orthodox actresses regard theatre primarily as an educational tool, rather than as an art. As such, they feel there should be no discrepancy between their personal life and the life created onstage. Many actresses declare that working within the strict limitations of the rules of modesty offers a challenge and creates opportunities for developing a new genre which they hope will become an alternative to western, secular Israeli theatre. Theatre in Religiously Orthodox Israeli Society: Background A surge of artistic activity within orthodox Israeli society has taken place in the fields of art, dance, music, literature and theatre since the 1990s. In theatre, orthodox artists' initiatives can be divided into men's and women's theatre. Women's theatre encompasses the whole range from storytelling, performed without acting, in schools and community centres (where they perform exclusively for women), to avantgarde theatre performed in front of mixed audiences in the Israeli annual alternative theatre festival in Acco. Most orthodox actresses consult the male religious hegemony (rabbis) before going onstage, especially

This piece, which was published in The Forward on Nov. 20, 2020, scores the failure of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, z"l, former Chief Rabbi of Great Britain, to act on the ethics he championed eloquently and passionately when it came to Jewish marital captivity: the inability of women to get a rabbinic divorce (gett), unless their husbands give them one, often after extortive deals, and in the context of physical and emotional abuse . Rabbi Sacks, along with many other Orthodox rabbis, condemned measures that some rabbis took to free such women, called "agunot," after the Hebrew word for "chained," by applying halakhic measures to annul marriages in which a husband was abusive, including the abuse of gett refusal. Neither did he offer  alternatives to end marital captivity of Jewish women, a stance in stark contrast to the primacy he put on ethics, which stance is prominent in assessments of his life upon his recent death.

"Jonathan Sacks was a beloved leader. Yet his stance on marriage captivity belied his ethics"

Please click below to access the article: https://forward.com/scribe/458867/jonathan-sacks-was-a-beloved-leader-yet-his-stance-on-marriage-captivity/?utm_source=Email%20Article&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Email%20Article

For over two decades, orthodox Israeli women have been creating theatre despite traditional Jewish reservations against it and despite the fact that theatre involves a certain degree of exhibitionism rather than the tsniut (modesty) demanded of them, particularly in the public sphere.1 A source for Jewish thought about tsniut is Micah 6:8 “Walk humbly with thy G-d” as interpreted by Rabbi Eliezer in Tractate Succah 49b of the Babylonian Talmud, whose explicit application of this as a principle to both public and private spheres is then further elaborated in halacha (religious law), in terms of dress, speech etc. This article highlights the unresolved inherent contradiction between theatre and tsniut, and how orthodox women negotiate and combine modesty with theatre performance. It focuses on two case studies of groups of orthodox actresses who have performed before mixed audiences (men and women), thus pushing the dilemma of modesty to its limit. It shows how their choice not to app...

This paper introduces the vast collection of petitions (kvitlekh) to Rabbi Elijah Guttmacher, the Tzaddik of Gratz (Grodzisk Wielkopolski), whose miracle working enterprise flourished in the early 1870s.  These thousands of petitions form windows onto the lives of East European Jews who seemed to be shifting from a passive attachment to tradition to a more conscious and defiant “traditionalism”—a product of friction with certain manifestations of secularization.

This chapter examines the construction of a “traditionalist” Jewish congregation, in which women and men perform various ritual practices that were performed only by men during most of Jewish history. The congregants’ attitudes towards female ritual performance are deciphered by focusing on the variety of interpretations of “tradition” the congregants offer. Emphasis is placed on their attempts to harmonize their perception of “the eternal Jewish tradition” with the ideology of gender equality that they have internalized in their country of origin – the U.S. The research congregation is affiliated with the Masorti (Conservative) movement, which supports ritual gender equality –a fact of little importance to Israelis until recent years. In Israel, there is no separation between religion and state. Hence, the Conservative movement’s religious legitimacy is challenged by the large public and the state Orthodox establishment. The chapter is based on ethnographic fieldwork: interviews with the congregants and participant-observations in prayers. The Female ritual performance in the congregation is examined in light of the literature on the “invention of tradition.” The chapter also focuses on the question as to how the habitus: the disposition to think, feel and act in specific ways, acquired during life – currently constructs the congregants’ perceptions of female ritual performance.