Jewfem Blog

Melanie Stark was forced from her job in sales at Harrod’s in for refusing to wear make-up. After five years of employment at the British department store, the company confronted Stark with a “Ladies’ dress code” which included the following strict instructions: “Full makeup at all times: base, blusher, full eyes (not too heavy), lipstick, lip liner and gloss are worn at all times and maintained discreetly (please take into account the store display lighting which has a ‘washing out’ effect).”

Feminism has no doubt transformed Orthodoxy over the past three decades. Women have gone from begging to hold a Torah on Simchat Torah to holding their own services, to creating partnership synagogues in which women take active roles alongside men in running the service. It’s not only about women learning Talmud, but also about being acknowledged with proper titles for the roles — from religious leaders who argue cases in the rabbinical courts to the most recent breakthrough of calling women (almost) rabbis. Gender roles in Orthodoxy are rapidly being redefined in homes, communities and synagogues, where men and women share the tasks of preparing for Shabbat and educating children, leading prayer and giving a D’var Torah. The list of changes goes on, and it’s all quite exciting.

If you want to be a religious Jew today, you have to have money — a lot of it. There’s no way around it, and it’s especially obvious at this time of year.

The City of Modi'in, Israel, may yet see 50% female representation on its City Council in the next election. Mayor Haim Bibas, speaking at an evening dedicated to women in leadership last week, said that he personally hopes to see women as fully equals in the local party lists in 2013.

The sexual lives of religious women will be a leading topic of discussion at a panel at the upcoming Kolech conference. Dr. Naomi Marmon Grumet, a leading researcher on the subject of religious women's intimate lives, will be examining the differences between orthodox men and orthodox women in preparation for marriage, on a panel that promises to open up new arenas of discourse for religious women.

Women in Israel seem to be breaking barriers on nearly every front. A female head of the Supreme Court (MK Dorit Beinisch), a female head of the opposition (MK Tzippi Livni), a female Major General (Maj Gen Orna Barbivay), two female heads of major banks (Shari Arison and Galia Maor), are a few of women's striking accomplishments. Nonetheless, when it comes to education, Israeli girls still lag behind boys. In fact, according to the World Economic Forum's international gender index, Israel ranks 52nd in the world in terms of gender equity, and 68th in terms of girls' education, despite the fact that there is complete gender equality in elementary school enrolment. In other words, Israeli girls are going to school, but they are not necessarily being educated well.

Naama Shafir, a junior guard, poured in a career-high 40 points to lead the University of Toledo to victory in the Women’s National Invitation Tournament championship. She was crowned the basketball tournament’s MVP. And then she walked about two miles home.

Shafir, an Orthodox Jew from Israel, did not want to break the Sabbath.

Part cancer story, part memoir, part kabbalistic manuscript, ‘Soul to Soul’ is a story about death and dying, but actually it’s about life, relationships, suffering and God.

It is so hard to read a book written by someone who has recently died. The words on the page echo her voice, bringing her whole being to life in your head, behind your eyes, inside your ears.

You forget for a moment that she is no longer in her body. You mistakenly think she is simply elsewhere, in another spot on the planet, while you are holed away, escaping by yourself with her beautiful narrative.

Maybe she’s not really gone, just far away, your mind toys with you. Memories of conversations you had with her over the years morph in your imagination with the story unfolding in the volume open before you. You sense her presence, filling the room, envisage her sitting in the chair across from you, her soft smile lightening the atmosphere.

The recent arrest of a woman carrying a Torah at the Western Wall is testing already tense relations between the ultra-Orthodox and other Jewish groups over issues of religious pluralism in Israel. It has also prompted accusations that Israel’s national police force is attempting to reinterpret a Supreme Court ruling on women’s prayer at Judaism’s holiest site.

Anat Hoffman, chairwoman of the women’s prayer group Women of the Wall, was detained July 12, as she was leading about 150 worshippers from the Western Wall plaza to Robinson’s Arch, the portion of the Wall where the group is permitted to read from the Torah.

Hoffman, executive director of the lsrael Religious Action Center, was interrogated for five hours, fined the equivalent of $1,300 and placed under a restraining order that bars her from visiting the Western Wall for 30 days. She contends that she was acting within the law, under which women are not permitted to read from the Torah or to wear a prayer shawl as an outer garment within the Kotel plaza.

Kaya Stern-Kaufman is graduating from rabbinical school this spring, but she says she will not always be called “rabbi.” Instead, the 47-year-old mother of two will also use the title “rabba,” making her the first woman to specifically choose this Hebrew feminized version of “rabbi” as a preferred moniker.

Just what this will mean, however, is unclear. After initially announcing her choice in a press release issued by her school, The Academy for Jewish Religion, Stern-Kaufman said she will use either rabbi or rabba, depending on the circumstances.

“I can’t predict every situation,” she said, in an interview, when pressed to explain. “It will be just sometimes ‘rabba’ and sometimes ‘rabbi,’” depending in part on whether she is working in a Jewish or general setting.

This straddling is a choice that distinguishes her from the first woman to ever receive the rabba title. Sara Hurwitz, who had the title conferred upon her in a 2010 special ceremony, is an Orthodox spiritual leader whose Orthodox mentor devised the term on his own to address objections that he was breaking with the tradition that reserves the title “rabbi” for males.