The Women Who Reconstructed American Jewish Education

Oct 27, 2011 By Carol K. Ingall | Public Event audio

Who Counts?

May 30, 1998 By Anne Lapidus Lerner | Commentary | Bemidbar

There was tension in the air that night in 1974 as members of Manhattan’s Tifereth Israel – Town and Village Synagogue filled the social hall, eager to join battle on the critical question of whether or not we would count women in the minyan. For those now accustomed to including women, the practice in about 85% of Conservative synagogues today, it may be hard to imagine the emotion that crackled through the air. Rumors about what different people would say were rife. Everyone knew that the rabbi, Stephen C. Lerner, was in favor of changing the policy. Some said that his own father, a respected member of the shul, disagreed with him. As the rabbi’s wife, I was concerned when my father–in–law raised his hand to speak. “When I was a boy growing up in the Ukraine,” said he with a bit of an accent, “and they asked the local peasants how many people had come to the town meeting, they would say twenty people and ten Jews. I think that we should stop counting that way.” The congregation voted overwhelmingly in favor of including women in the minyan.

Jewish Law and “The English Patient”

Jun 14, 1997 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Naso

As the Pentagon struggles with the issue of adultery in the military, Americans feast on the photography and melodrama of the film The English Patient. Never have our moral fault lines been so discomforting. Garlanded in Academy Awards, the the film is a straightforward story of adultery in the army, albeit the British in North Africa in World War Two. Ironically, it ends up making a case for the Pentagon’s view that adultery can endanger the security of the military (with Count Amalfi desperately bartering his maps of desert paths for a German place to rescue his injured lover Katherine Clifton), though only after a long, glossy tale of passionate romance.

The Status of Women

Sep 17, 2005 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Ki Tetzei

At JTS’s opening barbecue for faculty and their families last week, my son and daughter-in-law told us sheepishly that their fourteenth wedding anniversary had caught them unawares.

A Feminist Mandate

Apr 8, 1997 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Vayak-hel

The recent conference in New York City on “Feminism and Orthodoxy” heralds a major escalation in the confrontation between Jewishly well-educated Orthodox feminists and a bitterly defensive rabbinic establishment. The word on the street in the weeks before the conference was that it would be a brief one, implying that the two topics had nothing in common. But reality proved the cynics wrong. Nearly a thousand Orthodox women of all stripes convened for two days of study, prayer and protest to challenge the gender inequities that abound in contemporary Orthodoxy. The plight of women stranded without benefit of a Jewish divorce from their husbands evoked an added measure of outrage.

The Women’s Section

Feb 16, 2002 By Lewis Warshauer | Commentary | Terumah

A woman of valor–who can find her? In ancient Israel, the place one could not find her was in the Temple, except in a section called the ezrat nashim — literally, women’s territory. Only men served in the Temple as priests and Levites. This was partly a consequence of monotheism. In other ancient religions, with goddesses as well as gods, women would often control thetemples to goddesses.

Giving Women a Voice

Nov 7, 1997 By Anne Lapidus Lerner | Commentary | Vayera

I did not celebrate my bat mitzvah on parashat Vayera; in fact, I never celebrated it at all. My birthday on 19 Heshvan gives me, as a legitimate birthright, permission to indulge in constant grappling with this incredibly rich and complex text. Yet I have never voiced that connection with a proper celebration of my Jewish coming of age.

Miriam’s Death

Jun 16, 1999 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Balak | Hukkat

Biblical narrative begs for reader participation. Time and again we come across a story short on context, background and human emotions, traces of an event barely recalled and crying out for elucidation. This week’s parasha contains a gem of an example.