Women, Religious Freedom Groups Stake Victories New Jerusalem bus ads featuring women read, "It's Nice to Know You: Jerusalem is a Town for Us All." Grass-roots campaign in Jerusalem reverses some haredi-imposed gender segregation and discrimination. Tuesday, August 14, 2012Michele ChabinIsrael Correspondent Jerusalem — Passing through Jerusalem’s Central Bus Station a few months ago, Rachel Jaskow decided to stop at the station’s synagogue and pray Mincha. Making her way to the very end of the departure level, Jaskow, a Modern Orthodox Jerusalemite, found the synagogue but only men praying there. Then she noticed a tiny room — separate from the shul and the size of a walk-in closet — designated as the women’s section. When Jaskow, who is active in the Israeli women’s movement, entered the room, she was “absolutely appalled” by its condition,” she told The Jewish Week. “There was trash; it was dingy, dirty, and there were three huge boxes crammed with old religious newsletters. I was angry and called the rabbi and said, ‘Is this the women’s section or a garbage dump? How can anyone pray here?’” Although it took the rabbi a bit of time to fulfill his promise to make the room usable, today it’s no longer a storage room. Though the tiny space is still completely detached from the minyan next door, it’s cleaner and the boxes are gone. The shul’s ultra-Orthodox rabbi has been making an effort, Jaskow said, and that’s a step in the right direction. While no one who knows Jerusalem intimately would call it a tolerant or pluralistic city, there has been some significant progress during the past year, according to community activists. ..... Feminist activist Elana Sztokman, interim executive director of the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance, observed that the momentum for change “is coming from a lot of different directions,” and that seems to have made the movement particularly effective. “It’s not so much more activist as it is more strategically activist,” Sztokman said. The result: “The governmental bodies seem to be paying attention and so have some companies that have changed their ads in response to pressure.” But at the same time, Sztokman said, “within the haredi community, there is also a backlash in the opposite direction. A kind of digging in the heels. The more public the movement becomes, the more signs seem to be going up. Backlash. So it seems to me like there are two simultaneous trends in opposite directions.” READ MORE HERE
Jewfem Blog
The event was a tremendous gathering of Jewish feminists. The fifty people in the room — almost all women — came from organizations representing many aspects of Jewish life: Reform rabbis, a dean at the Jewish Theological Seminar, Orthodox clergy and senior professionals from a range of Jewish women’s organizations. We were all there because Joanna and AWP had touched us in some way. Remember her commitment to pledging men as allies in promoting women’s leadership? Her guidance in teaching women how to “ask”? Her efforts at promoting women’s advancement in Jewish organizations? A tribute to Joanna as well as the diverse and wide reach of AWP, the good-bye party became a celebration of the minds and spirits of Jewish women, especially those who spend their lives making a difference in the Jewish community through not-for-profit work. Read more: http://blogs.forward.com/sisterhood-blog/160624/goodbye-and-good-luck-to-joanna-samuels/#ixzz22sHSUyJn
Revered Leader Blocked Progress on Divorce and Equality getty imagesPainful Legacy: Thousands mourned the death of Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv. But his teachings caused enormous pain for women. Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, the 102-year-old Lithuanian religious figure who died this week, is being hailed in some circles as the “greatest leader of his generation”. He may have been great to some men, but for women, his ideas and rulings were often the cause of enormous pain. For example, he was a vigorous adherent of the most oppressive and retrograde views on the issue of agunot, or women who are denied religious divorce. He regularly promoted a 16th century opinion by the Maharshdam (Rabbi Shmuel di Medina of Saloniki) according to which a man may never be pressured in any way to give his wife a get, or divorce, ever. Moreover, he believed that if any pressure is exerted by the woman, such as requests to compromise on financial settlements or custody issues, then the get will be considered invalid. Any children born thereafter will be mamzerim, or forbidden from ever marrying a Jew. This position renders rabbinic judges completely helpless in cases of recalcitrance on the part of husbands. Elyashiv’s opinion effectively nullified the 1994 Law of Sanctions, a law passed in the Knesset with the support of the religious state establishment at the time, which gives rabbinic judges the power to enforce sanctions against recalcitrant husbands. These sanctions – which include revoking a driver’s license, revoking a passport, and in some cases imprisonment – are used regularly by rabbinic judges to help women level the playing field when it comes to exiting from Jewish marriage. But to Elyashiv, sanctions were not permissible, and the rabbis should never pressure a man to give a get. (It should be noted that many rabbinic rulings since the 16th century have taken a much more humane approach. Rabbi Haim Pallagi, the chief rabbi of the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century, ruled that if a husband and wife live apart for 18 months, the court must force the man to give a get). Elyashiv’s retrograde approach played a strong role enabling men to blackmail women during divorce. It is this dynamic that facilitated the formation of the so-called “Agunah Fund”, a pool of money that the rabbinic judges have which they use to literally pay men in order to give their wives a get. The legality of this fund was unfortunately upheld by a 2010 High Court ruling, based on a petition brought by Susan Weiss of The Center for Women’s Justice. One agunah named “Orit” whose story was reported in Maariv several years ago, suffered personally from Elyashiv’s refusal to allow the rabbinical court to help her. She described a marriage full of physical, emotional, and financial abuse, from which she had to escape in fear of her life. The rabbinical judges actually issued a “hiyuv get,” an order to give a get, but she never knew about it because the...
As of tomorrow, I will be working as Interim Executive Director for JOFA, the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance. This is incredibly thrilling for me, since this is of course an issue very close to my heart. The travel back and forth will perhaps be challenging, but sometimes we have to work hard and make unconventional decisions in order to get to the really interesting and exciting places in life.... Here's to the next adventure!!!!
"Balance and Business: Integrating spiritual ideas with your professional life" was the title of a workshop I gave last week with Elana Rozenman's Professional Women's Networking group SuccessWorks. It was a fabulous group of professional working women in a variety of fields who shared experiences and ideas about maintaining our own spiritual balance in our professional identities. Elana Rozenman has been a leader in the field of women's professional empowerment in Israel, and it was a privilege for me to be invited to address this group and talk about these important issues. Miriam Simon was kind enough to take some notes, and Sharon Altschul took photos, so I'm sharing some of those here. What throws us off balance? TrustSafetyDignityPersonal PowerAbuse/Attacking/ Violence – screaming, shamingFairness/JusticeFear of Security, Self Worth, Money, RespectBasic Needs Not Being MetSupporting SelfToxic EnvironmentFear of Mistakes These fears flash through our brain all the time, even just for seconds. There are fears that should call us to action, like when you see someone being shamed. There are fears that can turn into opportunities, like leaving a toxic work environment to find a better job. When we have events throw us off balance, not only look at it from a lens of fears but from what it does from our whole world view – what is my life and how I want to live my life – to quit, become freelance, to sue, to stop a meeting. Working as a spiritual quest. Five spiritual principles. 1. Dignity. Create working lives that value our and others dignity so the environment is one we can trust. Trust can build a dignified environment. 2. Diversity/complexity. We're diverse people within ourselves. Welcome that we wear lots of hats. It's ok to be more than one thing. Making space for our own complexities and in an environment where it's not expected that everyone is the same. 3. Balance between give and take. Give service/time and receive payment but suddenly it's off. In our culture women are trained to give and men are trained to take which is why women find it hard to ask for what they are worth. Balance between give and take is important. 4. Alighment. What we're doing fits in to our sense of purpose in this world. Does your work feel like work that matches what you believe in – a sense of alignment. 5. Joy. We should be happy in our work environment. If you really hate wehre you are – reason enough to work for a change. To learn more, contact me anytime at
wikimedia commonsEli Yishai It never ceases to amaze me how some so-called leaders will use women’s issues to advance their own agendas that have nothing to do with women. The overtly racist statements coming from the Shas government minister Eli Yishai last week in light of a Tel Aviv rape case were particularly troubling. When the police arrested four Sudanese and Eritrean men last week on suspicion of raping a woman in Tel Aviv, some Israelis took this as an opportunity to indict the entire community of refugees that is concentrated in South Tel Aviv. I listened in horror to radio interviews with Tel Aviv residents talking about “those people” who have “taken over” the otherwise “normal” Tel Aviv — using language that is painfully reminiscent of my Orthodox Brooklyn upbringing, when we were expressly taught to cross to the other side of the street if we saw black men walking in our direction. For these sentiments to be reinforced in the year 2012 by a government official is particularly troubling. Yishai said, in response to the rape, “Most African migrants in Israel are involved in criminal activity and should be imprisoned and deported.” As if to say, all the black folks in Tel Aviv are really just rapists, thieves, murderers, whatever. These statements give legitimacy to racism and may lead to criminal acts, like those that took place recently against asylum seekers,” said Michal Pinchuk, director of the Aid Organization for Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Israel (ASSAF). Indeed. Read more: http://blogs.forward.com/sisterhood-blog/156640/tel-aviv-rape-blanket-indictment/#ixzz1yzk0Byt7
The first thing I noticed when I walked into the offices of Lilith was the books. Piled up in every corner of desks, chairs, shelves, and the floor, the books were an almost unintended design concept. They tell the visitor that this is a place where people love to read. Really, though, Lilith is a place where people love to *eat*. Well, maybe not eat so much as to work around the conference-table-slash-kitchen-table. My meeting with the Lilith staff took place around the table in the center of the office that was filled with all kinds of salads and baked goods that the multi-talented and multi-tasking staff members made. “Lilith is a place where people love to talk, and our conference table has always been a place where good talk happens over food--much like at a wonderful dinner table, or even a salon,” Lilith editor-in-chief Susan Weidman Schneider said. “Despite the yumminess of the victuals, the important part is, of course, not what food each person brings to the table, but what *voices* are at the table. The food is just a signifier of our hospitable impulse to invite in guests and their ideas. For example, the Lilith staff has mentored more than 150 interns in our 35 years of publishing, and almost every one has told us that what they valued most about their experience here was being heard at that very table. Lilith is probably the most intellectually welcoming office I have ever encountered. And what’s amazing about that is that the atmosphere is definitive part of the working culture, a purposeful outgrowth of the feminist ideology that drives the magazine content. “Everything gets done around this table,” Susan told me over salmon salad and soft fennel-molasses bread made by Lilith’s inimitable managing editor Naomi Danis. Every issue and every article gets created over food, slowly, with cooperative input, tossing in and kneading new ideas as the staff chews and digests. The entire magazine is a product of group thinking and collaboration, mostly over food. This is a remarkable model of feminist work. It’s about giving women power and voice in a way that strengthens everyone rather than adopting patterns of being controlling, aggressive, manipulative or hierarchical. That’s not an easy thing. Expressions that are ambivalent, uncertain, hesitant, or help-seeking are not valued in most workplaces. They are often taken as signs that a person is not serious, or intelligent, or “management material”. Definitions of professionalism are often a function of being single-minded, unwavering, determined, loud, aggressive and abrasive. The person most unflinching is often the one whose ideas are adopted and who seen as the “leader”. In fact, much of the current literature on helping women “get ahead” in the workplace focuses on teaching women to adopt these behaviors – drop the qualifiers, we are told, get rid of all the “I think”s and “perhaps”es, and don’t forget to unabashedly self-promote and publicly give yourself credit. If this is the model that developed from generations of women’s exclusion...
The strangest part of Monday night’s panel discussion of my new book, “The Men’s Section,” about partnership synagogues, wasn’t that the four-person panel was made up of all men. All-male panels are so common — to wit, I passed by a poster at Harvard this week announcing an economic conference with no female speakers at all — that Joanna Samuels of Advancing Women Professionals has been asking Jewish men to take a pledge not to sit on all-male panels. (Several of the men on my book panel said that they had taken the pledge and actually felt odd sitting on this all-male dais at the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute.) The really unusual part for me was that, although all the speakers are accomplished men with very impressive resumes and professional and communal achievements, their speeches had nothing to do with their expertise. Rather, they each talked about their feelings about partnership synagogues and the discussion centered on their own journeys in Jewish communal and religious life. In fact, Marc Baker, of Minyan Kol Rinah in Brookline, Mass. opened by saying, “I’m not used to talking about myself in this kind of forum.” The men were used to talking about ideas; they were not used to talking about themselves. This is what I want to happen from the publication of my book. I want men to start exploring their journeys and experiences, and to start examining Jewish life — not from the perspective of halachic and cold, cerebral, detached analysis of rules and facts. I want to give men the language and framework to ask themselves what they feel, what they see, what they really want. Read more: http://blogs.forward.com/sisterhood-blog/154980/when-orthodox-men-get-personal/#ixzz1sRCcma12
There have been some moments on my book tour when I felt like I’m on a journey revisiting my own life. Part observer, part social commentator, and part Jewish traveler, I seem to be making stops that connect in significant ways to voyages past. The first striking moment was the discovery that Prof. Jon Levisohn of Brandeis University would moderate at my official book launch. Jon and I were very close friends when we were 14, and the truth is that even though we have only seen each other a few times over the past 20 years, he has a very special place in my heart. During that awkward period of adolescence when it’s easy to think that nobody sees you or understands you, Jon was a patient and kind listener, and a thoughtful, intelligent conversationalist. Actually, it seems to me that he still is all those things. His friendship was healing then, and his presence at my first ever book launch was incredibly comforting. It made me feel whole. As if to say, I have been on this journey for thirty years, taking me to this place, and I stll am this same person. And by the way, the fact that we both ended up with doctorates in education makes me wonder what we were talking about during those late night conversations all those years ago. My tour has also taken me back to the Barnard/Columbia Hillel, some 21 years after I graduated from Barnard. I spent a lot of time at the Hillel back then, when it was in what now seems like a small office in Earl Hall. I was particularly active in Columbia Students for Israel, with my friend Josh Leibowitz, z”l, and I remember many hours spent preparing all kinds of flyers and events. We used to sometimes take over the desk of then program coordinator Helise Leiberman who was nice enough to pretend not to mind. (Helise now works with Jewish students in Poland, and we recently reconnected, and are now Facebook friends of course.) We were really happy then, I think – although seeing what HIllel has become, a multi-story building of its own, the Kraft Center for Jewish Life, with an Indian-themed kosher cafeteria, alarge synagogue that does not alternate as a mosque, and lots of spacious rooms and offices for every possible occasion including four different types of prayer services, just blows my mind. The building today is used by a thousand students on campus. That’s just amazing. Still, I should say that the moment that really blew me away was when I mentioned during my session that partnership synagogues have “only” been around for ten years, realizing that for some of the students in the room, that was more than half their lives! Their reality forced me to adjust my thinking and reconsider my narrative of social change. At one of these events, I had a very special audience member: Susan "Sooz" Goodman, my first cousin once removed, whom I had...
Now that I’m on the last leg of my three-week book tour, the dozens of comments and questions that I’ve heard in different communities are starting to play over in my mind, some issues repeating themselves and others new and stimulating each time. Here are some of the issues that have dominated discussions, along with my responses: Is there a difference between younger and older men? A common assumption is that younger men are more “flexible” in their thinking than older men, and that the gender problem in Orthodox Judaism can be attributed to generational differences in attitudes. Actually, my research did not validate that finding. Anecdotally, some of the most open-minded men I interviewed were retirees and those with some of the most ossified ideas about women were in their thirties. Although I assumed this to be merely a counter-intuitive finding, it was actually explained to me by a discussant in Boston – my uncle, Hy Kempler, a 78-year old psychologist who, in his retirement, is researching identity shifts in later life. His research, which he published with the Harvard Adult Learning Institute, found that many people in later life experience significant shifts in identity and ideology, and find themselves opening up to ideas and lifestyles that they would not have in earlier years. Whether this is because burdens of childrearing and providing can be overwhelming, or whether we start out life with rigid expectations of perfections only to discover as we live life that such ideals are elusive and perhaps unhelpful – it is not entirely clear. But what is clear is that the idea of generational differences that view “young” people as more open and flexible than “older” people is an assumption that is not necessarily valid. Maybe this is more about Israelis than Americans Several people told me that some of the descriptions of the “Be an Orthodox Man Box” reflect more Israeli norms than American norms. This may be true to a certain extent. For instance, expectations of a prayer service that does not exceed 90 minutes is clearly an Israeli thing. Also, descriptions of army service as part of the construction of a masculine identity are also clearly Israel. That said, I think that despite these slight differences, I think that there is far more overlap than difference overall. For instance, even though the word “hafifnik”, referring to a kind of “slacker” who comes late to services and does not care about precise performance, is a Hebrew slang word, the attitude of annoyance with the hafifnik-type has crossed through pretty much every synagogue I encountered. The communal narrative around those who come late, who don’t layn well, who don’t bother with mincha, or who just aren’t attentive enough to detail, took place in shuls in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Boston, Melbourne, Jerusalem, and Modi’in. Moreover, I think that as people are traveling more and communicating more, cultural differences are starting to blur. I interviewed men who started a shul in Chicago but moved to...
