Feminism and Religion: How Faiths View Women and Their Rights, Eds. Michele Paludi and J. Harold Ellens, Praeger: 2016.
Chapter 10: pp. 205-220. By Dr. Ilona Rashkow*
Judaism and Feminism
I. Introduction
This chapter, “Judaism and Feminism” is in two parts: Part I is an overview of the role post-19th century American Judaism has had on 2nd and 3rd wave feminism (defined below); and Part II is a brief discussion of the effects of American feminism on contemporary American Judaism.
Basic Background Information on Judaism
The question of how many Jewish Americans there are does not have a simple answer because the number of Jews in the U.S. depends on how one defines a Jew, as explained in the Pew Research Center’s major new survey of Jewish Americans (Pew 2013).
There are roughly 5.3 million adult American Jews (2.2% of the adult US population) as defined by the Pew Report. This number includes about 4.2 million American adults who say they are Jewish by religion (1.8% of the U.S. adult population) and 1.2 million Jews who consider themselves “Jews of no religion,” a group of people who say they are atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular” when asked about their religion but who were reared Jewish or have a Jewish parent and who still consider themselves Jewish aside from religious beliefs and/or practice. Two other groups were not counted as Jews in the report. There are an additional 2.4 million adults in the “Jewish background” category – that is, people who were reared Jewish or had at least one Jewish parent, but who now either identify with a religion other than Judaism (most are Christian) or say they do not think of themselves as Jewish or partially Jewish, by religion or otherwise. Also, there are 1.2 million adults in the “Jewish affinity” category – people who were not raised Jewish, do not have a Jewish parent, and are not Jewish by religion but who nevertheless consider themselves Jewish in some sense.
“Judaism” does not lend itself to a facile definition, although it is described often as “the religion, philosophy, and way of life of Jews” (Encyclopedia Judaica 2007 p. 511). The Talmud (Shab. 31a) tells the well-known story of a gentile who wanted to converted to Judaism but only on the understanding that he would be taught the whole of the Torah while standing on one foot. Hillel accepted him and, in response to his request, replied: “That which is hateful to you do not do to your neighbor. This is the whole of the Torah. The rest is commentary. Go and study.” Hillel’s definition was only one of the many attempts to discover and define Judaism: its main ideas and particular viewpoint, in order to differentiate it from other religions and philosophies. Developed and adapted to diverse circumstances throughout its long history, it contains varying emphases as well as outright contradictions. Extending over thirty-five centuries of history and a significant portion of the world, Judaism has not retained the same form and character. Biblical period Judaism differs from exilic and post-exilic Judaism; rabbinic Judaism is quite different from Mosaic Judaism; and post-19th century Judaism differs yet again. That said, there appear to be some tenuous threads which make various aspects of contemporary Judaism a unified whole.
Contemporary Judaism includes the intricate religious and cultural development of the Jewish people incorporating the social, cultural, and religious history of a widespread and diverse community, both people who do and do not think of themselves as “religious.” From the perspective of “peoplehood”, Judaism is the group memory of the communities and cultures formed by Jews through the ages. It consists of the religious texts and commandments; the diverse of the Hebrew, Yiddish, and Ladino languages; the visible markers of religious observance, such as the kippah or the payot or the tzitzit; the communal structures; and the whole range of Jewish education, family life, food, festivals, music, dance, customs, and humor. “Each part of the Jewish tradition is integrally related to the whole. Jewish religion and Jewish culture are more than complementary, they are symbiotic; one is inconceivable without the other” (Harvard Pluralism Project).
Basic Background Information on Feminism
In its essence, “feminism” seeks social equity for women and analyzes a wide range of issues in terms of gender politics. But that definition is too simplistic as any perusal of feminist theory bibliographies shows.
It is common to speak of three phases of modern feminism,[1] the first of which began at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 when 300 men and women rallied to the cause of equality for women. Elizabeth Cady Stanton (died 1902) drafted the Seneca Falls Declaration outlining the new movement’s ideology and political strategies, including feminist biblical hermeneutics (see Chapter 2 in this volume).
The second wave of feminism began in the 1960s and continued into the 1990s. This wave unfolded in the context of the anti-Vietnam War and the civil rights movement as well as the growing self-consciousness of a variety of minority groups around the world. American Jewish women, including Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, and Letty Cottin Pogrebin, were in the forefront of the second wave of American feminism. While these Jewish feminists became well-known activists within wider American society, an equally significant Jewish brand of feminism developed as well with far-reaching implications for the American Judaism.
The third phase of feminism began in the mid-1990s and due to the influence of post-modern scholarship destabilized many constructs including the notions of “universal womanhood,” body, gender, sexuality and heteronormativity (Rutenberg 2003).
II. The Impact of American Judaism on American Feminism
All Jewish feminists have at least three things in common: they are women; they are Jews; and they are feminists. These separate facets of their identity may conflict with other members within each subcategory, as when Jewish women face anti-Semitism from other feminists, or experience sexism within the Jewish community. However, efforts to integrate these three aspects have brought feminist insights to the Jewish community and Jewish insights to the feminist movement.
Many Jewish women who became feminist leaders generally attribute their activities to two contrasting experiences of Judaism. Some speak of a positive influence: the Jewish tradition of social justice. They identify Judaism, and their experiences as a minority group, as the source of their commitment to social justice. For these women, Judaism and feminism are complementary partners in the work of Tikkun Olam (“repairing the world”). As Letty Pogrebin has described her own roots:
I grew up in a home where advancing social justice was as integral to Judaism as lighting Shabbat candles… Having learned from [my parents] to stand up for my dignity as a Jew, I suppose it was natural for me to stand up for my dignity as a woman, which, after all, is what feminism is all about” (Jewish Women’s Archive. “Letty Cottin Pogrebin.”).
On the other hand, some Jewish feminists say that negative Jewish experiences contributed to their involvement in feminist movements, such as being excluded from the minyan (prayer quorum, traditionally composed of ten men), not being allowed to say kaddish (mourner’s prayer) for a parent, or the opportunity for as good a Jewish education as males. As a result, many women embraced feminism as a reaction against patriarchal Jewish values and as an alternative to a model of community based on traditional gender roles. As a consequence, some feminists have worked to “change the system” as discussed below ( “The Impact of Feminism on American Judaism”).
The status of American Jewish assimilation in the postwar period was a major factor in the role of Jewish women in the American feminist movement. Although assimilation was sufficiently underway that Jewish women were able to go beyond the boundaries of their community and mingle with non-Jewish women, Jews were still new enough to America that they were identified by others, and identified themselves, as “outsiders”. Generally upwardly-mobile, Jewish women in this period tended to be well educated and sensitive to injustice, which fostered their feminist activism. Individual Jewish feminists have made a major impact in American judicial and political life. (Among the many are: United States Senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein; Congresswoman Bella Abzug; Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman; N.Y. Supreme Court Judges Birdie Amsterdam and Judith Kaye; and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg.)
While Jewish female activists such as Friedan, Steinem, and Abzug became well-known in American society as a whole, another aspect of Jewish feminism developed: some of the American Jewish publications published in the 1970s began to change the perceptions of women in modern Jewish life generally and in rather disparate fields. For example, The Jewish Catalog (1973) contains a chapter on Jewish women emphasizing “consciousness-raising” and suggesting new “areas of priorities for interested Jewish women;” Lilith magazine, established in 1976 by Susan Weidman Schneider and Aviva Cantor; Blu Greenberg’s On Women and Judaism (1979); etc. As Anne Lapidus Lerner wrote in 1973: “Queen Esther no longer reigns supreme in the hearts of young Jewish women. More and more of them are admiring Vashti’s spunk instead” (Lerner 1973, p. 3).
III. The Impact of Feminism on American Judaism
American Jewish life has been transformed radically by American feminism. While many feminist celebrities are Jews, the focus of their feminism has not been specifically Jewish in nature. On the other hand, the Jewish feminist movement, (women such as Rachel Adler, Paula Hyman, and Aviva Cantor) have centered their activities on changes within contemporary American Judaism. As a result they are recognized primarily within the Jewish community as having changed many aspects of Jewish religious, intellectual, cultural, and communal life in the United States.
Non-Orthodox American Judaism
That said, one of the greatest challenges to Judaism in America has been the women’s movement. For most of its history, Judaism was patriarchal: women’s role was to maintain a kosher home while activities that took place in the public sphere (such as study and prayer) were considered mandatory for men only. While the Reform movement of the 19th century adopted some measures intended to equalize the role of women in the synagogue, such as mixed seating,[2] it was not until the 1970s that the structure of Judaism begin to change in response to feminist activities. To the secular feminist and the conventional Jew alike, American feminism and American Judaism may seem to present contrasting belief systems. Yet since 1971, a number of significant changes in American Jewish life have been made and effected a partial reconciliation between contemporary feminism and American Judaism.
Conversely, modernity saw also a few non-synagogue female-only spheres of women’s traditional expressions of Judaism minimized or eliminated by non-Orthodox Jews, such as mikveh observance (immersion in the ritual bath following menstruation and childbirth) which declined radically in the modern era (although it has been revived in the late 20th century by the Conservative movement). Since the mikveh served as a gathering place for women only to socialize and exert authority in the absence of men, its decline diminished women’s opportunities to assemble away from male presence. Further, the liberal branches decline in adherence to Rabbinic law (important to Orthodox Judaism) weakened women’s status as sources of domestic and gendered experience-based experts, particularly concerning laws of kashrut. Traditionally entrusted with responsibility for the laws of niddah and kashrut, women had been viewed with the moral trust, intellectual ability, and religious commitment necessary for their strict adherence to those often complex laws.
The most dramatic change in Judaism for many centuries came with the equality of women in Reform, Conservative, and Reconstructionist synagogue worship. The public honoring of young women in non-Orthodox congregations, the bat mitzvah (“daughter of the commandment” – discussed below), became widespread by the late 1960s, followed by decisions by these branches to include women in the minyan, call women to the Torah, and allow women to lead synagogue worship services. Perhaps the most striking transformation from previous Jewish practice has been the ordination of women as rabbis.
In 1972 the Reform seminary (Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion), ordained Sally Priesand (the first woman rabbi in America), and in 1973 the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College ordained Sandy Eisenberg Sasso. The Conservative movement did not ordain women until 1985 when Amy Eilberg was ordained. But the issue deepened the divide between Orthodoxy, which does not allow women to lead services, and the other Jewish branches (see below, however, for a discussion of the first American Orthodox seminary for women). It should be noted, however, that in 1990 Nishmat, an Orthodox institution, was founded in Israel by Rabbanit (wife of a Rabbi) Chana Henkin to bring higher Torah learning to women. Nishmat has become a world center for women’s scholarship, leadership, and social responsibility, and a world leader in paving a new path for women in Orthodox Jewish life. Ten years after its founding, Nishmat created the new religious role of Yoatzot Halacha (women halakhic advisors), opening the way for women in Orthodox religious leadership.
Orthodox Judaism
Orthodox Jews constitute the smallest major Jewish branch in America (about 10% of the Jewish population) and it is by no means monolithic: there is a diversity in practice; there is no ultimate authority or hierarchy of authorities; and it has never been able to mobilize even one national or international organization in which all of its groups would speak as one.[3]
Ḥaredim
The Haredi proportion of the overall Jewish population is higher in the United States and the United Kingdom than in Israel.
According to the 2013 Pew Survey, about a quarter of American Orthodox Jews are ḥaredim (referred to often as “ultra-Orthodox”). America is home to the second largest Haredi population which, according to predictions based on its current growth rate, the Haredi population will double approximately every 20 years. In 2000, there were 360,000 Haredi Jews in the US (7.2 per cent of the approximately 5 million Jews in the U.S.); by 2006, the number had grown to 468,000 or 9.4 per cent (Wise 2007). Although they have changed over time, ḥaredim have made far fewer compromises with contemporary secular culture or essential changes in the way they practice their Judaism from what the tradition and halakhah (Jewish law) have followed throughout history. Ḥaredim establish and maintain their traditional identity and separation by dressing (and grooming themselves) in ways that make them distinct. For men this means having a beard and long earlocks as well as black caftans and black hats (fur hats or shtreimels on the Sabbath and holidays for married or adult men), and often some form of knee pants and black shoes. For women it means dressing in modest clothing which covers most of the body and for married women, a head covering (such as a kerchief covering their hair, a wig, or even a wig covered by a hat or kerchief). Variations in attire are determined by sectarian affiliation within the ḥaredi world.
Ḥaredim struggle actively against the influences of secular culture. Although there are many elements that distinguish ḥaredim from other American Jews, perhaps the most outstanding is their attitude toward sexuality. Unlike Modern Orthodox and non-Orthodox Jews who allow the free mixing of males and females in social and educational settings, ḥaredim separating the sexes from the earliest years of life. Not only do they offer separate education of males and females, they also discourage dating and the free selection of marital partners but rely instead on arranged marriages (usually by the very early twenties or late teens) to other ḥaredim. Studying Torah for as long as possible is the ideal for men, while women are expected to give birth and rear children who will be Torah scholars or the wives and mothers of Torah scholars. As a result, American feminism has made virtually no impact on ultra-Orthodox American Judaism.
Modern Orthodox
Approximately 168,000 American Orthodox Jews (about three-quarters of American Orthodox Jews) are “Modern Orthodox,” Jews who choose a middle-way between whole-hearted acculturation to America and strict insulation from it (Wise 2007). These are Jews who, although following halakhah, value and receive a secular education in addition to their intensive Jewish one, attend university, and are found in most professional careers.
The mantra of Modern Orthodoxy is expressed in the motto of Yeshiva University – Torah u’Madda (“Torah and science”): the parallel values of Jewish observance and involvement in the secular world.
One of the greatest controversies in Modern Orthodoxy is women’s roles in religious life. During worship services, men and women are separated by a curtain or low wall, and only men are allowed to lead services, read, and bless the Torah. Women are exempt from time-mandated mitzvot and, for the most part, cannot become rabbis (however, see below for a recent innovation).
It was in the context of the Second Wave feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s Orthodox women began to question their roles in the family, the workplace, society at large, and religion. As a result, institutions emerged in Israel and the United States that offered advanced text-based Jewish learning (including the study of Talmud) for Orthodox women. These institutions, like Matan in Jerusalem and Drisha in New York City, created a cadre of learned Orthodox women who wanted to take on public roles in religious life. American feminism, combined with stronger Jewish education for Orthodox girls, has caused some dissatisfaction with traditional gender roles and restrictions among many Orthodox women (and men). Being Orthodox, they retain their adherence to halakhah but have sought changes within the limits of Jewish law through creative re-interpretations as well as attempting to shift some aspects of Jewish culture or by creating new opportunities for female religious participation.
Perhaps as a by-product of second-wave feminism, in 1977 the first International Conference on Feminism and Orthodoxy was held in New York City which led to the creation of the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance (JOFA). JOFA’s position is that traditional Jewish legal processes should be pressed to deal with questions of Jewish women’s leadership and participation. Orthodox women now have opportunities for studying rabbinic texts (limited previously to men) and with training in particular areas of Jewish law, women serve as legal advisors to Orthodox women regarding issues connected with divorce and niddah observance. Orthodox women have established women-only prayer groups and institutions for studying rabbinic texts, and a few Orthodox synagogues have started to permit women deliver a sermon (usually after the service). Several clauses have been proposed for inclusion in the ketubbah (religious marriage contract) that would provide recourse for a woman whose husband refuses to grant her a Jewish divorce. The problem of the agunah (a woman whose husband refuses, or is unable, to grant her an official bill of divorce, known as a get) remains a central issue for Orthodox feminists and organizations of Orthodox women are attempting to address the problem of the agunah.[4]
Some Orthodox women have assumed para-rabbinic roles in their communities, although these women have not been given the title “rabbi”. Working as rabbinical advocates, family purity experts, and synagogue leaders, these women perform tasks that were once the domain of male Orthodox rabbis exclusively. Although the women who hold these positions might look like rabbis and sound like rabbis, they are careful not to call themselves rabbis. Although Jewish law prevents women from being witnesses or counting as part of a minyan, women can do most of the jobs that male rabbis do.
Since the late 1990s, a handful of Modern Orthodox synagogues in the United States have created congregational leadership positions for women. While each synagogue has chosen a different title (community scholar, assistant congregational leader, education fellow, spiritual mentor), all of these positions carry a job description that resembles much of what pulpit rabbis do, incorporating teaching and pastoral care.
While a few women have received private ordination from Orthodox rabbis, they have not been recognized as rabbis in mainstream Orthodoxy. In March 2009, after a course of advanced study equivalent to that of male rabbis, Sara Hurwitz received ordination from Rabbi Avi Weiss of the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale as a Maharat, an acronym Weiss devised, which stands for “halakhic, spiritual, and Torah leader. Committed to training more women to serve as religious leaders of synagogues, schools, and college campuses, Weiss opened Yeshivat Maharat in New York in fall 2009. As of August 2015, twenty women have enrolled in Yeshivat Maharat’s programs and five have been ordained. Of the five women who have been ordained by the yeshiva (three in 2013 and two last year) four are working in synagogues, serving essentially as assistant rabbis. (The fifth is a Jewish educator in Montreal.) Yet even as they have found jobs, the Maharats and the institutions they serve are grappling with how to define their roles as clergy in a movement that still does not accept women as rabbis. “We recognize that the path toward female leadership is slow and is an evolution, and part of the mission of Yeshivat Maharat is to open communities up to the possibilities of women serving in leadership positions,” said Sara Hurwitz, the dean of Yeshivat Maharat (whom Weiss ordained in 2009 as a “rabba”). “We know that there are parts of the Orthodox community that are not open and not ready for Orthodox female leadership, but many are” (Hellman 2015).
Only time will tell if there will be additional jobs and positions for the graduates of Yeshivat Maharat, or if the Orthodox sensitivities to a woman being called “rabbi” will change as more qualified and learned women are seen in religious leadership roles. In the modern world, where women hold public positions in so many areas, it is certainly likely that an increase in the numbers of women with advanced religious education and leadership experience will continue to make a serious difference to and in the Orthodox community.
American Feminism’s Influence on Jewish Rituals
American feminism’s influence on Jewish rituals has been seen in two ways: adapting existing rituals and creating new ones. Anthropologists label many activities as “rituals” ranging from private ceremonies (including those with just one person or only a few participants) to large gatherings, and from single acts to long sequences spread over months or years. The occasions for ritualized behaviors vary also, either contingencies such as illness or misfortune, life-events (such as birth, “coming-of-age”, and death), or recurrent religious holidays with their attendant rituals.
Feminists critical of adaptive rituals (sometimes referred to as “add women and stir”) have questioned the value of putting their energies into making women’s versions of the rituals that Jewish men are performing, or fighting for the right to perform those rituals in communities that forbid them to do so. Instead, they have proposed creating distinctively female alternatives, derived from insights and practices that are unique to lives of Jewish women, which will transform Judaism into what Judith Plaskow described as “a religion that women as well as men have a role in shaping” (Plaskow 1984, p. 134).
Both adapting existing rituals and creating new ones exist in both the recurrent daily and seasonal/holiday patterns of Judaism as well as the nonrecurring moments of personal life which celebrate or mark times of new beginning and transition from one life stage to another. Moments of passage with their attendant rituals provide the means of transition from one life stage and one sphere of responsibility to another. As such, they confirm the hierarchies of value of the community and they project an ideal sequence of personal development to which women can anticipate.
Birth is naturally the first major moment in a persons individual and communal life. When a boy is born, a circumcision rite called a brit (“covenant” short for “covenant of circumcision”) takes place eight days later. This ceremony, of great antiquity, confirms the transition of the male infant from being a child of Adam, as it were, to a member of the Jewish people. Thus the boy enters the “covenant of Abraham.” The brit milah ritual has been regarded historically as a vital Jewish tradition, and the mitzvah to honor the rite with a festive meal became an opportunity to celebrate the birth of a son and welcome him into the Jewish community.
Originally, Judaism had no special celebration to welcome female infants into the covenant. Traditionally, fathers are given an aliyah (the honor of reciting the blessing before and after a section of the weekly Torah portion is read) at the synagogue the first Shabbat after a girl was born. The child received her Hebrew name at the same time. After services, both mother and father were honored at a congregational Kiddush (refreshments served after prayer services).
As Jews became more sensitive to the importance of including females in Judaism’s most important rituals, the need to welcome daughters became apparent. Because welcoming rituals for Jewish baby girls are a recently-developed phenomenon, there is no single Simchat Bat (“joy of a daughter”) ritual. Welcoming daughters with contemporary Jewish rituals has exploded in popularity in the last decade. Though it is not yet universally practiced, daughters’ welcoming ceremonies are held by families across the spectrum of Jewish identity– from those who tend toward the secular to those which are modern Orthodox. Whichever form of celebration is followed, Jewish families are increasingly finding formal ways of expressing joy on the birth of a girl as well as the birth of a boy.
The study of Torah begins quite early and, according to custom, this event is inaugurated by having the child find and trace the letters of his or her name which are covered with honey. This act symbolizes the hopes for the sweetness of life devoted to Judaism. However, a boy is not a “formal” member of the community until he is thirteen years old. At that time he will become a bar mitzvah, literally a “son of the commandment(s).” Then he can then perform all the commandments and is required to do so with full responsibility for his religious behavior. When the boy is first “called up” to the Torah, symbolic of his attainment of majority, the father says a blessing commemorating this transition to adulthood.
Traditionally, a girl achieves majority at twelve years and a day, a time symbolic of the onset of menstruation. Since the impact of American feminism, girls are given fuller instruction in the traditional literature (though this varies by group) and in liberal contexts a bat mitzvah ceremony (“daughter of the commandment”) has been developed to mark a girl’s rite of passage. The degree to which this ceremony is part of the traditional service depends upon the strictness of the community. Some congregations give a girl the same Torah ceremony as a boy; others only give her some ritual part in the Friday evening service; and still others limit this involvement of some celebratory action outside the framework of a religious service. There is a high correlation between how a girl celebrates her majority status and the role of women in a given ritual community. Strict traditionalists, concerned with the separation of these and other ritualistic roles of the female, tend to regard the moment as a “female” affair. Those groups that variously reject traditional rules about women (particularly matters of segregation in prayer, formal exclusion from the prayer quorum, and fewer required positive commandments) will correspondingly consider the a girl’s majority as a more ritual event along the lines enjoyed by boys. These issues are subject to local rabbinic-communal regulation, although the communities are subject to the authority of different rabbinical institutions and their rulings on these matters.
For traditionalists and nontraditionalists alike, the wedding canopy is a major moment of personal and social transition. The male and female take their place as equal, productive communal citizens with the obligation to fulfill the first mitzvah of the Torah: “be fruitful and multiply.” The wedding is thus the transition to the basic Jewish institution of the home and to the responsibility for the continuance of Judaism.
In addition to appropriating traditionally male rituals, new women’s rituals that have been evolving since the 1970s and share certain common characteristics.
First, they mark the unmarked events linked to women’s experiences that previously have not evoked formal Jewish responses. These include the onset of menstruation, pregnancy, giving birth, and menopause.
Second, they foster a sense of “female community”. Many of them are held in all-women groups, and encourage supportive sharing. This aspect reflects the influence of the consciousness-raising sessions of early secular feminism and has been preserved primarily in Rosh Chodesh groups. (Rosh Chodesh, literally “head of the month” is a significant festival day. It remains a custom in some communities for women to refrain from work on Rosh Chodesh, as a reward for their refusal to participate in the incident of the Golden Calf.) Evoking the mood of a support group, the rituals emphasize the participation of a community of equals and create opportunities for women’s bonding across lines that might otherwise be divisive, such as age, economic class, marital status, and ideology.
Third, unlike traditional rituals, these women-only rituals allow for improvisation and personalization. Most new women’s rituals are not meant to change or challenge laws or be legally binding, Thus, they do not have fixed liturgies, specific words that must be said, or a series of actions that must be performed to make the ritual valid. The preference for improvisation, personalization, and choice that the rituals reflect leaves a wide opening for creativity. For example, suggestions for Rosh Chodesh meetings that one might receive from the Hadassah organization or a newer group, “Moving Tradition: It’s a Girl Thing” (Ochs 2007) which promotes Rosh Chodesh observance among young girls, are presented as inspirational templates from which one can pick and choose. Likewise, in Debra Nussbaum Cohen’s book of rituals for baby daughters, the reader is given a template for most ceremonies, as well as hundreds of elements to consider incorporating, in an easy-to-follow menu of options (Cohen 2001).
Fourth, women’s-only rituals provide ideas for additional ceremonies which foster the spirituality of the individual in addition to that of the entire Jewish people. While the new women’s rituals foster the growth and cohesive feelings of communities, they tend to emphasize the psychological and spiritual well-being of individuals within the group. Because of the emphasis on the individual over the group, it is worth noting that American Jewish feminists have not attempted to create brand-new holidays to be celebrated by all Jews or even by all Jewish women. Many Jewish feminists as well as Jewish organization have published guidelines to help women establish new rituals within their communities. For example, the Jewish Women’s Center of Pittsburgh is a community of women of all Jewish backgrounds that provides educational opportunities and spiritual experiences rooted in Jewish values and feminist ideals. In addition, P. Adelman wrote a ground-breaking book (Miriam’s Well: Rituals for Jewish Women Around the Year) which has been used many congregations as well as smaller groups of Jewish women (1973). JOFA has a pamphlet (“Orthodox Jewish Women and Ritual: Life Cycle Guides”) which has personal stories and suggestions from women who have felt excluded from traditional life cycle events. The guides illustrate how women can expand their roles in the Orthodox Shabbat rituals, celebrating their daughters’ births and bat mitzvahs, and in mourning loved ones.
Fifth, these innovative rituals take place in a less regulated space. As Paula Hyman discusses (2009), the earliest new women’s rituals typically took place in homes or in nature. They were enacted away from institutionalized settings, both physically and metaphysically, so as to avoid being subject to rabbinic, communal, or male jurisdiction. There were feminist seders that moved from one woman’s apartment to another each year and then expanded so that they now take place in community centers and catering halls. There are pre-wedding mikveh parties that take place, among women friends, in the ocean, under the moonlight. There are gatherings of Lubavitch Hasidic women in basement recreation rooms for designing and decorating Miriam’s tambourines. Only later, as the new rituals became more familiar, have they been held in synagogues and Jewish community centers.
Sixth, the new women’s rituals are timed more flexibly. They are created when a situation calls for ritual marking and intensification and are set to fit the emotional needs and schedules of the celebrants. A baby girl’s naming ceremony, for instance, rarely takes place on the eighth day of the infant’s life or during the first time Torah is read after birth. Instead, it is usually held when the mother has regained her strength after childbirth and when relatives can arrive more conveniently. The feminist seder is also flexible: it can take place before Passover or during one of the intermediate days, any time that does not place it in direct competition with family observance.
Seventh, these new rituals promote a feminist agenda within the context of Judaism.
This is accomplished through fresh readings of traditional sources which can be a formidable project for women who identify as “halakhic Jews” and are reluctant to be viewed as radical or disloyal.
Thus, one of the most significant expressions of the creation of feminist Judaism and its influence on the Jewish people is women’s wide-ranging involvement in the full range of rituals and ceremonies that exist both within and beyond halakhah. The most prominent is egalitarian ceremonies, which create and express the desire for equality between women and men in religious ritual, from which women were either actively excluded or in which they were in the past permitted only minimal participation.
The bat mitzvah ceremony, which began to develop in the early twentieth century, blazed the trail to equality. This egalitarian consciousness paved the way for the creation of new ceremonies which express the feminist desire for cultural equality, reflect the female life cycle and have no precedent in normative halakhah. Most of the new ceremonies are based in one way or another upon older female traditions, such as preparation ceremonies for a wedding, fertility rituals or ceremonies that marked old age, which existed on the fringes of masculine culture. The renewal of these feminine folk traditions led finally to feminist interpretations of those ceremonies in halakhah which are intended for women, particularly the monthly immersion in the mikveh. Finally, other ceremonies reflect the empowerment of women via creative-feminist development of the halakhic and folk traditions connected with the Jewish calendar. (The best-known examples of this are women’s seders and Rosh Chodesh ceremonies.)
Conclusion
Historical studies of American Judaism seemed to have downplayed women’s lives. The growth of academic Women’s Studies Programs helped establish a counterpart within Judaic Studies Programs.
Feminist analyses have criticized masculinist biases in describing the Jewish past, and have used historicism to justify feminist innovations. For example, feminist analyses of rabbinic literature have uncovered legal precedents for changing halakhic prescriptions regarding women (Hauptman 1998) and interpretive patterns of leniency in establishing Jewish law (Biale 1995). The impact of feminism on Judaism has highlighted patterns of gendered rhetoric in rabbinic literature that create the masculinity of God (Boyarin 1993; Baskin (2002); Eilberg-Schwartz 1994).
In the early years of women’s studies, the task seemed to be fairly straightforward. Textual expressions of misogyny and male-centeredness were demonstrated, and even if the thinker had been dead for centuries, his influence continued as part of a long chain of patriarchal tradition. More recently, however, feminist scholars of Judaism have developed more complex analyses, demonstrating ambivalences toward women within the same thinker and text, and also turning to metaphorical uses of masculine and feminine imagery in matters not explicitly related to men and women.
Judaism has made an enormous impact on the feminist movement. Likewise, the feminist movement has influenced contemporary American Judaism more than many scholars had foreseen. Both Judaism and feminism continue to evolve; hopefully it will continue to do so in tandem.
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Eilberg-Schwartz, H. 1994. God’s Phallus and Other Problems for Men and Monotheism. Beacon Press.
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Goldman, K. 2000. Beyond the Synagogue Gallery: Finding a Place for Women in American Judaism. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Greenberg, B. 1979. On Women and Judaism: A View from Tradition. Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society.
Harvard University Pluralism Project. http://www.pluralism.org/religion/judaism.
Hauptman, J. Rereading the Rabbis 1998. Westview Press.
Hellman, U. 2015. Jewish Telegraphic Agency. http://www.jta.org/about-us.
Heschel, S. 2003. Yentl’s Revenge: The Next Generation of Jewish Feminism. Seal Press.
Hyman, P. 2009. “Jewish Feminism in the United States.” Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia. Jewish Women’s Archive.
Jewish Women’s Archive. “Letty Cottin Pogrebin.” http://jwa.org/feminism/pogrebin-letty-cottin-1.
Lerner, A. 1973. Who Hast Not Made Me a Man: The Movement for Equal Rights for Women in American Jewry. American Jewish Yearbook, Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society.
Making Our Wilderness Bloom. 1984. Jewish Women’s Archive, Boston, p. 134.
Ochs, V. Inventing Jewish Ritual. 2007. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society.
Pew Research Center. 2013. A Portrait of Jewish Americans.
Rutenberg, D. 2003. Ed. Yentl’s Revenge: The Next Generation of Jewish Feminism. Seal Press.
Siegel, R. 1973. The First Jewish Catalog. Jewish Publication Society.
Wise, Y. 2007. “Majority of Jews will be Ultra-Orthodox by 2050”. University of Manchester News, July 23, 2007.
Additional Readings
Adler, R. 1997. Engendering Judaism: An Inclusive Theology and Ethics. Beacon Press.
Biale, D., Galchinsky, M. and Heschel, S. (eds.). 1998. Insider, Outsider: American Jews and Multiculturalism. University of California Press.
El-Or, T. 1994. Educated and Ignorant: Ultraorthodox Jewish Women and their World. Lynne Rienner Pub
Frankel, E. 1998. The Five Books of Miriam. HarperCollins (USA).
Heschel, S. (ed.). 1995. On Being a Jewish Feminist. Schocken.
Koltun, E. 1976. The Jewish Woman: New Perspectives. Schocken Books.
Levitt, L. 1997. Jews and Feminism: The Ambivalent Search for Home. Routledge.
Magonet, J. (ed.) 1995. Jewish Explorations of Sexuality. Berghahn Books.
Peskowitz, M. 1997. Spinning Fantasies: Rabbis, Gender and History.
Plaskow, J. 1991. “Feminist Anti-Judaism and the Christian God,” in: Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, 7:2 p. 99–108;
_________. 1990. Standing Again at Sinai. Harper & Row.
Sarna, J. 1987. “The Debate over Mixed Seating in the American Synagogue”, The American Synagogue: A Sanctuary Transformed, Jack Wertheimer (ed.), New York: Cambridge University.
Sered, S. 1992. Women as Ritual Experts. Oxford University Press.
von Kellenbach, K. 1994. Anti-Judaism in Feminist Religious Writings. Oxford University Press.
* Dr. Ilona Rashkow – Professor Emerita, State University of NY at Stony Brook
[1] Some sources locate the roots of feminism in ancient Greece with Sappho (died c. 570 BCE) or the medieval world with Hildegard of Bingen (died 1179) or Christine de Pisan (died 1434). Virtually all writers agree that Olympes de Gouge (died 1791), and Mary Wollstonecraft (died 1797), among others, are foremothers of the modern women’s movement. All of these women advocated for the dignity, intelligence and basic human potential of the female sex.
[2] Mixed seating in the synagogue was first introduced in the United States in 1851 at Congregation Beth El in Albany, New York, and in 1854 at Temple Emanu-El in New York City. It became common in the United States after 1869 when many new post-Civil War synagogues opened. (Goldman 2000). Today some Conservative synagogues allow mixed seating throughout the sanctuary while other have three separate sections: men, women, and mixed; Orthodox synagogues maintain separate seating.
[3] Agudath Israel of America, sometimes referred to as Agudah or abbreviated AIA, is a Haredi (ultra Orthodox) Jewish communal organization in the United States loosely affiliated with the international World Agudath Israel.
Chabad Lubavitch is a branch of Hasidic Judaism widely known for its emphasis on outreach and education. The organization has been in existence for 200 years, and especially after the Second World War, it began sending out emissaries (shluchim) who have as a mission the bringing back of disaffected Jews to a level of observance consistent with Chabad norms. It should be emphasized that unlike some Christian groups, they do not try to convert non-Jews.
The Agudath HaRabbonim, also known as the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the United States, is a small Haredi-leaning organization founded in 1902. It should not be confused with “The Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America” (see below) which is a separate organization.
The Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, known as the Orthodox Union, or “OU”, and the Rabbinical Council of America, “RCA” are organizations that represent Modern Orthodox Judaism, a large segment of Orthodoxy in the United States.
The National Council of Young Israel and the Council of Young Israel Rabbis are smaller groups founded as Modern Orthodox organizations. They are Zionistic, and in the right wing of Modern Orthodox Judaism.
[4] By contrast, the Reform movement has entirely eliminated the get, the divorce decree given by a man to his wife, while the Conservative movement has developed a clause that can be inserted into a ketubbah that allows a bet din (court of Jewish law) to issue a get to a woman if her husband refuses to do so. Since 1980, the Reconstructionist movement has used an egalitarian get that can be issued by either spouse.
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