Answer: I have to quibble a little with your question, Alan. I’m guessing that you’ve seen Jewish men wearing yarmulkes, or kippot, and you haven’t seen women wearing them, so you’ve assumed that women don’t, as a rule, wear kippot. But that’s not actually true–go into any Reform or Conservative synagogue and you’re likely to see a fair number of women covering their heads.

Some women wear crocheted yarmulkes just like the ones worn by men. Others wear wire or beaded yarmulkes that are more feminine, and others cover their heads with scarves, hats, even headbands. Though these headcoverings may not look the same as the traditional ones you recognize, they are intended to serve the same purpose as the yarmulke on a man.

So what is the purpose of wearing a yarmulke? Covering one’s head is not a commandment found in the Torah or the Talmud. Instead, it’s a sign of reverence for God, a custom that became popular in the Middle Ages, and has stuck around since. Though some have suggested that covering one’s head is a way to remind oneself that God is always above, the primary function of a kippah today is to act as a sign of belonging to a certain group of people and of commitment to a certain way of life.

Why is the kippah only worn by men in traditional Orthodox communities? In these communities all ritual clothing–such as a prayer shawl, a Hasidic stock coat, or a kittel–is only worn by men. Women are not considered obligated to perform the commandments associated with some of these garments, so they don’t wear any of them. However, in these communities, married women do cover their hair, usually with hats, scarves, or wigs. This goes back to a commandment hinted at in the Torah, and stated more explicitly in the Talmud and later rabbinic texts. It’s a law unrelated to the kippah custom.

As you can see, there’s a lot of head and hair-covering in Jewish life, for men and women alike, in Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, and other Jewish communities.

The post Ask the Expert: Can Women Wear Kippot? appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

“Who had time in Sarnia,” recalls my father, “for a leisurely Friday night dinner? You had to rush home, eat quickly, and get back to the store.”

When my family moved to Toronto, however, all this changed. My father ceased working on Shabbat. We began attending Jewish schools and camps where we learned tefillot (prayers) and Hebrew songs.

Singing as a Renewed Commitment

When we first introduced the singing of Eshet Hayil at the Shabbat table, my father, who had received but a rudimentary Jewish education growing up in Sarnia, struggled with the complex Hebrew words, yet persisted in going through it every week. For our family, singing Eshet Hayil symbolized a renewed commitment to Jewish observance and the authentic calm of a leisurely Shabbat meal shared with the whole family. It stood for the realization of a Jewish Canadian/American dream, completely elusive to my grandfather’s generation: the possibility of earning a living while living as a fully observant Jew.

Listen to Eshet Hayil (courtesy of Mechon Hadar)

The Origins of Eshet Hayil

Scholars say that the custom of singing Eshet Hayil at the Friday night table was initiated by kabbalists in the 17th century, who viewed Shabbat as an occasion of mystical union with the Divine. They understood Eshet Hayil allegorically as a representation of the Shekhina, the feminine presence of God. In a sense, we were living out our own contemporary allegorical interpretation of Proverbs 31, with the Woman of Valor being the Sabbath, whom we had welcomed, with renewed energy, into our midst.

There is allegory, and then there is literal reading. Singing Eshet Hayil was also an occasion to offer appreciation for my mother, who cooked, baked, and sewed, and had now prepared the Shabbat dinner that we so much enjoyed. The valorous woman in Proverbs 31 never sits still, let alone rests. Her light never goes out and she rises from her bed when it is still dark. Was that not just like my own mother, who teemed with nervous energy, walked more quickly than anyone else in the family, and had this uncanny ability to wake up in the middle of the night in response to the sound of my footsteps approaching my parents’ room?

Wonder Woman

Years later, as a mother, scholar, and feminist, I find myself returning to Eshet Hayil, wondering where I see myself in relation to this biblical uber-frau, who singlehandedly feeds her entire household, works her hands in wool and flax, clothes her children in crimson, all the while managing a business and various philanthropic endeavors. To what extent do any of us see ourselves in this A to Z list of what was valued in a woman in the biblical period? Are we amused by it or alienated?

In the context of our own times, when so many of us work outside as well as inside the home, negotiating on a daily basis a heroic set of professional as well as domestic duties, does Proverbs 31 provide inspiration or does it enshrine a set of unrealistic expectations? Nowadays, when husbands are more involved in child rearing, domestic chores, and Shabbat preparation, should they still sing this paean to their wives while wives sing nothing to their husbands? Given our awareness of the number of single women in our midst as well as couples and families who do not conform to this heterosexual norm, are we not concerned about trumpeting this image as an ideal?

In asking these questions, we exit the experiential mode in which the song wafts over us unthinkingly and begin a more critical set of deliberations that can lead to disgruntlement as well as rediscovery. What do we find when we look into the ways in which Jews read and understood this poem/song in the past? And what new readings can we offer as moderns and as feminists?

Eshet Hayil In Context

Many of us are acquainted with remarkable men and women, though, who possess amazing and numerous virtues that inspire us and even arrest our imaginations. As feminists, we may not thrill to the list of tasks and traits enumerated in the biblical acrostic that is Proverbs 31. Yet, I still cling to the scholarly mission of searching out outstanding women of the past as well as to the belief in the real possibility of contemporary women of valor, however we define the term. Once again, I refer to the issue of context.

We typically ignore the fact that the Eshet Hayil poem is preceded in Proverbs 31 by nine verses of instruction offered by an unnamed Queen Mother to her son King Lemuel, in which she warns him against drunkenness and debauchery (with women), encouraging him instead to judge righteously and be an advocate for the needy. One way to read the Eshet Hayil, poem, then, is as King Lemuel’s eulogy for his valorous and wise mother, bearing in mind the genre of the eulogy, which often includes hyperbole and sacralizing of the lost loved one.

We all know, of course, that it is best not to reserve one’s appreciation for that ultimate occasion. Instead, why not sing it each week to others as well as ourselves? This past Friday night, after completing a draft of this essay as well as a dizzying array of other home-related tasks, I giddily joined in the singing of Eshet Hayil, adding in my own extemporaneous musical list of my accomplishments and those of the people around me–my kids had been remarkably cooperative that Friday, my husband survived another week on Wall Street and had managed to get home just in time for candle lighting–to the praised attainments of yesteryear. A better way to begin my Shabbat, who can find?

Excerpted with permission from JOFA, The Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance.

The post How To Read Eshet Hayil appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

Where This Practice Comes From

The origin of the tradition lies in the Sotah ritual, a ceremony described in the Bible that tests the fidelity of a woman accused of adultery. According to the Torah, the priest uncovers or unbraids the accused woman’s hair as part of the humiliation that precedes the ceremony (Numbers 5:18). From this, the Talmud (Ketuboth 72) concludes that under normal circumstances hair covering is a biblical requirement for women.

The Mishnah in Ketuboth (7:6), however, implies that hair covering is not an obligation of biblical origin. It discusses behaviors that are grounds for divorce such as, “appearing in public with loose hair, weaving in the marketplace, and talking to any man” and calls these violations of Dat Yehudit, which means Jewish rule, as opposed to Dat Moshe, Mosaic rule. This categorization suggests that hair covering is not an absolute obligation originating from Moses at Sinai, but rather is a standard of modesty that was defined by the Jewish community.

Having first suggested that hair covering is a biblical requirement — rooted in the Sotah ritual — and then proposing that it is actually a product of communal norms, the Talmud (Ketuboth 72) presents a compromise position: Minimal hair covering is a biblical obligation, while further standards of how and when to cover one’s hair are determined by the community.

Elsewhere in the Talmud (Berakhot 24a), the rabbis define hair as sexually erotic (ervah) and prohibit men from praying in sight of a woman’s hair. The rabbis base this estimation on a biblical verse: “Your hair is like a flock of goats” (Song of Songs 4:1), suggesting that this praise reflects the sensual nature of hair. However, it is significant to note that in this biblical context the lover also praises his beloved’s face, which the rabbis do not obligate women to cover. Though not all would agree, the late medieval German commentator Mordecai Ben Hillel Hakohen, known as the Mordecai, explains that these rabbinic definitions of modesty — even though they are derived from a biblical verse — are based on subjective communal norms that may change with time.

Historically speaking, women in the talmudic period likely did cover their hair, as is attested in several anecdotes in rabbinic literature. For example, Bava Kama (90a) relates an anecdote of a woman who brings a civil suit against a man who caused her to uncover her hair in public. The judge appears to side with the woman because the man violated a social norm. Another vignette in the Talmud describes a woman whose seven sons all served as High Priest. When asked how she merited such sons, she explained that even the walls of her home never saw her hair (Yoma 47a). The latter story is a story of extreme piety, surpassing any law or communal consensus; the former case may also relay a historical fact of practice and similarly does not necessarily reflect religious obligation.

Throughout the Middle Ages, Jewish authorities reinforced the practice of covering women’s hair, based on the obligation derived from the Sotah story. Maimonides does not include hair covering in his list of the 613 commandments, but he does rule that leaving the house without a chador, the communal standard of modesty in Arabic countries, is grounds for divorce (Laws of Marriage 24:12). The Shulchan Aruch records that both married and unmarried women should cover their hair in public (Even Haezer 21:2), yet the Ashkenazic rulings emphasize that this obligation relates only to married women. The Zohar further entrenches the tradition by describing the mystical importance of women making sure that not a single hair is exposed.

Varying Interpretation in the Modern Era

Today, in most Conservative and Reform communities, women do not cover their hair on a daily basis, though in some synagogues women still cover their heads during prayer. A Reform responsum (1990) declares: “We Reform Jews object vigorously to this requirement for women, which places them in an inferior position and sees them primarily in a sexual role.”

Both the Conservative and Reform movements allow, and in some cases encourage, women to cover their heads when praying or learning Torah, because of the requirement to wear a kippah. These rulings take head covering out of the realm of female sexual modesty, and instead define it as a ritual practice — for men and women alike — that signifies respect and awareness of God above.

In the contemporary Orthodox world, most rabbis consider hair covering an obligation incumbent upon all married women; however, there is variation in the form this takes. Some maintain that women must cover all their hair, for example the Mishnah Berurah forbids a man from praying in front of his wife if any of her hair is showing.

READ: It’s Yelp for Sheitels — the First-Ever Wig Review Site

Other Orthodox rabbinic figures have suggested that hair is no longer defined as erotic in our day and age, because most women in society do not cover their hair in public. Based on this logic, the Arukh HaShulhan concludes that men are no longer prohibited from praying in the presence of a woman’s hair, and Rav Moshe Feinstein ruled that women may show a hand’s-breadth of hair.

A few Orthodox rabbis in the early 20th century justified women’s decisions not to cover their hair at all, including the Moroccan chief rabbi in the 1960s, HaRav Mashash, and the lesser known American Modern Orthodox rabbi, Isaac Hurwitz — though they drew criticism for this opinion. In their writings, they systematically review the sources surveyed above and demonstrate that those sources describe a social norm of modest dress, but not a legal requirement.

“Now that all women agree,” Rabbi Mashash wrote, “that covering one’s hair is not an issue of modesty and going bare-headed is not a form of disrespect — in fact, the opposite is true: Uncovered hair is the woman’s splendor, glory, beauty, and magnificence, and with uncovered hair she is proud before her husband, her lover — the prohibition is uprooted on principle and is made permissible.”

What Women Do

While only a few traditional rabbis have reinterpreted the law of hair covering, throughout the generations women have acted on their own initiative. The first sparks of rebellion occurred in the 1600s, when French women began wearing wigs to cover their hair. Rabbis rejected this practice, both because it resembled the contemporary non-Jewish style and because it was immodest, in their eyes, for a woman to sport a beautiful head of hair, even if it was a wig. However, the wig practice took hold and, perhaps ironically, it is common today in many Hasidic and ultra-Orthodox communities. In some of these communities the custom is for women to wear an additional covering over their wig, to ensure that no one mistakes it for natural hair.

As the general practice of covering one’s head in public faded in Western culture in the past century, many Orthodox women also began to go bare-headed. Despite rabbinic opinions to the contrary, these women thought of hair covering as a matter of custom and culture.

Many women who continue to cover their hair do not do so for the traditional reason of modesty. For example some women view head covering as a sign of their marital status and therefore do not cover their hair in their own home. Others wear only a small symbolic head covering while showing much of their hair. Also in many communities, women have persisted in covering their hair only in synagogue.

In recent decades, there is an interesting trend among women who have learned the Jewish legal sources for themselves, due to advances in women’s education, and have decided to adopt a stringent stance toward hair covering, rather than following the more permissive norms of their parents’ communities. An entire book, Hide and Seek (2005), tells these women’s stories.

Modesty, as a Jewish value, is continually being refined and redefined by Jewish women and their communities. Just as some women have chosen to deemphasize hair covering as a marker of modesty, in other communities women may choose to embrace it, developing and reinforcing a more traditional communal norm. As modesty is subjectively defined, the community to which one wishes to belong may play a large role in determining practice. The decision to cover one’s hair rests at the crossroads between law and custom, personal choice and community identification.

For further reading check out:

What to Watch After Unorthodox

18 Things to Know About Shira Haas

On the Set of Unorthodox I Brushed Up Against My Hasidic Past

The post Hair Coverings for Married Women appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

Women in Traditional Jewish Sources

The Bible is a compilation of numerous books written over several centuries, and thus cannot be said to present a single view of women. Women are sometimes presented as men’s equals–as in the first creation story in Genesis–and other times as secondary in status–as in the laws which place women under the authority of their husbands and fathers.

The rabbis of the Talmud and Midrash were more explicit in their discussions about women and their status in Judaism. Rabbinic sources describe women as foolish, licentious, and light-minded, but also compassionate and intelligent. Judith Hauptman has shown how the rabbis self-consciously tempered biblical laws to improve conditions for women.

In the Middle Ages, women’s lives continued to be scripted by Jewish law, but the general cultural setting of Jewish communities also had significant impact on the way women were viewed. In Muslim lands, women tended to be more sheltered than in Christian areas. However, there are suggestions that in certain cases, Jewish communities in the Islamic world were more accommodating. For example, documents from the Cairo Geniza–a storeroom of Hebrew texts–show that the right of a woman to instigate divorce–established in the Talmud–was upheld, whereas certain European rabbis tried to restrict this right.

Today, questions regarding women and the possibility of increased inclusion in Jewish life continue to be debated and discussed in responsa literature (written rabbinic answers to specific legal questions).

Jewish Feminist Thought

Jewish feminists are critical of the exclusion of women from traditional Judaism’s most hallowed rituals and practices. But this practical critique is rooted in a conceptual critique founded upon the belief that the values, experiences, and characteristics which Judaism privileges are fundamentally male. Thus, for example, that the normative descriptive imagery and pronouns for God are male suggests that–in Judaism–male characteristics are of supreme value.  In a way, this conceptual critique is much more significant than the practical critique, because it calls for systematic changes in the way we think, not just in what we do.

Feminist theologians differ on the extent to which they think Judaism needs to be adjusted in order to correct this problem. But for some Jewish feminists, the privileging of male-ness is so imbedded in the structure of Judaism, that nothing less than a revolutionary re-creation of Judaism can suffice.

The post Jewish Gender and Feminism 101 appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

An Unorthodox Upbringing

Asenath Barazani was the daughter of the eminent Rabbi Shmuel b. Netanel Ha-Levi of Kurdistan (1560?–1625/1635?). Her father, a scholar and mystic with a large following, aimed to rectify the plight of his brethren, namely, the dearth of educated leaders. He built a yeshiva in Mosul where he hoped to train young men who would become community leaders and scholars. Since he had no sons, he trained his daughter to be a learned scholar of the highest order. She described her upbringing in a letter:

I never left the entrance to my house or went outside;
I was like a princess of Israel…
I grew up on the laps of scholars, anchored to my father of blessed memory.
I was never taught any work but sacred study, to uphold, as it is said:
“And you should recite it day and night (Joshua 1: 8)”

Yeshiva Leadership

Asenath was married to one of her father’s finest students, Rabbi Jacob Mizrahi. She described the conditions of their marriage in the continuation of the above letter:

“And he (my father) made my partner swear never to allow me to engage in work, and thus he did as he was commanded. From the start, the Rabbi (Mizrahi) was involved in his studies and did not have time to teach the students, so I would teach them in his stead, a helpmate…”

Thus we learn that Rabbi Mizrahi agreed to conditions whereby Asenath would never have to spend her time on housework, because she was a Torah scholar like himself. After her father died, her husband technically became the head of the Yeshiva, but in fact it was Asenath who taught the students who had come for rabbinic training.

When R. Mizrahi passed away, the leadership of the yeshiva naturally passed to his widow, and since she had already been the students’ teacher, the transition was natural and painless. Unfortunately, neither her father nor her husband had been successful fundraisers and the yeshiva was always in financial straits. Asenath wrote a number of letters requesting funds in which she described the dire situation that had befallen her and her children. Her home and belongings had been confiscated, as had their clothing and books. She was still teaching Torah, but the debts were adding up and, as a woman, she felt it was inappropriate for her to travel in search of financial support. In letters addressed to her, one can see the respect and admiration of fellow rabbis from far and near.

Myths & Legends

Few of her writings are extant, but one can perceive in them her complete mastery of Torah, Talmud, Midrash, Kabbalah and Hebrew, for her letters are lyrical as well as erudite. A recently discovered manuscript provides additional insight into her life. Inter alia, it reveals an attempt to deceive her regarding the means of delivery of contributions to her yeshiva. In addition, there are numerous stories about her, most of which have been found in amulets, which allude to her supernatural powers. These include her ability to limit her childbearing to two children so that she could devote herself to her studies, and the ability to freeze an intruder in his tracks in order to prevent him from raping her, a feat achieved by loudly calling out holy names. Ironically enough, while in life her sex did not seem to present a problem, in local folklore her sexuality clearly plays a central role. Nevertheless, she successfully ran a yeshiva which continued to produce serious scholars, including her son, whom she sent to Baghdad upon request, where he continued the dynasty of rabbinic scholars.

One well known legend claims that Asenath received messages from her father via dreams. While visiting Amedi on Rosh Hodesh, she convinced the community to celebrate outside. When the synagogue suddenly went up in flames, by means of a secret name, she alerted the angels of the danger; they successfully extinguished the fire. The synagogue whose contents were unharmed was renamed in Asenath’s honor.

Impact & Legacy

No mention of opposition to her leadership is recorded. She was clearly important to the Kurdish Jews in her lifetime, but one cannot find any influence on the lives of other women in the community, even of her daughters. However, her status has been used to justify permitting Orthodox women to be ordained as rabbis. In addition, her descendants have copies of their family tree and are proud to be related to her. Today she is still idolized by Kurdish Jews as her achievements are viewed as a sign of greatness.

Reprinted from the Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women with permission of the author and the Jewish Women’s Archive.

Looking for a kid-friendly way to teach about Asenath Barzani? Check out our partner site Kveller’s interview with Sigal Samuel, the author of “Osnat and Her Dove,” a children’s book that recounts Barzani’s incredible life.

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In biblical law, women were subordinate to either father or husband. Though, as a general rule, women did not have property rights, a woman with no brothers could inherit her father’s land–a rule established after the daughters of Zelophehad successfully petitioned Moses (Numbers 27).

Attitudes toward women changed over the biblical period. According to Carol Meyers, women and their traditional roles were valued less once the monarchy was established, religious life was shifted to the Temple cult, and Israelite society was no longer centered on agriculture and the home.

Nonetheless, the Bible depicts many strong female characters. The prophet Deborah was the foremost religious leader of her time, and figures such as Hannah, Ruth, and Esther play pivotal roles in the biblical narrative.

Rabbinic literature contains more explicit opinions about women. It is said that women are greedy, lazy, and jealous, but also more compassionate and more naturally intelligent than men. Women are associated with witchcraft, and said to be foolish and dishonest, but a man without a wife is said to be without joy and blessing. The ancient rabbis taught that a woman’s body and voice were indecent, but also that a man should respect his wife more than himself.

In rabbinic law, women have fewer religious responsibilities than men. As a general rule, they are exempt from positive time-bound commandments, such as fixed prayer at particular times of the day. According to scholar Judith Hauptman, this ruling also reflects female subordination. If a woman were compelled to fulfill time-bound commandments, this, “would lessen her husband’s dominance over her because she would have to cease temporarily from serving him, and instead serve God.”

Attitudes toward women in the Middle Ages built on rabbinic models, but also reflected the general cultural milieu of individual Jewish communities. In sources originating in Muslim lands, we often find more restrictive attitudes toward women. According to Maimonides, “There is nothing more beautiful for a wife than sitting in the corner of her house.” In addition, Maimonides allowed a husband to beat his wife if she consistently refused to fulfill wifely duties such as washing his hands and feet.

An example of the discrepancy between attitudes in Muslim and Christian lands can be seen in the response of Maimonides’ critic Abraham ben David of Posquieres, a French authority, who noted that he had, “never heard that it is permitted to raise a rod against a woman.”

In the medieval mystics’ theology of sefirot, some of God’s ten attributes are female. The sefirah known as Malkhut or Shekhinah is the primary female manifestation of God, and to a certain extent the existence of such a manifestation made femaleness praiseworthy. Still, the female attributes of God were considered secondary, subservient, and passive, receiving power from the primary male attributes.

As for “real” women, the mystics generally believed that their primary purpose was the facilitation of men’s religious life. Thus a fascinating passage in the Zohar, the most important medieval mystical work, relates that the halls of the afterlife are presided over by women who gave birth to or aided great men.

In the past 30 years, scores of teshuvot, or responsa (written rabbinic answers to specific legal questions) have been written about women’s issues. The liberal denominations have addressed women’s leadership of public prayer and the entrance of women into the rabbinate and cantorate, while Orthodox responsa have covered issues such as women’s prayer groups and women’s recitation of the mourner’s kaddish. Many of these Orthodox responsa address not only the legality of such innovations, but also the social ramifications of change. One of the concerns reflected is that innovating tradition–even when it is permissible under Jewish law–could position the community on a “slippery slope,” leading to practices which do conflict with Jewish law.

The post Overview: Women in Traditional Jewish Sources appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

Though all feminists believe that Judaism reflects male bias, not all feminists believe that this bias is inherent in the very structure of Judaism. The less fundamental androcentrism (male-centeredness) is to Judaism, the more likely it is that traditional Jewish resources can be used to foster a feminist Judaism.

For example, Cynthia Ozick has suggested that not only is Judaism not intrinsically biased, but that–in its generic prescription to pursue justice for all–it contains an exhortation to improve conditions for women. In a similar vein, Orthodox feminist Blu Greenberg, in her classic work On Women and Judaism, defines an agenda for reconciling Judaism and feminism that looks for ways “within halakhah [Jewish law] to allow for growth and greater equality in the ritual and spiritual realms.”

These approaches to Jewish feminism seek to integrate female concerns into an existing model of Judaism, but not all of Jewish feminist thought is focused on achieving equality within the religion’s traditional structure. For some Jewish feminists, the entire system needs an overhaul, because Judaism is a classic patriarchy–a system that reflects male experiences and voices, and in which women are “other.”

For someone like Ozick, Judaism is essentially gender neutral. Restrictive measures vis-à-vis women may exist in Jewish tradition, but these can be purged without altering Judaism in any fundamental way.

But for those who see Judaism as patriarchal at its core, gender inequality cannot be rectified simply by loosening restrictive measures, such as providing women with ritual opportunities formally off limits to them. Indeed, some feminists view the opening of traditionally male ritual roles to women–e.g. ordaining women rabbis, allowing women to lead prayer services–as in some sense perpetuating Judaism’s male bias, affirming the male experience as normative and merely extending it to women.

Feminist theologians have responded to this problem in a number of ways. Some, like Judith Plaskow, have suggested the need for a comprehensive re-imagining of Judaism–not just of contemporary Judaism, but of the Jewish past as well. The history of Jewish women must be recovered–or recreated–and injected into Jewish communal consciousness. Similarly, Rachel Adler advocates self-consciously “engendering” Judaism–that is, making gender a fundamental criterion by which the Jewish past is understood and the Jewish future envisioned.

This self-conscious approach to gender has been adopted by Jewish feminist academics, as well. In the view of these scholars, our knowledge of what Judaism is has also been fundamentally shaped by a male perspective, because the producers of this knowledge have been, for the most part, men. Like Adler, these scholars recommend employing gender as an interpretative tool–both to better understand the history of Jewish women and to counter gender-biased historical narratives.

This method has not exposed only misogyny and women’s exclusion. Scholars like Tikva Frymer‑Kensky (reading the Bible) and Judith Hauptman (interpreting rabbinic sources) have found that, in many ways, ancient Israelite views of women were more positive than those in other ancient Near Eastern societies.

In discussing Jewish feminist thought, special mention must be made of conversations about the nature–and names–of God. For the most part, traditional Jewish texts refer to God using male pronouns and imagery. Jewish feminists have responded to this in a number of ways.

Some suggest eliminating male and female pronouns for the divine, while others recommend alternating their usage. Some choose to emphasize traditional Jewish imagery that can be connected with the feminine — like the Shekhinah, or God’s indwelling presence, or the Source of Life — while others have advocated adopting new feminine imagery, including ancient Israelite goddess imagery.

Contemporary Jewish feminist thought covers a wide range of approaches, including the classical Jewish feminist models described here, affirmations of traditional gender roles and God language as consistent with feminism, and analyses of gender in Judaism as it affects and is reflected in the lives, depictions, and practices of both men and women.

The post Jewish Feminist Thought appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

The post Debbie Friedman: Singing Unto God appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

Traditionally, a married couple refrains from intimacy during a woman’s menstrual period and for seven days afterward. Immersion in the mikveh, a Jewish ritual bath, marks the point at which the couple may reunite physically.

To learn more about what mikve’ot (the plural of mikveh) are, including the many reasons Jews immerse in them and how they operate, click here.

The practice of niddah, which is also known as “taharat hamishpacha,” or family purity is based on laws outlined in the Torah, beginning in Leviticus 15:19. The laws of niddah are further elaborated on in a tractate of the Talmud called Niddah, and some women study these laws in a pre-wedding class often referred to as Kallah (Bride) Classes.

READ: When It Comes to Jewish Sexual Laws, It’s 3 Jews and 0 Opinions

According to Jewish law, a woman is in a state of niddah (translated either as ritually impure or ritually unready) while she is menstruating, after childbirth or miscarriage and at any times of uterine bleeding. It is important to note that ritual purity is not the same as general physical purity or cleanliness.

READ: Confronting the Awkwardness of Separating During Niddah

Traditionally, married couples refrain from sexual relations and other physical contact from the time menstruation begins until the time the wife immerses in the mikveh. Some couples sleep in separate beds during the niddah period. Niddah proponents often argue that the practice promotes healthy marriages, because by restricting physical intimacy to a specific window of time, it prevents sex from becoming boring or routine. The practice also generally results in more success with conceiving a baby, since it encourages the couple to resume relations at a time in the cycle when a woman is usually ovulating.

For more details about traditional observance of niddah/taharat hamishpacha click here.

Although for generations many liberal Jews have found niddah problematic, rejecting the practice as archaic and demeaning to women, in recent years, some non-Orthodox Jewish women have reclaimed the monthly ritual, finding new meaning in its attention to women’s reproductive cycles.

READ: I’m a Non-Orthodox Jew Who Loves Going to the Mikveh

At some liberal and pluralistic mikve’ot, like Boston’s Mayyim Hayyim, members of Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist, Orthodox and Renewal congregations, as well as unaffiliated Jews, are experimenting with monthly immersion and observing it in a variety of ways.

For an immersion ceremony and blessings for niddah, click here.

Adapted with permission from Mayyim Hayyim, a reimagined and radically inclusive mikveh in Boston where education is as important as immersion and all Jews can come for healing, celebrations, life transitions, and conversion to Judaism.

<!–Rabbi Ronald H. Isaacs has been the spiritual leader of Temple Sholom in Bridgewater, NJ, since 1975. He is the author of more than 50 books including, Every Person’s Guide to Death and Dying in the Jewish Tradition and Every Person’s Guide to Jewish Philosophy and Philosophers.

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For more on Jewish parenting and pregnancy, visit our partner site Kveller.

First I set out to find Jewish sources about how to have a traditional pregnancy and birth experience. This seemed appropriate, since I had a fairly traditional Jewish wedding, and as an adult I have enjoyed discovering Jewish prayers, blessings, and rituals that can punctuate my daily life.

So I felt rather disappointed — well, actually, kind of cheated — when I found almost nothing in our tradition to guide an expecting mother. I discovered that those Talmudic rabbis who discussed, debated, and opined about what part of the field to harvest first, and when a woman was ritually pure enough to have sex with her husband, had very little to say about how to carry a child for nine months.

Perhaps this is because the sages were never pregnant. As Sandy Falk and Rabbi Daniel Judson write in The Jewish Pregnancy Book ( 2004): “the Talmudic Rabbis, who formulated the basis of traditional Jewish prayer, ritual and law, were men, so they never experienced pregnancy. As a result, there are a dearth of prayers, rituals and blessings that Judaism has for pregnancy and delivery.”

The challenge, therefore, was my own. In the ultimate creative time, as I nurtured the growth and completion of another being, I also had the opportunity to be creative with Jewish practice.

Personal Practices

Over the centuries, Jewish women like me have whipped up a wonderful buffet of pregnancy observances, many uniquely created for and by individuals. Going to the mikveh, chanting psalms, reading poems, lighting candles and gathering friends together to share stories of birth and motherhood are some of the ways that women have sought to amplify the spiritual experience of pregnancy.

For me, a modern translation of Psalm 118 formed the basis for my personal pregnancy ritual. I regularly recited these words, liberally translated by a friend: “Open up the gates of justice, sing a song to life, give tzedakah (do good works, be generous) and walk the path of freedom.” This helped me focus on the work of “opening up” and creating space for new life throughout pregnancy.

I also found that giving tzedakah helped me stay grounded and grateful for my healthy pregnancy. Prior to conception, I had donated blood, and as my waistband expanded, I researched and donated money to organizations promoting maternal and neonatal health around the world.

Superstitious Traditions

Like a lot of couples, my husband and I felt conflicted about when to let our friends and family know our good news. I was so overjoyed that I couldn’t wait to tell, and even considered updating my Facebook status immediately, but my husband wanted to wait 40 days before telling our family and friends. Why that long? The Talmud states that at 40 days after conception, the embryo finally forms into a fetus (Niddah 30a). Whether or not the fetus receives its soul at this point was debated in the Talmud and the Mishnah, but having the 40-day guideline worked for us.

When we did finally announce the pregnancy, we noticed that we didn’t receive the joyous response of “mazel tov!” that we anticipated from Jewish friends. Rather, we heard people say, time after time, “b’sha-ah tova!” This literally means “in a good hour,” and expresses the impermanence of pregnancy and the potential for loss — in other words, “May your child be born at the right time.” It did seem a bit superstitious to me, but many of the Jewish traditions surrounding pregnancy seem to come from an impulse to protect the parents from disappointment and grief should there be a birth complication or miscarriage.

I was told that many Jews don’t throw baby showers or buy the baby’s clothing or furniture before birth. Not feeling particularly anxious, but also not wanting to go against custom (you never know!), I decided to collect just a small box of baby items and wait until I was nearly due before getting fully equipped.

As we prepared for our transition to parenthood, my husband and I helped one another memorize the priestly blessing, which has became the traditional blessing for parents to give their children: “May God bless you and keep you; May God make His face shine upon you and be gracious to you; May God lift up His countenance and give you peace.” We chanted it over my bulging belly so that our baby would feel comforted by it when she heard it again on her first Shabbat.

Baby Blinders

During these nine months, I felt like I was wearing pregnancy-colored glasses. Hyper-alert to other expecting mothers, and super-attuned to any babies nearby, I was always seeking out allies in my journey to motherhood. As I observed Jewish holidays, I found myself re-interpreting biblical stories to fit my particular viewpoint.

With new appreciation, I relished the part of the Passover seder that describes when Pharaoh ordered the firstborn Hebrew babies killed. My new feminist heroines, the midwives Shifra and Puah, valiantly defied Pharaoh by helping to deliver and protect Hebrew children (who, encouragingly, came out very fast because of the innate strength of Hebrew women). I resolved to imagine Shifra and Puah on my right and left side during labor.

I also couldn’t help reframing the Exodus as the “birthing” of the Jewish people, who passed from the constricted, difficult Egypt through the birth canal of the Sea of Reeds and landed in the vast expanse before the Promised Land. I was hoping that I could bring that vision of the Red Sea to my labor and imagine my baby passing through easily, following Moses into the world.

Of course, some biblical stories were not as affirming to this pre-mama. I was reluctant to revisit the Genesis story that blames the pain of labor on Eve’s transgression in the garden of Eden. After the serpent entices her to eat the forbidden fruit, God says to her, “I will make most severe your pangs in childbirth; in pain you shall bear children” (Gen 3:16). What punishment! I decided to reject this passage and instead honor my birth as a huge gift and not a primordial payback.

I knew it wouldn’t be a comfortable experience, but I wanted to see the pain instead as an invitation to connect back through the ancestral line of mothers that started with our matriarchs Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah, each of whom experienced this miracle of birth in her own, creative way.

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Ethiopian Jews: Background

Almost all researchers, including those who maintain that the Ethiopian Jews did not exist in Ethiopia until the Middle Ages, admit that Jews have lived in Ethiopia from early times. Some say that the Beta Israel are descended from the union of King Solomon and Queen of Sheba; other theories refer to them variously as descendants of Yemenite Jews, Agaus (an Ethiopic indigenous people), Jews who went down to Egypt and wandered south, or even an outgrowth of Jews who inhabited the garrison at Elephantine.

Women’s Occupations

Although the Beta Israel reigned supreme in Ethiopia for several generations and succeeded in subjugating their Christian neighbors, by the seventeenth century they had become a powerless minority with little or no rights to land. From the seventeenth century on, the Beta Israel women worked as artists and decorators in Christian churches.

By the nineteenth century, the Beta Israel had taken up stigmatized craft occupations. The men became blacksmiths and weavers and the women became potters, a low-status profession associated with fire and danger and with the belief that the Falashas were buda, supernatural beings who disguised themselves as humans during the day and at night became hyenas that could attack humans. “Falasha pottery,” which is still famous in the Wolleka village in the Gondar region, became a major industry and Beta Israel women selling pots and statuettes attracted many tourists, particularly from the 1970s to the 1990s.

The Beta Israel in Ethiopia tended to live in scattered villages located on hilltops near streams. It was women’s job to haul water to their homes in earthenware jugs strapped to their backs. Women were in charge of the domestic sphere, baking the basic bread (enjera) on an open hearth, which they also stoked to gain warmth. They prepared the stew (wat), commonly made of lentils and chicken or meat, to go with the enjera. The meal was often accompanied by a type of home brew (talla) made of hops, other grains, and water and fermented in containers made by women. Food was stored in baskets made of rushes from local plants, dried in the sun and twisted into coils. Women spent time weaving these brightly colored baskets, which could also be used to serve food, if the basket was flat-topped. Preparation of coffee was also the province of women, who washed and roasted the raw coffee beans before grinding them manually in a mortar. They brewed the coffee in a pot over the fire and served it in small cups to guests, primarily females, who dropped in to drink coffee and exchange gossip.

Women looked after young children. A mother would strap the smallest baby on her back, while drawing water from the stream or cooking. Young boys stayed with her in the home until they joined their fathers in the field; young girls were expected to help their mothers and take care of the younger children until the age of marriage, around first menstruation.

The Purity of Women

For the Beta Israel, as for many others, the purity of women and their blood signified womanhood and the pulse of life as it revolved around sexual relations and the renewal of male-female relations.

The Bible states:

When a woman conceives and bears a male child, she shall be unclean for seven days, as in the period of her impurity through menstruation…. The woman shall wait for thirty-three days because her blood requires purification; she shall touch nothing that is holy, and shall not enter the sanctuary till her days of purification are completed. If she bears a female child, she shall be unclean for fourteen days as for her menstruation and shall wait for sixty-six days because her blood requires purification.

Leviticus 12:1–6

The Beta Israel of Ethiopia observed this tenet in strict fashion, precisely following the Torah commandment, isolating the woman in a hut of childbirth (yara gojos/ ye-margam gogo) for forty days after the birth of a boy and eighty days after the birth of a girl.

In Leviticus, it is further written:

When a woman has a discharge of blood, her impurity shall last for seven days; anyone who touches her shall be unclean till evening. Everything in which she lies or sits during her impurity shall be unclean.

(Leviticus 15:19–20)

In Ethiopia, every woman belonging to the Beta Israel spent approximately a week in a special menstruating hut (ye-margam gogo/ye-dam gogo/ye-dam bet), where she was prohibited by virtue of her impure blood from coming into contact with people who were in a pure state.

She was thus isolated for the length of time of her menstrual period and could share the hut only with other menstruating women. Since her impurity was contaminating, she was not allowed to dine or spend time with pure people, least of all her husband, who could resume sexual relations with her only after she had purified herself in the river. A series of stones surrounded the menstruating hut, separating the impure women from other members of the village.

In many villages, the hut was situated almost outside the village, on the peripheries between conquered, civilized space (the village) and the unknown, the wilds, the unconquerable space (the outside). However, in the village of Wolleka near Gondar, the menstruating hut was situated on the hill in the center of the village, far away from the view of passing tourists buying “Falasha pottery” but nevertheless in center-stage as far as the villagers were concerned. It was marked off by stones surrounding the hut in circular fashion, and little children would push food on ceramic plates inside the circle, which would then be taken by the menstruating women. Although Faitlovitch and other Westerners, as well as Ethiopian pupils who had studied in the West, tried to persuade the Beta Israel women not to observe the purity laws according to the Biblical precepts and tried to encourage them to come in line with Jews elsewhere, Beta Israel women in Ethiopia kept these rules strictly until their immigration to Israel, and often thereafter.

Contact with the Western World

The Beta Israel had little contact with the Western world before the nineteenth century. Protestant missionaries from the London Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews succeeded in converting some Beta Israel to Christianity. In 1867, Prof. Joseph Halevy (1827-1917), a Semitic scholar from the Sorbonne in Paris, met with the Beta Israel in Ethiopia. In a detailed report in 1877 to the Alliance Israelite Universelle, Halevy described the religious practices of his co-religionists, who had not been exposed to the Oral Law, and recommended steps to improve their socio-economic conditions; no action, however, was taken.

Click here to read more about Ethiopian Jewish women in Israeli society following mass immigration to Israel.

Reprinted from the Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women with permission of the author and the Jewish Women’s Archive.

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Who Wrote the Book of Proverbs?

In spite of this attribution, it is unlikely that Solomon, in fact, authored much of Proverbs. For one, several other authors are credited throughout the book, such as the officials of King Hezekiah, Agur son of Yakeh and King Lemuel. Also, while much of the material may have been produced prior to the Jewish exile from Israel, some modern scholars set the book’s true completion in the post-exile period, long after King Solomon’s actual reign.

The attribution more likely stems from the tradition of tying a book to a biblical figure known for a certain quality. For example, the Book of Psalms is associated with King David, who was known to be a poet and musician. King Solomon was known for his wisdom, and so Proverbs might have seemed like a natural fit.

Much of the book may be unfamiliar to many; however, it does include a few notable passages. One in particular, has become a focal point of the Torah service — etz hayim hi lamahazikim ba v’tomkheha m’ushar or “It is a tree of life to those who grasp her, and whoever holds on to her is happy.” (Proverbs 3:18)

The Book of Proverbs fits within the genre of wisdom literature, as it is unconcerned with Israelite practices such as Temple worship or sacrifice.

Instead, Proverbs offers statements about how to conduct one’s life wisely. While the book does not offer a systematic presentation of specific doctrinal principles, Israelite or otherwise, Proverbs does convey a clear view of reward and punishment connected directly to God. Chapter 1, verse 7 sets the tone: “Fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.” Then the text delves further:

For the upright will abide in the land, and the innocent shall remain in it; but the wicked will be cut off from the land, and the treacherous will be rooted out of it. (Proverbs 2:21-22)

Everything begins with God. The good shall be rewarded, and the evil punished. And those who truly pursue wisdom will find reward greater than material wealth: “Happy are those who find wisdom…for her income is better than silver, and her revenue better than gold (Proverbs 3:13-14) Wisdom itself is the greatest reward of all.

Wisdom, Personified

One of the most defining characteristics of Proverbs is the recurring figure of Hokhma, Wisdom. This figure is a goddess-like being, similar to the Sophia of Greek philosophy. At first she appears almost like a prophet of Israel: “Wisdom cries out in the street, in the squares she raises her voice (Proverbs 1:20).”

She appeals to the people directly, urging them to follow her guidance, much the way that biblical prophets urged the sinning Israelites to atone for their sins. Her role shifts, though, when she speaks directly in Chapter 8. Her divine qualities come through, when she places herself right alongside God in the Creation story: “When He established the heavens, I was there…when He marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside him, like a master worker.” (Proverbs 8:27-30)

The Book of Proverbs also presents, as a counterpart to Wisdom, the loose or “strange” woman, who is prominent throughout the book.

Nearly all of Chapter 5 is dedicated to warning young men away from this evil woman: “For the lips of the loose woman drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil…She does not keep straight to the path of life, her ways wander, and she does not know it.” (Proverbs 5:3-6).

This figure might be a metaphor for the folly that opposes Wisdom, but it might also be a more literal fear. This would accord with some of the book’s broader themes, such as preparing for adult responsibilities and choosing a suitable wife.

Warnings, Good Advice and Righteous Women

In warning young men away from temptresses, the text assumes a parental tone. Fitting with the theme of constant parental concern (many chapters begin with some variation of the entreaty “My child, accept my teachings”), children maturing into adulthood are instructed to choose the right path.

For example, Polonius’ words to Laertes in Hamlet are reminiscent of Proverbs 3:30, “Do not quarrel with anyone without cause, when no harm has been done to you.” In Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 3, Shakespeare writes: “Beware of entrance to a quarrel…give every man thy ear, but few thy voice.” The parental investment in both texts is clear –a  family that upholds the right qualities guarantees that God’s will is followed.

All these themes are summed up in the final 22 verses in Proverbs, better known as Eshet Hayil. The simplest reading of these verses yields an acrostic poem that describes an ideal woman. While that simple reading might yield a lovely poem to read to one’s wife, it may also be seen as a dedication to this figure of Wisdom that figures so prominently throughout the book.

The same qualities of courage, kindness and piety expounded throughout Proverbs are embodied in this woman — or in the spirit of Wisdom. Some scholars point to earlier references to Wisdom, such as (31:10) “worth greater than jewels,” which nearly replicates the “she is more precious than jewels” of Proverbs 3:15. Whether it’s simply a song to one’s wife, a dedication to an idea, or something else, the themes of Proverbs are neatly summed up in Eshet Hayil: Build a worthy family, stay on the path of virtue and you shall be rewarded.

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Jewish feminists agree that Jewish prayer and practice have slighted women, and many of them are seeking change. They disagree, however, about the benefit of changes intended to include women’s perspectives in the Jewish worship experience.

Including Women, Transforming Prayer

This story was told by Rabbi Laura Geller:

One day when I sat in a class in my rabbinical seminary…we studied the tradition of berakhot–blessings, blessings of enjoyment, blessings relating to the performance of mitzvot (commandments) and blessings of praise and thanksgiving. My teacher explained…’There is no important moment in the lifetime of a Jew for which there is no blessing.’ Suddenly I realized that it was not true. There had been important moments in my life for which there was no blessing. One such moment was when I…first got my period.

Geller’s story depicts a paradoxical situation. She appears to be a full participant in an egalitarian Judaism. She is even a rabbinical student. But her internal experience is of exclusion: vital components of her personhood have been ignored. What is more, her invisibility is invisible. Her teacher and her male classmates do not know that they do not see her.

What would have to happen for liturgies to become fully inclusive of women as well as men? First of all, we would have to acknowledge women as well as men as members of the praying community. Classical Judaism, along with counting only men in the community of worshippers, based its liturgies exclusively on stories about male ancestors and described the people Israel as if all of them were male. Women’s inclusion would necessitate supplying the missing ancestral memories, the missing language about the people Israel, and the missing human experiences about which prayer speaks.

Second, we would have to involve women along with men in the creation and transformation of the prayers and in the compilation of the liturgies that all of us will recite together.

Third, in order to begin to create truly inclusive worship, we would have to acknowledge the extent to which our current services reflect masculine sensibilities, styles, and gestures and androcentric language and theologies. We would have to admit that the exclusively masculine language with which we currently refer to God is a metaphoric language that has been totalized. That is, selected metaphors have been taken to represent the totality of the God toward whom they point. Such an understanding is, at the least, inadequate and distortive.

To correct this situation, would have to enrich and diversify the language in our present prayer books with feminine forms and imagery. But substituting words is not enough. We would have to make room for new genres, new gestures, new styles of prayer. This third task is complicated by so many considerations–theological, anthropological, psychological, and aesthetic–that it is really incommensurate with the other two.

–Rachel Adler, a feminist theologian, earned a Ph.D. in Religion and Social Ethics from the University of Southern California conjointly with Hebrew Union College, Los Angeles, where she now teaches. Excerpted with permission from Engendering Judaism: An Inclusive Theology and Ethics. © Rachel Adler, 1998, Jewish Publication Society.

Masculine-Biased Language

Until now, the prayer book has expressed the spiritual yearnings of half the Jewish people, the men who were the writers, editors, and translators of a liturgy that was designed for use by men. Still, many of the prayers reflect human experience such as prayers for health, wisdom, forgiveness, and justice as well as praise and thanksgiving. Feminine imagery appears, for example, in the Hallel [Psalms 113-118], which speaks of barren women becoming mothers. It is difficult to determine whether the prayer reflects female yearnings or male priorities–the desire for progeny–which women internalize.

No matter how sensitive, these prayers, written from a male perspective, assume that women’s only priority is to fulfill her biological function–to bear children. These prayers are highly selective, reflecting a biblical perspective (male) that features the Matriarchs as revered female role models. The editors of our prayer books traditionally excluded prayers by other biblical women, such as Miriam and Deborah, which offer alternative role models.

Through the centuries, male editors of the prayer book stereotyped the role of women in the eyes of those at worship. The language of liturgy is also unrelievedly masculine, creating the overriding impression that worship is a male prerogative. Since services were traditionally conducted in Hebrew, which has no neuter gender, it was only natural that prayers, written and selected by men, would appear only in masculine form, further excluding women-whether or not intentionally. Translations in the vernacular such as English, which does have a neuter gender, were nevertheless couched in solely masculine terms, compounding the problem.

As Jews, who have suffered for centuries because of the stereotyped images that were used to exclude us from the mainstream of society, we are particularly sensitive to the way language is used to foster and perpetuate prejudice. Yet, when the question of masculine-biased language in liturgy is raised, the subject is often trivialized, the hostility hidden under the guise of humor. Women, themselves, sometimes object to suggested changes. They may be going through a process of denial, for the price of recognition may be too painful, or they may simply be unaware that change in language and liturgy is in good Jewish tradition.

In biblical days, even the names of revered Patriarchs and Matriarchs were changed when a radical change in character took place. Abram became Abraham when he received God’s blessing (Genesis 17:5). Sarai became Sarah as she became the mother of the Jewish people (Genesis 17:15). Jacob’s name was changed to Israel as a result of his transformation of character (Genesis 32:29). Religious equality for women signifies a similar change in status, necessitating inclusion in the language of liturgy and, thus, the elimination of sexist language.

The problem of masculine-biased language has been addressed on two levels. It has been relatively easy to reach a consensus on the need to change language referring to humanity. Resistance to the elimination of masculine imagery about God is much more pervasive, indicating the profound emotional impact of the language of prayer.

–Annette Daum was Director of the Department of Inter-religious Affairs of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations and Associate Director of the Commission on Social Action of Reform Judaism. Reprinted with permission from Daughters of the King: Women and the Synagogue, edited by Susan Grossman and Rivka Haut. © Annette Daum, 1992, Jewish Publication Society.

Feminine Language for God

Some feminists view the traditional Hebrew liturgy–and English translations such as Rabbi [Jules] Harlow’s [in the book from which this article is taken]–as sexist. For them, the image of God as a male king, who sits on a throne and judges humanity, is alienating. Some of these feminists feel that adding feminine language–God as queen, God as mother–makes the concept of the divine inclusive, and this allows them to embrace Jewish prayer.

Other feminists, myself included, object to changing the Hebrew language that refers to God. The traditional Hebrew of the siddur [prayerbook] unites Jews everywhere. Although I, and other Jewish feminists, welcome changes in the English translations and though I welcome original prayers and new feminist rituals (alongside new understandings of Jewish women’s roles), I believe that public, communal Hebrew prayer should remain largely fixed.

As Rabbi Harlow argues, traditional Hebrew prayer, even today, is shared by Jews in all countries of the world. I pray with greatest intensity when the words are familiar and link me to earlier generations and to Jews in Israel and elsewhere.

I believe, too, that traditional conceptions of God include attributes that are neither masculine nor feminine; both women and men are wise, strong, merciful. For me, God transcends gender. I am uncomfortable with feminist rewriting of Hebrew language that addresses or refers to God. While changing references to the Jewish people, both to our ancestors and to Jews today, is–for me–a necessary change, changing the way we refer to God is, in my mind, not authentically Jewish. The Bible describes God using physical terms with masculine gender: Melekh or King, Adon or Lord. Yet, as Rabbi Harlow points out, the Bible also uses feminine imagery in referring to God.

None of these descriptions or images of God in the Bible imply God is either masculine or feminine. Some people would assign specific attributes to masculine or feminine aspects of God, but such narrow definitions tend to create and reinforce stereotypes that are misleading because of God’s unique and genderless nature. Tampering with the original Hebrew eliminates the nuances of the multi-dimensional meaning of God.

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Babylonian Talmud Shabbat 62a expresses the basic rabbinic conviction that “women are a separate people.”

Despite the egalitarian vision of human creation found in the first chapter of Genesis, in which both male and female appear to share equally in the divine image, Rabbinic tradition is far more comfortable with the view of Genesis 2:4ff., that women are a secondary conception, unalterably other from men and at a further remove from the divine.

This certainty of woman’s ancillary place in the scheme of things permeates rabbinic thinking, and the male sages who produced rabbinic literature accordingly apportioned separate spheres and separate responsibilities to women and men, making every effort to confine women and their activities to the private realms of the family and its particular concerns.

Women in the Public Sphere

These obligations included economic activities that would benefit the household, so that undertaking business transactions with other private individuals was an expected part of a woman’s domestic role. Women also participated in the economic life of the marketplace, worked in a number of productive enterprises, trades, and crafts, brought claims to the courtroom, met in gatherings with other women, and attended social events.

But whatever women did in public, they did as private individuals. Not only by custom but as a result of detailed legislation, women were excluded from significant participation in most of rabbinic society’s communal and power‑conferring public activities. Since these endeavors had mostly to do with participation in religious service, communal study of religious texts, and the execution of judgments under Jewish law, women were simultaneously isolated from access to public authority and power and from the communal spiritual and intellectual sustenance available to men. […]

Women and Family Life

As long as women satisfied male expectations in their assigned roles, they were revered and honored for enhancing the lives of their families and particularly for enabling their male relatives to fulfill their religious obligations.

As [the Babylonian Talmud, or BT, in] Berakhot 17a relates, women earn merit “by sending their children to learn in the synagogue, and their husbands to study in the schools of the rabbis, and by waiting for their husbands until they return from the schools of the rabbis.”

This remains the case even as rabbinic jurisprudence goes beyond biblical precedents in its efforts to ameliorate some of the disadvantages and hardships women faced as a consequence of biblical legislation, devoting particular attention to extending special new protections to women in such areas as the formulation of marriage contracts that provided financial support in the event of divorce or widowhood and, in specific circumstances, in allowing a woman to petition a rabbinic tribunal to compel her husband to divorce her. […]

Negative Traits Ascribed to Women

Woman’s otherness and less desirable status are assumed throughout the rabbinic literature. While women are credited with more compassion and concern for the unfortunate than men, perhaps as a result of their nurturing roles, they also are linked with witchcraft (Mishnah Avot 2:7; Jerusalem Talmud Kiddushin 4, 66b), foolishness (BT Shabbat 33b), dishonesty (Genesis Rabbah 18:2), and licentiousness (Mishnah Sotah 3:4, and BT Ketubot 65a), among a number of other inherent negative qualities (Genesis Rabbah 45:5).

Sometimes the secondary and inferior creation of women is cited as explaining their disagreeable traits (Genesis Rabbah 18:2); elsewhere Eve’s culpability in introducing death into the world accounts for women’s disabilities in comparison to male advantages (Genesis Rabbah 17:8). Aggadic [narrative] exegeses of independent biblical women tend to criticize their pride and presumption. Thus, the biblical judge Deborah is likened to a wasp, and the prophetess Huldah to a weasel (BT Megillah 14b); other biblical heroines are similarly disparaged, and women who display unusual sagacity often meet early deaths (BT Ketubot 23a).

Women do utter words of wisdom in rabbinic stories, but generally such stories either confirm a rabbinic belief about women’s character, such as women’s higher degree of compassion for others (BT Avodah Zarah 18a; BT Ketubot 104a), or deliver a rebuke to a man in need of chastisement (BT Eruvin 53b; BT Sanhedrin 39a).

The Case of Beruriah

Both qualities are present in traditions about Beruriah, the wife of the second century C.E. rabbi, Meir, known for her unusual learning and quick wit (BT Pesahim 62b, BT Erubin 53b‑54a). Yet Beruriah’s scholarship was a problem for rabbinic culture, and in later rabbinic tradition she is shown to reap the tragic consequences of the “lightmindedness” inherent in woman’s makeup: in his commentary on BT Avodah Zarah 18b, Rashi ([the pre-eminent] eleventh-century [Bible and Talmud commentator]) relates that Beruriah was seduced by one of her husband’s students and subsequently committed suicide.

Contemporary scholars have shown that the scholarly Beruriah is a literary construct with little historical reality, yet they agree that the traditions about her articulate profound disquiet about the role of women in the rabbinic enterprise.

Rachel Adler suggests that Beruriah’s story expresses rabbinic ambivalence about the possible place of a woman in their wholly male scholarly world, in which her sexuality was bound to be a source of havoc. Daniel Boyarin writes that for the amoraic sages of the Babylonian Talmud, Beruriah serves as proof of “R. Eliezer’s statement that ‘anyone who teaches his daughter Torah, teaches her lasciviousness’ (Mishnah Sotah 3:4);” in rabbinic culture, he writes, “The Torah and the wife are structural allomorphs and separated realms…both normatively to be highly valued but also to be kept separate.” […]

The Problem of Female Sexuality

Women constitute an additional source of danger in rabbinic thinking, because their sexual appeal to men can lead to social disruption.

A significant argument for excluding women from synagogue participation rests on the talmudic statement, “The voice of a woman is indecent” (BT Berakhot 24a). This idea emerges from a ruling that a man may not recite the Shema while he hears a woman singing, since her voice might divert his concentration from the prayer. Extrapolating from hearing to seeing, rabbinic prohibitions on male/female contact in worship eventually led to a physical barrier (mehitzah) between men and women in the synagogue, to preserve men from sexual distraction during prayer.

Indeed, viewing women always as a sexual temptation, rabbinic Judaism overall advises extremely limited contact between men and women who are not married to each other. This is to prevent inappropriate sexual contact, whether adulterous, incestuous, or simply outside of a married relationship.

The Autonomy and Ownership of Women

In her detailed study of the legal status of women in the Mishnah, Judith Wegner points out the role of women’s sexuality. She demonstrates that in all matters that affect a man’s ownership of her sexuality-‑whether as minor daughter, wife, or levirate widow–woman is presented as belonging to a man. In nonsexual contexts, by contrast, the wife is endowed with a high degree of personhood. Her legal rights as a property holder are protected, and she is assigned rights and privileges that are denied even to non‑Israelite males.

Notably, mishnaic legislation always treats as an independent “person” a woman on whose sexuality no man has a legal claim. Such an autonomous woman–who might be an emancipated daughter of full age, a divorcee, or a widow–may arrange her own marriage, is legally liable for any vows she may make, and may litigate in court. Free from male authority, she has control over her personal life and is treated as an independent agent.

Wegner emphasizes, however, that while the autonomous woman has some latitude in the private domain of relationships between individuals, mishnaic rules governing women’s relationship to the public domain tell quite a different story. Here, all women are systematically excluded from the religiously prestigious male domains of communal leadership, collaborative study, and public prayer.

Excerpted and reprinted with permission of The Continuum International Publishing Group from The Encyclopedia of Judaism, edited by Jacob Neusner, Alan Avery-Peck, and William Scott Green.

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But some women, whose Jewishness was central to their self-definition, naturally applied their newly acquired feminist insights to their condition as American Jews. Looking at the all-male bimah (stage) in the synagogue, they experienced the feminist “click”—the epiphany that things could be different—in a Jewish context.

1970: The Beginning of Jewish American Feminism

Two articles in particular pioneered feminist analysis of the status of Jewish women. In the fall of 1970, Trude Weiss-Rosmarin criticized the liabilities of women in Jewish law in her “The Unfreedom of Jewish Women,” which appeared in the Jewish Spectator, the journal she edited. Several months later, Rachel Adler, then an Orthodox Jew, published a blistering indictment of the status of women in Jewish tradition in Davka, a countercultural journal. Adler’s piece was particularly influential for young women active in the Jewish counterculture of the time.

In the early 1970s, Jewish feminism moved beyond consciousness-raising discussion groups and collectives to challenge established Jewish institutions and practices. Calling themselves Ezrat Nashim, a small study group of young feminists associated with the New York Havurah, a countercultural fellowship designed to create an intimate community for study, prayer, and social action, took the issue of equality of women to the 1972 convention of the Conservative Rabbinical Assembly. The founding members of Ezrat Nashim represented the highly educated elite of, primarily, Conservative Jewish youth.

In separate meetings with rabbis and their wives, the women of Ezrat Nashim issued a “Call for Change” that put forward the early agenda of Jewish feminism. That agenda stressed the “equal access” of women and men to public roles of status and honor within the Jewish community. It focused on eliminating the subordination of women in Judaism by equalizing their rights in marriage and divorce laws, counting them in the minyan (the quorum necessary for communal prayer), and training them for positions of leadership in the synagogue as rabbis and cantors. In recognition of the fact that the secondary status of women in Jewish law rested on their exemption from certain mitzvot (commandments), the statement called for women to be obligated to perform all mitzvot on the same level as men. Ezrat Nashim caught the eye of the New York press, which widely disseminated the demands of Jewish feminism.

Jewish feminism found a receptive audience. In 1973, secular and religious Jewish feminists, under the auspices of the North American Jewish Students’ Network, convened a national conference in New York City that attracted more than five hundred participants. A similarly vibrant conference the following year led to the formation of a short-lived Jewish feminist organization. Although Jewish feminists did not succeed in establishing a comprehensive organization, they were confident that they spoke for large numbers of women (and some men) within the American Jewish community.

Early Strategies of Jewish Feminists

Feminists used a number of strategies to bring the issue of gender equality before the Jewish community. Feminist speakers presented their arguments from the pulpit in countless synagogues and participated in lively debates in Jewish community centers and local and national meetings of Jewish women’s organizations. Jewish feminists also brought their message to a wider public through the written word. Activists from Ezrat Nashim and the North American Jewish Students’ Network published a special issue of Response magazine, devoted to Jewish feminism, in 1973. With Elizabeth Koltun as editor, a revised and expanded version, entitled The Jewish Woman: New Perspectives, appeared in 1976. That year, Lilith, a Jewish feminist magazine, was established by Susan Weidman Schneider and Aviva Cantor; Schneider has served as its editor since that time. Lilith combines news of interest to Jewish women with articles and reviews of new publications, bringing to a lay audience the latest Jewish feminist research in a popular form.

The very lack of formal Jewish feminist organizational structures in the early years allowed for grass-roots efforts across the country. In 1977, for example, Irene Fine of San Diego, California, established the Woman’s Institute for Continuing Jewish Education. Not only did this organization regularly bring speakers and artists to southern California, it also published collections of women’s rituals and Jewish women’s interpretations of Jewish texts.

Through their publications and speaking engagements, Jewish feminists gained support. Their innovations—such as baby-naming ceremonies, feminist Passover seders, and ritual celebrations of Rosh Chodesh (the new month, traditionally deemed a woman’s holiday)—were introduced into communal settings, whether through informal gatherings in a home or in the synagogue. In a snowball process, participants in the celebration of new rituals spread them through word of mouth. Aimed at the community rather than the individual, new feminist celebrations designed to enhance women’s religious roles were legitimated in settings that became egalitarian through the repeated performance of these new rituals. Indeed, one of the major accomplishments of Jewish feminism was the creation of communities that modeled egalitarianism for children and youth.

Ordaining Women as Rabbis and Cantors

The concept of egalitarianism resonated with many American Jews, who recognized that their own acceptance as citizens was rooted in Enlightenment views of the fundamental equality of all human beings. With growing acceptance of women in all the professions, the Reform Movement, which rejected the authority of halakhah (Jewish law), acted on earlier resolutions that had found no obstacles to women serving as rabbis. Hebrew Union College, the seminary of the Reform Movement, ordained the first female rabbi in America, Sally Priesand, in 1972, and graduated its first female cantor in 1975. The Reconstructionist Movement followed suit, ordaining Sandy Eisenberg Sasso as rabbi in 1974.

Women’s Struggle to be Ordained by the Conservative Movement

Although the issue of women’s ordination was fraught with conflict for the Conservative Movement, it, too, responded to some feminist demands. In 1973, the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards of the Conservative Rabbinical Assembly ruled that women could be counted in a minyan as long as the local rabbi consented. And the 1955 minority decision permitting women to receive aliyot was widely disseminated, leading to a rapid increase in the number of congregations willing to call women to the Torah.

It took longer for women to be ordained as clergy in the Conservative Movement, then the largest denomination within American Judaism. Because the Conservative Movement considers halakhah binding but also acknowledges that Jewish law is responsive to changing social conditions and concepts, the decision to ordain women as rabbis and invest them as cantors had to be justified in halakhic terms. The combined impact of American and Jewish feminism on Conservative congregations and their rabbis led to a decision by the movement in 1977 to establish a national commission to investigate the sentiment of Conservative Jews on the issue. Holding meetings throughout the country, members of the commission heard the anguished testimony of women who felt ignored in public Jewish life, as well as statements of men offering their support. Although it took note of the arguments against ordination, in its report submitted early in 1979, the commission recommended the ordination of women.

The divisions within the Conservative Movement and among the faculty of the Jewish Theological Seminary, the movement’s educational institution responsible for the training of rabbis, led to the tabling of the issue, but it would not disappear. With strong support from the Rabbinical Assembly and ultimately from Chancellor Gerson Cohen, and after consideration of faculty position papers supporting and opposing women as rabbis, the faculty of the seminary voted in October 1983 to accept women into the rabbinical school as candidates for ordination. Amy Eilberg, who had completed most of the requirements for ordination as a student in the seminary’s graduate school, became the first female Conservative rabbi in 1985. Women were welcomed into the Conservative cantorate in 1987.

Reprinted from the Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women with permission of the author and the Jewish Women’s Archive.

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Twenty‑three years of further debate within the Reform movement were required before the Hebrew Union College finally succumbed to the pressure of its CCAR alumni and its Union of Ameri­can Hebrew Congregations, as well as the accumulated moral pres­sures of the civil‑rights and women’s movements. In 1972, Sally J. Priesand, age 25, was granted ordination.

Nevertheless, the battle for women rabbis was not over. Although Priesand served as assistant rabbi of New York’s Free Synagogue from 1972 to 1977 and as associate rabbi from 1977 to 1978, she encountered innumerable problems in securing her own congregation. For months at a time, the CCAR placement bureau could not so much as arrange an interview for her. Eventually Priesand secured a modest congrega­tion in Tinton Falls, New Jersey.

By then, too, few congregations could be unaware that women were being ordained and granted pastoral assignments in every major branch of Protestantism. By 1982, some fifty women rabbis already had been graduated by the Hebrew Union College and by Philadelphia’s little Reconstructionist Rabbinical Col­lege, and almost one‑third of those institutions’ current student bodies were women. Upon ordination, they were finding employment opportunities as educators, chaplains, administrators, pastoral counselors, and increasingly as “associate” rabbis in large congregations and as solo rabbis in smaller ones.

Progress was rather slower within the Conservative movement.  In 1971, a group of 13 young women from traditional back­grounds formed a study group, Ezrat Nashim (“Women’s Help” [and also “Women’s Area”, the name for the women’s section in synagogue]). Like their Reform counterparts, they were perturbed by the sexism in Jewish religious law. The following year, several of them barged unin­vited into the convention of the Rabbinical Assembly, the collegium of Conservative rabbis, to demand an end to Judaism’s gender bias. Above all, they demanded the right to attend rabbinical school and to receive ordination.

A majority of the rabbis appeared sympathetic. Indeed, over the years, increasing numbers of synagogue boards al­ready had countenanced women’s participation in minyans and in Sabbath Torah readings. In 1973, the Rabbinical Assembly even lent the practices its “official” endorsement. Yet four more years passed without movement on the issue of ordination. In the interval, Jewish women’s study groups were formed to exert pressure on the Assembly. The liberalized practices of individual Conservative synagogues also made their impact.

Finally, in 1978, the Assembly bestirred itself, petitioning the Jewish Theological Seminary to study the ordination issue. The school’s chancellor, Gerson Cohen, re­sponded affirmatively. He appointed a faculty committee, which then conducted a nationwide poll of individual congregations. Two more years passed before the committee members issued their report. The document was favorable.

Even then, the full faculty plenum procrastinated, tabling the issue for yet another year. The professors were by no means blind obscurantists. It was their point, rather, that the essence of Conserva­tive Judaism itself was based on gradualism, that the tradition of the Jewish wife and mother, as sanctified over the millennia, dared not be exposed to as sudden and traumatic a reversal as female ordination.

But in 1981, an exasperated Chancellor Cohen decided to wait no lon­ger. A former Columbia University professor of Judaica, husband of the distinguished Jewish historian Naomi Wiener Cohen, he had long been in the forefront of Conservatism’s progressive wing. With the support of a small group of colleagues, therefore, Cohen established a four‑year program for women with a curriculum identical to that of the rabbinical school. In effect, he was playing shrewd politics, oblig­ing his faculty members to risk future outrage by denying women graduates the privilege of ordination.

None did. In 1983, the faculty voted to accept women into the regular ordination program. A year after that, Amy Eilberg became the first woman to receive ordination at the Jewish Theological Seminary. The great majority of Conserva­tive rabbis and lay people accepted the change calmly. By the end of the decade, a fifth of the Seminary’s student body were women, a dozen had been graduated, and half had secured employment in established congregations, although usually as assistant or associate rabbis.

By then, too, faint tremolos of unrest were apparent even within Orthodoxy. Several rabbis in the trend’s moderate wing contributed articles favoring improved education for women, and in 1979 Yeshiva University’s Stern College for Women added a course in Talmud. In ensuing years, additional women were enrolled at Yeshiva’s Cardozo Law School, until by the mid‑1980s they composed half the student body. The law they studied was not Jewish law, to be sure, and the notion of ordination, even of women’s participation in minyans, was all but unmentionable within the Orthodox tradition. Under funda­mentalist pressure, Orthodoxy’s progressive wing actually lost ground in the 1980s. Nevertheless, given the flux of American society, there seemed every likelihood that future confrontations would take place, at least along the margins of Orthodoxy.

Reprinted with permission from A History of the Jews in America (Knopf).

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Early life

Born in Brooklyn on March 15, 1933, Ginsburg was the first in her immediate family to attend college. She earned her B.A. from Cornell, with High Honors in Government, in 1954. Admitted to Harvard Law School, she delayed her studies to move with her husband to Oklahoma, where she worked for the Social Security Administration. Returning east, Ginsburg enrolled at Harvard in 1956, but switched to Columbia Law School for her final year when her husband accepted a job offer from a prestigious New York law firm. At both Harvard and Columbia, Ginsburg was accepted to the Law Review; at Columbia, she tied for first in her class.

Despite this record of achievement, Ginsburg found it difficult to work as a lawyer upon graduation. Few judges and no law firms were willing to accept a woman as clerk or staff member. Finally, she won a clerkship with Judge Edmund L. Palmieri of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Palmieri accepted her only on the promise from a male lawyer that if Ginsburg did not work out, he would find an overqualified man to take her place. That proved unnecessary. After her clerkship, Ginsburg worked for the Columbia Project on International Civil Procedure, which did basic research on foreign systems of civil procedure and recommended changes in the U.S. system of transnational litigation.

With the completion of the Columbia Project, Ginsburg embarked on an academic career, first at Rutgers University (1963-1972) (where she was paid less than her male colleagues), and then at Columbia (1972-1980), where she was the first tenured woman on the law faculty. Just before her move to Columbia, Ginsburg also became co-director of the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project.

Dividing her time between Columbia and the ACLU, Ginsburg worked extensively on sex-discrimination cases, especially those relating to employment. In this work, Ginsburg filed briefs in nine major sex discrimination cases that were decided by the Supreme Court, personally arguing six of them. Ginsburg argued that protections granted to persons under the constitution should apply to women and, thus, successfully established that differential treatment based on gender was unconstitutional.

In 1980, President Jimmy Carter appointed Ginsburg to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. She served there for thirteen years, until her nomination and confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court. In nominating Ginsburg to the Supreme Court, President Clinton described her as “one of our nation’s best judges, progressive in outlook, wise in judgment, balanced and fair in her opinions.” He also said that “Ruth Bader Ginsburg cannot be called a liberal or a conservative. She has proved herself too thoughtful for such labels.” Ginsburg’s record as a centrist likely helped to ease her confirmation; the Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously endorsed her nomination, and the full Senate voted 96-3 in her favor.

On the Court, Ginsburg’s work has been characterized by cool logic and reason, and a pragmatism that takes into account the real-life implications of Court decisions. In her written decisions she has continued to establish the constitutional basis for prohibiting discrimination based on gender. During the 2006–2007 session of the Court, Justice Ginsburg took the unusual step of reading two of her dissents orally. Observers have seen these forceful and passionate dissents as evidence of Ginsburg’s growing frustration with the decisions and reasoning of her more conservative colleagues.

Ginsburg’s contributions to the law were nothing short of monumental, but she never could have predicted the cultural icon she would become, the subject of a critically acclaimed documentary, “RBG,” featuring quotes from her cases and her speeches and highlighting her indomitable spirit with clips from her workouts with her trainer. And no one could have imagined the Saturday Night Live spoof; or the feature film “On the Basis of Sex,” starring Felicity Jones as Ginsburg; or the internet meme mirroring the deceased rapper Biggie Smalls’ meme (“Notorious B.I.G.”). She was the “Notorious RBG,” a beloved figure to new generations of young feminists and activists.

“Justice, justice you shall pursue”

On the wall in Ginsburg’s office hung the biblical saying “Justice, justice shalt thou pursue.” Although she was not religiously observant, she proudly identified as a Jew: “I am a judge, born, raised and proud of being a Jew,” she said, in an address to the American Jewish Committee (Antler, 332). And she added, a fitting coda to her life’s work, “the demand for justice runs through the entirety of the Jewish tradition.”

This unquenchable demand for justice was reflected in the cases Ginsburg had argued, the causes she had advocated, and the Court’s decisions she authored. As Linda Greenhouse put it, Justice Ginsburg always “played a long game” with the “ultimate goal”—equality between the sexes, as well as racial equity, access to justice, procedural fairness—“constantly in view.”

It was indeed “a long game,” with extraordinary milestones and a remarkable legacy. Ruth Bader Ginsburg died on September 18, 2020, of complications from pancreatic cancer. Her death prompted outpourings of grief and countless tributes from women young and old, feminists and civil rights activists, and a wide range of people concerned with social justice.

Editor’s Note: You can read Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s obituary here.

Reprinted from the Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women with permission of the author and the Jewish Women’s Archive.

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Immigration to Israel

There was no mass emigration from Ethiopia by the Beta Israel after the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, as there was with other Jewish communities. In 1952 and 1956, Emperor Haile Selassie allowed two groups of young Beta Israel pupils to study in a dormitory school, Kfar Batya, in Israel, on the condition that they return. A few of the pupils were female and two women stayed on in Israel after marrying Israeli men.

In 1973, on the basis of the halakhic precedent by David ben Solomon ibn Zimr, (1479-1573), also known as the Radbaz, that the “Falasha” (sic) are members of the lost tribe of Dan, Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel Ovadiah Yosef declared that they could be accepted as lost Israelites and thereby return to their historic homeland. In 1975, the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Shlomo Goren also accepted the Ethiopian Jews into the fold.

In 1984–5, 7,700 Ethiopian Jews were airlifted from the Sudan to Israel in Operation Moses, and in 1991 14,400 were airlifted in 24 hours from Addis Ababa to Israel in Operation Solomon. Some women gave birth on the flight itself. During the 1990s, thousands of people belonging to the group today called the Feresmura or Felesmura (Jews who had converted to Christianity from the nineteenth century on) migrated to Israel. At the end of 2017, the population of Ethiopian origin in Israel numbered 148,700 residents. Approximately 87,000 were born in Ethiopia, and 61,700 were Israeli-born with fathers born in Ethiopia.

Changes in Family Life

One of the greatest changes the Ethiopian Jewish community has undergone in Israel in their move from an underdeveloped society to a modern, Western society is in the realm of family and personal relations. Female genital surgery is hardly ever performed in Israel and women express no desire to continue this practice; today it has died out. Girls can no longer marry at first puberty; it is illegal to marry in Israel before the age of seventeen. In addition, girls have to attend school until the minimum age of sixteen. According to the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics (2018), Ethiopian Jews in practice marry at a later age than the overall Jewish population, although it is possible the state is unaware of earlier marriages. Endogamy is the norm; 88% of individuals (92% of men and 85% of women) of Ethiopian origin marry partners from their community.

Married women are encouraged by social workers and others to go out to work in order to assist with the family income, and it is often easier for women to find employment than men, particularly in the temporary, unskilled jobs in which Ethiopian Jews tend to congregate, despite the numerous vocational courses offered to the community. For the first time, rural Beta Israel handle money and manage bank accounts for the first time; a woman’s salary may be paid straight into her bank account; or she may be earning more than her husband.

Between 1995 and 2007, the number of femicides (wife-murders) among Ethiopian immigrants in Israel was 21 times higher than among non-Ethiopian Israelis. A small sample of Ethiopian women survivors of femicide attacks all related similar stories. They were born in small Ethiopian rural villages; they were forced to marry their husbands or were abducted by them; they suffered severe domestic violence, both in Ethiopia and after their emigration, of which social workers and kin in Israel appeared to be unaware. In all cases, the husband suspected that his wife was unfaithful to him and attempted to kill her in the domestic arena with a knife, in the apartment in which their children were present.

Today, the rate of femicide among the Ethiopian population in Israel is declining. The vast majority of young women in Israel of Ethiopian origin, whether married or divorced, model themselves on their Israeli female counterparts and pay at least lip-service to gender equality, even in the domestic arena.

Changes in Education

Since their immigration to Israel, both males and females attend school. Whereas between 1987 and 1989, nearly ten percent of girls of Ethiopian origin of high-school age were not studying at any educational institution, probably because they were already mothers, today nearly every female adolescent is enrolled in school. However, some young Ethiopian female adolescents, like male youth, drop out of school, albeit at a slower rate.

At the other extreme, some women are among the forerunners of those receiving higher education in Israel. There are Ethiopian-Israeli women who hold doctorates; other women have completed their MAs in law, social work, social sciences, or physiotherapy. In the Hebrew University Program for Excellence in Education among Ethiopian Jews, which trained young Ethiopian Jews as teachers, just over half the students were female.

Occupations and Status in Israel

According to a 2015 report, 53% of Ethiopian Israelis pass their official high school matriculation examinations, compared to 75% among the general population of Jewish high school students. Thirty-six percent of Ethiopian Israelis, who moved to Israel at an older age graduate from high school, compared to 90% in the general Jewish population. Twenty percent of Ethiopian Israelis who were born in Israel or migrated to Israel at a young age hold an academic degree, as compared to 40% of the rest of the Jewish population in Israel.

Among employed Israelis of Ethiopian origin who moved to Israel after the age of 12, about 50% of women work as cleaners. However, for Ethiopian Israelis with an academic degree, rates of labor market integration into occupations that demand highly skilled workers are similar to the general Jewish population. More females gain academic degrees than males, and therefore Ethiopian Jewish women in Israel are in general more successful than their male counterparts. Gaps between female Ethiopian Israeli students and other Jewish female students still exist, but they are much smaller than the gaps between male students.

In 2016, two Ethiopian-Israeli women were appointed to be judges: Ednaki Sebhat Haimowitz and Esther Tafta Gardi. Tsega Melaku is a well-known Israeli journalist. Pnina Tamano-Shata is the first Ethiopian woman in Israel to become a Member of Knesset. Meski Shibru-Sivan and Esther Rada are famous Ethiopian Jewish actresses and singers. Hadas Maladi-Mitzri was the first lieutenant in the Israel Defense Forces. Titi Aynaw made history in 2013 when she won the Miss Israel prize.

Reprinted from the Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women with permission of the author and the Jewish Women’s Archive.

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Mizrahi feminism goes beyond the western scope of feminism to include the history and issues that concern women in the Middle East (Jewish and non-Jewish) in Israel and in Arab and Muslim countries. In this respect, it is particularly sensitive to issues of racism, class division, immigration and ethnic discrimination; it is often described as an intersectional feminism that focuses mainly on the struggle against gender and ethnic oppression. 

The Origins of Mizrahi Feminism

“Mizrahi feminism” is an expanding term used in feminist discourse and activist feminism in Israel. It stretches the boundaries of Israeli feminism—a feminism that evolved out of the western liberal tradition. Mizrahi feminism goes beyond the western scope of feminist activism and research to include the history and issues that concern women in the Middle East (Jewish and non-Jewish) in Israel and in Arab and Muslim countries. In this respect, it is particularly sensitive to issues of racism, class division, immigration and ethnic discrimination; it is often described as an intersectional feminism that focuses mainly on the struggle against gender and ethnic oppression. 

A main criticism of classical liberal feminism is that it focuses on the liberation and equality of women in their abstract forms and strives for women’s equal access to the public sphere, leaving out topics that concern specific groups of women.

Israeli feminism in its first steps was unclear about its agenda. On the one hand, it was an imitation of US feminism because it was established by US immigrant women in the 1970s; on the other hand, this model was not fully applicable to the Israeli social and political structure or responsive to Israeli women’s needs. Hence in the early days it was impossible to determine what was liberal and what was radical. Israel’s complex social structure and its preoccupation with security and religious politics shaped the trajectory of Israeli feminism beginning in the 1970s.

Mizrahi feminism split off from “Israeli feminism,” considering Israeli feminism to be in essence “Ashkenazi feminism” because most of its activists were white Jewish women of European origin. Mizrahim, who originate in North Africa and the Middle East, were seen by Zionists after their migration to Israel as an aggregated group of “Bnei Edot Hamizrah” (children of Mizrahi ethnic groups). Their specific histories, languages, and cultures vanished from Israeli history and curricula, and they were treated as one ethnic group in the eyes of the Zionist absorbing authorities, who aimed to melt all Jews in one Jewish national pot. Only in Israel is one “a Mizrahi,” rather than Yemenite, Moroccan, Iraqi, etc. 

Tensions Between Ashkenazi and Mizrahi Activists

In the 1970s, Jewish feminists migrated from the United States, bringing with them ideas from the American women’s liberation movement. Together with Israeli Ashkenazi women, they formed a feminist movement in the liberal-radical spirit and began to promote their agenda, joined by a few Mizrahi feminists attracted by their slogans of liberation, sisterhood, and solidarity. 

From the beginning the Mizrahi feminists experienced patronization, exclusion, and discrimination, as Hanita Raz, one of the activists, reported. They learned that problems they recognized as Mizrahim outside the movement infected feminist activity as well. As Ramazanoglu put it, feminists’ class interests generally outweigh sisterhood and solidarity; in a choice between a low-priced dress produced by an exploited woman and a more expensive, ethnically produced item, they purchase the less expensive dress. Ashkenazi feminists favored their middle- and upper-class interests, rather than their lower-class sisters—most of whom were of Mizrahi or Palestinian origin. Within feminist organizations, stereotypes and prejudice about Mizrahim were common. 

It took Mizrahi feminists more than 25 years to find their voices and begin expressing their opinions about the aggravating situation. In that time feminists met once a year in a gathering they called “the feminist movement.” But it was not yet a movement or a well-organized feminist body. The organizations were still in formation, by women from upper-middle-class strata who considered themselves feminists. In 1994, in the communist kibbutz Givat Haviva where the annual conferences usually took place, a handful of Mizrahi feminists burst onto the stage where the main speech was being given on a Friday night, demanding that oppression and racism against Mizrahi and Palestinian lower-class participants be dealt with immediately.

About a dozen of leading Mizrahi figures including Netta Amar, Henriette Dahan-Kalev, and Tikva Levi, refused to leave the stage and the program stopped. The Ashkenazi feminists, deeply hurt, accused the Mizrahi women of ingratitude. The long-silenced tension surfaced, and bitterness on both sides soured the atmosphere. Many of the more radical Mizrahi feminists left the movement, while others, including the prominent figure Vicki Shiran, favored compromise and remained. Most of those in favor of compromise were better off and better educated and lived in Tel Aviv, while the more militant came from more peripheral areas.

The Cultural and Traditional Divide

The cleavage between Mizrahi and Ashkenazi women is felt in other domains too, particularly their different histories, cultures, and religious practices. Mizrahi women were generally educated in homes with traditional Mizrahi lifestyles, often referred to in English as Sephardi. Jewish communities in Arab and Muslim countries had often found ways to intertwine religion, tradition, and modernity; even in the face of modernization, these communities maintained traditional Jewish values of family, respect for parents and ancestors, and memory of deceased rabbis.

In reaction, Mizrahi feminists invested in redeeming their mothers’ legacies; they worked to reclaim precious cultural assets, rather than seeing them as vulgar, populist, and superficial, as the absorbing authorities did. Mizrahi feminists joined with male Mizrahi activists to replace contempt, humiliation, and pain with pride in their ancestors’ legacies and to re-awakening their culture through musical, poetic, and culinary projects drawing on traditions from Arab countries. They also sought to restore women’s traditional knowledge in all domains of life, not just child rearing and household tasks. In recent years, the number of conferences, published writings, films, and television and plastic arts events has increased, as second- and third-generation Mizrahi artists, who were born in Israel or came as children, look back to their cultural heritages.

By the end of the twentieth century, artistic and cultural products proliferated, exhibited in substantial halls and galleries and visible to general audiences in Israel and abroad. Mizrahi artists, film producers, and academics fought for inclusion in official committees that allocate money for cultural and knowledge production, in order to direct funding towards projects of Mizrahi origin. At the same time, they point out the Ashkenazi-dominated systems that preserve economic and cultural structures that discriminate against Mizrahim.  

State, Religion and Mizrahi Feminism

An issue that is unique to Israel is that of the relationship between the state and religion. Here, too, feminism has registered some success, mainly with respect to laws of marriage and divorce in the rabbinical courts, the Conservative and Reform movements, and legislation in favor of LGBTQ interests. The Reform and Conservative movements demand mixed-gender prayers in synagogues, women’s right to be ordained as rabbis, women’s right to serve as religious authorities in religious committees at the municipal level and the right to pray at the Western Wall. However, this agenda is mainly that of a minority of feminists, mostly upper-class, well-educated, Ashkenazi women. 

As the majority of observant Mizrahi women belong to traditional and/or Orthodox sectors of the religious population, they are more concerned with problems such as protecting women against domestic violence, child care, and issues of poverty and welfare.The Ultra-Orthodox and traditional Mizrahi population in Israel is on average much poorer than the secular population, and its gender division of labor is completely different. While men are expected to learn Torah in the yeshiva, women are in charge of child rearing and religious education, breadwinning and supporting families.  

Many of the Mizrahi women belong to the traditional Sephardic Shas movement, whose motto is “Returning the glorious Sephardic crown” Shas aims to redeem the humiliated honor of the Mizrahi community and regain its traditional glory. When traditional Mizrahi families sent their children to Ashkenazi Ultra-Orthodox educational institutions, they realized that the moderate and tolerant religious practices of Mizrahi homes contrasted sharply with the rigid practices the children were taught in schools and yeshivas, leading to the loss of Mizrahi values.

In the 1990s a Mizrahi Orthodox feminist branch developed within Shas, led by Adina Bar Shalom, the daughter of the movement’s late spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef. Bar Shalom identified the severe anxiety suffered by Shas’ poor Mizrahi families. She received her father’s blessing to establish a college for women that would prepare them for professions in which they could better support their families, especially jobs that could be performed from home by women with large families, such as computers, travel agencies and bookkeeping. A few years later the college opened its gates to men who had dropped out of yeshivas. The project empowered women, many of whom went on to universities and more prestigious jobs as managers, journalists, lawyers, and educators. Bar Shalom won the Israel Prize, Israel’s highest honor, for this work.

Unfortunately the college closed after seventeen years for financial reasons. Rumors hint at political problems shortly after Rabbi Yosef’s death, when new rabbis objected to the freedom and power Bar Shalom and other women gained. This success is particularly significant because when women become conscious of their freedom and rights, no one can put them back where they were previously. After women tasted freedom, higher education, and careers, new community control regulations could limit their steps but not their awareness of their own abilities. 

Reprinted from the Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women with permission of the author and the Jewish Women’s Archive.

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