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JewishWikipedia.info
THE
INCREDIBLE
STORY OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE
All those describing themselves as Christians don’t have the same belief. The first question is ‘What kind of Christian’. The answer might be Catholic, Protestant, Eastern Orthdox. If the answer is ‘Protestant’ you then ask which of the 30,000-plus Protestant denominations they belong to? (Go to http://www.philvaz.com/apologetics/a106.htm for help in understanding the answer). You then ask your question.
Similarly, Jews are also divided into groups varying from Ultra Orthodox to Liberal. Examples of how this can be seen is whether men and women sit separately at services and at celebrations such as marriages to those where they sit together. The names given to each group also varies between countries.
The role of the Jewish woman today varies between the group they belong to and the group of which they are a member see Ultra Orthodox Jews - Israel
FOLLOWING ON FROM THE NESHAMA FESTIVAL, WE ARE DELIGHTED TO LAUNCH THE ‘LEARNING CIRCLES’ INITIATIVE. THESE CIRCLES WILL PROVIDE AN OPPORTUNITY FOR GROUPS OF WOMEN TO MEET REGULARLY TO LEARN TORAH AND DISCUSS ISSUES THAT IMPACT AND AFFECT THEIR JUDAISM.
THE OFFICE OF THE CHIEF RABBI WILL COLLATE REQUESTS FOR LEARNING CIRCLES AND THEN CONNECT WOMEN BASED ON THEIR INTERESTS OR GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATION.
THE PARTICIPANTS OF THE CHIEF RABBI’S MA’AYAN PROGRAMME ARE AVAILABLE TO TEACH OR LEAD THESE CIRCLES. SOME MA’AYANOT HAVE THEMES AND TOPICS IN MIND WHICH WILL
GUIDE THEIR CIRCLE, OTHERS WILL BE
GUIDED BY THOSE WHO APPROACH THEM.
MORE INFORMATION
WOMEN IN ANCIENT ISRAEL AND THE HEBREW BIBLE
Oxford Research Encyclopedias - Religion, Susan Ackerman, 2016
SUMMARY
The Hebrew Bible is a book that was primarily written by men, for men, and about men, and thus the biblical text is not particularly forthcoming when it comes to the lives and experiences of women. Other evidence from ancient Israel—the society in which the Hebrew Bible was generated—is also often of little use. Nevertheless, scholars have been able to combine a careful reading of the biblical text with anthropological and archaeological data, and with comparative evidence from the larger biblical world, to reconstruct certain features of ancient Israelite women’s culture. These features include fairly comprehensive pictures of women’s lives as wives and childbearers within Israel’s patrilineal and patrilocal kinship system and of women’s work within the economy of a typical Israelite household. Because the Bible is deeply concerned with religious matters, many aspects of women’s religious culture can also be delineated, even though the Bible’s overwhelmingly male focus means that specific details concerning women’s religious practice must be painstakingly teased out of the biblical text. The Bible’s tendency to focus on the elite classes of ancient Israelite society likewise means that it is possible to sketch a reasonable portrait of the experiences of elite women, especially the women of the royal court, although, again, this information must often be teased out of accounts whose primary interest is elite men.
The Hebrew Bible is, in many respects, a man’s book. Its authors are arguably all male, and even scholars who point to a few biblical texts that might have been authored by women must admit that these compositions have been transmitted through male scribal communities.1 The Hebrew Bible’s worldview is likewise overwhelmingly male: while Exodus 19:15 is ostensibly addressed to “all the people,” for example, men must in fact be the exclusive audience of the command given there to “not go near a woman.” The Bible’s main actors are in addition predominantly male: the patriarchs of Genesis, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the redeemer Moses, who is the principal figure of Exodus-Deuteronomy; the all-male priesthood that is part of Moses’ levitical line; the war leaders of Joshua and Judges; the kings of 1–2 Samuel, 1–2 Kings, and 1–2 Chronicles, along with the prophets of these same books and of the Hebrew Bible’s prophetic corpus; the leaders of the postexilic community described in Ezra and Nehemiah; and, according to tradition, poets such as King David (to whom many of the psalms are ascribed) and King Solomon (if one interprets Cant. 1:1 as identifying Solomon as the author of the Song of Songs). Indeed, over 90 percent of the 1400 or so individuals who are given names in the Hebrew Bible are men.2
Still, almost 10 percent of named characters in the Hebrew Bible are women, and there is also a significant corpus of texts that concern women not identified by name: the daughter of Jephthah in Judges 11:29–40, for example, or the women weavers of 2 Kings 23:7. Many of these women, moreover—whether named or unnamed—are among the most memorable characters in biblical tradition: Eve, whose creation is described in Genesis 2:21–23 and who is designated the “mother of all the living” in Genesis 3:20; the Genesis matriarchs Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, and Leah; Moses’ sister Miriam, identified as a prophet and as a musician in Exodus 15:20–21; Deborah, likewise identified as a prophet and also a judge in Judges 4:4; and royal women, including King David’s wife Bathsheba, Esther, the wife of the Persian King Ahasuerus, and the many wives and concubines of King Solomon. Also, among Solomon’s wives are said to be foreign women, which calls to mind other notable foreign women of biblical lore, for example, King Ahab’s wife Jezebel, who is from the Phoenician city of Sidon, Rahab, who is a Canaanite, and Ruth, who comes from Moab.
These various women represent the many different roles women played and responsibilities women assumed within the Hebrew Bible and within the society of first-millennium bce Israel from which the Hebrew Bible emerged. In what follows, we will consider women’s position within ancient Israelite family structure; women’s place within their households’ economies; women’s religious lives and the opportunities available to women to serve as religious functionaries; and the women of ancient Israel’s royal families, as well as other women who served in leadership positions.
Go to site for detail of topics below
SUMMARY
WOMEN’S POSITION WITHIN THE ANCIENT ISRAELITE FAMILY
Marriage
Childbearing
WOMEN’S PLACE WITHIN THEIR HOUSEHOLDS’ ECONOMY
WOMEN’S RELIGIOUS LIVES
Ancient Israel’s State-Sponsored Temples
Regional Sanctuaries
Household Shrines
Women Religious Functionaries: Magicians
Women Religious Functionaries: Prophets
Women Religious Functionaries: Musicians
ROYAL WOMEN AND OTHER WOMEN WHO SERVED IN LEADERSHIP POSITIONS
WOMEN IN ANCIENT ISRAEL AND THE HEBREW BIBLE: CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS
REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE
PRIMARY SOURCES
FURTHER READING
Notes
THE JEWISH WOMAN
‘The Second Book of Jewish Why’ by Alfred J Kolatch, 1990
INTRODUCTION
Society in biblical times was patriarchal. In that world the Jewish woman occupied a position subordinate to that of the Jewish male. The function of woman, it was thought was to serve man. When a woman married, she became the property of her husband. In fact, the original word for marriage was kinyan, meaning “acquisition,” while the word used today is kiddushin, meaning “sanctification.” Jacob may have loved Rachel when he married her, but he had to buy her from his father-in-law, Laban, by working for him for seven years (Genesis 29:18). A family in biblical times was called bet avot, a term literally meaning “house of the fathers” (Exodus 12:3). The Bible states clearly (Genisis 2:18) that woman was created to be a helpmate to her husband. 1
During the days of the First and Second Temples (the first millenium B.C.E.), women did not participate in Temple rituals. Unlike men, they did not sing in the Temple choir nor were they permitted to enter the inner court of the Temple when they brought a sacrifice. A woman had to hand the animal offering to the Priest at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting (Ohel Moed in Hebrew); the Priest would take the animal and offer it up for her.
The status of Jewish women improved in post-biblical and talmudic times, especially as compared with the lot of men in society at large. Nevertheless, the Jewish woman is far from equal with the Jewish man. The first-century Jewish historian Josephus, in Against Apion (2:24), notes, “Woman, says the Law, is in all things inferior to men. Let her accordingly be submissive, not for humiliation, but that she may be directed; for authority has been given by God to man.” Throughout the Talmud we find this same attitude expressed.
Despite the deprecatory statements that are found, it must be emphasized that although considered inferior, women were nevertheless respected and were not abused, this is reflected in statements such as, “Israel was redeemed from Egypt through the merit of its righteous women”; “Women are endowed with more intelligence than men”; “A man should love his wife as himself and respect her more than himself.”1 _
The status of women in Jewish life continued virtually unchanged for centuries, through the talmudic and post- talmudic periods, until Rabbenu Gershom of Mainz, Germany, a leading rabbi of the tenth and eleventh centuries, convened a synod of prominent rabbis in the year 1000 which enacted legislation prohibiting a man from having more than one wife at one time and from divorcing a wife without her consent. (She could refuse to accept the get, the divorce document.) But despite this monumental change in the law, little new legislation was enacted over many centuries to improve the status of women. Even the liberal pronouncements of Reform Judaism in the middle of the nineteenth century and Conservative Judaism at the end of that century resulted in no practical change in the status of women.
In 1846, at their conference in Breslau, Germany, Reform rabbis favored the granting of religious equality to women, yet it was not until 1972 that a Reform seminary, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, ordained a woman as a rabbi. By 1984 it had ordained a total of seventy-two women rabbis. The Conservative movement, which also aspired toward greater equality, did not grant women the right to be candidates for ordination at the Jewish Theological Seminary until 1984. In 1985, it ordained the first woman rabbi. Henrietta Szold, who later founded Hadassah, the women’s Zionist organization, had been permitted in 1903 to attend classes at the Jewish Theological Seminary, but only on condition that she would not be ordained and that she would not use her knowledge to function as a rabbi. The Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, which was founded in Philadelphia in 1968 by disciples of Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, stands for granting women full equality with men “in all matters of ritual.” In 1974 it ordained its first woman rabbi.
Today, Jewish feminists, many of whom are Orthodox, have become vocal protagonists for change in Jewish law so that women may share with men the privileges and obligations of Jewish living. The manner in which the desired changes should be accomplished is being grappled with by all branches of Judaism. Many of the problems and issues being confronted are discussed in this chapter.
Alfred J Kolatch then answers questions such as .
Why are women not required to observe the biblical commandment pertaining to the wearing of fringes (tzitziot) on their garments? (p294)
Why are women kept separate from men at Orthodox weddings and other social gatherings? (p295/6)
Why are women traditionally not counted along with men as part of a Quorum for Grace After Meals? (p297)
Why are women traditionally not permitted to officiate at religious services? (p297/9)
Why were girls traditionally given less Jewish education than boys? (p303/4)
Why is the woman given a marriage contract by her husband? (P305)
MEDIEVAL JEWISH ATTITUDES TOWARD WOMEN
My Jewish Learning by Alexandra Rothstein
In the Middle Ages, a Jewish woman's social well-being was considered important, but her life was strictly guided by Jewish law.
A discussion of Jewish attitudes toward women in the Middle Ages is limited by the sources about women’s lives that survive. There are almost no extant books written by women or specifically for them.
Instead, women’s lives are reflected primarily in legal writings, including codes of Jewish law, responsa literature (rabbinic questions-and-answers), contracts related to betrothal, marriage, divorce, and inheritance, and business correspondences. The nature of these sources itself suggests that women were not viewed as participants in Jewish legal discourse, nor did the rabbis feel the need to provide women with literature that would allow them to make study a part of their religious life. At the same time, the rabbis felt that women were within the jurisdiction of Jewish law and felt themselves obligated to protect what they perceived as women’s rights and interests.
THE RIGHT TO A RESTRICTED SOCIAL LIFE
These two impulses may be seen in the writings of the Maimonides (1135-1205), one of the greatest legal scholars and philosophers of the Middle Ages, who lived in Egypt. Chapter 13 of Hilkhot Ishut, Laws concerning Marriage, in his major legal code, the Mishneh Torah , deals with a woman’s entitlements within a marriage. The 11th paragraph speaks about a woman’s right to leave the house, a privilege that was restricted–at least by custom–in many Muslim lands.
According to Maimonides, a Jewish woman has the right to leave the home, and he lists the places he considers appropriate for her to go: to celebrations, houses of mourning, her parents’ and relatives’ houses, and to do charitable works. Maimonides emphasizes that every woman has the right to come and go freely, because a wife should not be treated like a prisoner.
At the same time, he feels that men should discourage their wives from leaving the house too frequently, because it is a disreputable practice for women to go out constantly, an attitude reflective of the practice in the larger, non-Jewish society in which Maimonides lived. This ruling suggests that Maimonides viewed women as persons in the eyes of the law, with certain inalienable rights, but also with a restricted role in society. Furthermore, women are to receive moral guidance about their behavior from their husbands, rather than through the study of the law.
A WOMAN’S HAPPINESS WAS VALUED
There is a great deal of information available about the Jewish community in Egypt from the 10th century on, which survived in the Cairo Geniza, a storeroom for papers that the members of the community used to dispose of religious texts and other documents written in Hebrew characters. There are many marriage and betrothal contracts, which show that families spent a great deal of money in outfitting their daughters for marriage.
Beyond the financial provisions for their daughters, they also attempted to provide for their emotional well-being, by writing in clauses to the betrothal contract to aid the wife in dissolving the marriage if she was unhappy. These contracts show that women were not treated solely as property or a medium of exchange and that their personal happiness was an important consideration.
JEWISH WOMEN IN EUROPE
Much less is known about the everyday life of Jewish women in Europe, because the most studied material about the Jews of medieval Europe originates from the rabbinic class, rather than from a large cross-section of society. These writings contrast strikingly with the Cairo Geniza documents on the subject of a woman’s freedom to exit a marriage.
The Talmud establishes that a woman who claims that she despises her husband is entitled to have the Jewish courts compel her husband to divorce her. While the Geniza contracts make financial provisions for the dissolution of a marriage at the wife’s instigation, the tendency of the European rabbis was to restrict the wife’s ability to demand a divorce.
The Spanish authority Rabbenu Asher (1250-1337) explained his rationale for these restrictions. A wife might claim to despise her husband simply because she desired some other man, and this was not a sufficient reason to compel a husband to divorce his wife. In this view of marriage, while the wife remained entitled to financial and other privileges, her feelings about her husband were not considered as important as his happiness with the marriage. This ruling may also reflect characterization of women as inconstant in their affections.
The French rabbis also restricted women’s permission to perform commandments that are obligatory for men, but not for women. In particular, they argued that women should not wear phylacteries, because they were not as able as men to maintain physical purity. This ruling seems specifically connected to a concern about purity, rather than a desire to discourage women from performing the commandments, because the French rabbis ruled that women could recite blessings when performing commandments that are only obligatory upon men.
WOMEN AND MYSTICISM
In many religious traditions, mysticism provided an arena in which women had the same access to the divine as men, but this does not appear to have been the case in medieval Europe, the center of the two medieval Jewish mystical movements, the Hasidei Ashkenaz and the Kabbalah. There are no famous female Jewish mystics associated with either movement.
The Hasidei Ashkenaz were extremely careful about fulfilling the commandments and also practiced acts of extreme piety, such as voluntary fasts, as well as magic rituals, to allow them to achieve a special perception of the divine. One of their major works, Sefer Hasidim (written by Rabbi Judah the Hasid in 12th century France), speaks of the importance of marrying a woman who is Hasidah, the feminine form of the term for an initiate, hasid. However, women do not seem to have been involved in the magical practices or divine contemplation, and this hasidah may simply be a woman who is scrupulous in her ordinary religious observances.
‘WHEN WESTERN WOMEN STOP BEING OBJECTIFIED,
THEY CAN CRITICISE US.’
Orthodox Jewish women fight back
When news broke of women being banned from driving, the position of females
in ultra-orthodoxJewish society came under scrutiny. We go inside a closed world
S Telegraph (UK) Sally Howard, 21 June 2015
The Hebrew phrase “chillul hashem” translates as bringing shame upon one’s community in the eyes of the outside world. It can be invoked by anything from double-parking to failure to observe the complicated latticework of laws that circumscribe orthodox Jewish life, dictating everything from hairstyles to behaviour.
These days chillul hashem is as likely to spark a trending hashtag. Recently, a leaked letter sent by school leaders in the north London Belz sect condemned mothers for their “immodesty” in driving their children to school. Social media was inflamed, while women’s groups drew comparisons with Saudi Arabia.
A few months earlier, a scandal was ignited when an Instagram post of a street sign from a Hackney Torah procession went viral. It read, in English and Yiddish: “Women should please walk along this side of the road only.”
“It was boring,” says Ilana Freedman of the furore, sitting in the flat she shares with her rabbi husband and four young sons, above a west London synagogue. “That sign was intended to make our women feel comfortable,”she says. “But it became part of that tired narrative about Haredi [ultra-orthodox Jewish] women being oppressed.”
Freedman’s pet hate is Western feminists’ reading of an ultra-orthodox Jewish woman’s lot as, “All about wigs, menstrual rites and being downtrodden,” she says. “Belz rabbis themselves don’t drive. But it’s easy to wheel out that tired old story about Haredi women being oppressed.”
Freedman – who migrated from traditional to ultra-orthodox Judaism – is a biology teacher and has written online about issues facing Jewish women. She is “a Facebook-hip Haredi woman”, as she puts it. “A sign our world is changing, I suppose.”
It is a troubled time for women in Britain’s more than 40,000-strong (and growing) Haredi community, and not just because of a rise in anti-semitic attacks. Their lives of strict observance are being assailed as never before, by the pressures of caring for large families in an era of benefit cuts; by rising house prices in the community’s north London enclave of Stamford Hill; and by the emergence in Israelof a reformist brand of “orthofeminism” that is questioning the doctrinal basis for traditional Haredi gender roles.
Haredi – literally “one who trembles before God” – is an umbrella term for the most strictly observant among the modern Jewry. In Britain Haredi communities range from the largely Hasidic, or Jewish mystic, Haredi Jews of Stamford Hill, to Lithuanian diasporic groups in Golders Green and Gateshead, and other communities in Edgware and Salford.
Shared by these groups is a fundamentalist interpretation of the Torah, a physical separation of the genders in certain situations and strictly defined roles for men and women that prescribe an ideal of male religious scholarship and female worldly service.
‘Why do we need women rabbis? Women can talk to their male rabbis. These are silly, insulting women’
The ‘orthofeminist’ Anat Hoffman holding the Torah during a prayer service near the Western Wall. Photo: Reuters
These models, in which women shoulder the twin burdens of housework and household income, are derided by outsiders for their construction of women as, in the Jewish social scientist Nurit Stadler’s words, “polluted providers”. Although there are no reliable figures for the UK, the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics indicates that 69 per cent of Haredi women are in paid work, but only 44.5 per cent of Haredi men.
Freedman sees her coming to Haredism as a moment of emancipation. Raised in a secular Jewish family in north London by a liberal mother, who instilled in her “a relaxed attitude to dress and sexual intimacy”, she traces her decision to become more observant to an incident in a nightclub while she was at university in Manchester.
“A man I’d never met slapped me on the bottom,” Freeman recalls. “I was livid. I thought, ‘When did this supposed feminist revolution happen that someone thought it was OK to do that?’ For a long time, I’d felt that goyish [non-Jewish] culture had become over-sexualised and Western women objectified. I looked at Judaism and I didn’t see that.”
At 22 Freedman began withdrawing from secular life. She gave away her TV, switched from jeans to long skirts and sleeves and – when her strictly kosher lifestyle became incompatible with that of her friends and family – moved in with a group of fellow ultra-orthodox women.
Freedman met her “empathetic and gentle” husband when he was lecturing at an orthodox Jewish conference. “In my earlier guise, I might have pursued him,” she says. “Instead, I held back and let him come to the realisation that we’d be perfect together.”
‘Belz rabbis themselves don’t drive. But it’s easy to wheel out that tired old story about Haredi women being oppressed’
Like most modern Haredi women, Freedman works: as a teacher at an orthodox Jewish seminary (theological school) and as a marital advisor to those in her husband’s congregation who are preparing for shidduch, a form of arranged introduction that typically takes place when a couple are in their late teens.
Freedman teaches young newly-weds that Haredi marriage makes its highest demands of the husband. “In Oral Law [the legal commentary on the Torah] the husband has three obligations: to feed his wife, to provide a roof over her head and to sexually satisfy her,” Freedman says.
“The rules are specific: a woman can demand sex at least twice a week when she is not niddah [menstruating]. Otherwise there are grounds for a wife to ask her husband for divorce.” A man cannot demand sex from his wife.
Ruth Stein is a 29-year-old working mother of eight from Stamford Hill who asked for her name to be changed due to her family’s standing in the local community. She describes Taharat Ha-Mishpachah, the law forbidding sex between a man and menstruating woman, as “something beautiful and impossible to explain to anyone from the outside”.
The most visible signifiers of orthodox Jewish womanhood are the ubiquitous bobbed wigs: today, they are a multimillion-pound industry
“When the wife is niddah, the couple get a chance to work on their friendship because the physical side is not there,” she adds. “It’s like a monthly renewal.” At 19 Stein married an Israeli man selected for her by her extended family.
“Of course, it was weird at first, because he was a stranger,” she says. “But we had all the excitement of the lovey-dovey, getting-to-know-you thing on our honeymoon. Not like in the West, where there’s no mystique.”
A pillar of Haredi life that is spoken of fondly, often reverently, during my meetings with British Haredi women is chesed, or kindness and giving. The British community is supported by a network of voluntary societies, or gemach, who make it their business to ensure that community members have everything from flat-pack boxes for house moves to volunteers for visits with hospitalised relations.
‘As Haredi women, we are committed to be there for each other and not think all the time of our own self-indulgence’
Raquel Klien, 63, is a veteran of Stamford Hill’s voluntary community. For 15 years, she has managed Ezer Leyoldos, an organisation whose services include post-natal support, childcare, home help and kosher meals for families in times of difficulty. “As Haredi women, we are committed to be there for each other and not think all the time of our own self-indulgence,” Klien tells me.
A grandmother of 20, she lives in the heart of Stamford Hill on a street where Haredi children, dressed in pigtails and pinafores, play as their mothers chat across garden walls. The most visible signifiers of orthodox Jewish womanhood are the ubiquitous bobbed wigs: Haredi women’s answer to the 18th-century shtreimel and payots (tall fur hats and long sidelocks) worn by married Haredi men.
So I am surprised to learn they are a recent vogue, supplanting the headscarves with which women traditionally symbolised their tzniut, or modesty. Today, these wigs are a multimillion-pound industry.
“Come on, we all use retail therapy,” Klien laughs. “I do. But there are young girls who get married now and the way they present themselves is not according to our rules of modesty. Young people in our community are becoming hooked on Western image obsessions thanks to the internet. It is like a cancer on our lives.”
‘When women on the outside stop popping antidepressants and being objectified, they can criticise our lives’
The effect of the internet preoccupies Haredis of all ages. Computers are tolerated within the community, but ostensibly only for business and with rabbinical permission. Meanwhile Haredi women’s magazines, such as the housekeeping weekly Binah, run opinion pieces about the threat worldwide connectivity poses to cherished family privacy.
“These roles give women security and quality of life,” Klien says. “The real value of a Jewish woman is in the influence she has on her husband and in bringing up her children as honourable beings. How can she do this in a world that thinks it is OK to have sex before marriage? For men to marry men?”
There is another challenge to the Haredi world view. In Israel “orthofeminists” are agitating for women’s equal access to sites of worship. The movement’s figurehead is Anat Hoffman, who stages direct actions at Judaism’s holiest site, the Western Wall, in protest against the strict rules about female worshippers and their dress (Ilana Freedman describes Hoffman as “odious”).
Other organisations, such as the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance(JOFA), advocate participation for women at the synagogue, instituting controversial “partnership minyans” (prayer groups committed to including women in ritual leadership roles with Jewish law). Dina Brawer of JOFA is aiming to become Britain’s first female orthodox rabbi.
“Why do we need women rabbis?” Klien scoffs. “Women can talk to their male rabbis. These are silly, insulting women.”
For Miriam Kliers, 42, the “warm bath of Haredi womanhood” is an illusion. Born and raised in Stamford Hill, she recalls being struck at a young age by the hypocrisies of an upbringing that taught women they were central to Haredi life while denying them an education. When Kliers asked permission to sit maths and English GCSEs, she was told she’d have to pay for the examinations herself.
“Of course, my parents had no interest,” Kliers says. “I was destined to be a good Haredi wife.” By her mid-20s Kliers was unhappily married, raising three children and was the sole family breadwinner. She felt disillusioned with Haredi life.
‘Haredi women manage large families and this gives them an illusion of power. This power isn’t real’
“I can sit and chat about babies and Passover recipes with the best of them,” she says. “But I suddenly saw how sinister it all was. Haredi women manage large families and this gives them an illusion of power. This power isn’t real.”
In Oral Law divorce is initiated by the husband issuing a get: an official bill of divorce that decrees that the woman is “hereby permitted to all men”. Aged 39, Kliers found herself agunah – or chained – to a marriage because her husband refused to divorce her. One night in 2011, she fled with only the clothes she was wearing and her youngest child, Sarah (not her real name), five, in tow.
Today, Kliers is part of a support group for women and men who have taken the decision to leave the faith. She claims her experience is not unique. “If you leave the community, the ‘religious police’ will make your life a disaster,” she says. “You will also lose your children as they are considered the property of the community. This, naturally, is a big disincentive for many women to leave.”
Yet Kliers considers herself one of the lucky ones. In her early 30s she satisfied her “insatiable itch” to get an education by studying for an Open University degree and was able to support herself in the outside world. “Most Haredi women don’t have the options I had,” she says.
‘Once you start allowing women to drive, you give them some power over their lives, and the rest of it starts to unravel’
Leaving the faith, for Kliers, has been a process of “taking back” her body after having three children in quick succession because she had been refused rabbinical permission to use contraception.
“I decided that no one gets to tell me what to do to my body, my hair, or how to dress. Enough was enough,” she says. Life after Haredism, Kliers admits, has been difficult. “But I have no regrets,” she says. “There are magical aspects of my life – like finding [her new partner] Peter, or my first trip to the theatre – and there are bad days. But even on bad days, I am living a real life rather than in some make-believe world.”
It is unlikely the Stamford Hill enclave of Kliers’ youth will exist by the time her daughter Sarah, who is now nine and living with her father, grows up. House prices are soaring in an already overcrowded area as a Haredi baby boom continues. Kliers believes something has to give. “They say it’s ‘traditional’ for women to pop out eight or nine children and then support them on a single wage with little or no education,” she says. “This is a dangerously irresponsible message.”
For Kliers change is inevitable. “That’s why the Belzers are running scared,” she says. “Once you start allowing women to drive, you give them some power over their lives, and the rest of it starts to unravel.”
Ilana Freedman acknowledges that life can be materially hard for young Haredi families. But, for her part, she sees traditional Haredi values as an antidote to the worst aspects of 21st-century Western life.
“When women on the outside stop popping antidepressants and being objectified, they can turn around to us and criticise our lives,” she says. “Until then, I say, ‘Deal with your own issues.’”
THE HUMAN RIGHTS OF JEWISH WOMEN
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
In the last decade, there has been increased awareness of human rights violations in every country. Evidence shows that women, particularly, have been denied their basic human rights. Often, the denial of women's human rights is based on religious law.
The declaration that "women's rights are human rights," which was made so eloquently at the World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna in 1993 and reconfirmed in 1995 at the Beijing World Conference on Women, should now include the recognition that Jewish women's rights are human rights.
As has been well documented, Jewish women can be discriminated against in marriage and divorce under Jewish law. While ancient Jewish law was designed to protect and support Jewish women, today that same law is being used by some as a tool to deny women their rights to equality in marriage, divorce, and the founding of a family.
The Jewish community readily admits that the shameful situation of the agunah, a woman chained to an unwanted or non-existent marriage who cannot be released without her husband's consent, is unjust. It is common knowledge that some Jewish husbands withhold their consent to a religious divorce or get, in order to extort exorbitant sums of money from their wives as the "price" for the get. Nonetheless, the Jewish community, despite a high level of educational attainment, financial success, organizational skills and traditional commitment to social justice, has been unable or unwilling to find solutions to the painful problem of the agunah.
The International Jewish Women's Rights Project intends to document the human rights violations of women in Jewish communities all over the world. Thanks to the vision and generosity of the International Council of Jewish Women, we will be establishing a central data base which will include cases of women who have been denied the right to marry and to found a family from every Jewish community. Each case is a violation of a Jewish woman's human rights. As the nations of the world celebrate the 50th anniversary of the ratifying of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Jewish Women's Rights Project intends to gather information, research, and publicize the infringement of Jewish women's rights. It is our hope that our efforts will bring about the necessary changes that will eliminate such human rights violations in the Jewish community. The time has come for all Jews to act on the biblical injunction: "JUSTICE, JUSTICE YOU SHALL PURSUE".
THE KETUBAH
The Ketubah: Evolutions in the Jewish Marriage Contract.
Once a protection for women, the traditional ketubah has been critiqued
by liberal Jews on several grounds.
My Jewish Learning by Rabbi Daniel Gordis
Strictly speaking, a legitimate Jewish wedding has two fundamental requirements: First, both parties must enter the marriage voluntarily and willingly; second, their marriage must be accompanied by a ketubah . The term ketubah, which comes from the Hebrew verb “to write,” refers to the traditional marriage document, in use since rabbinic times. The traditional ketubah stipulates the obligations that the husband takes on vis-à-vis his bride during marriage, as well as his financial obligations in the case of divorce.
Over the course of marriage, the husband traditionally has three primary obligations to his wife: He must provide her with food, clothing, and sexual satisfaction. Food and clothing, of course, represent the basic economic necessities of life, and the clear implication of the traditional ketubah text is that the husband will effectively provide for his wife’s economic well-being. In the case of divorce, the ketubah requires the husband to pay the wife a sum of money, which is dependent on her marital history prior to the current marriage [that is, whether she is a virgin, a divorcée, or a convert].
Because the traditional ketubah text assumes that it is the husband who will provide for the wife, this document has come under attack by those seeking greater equality between men and women. Before briefly addressing the substance of this critique and the suggestions for making the ceremony more egalitarian, a word about the original intentions of the ketubah is in order.
KETUBAH ORIGINATED AS A PROTECTION FOR WOMEN
Though clearly the respective roles of the bride and groom as stated in the ketubah are not equal, it must be stressed that, far from being an intentionally misogynist document, the ketubah was originally created to protect women from being simply discarded by their husbands with no provision for their economic welfare. To that extent, the ketubah, despite its dated perception of social reality, was not a tool of repression, but actually a liberating document for women. The ketubah was considered so basic to a just marital relationship, in fact, that the Talmud commented that the fundamental distinction between a wife and a concubine was that a wife had to be given a ketubah, while a concubine did not. The rabbis further stipulated that a man was forbidden from living with his wife, even for one hour, without a ketubah.
MODERNISTS UNHAPPY WITH KETUBAH
These comments on the history and intent of the ketubah do not satisfy most couples who wish to equalize their roles in marriage. These couples, as well as many rabbis and feminist thinkers, point to several distinct difficulties with the traditional ketubah text:
1. the lack of mutuality, given the dramatically changed social and economic circumstances of women today;
2. the reference in the document to the woman’s previous marital status–and specifically to the usual use of the term betultah, or “virgin,” as it is commonly translated, to refer to a previously unmarried woman–with no mention made of the man’s marital or sexual history; and finally,
3. the one-sided focus on financial issues.
POTENTIAL SOLUTIONS
The two most obvious solutions to these objections are to do away with the ketubah altogether, or to revise it. While the Orthodox community continues to use only the standard text, practices in the other movements vary. Some Reform rabbis have simply dispensed with a ketubah, and many Reform and liberally inclined Conservative rabbis also use nontraditional texts, pointing out that no single ketubah text was ever adopted universally by all Jewish communities. Research into ancient ketubot has shown, for example, that some traditional communities avoided making any reference to the bride’s marital or sexual history, while others used terms such as penita (unmarried), thus avoiding the issue of virginity.
Similarly, although Maimonides claims that a nonvirgin must be identified as such by use of the term be’ultah (married woman), other equally significant sources deny this. In the Talmud, Rabbi Meir suggests that the classification of the bride ought not depend on her physical virginity but on whether her societal attractiveness has been affected in any way. And Rabbi David Hoffmann, the leading light of German Orthodoxy at the end of the 19th century, urges that if a woman is not a virgin, no term be used to designate her.
Some communities also sought to include in the ketubah some mention of nonfinancial elements of the marriage; one ancient ketubah has been located in which the groom declares his bride to be not simply “my wife” but “my friend and my wife in covenant” (ha-veirati ve-eshet beriti).
Today, many liberally inclined Jews who still elect to use a ketubah make much more significant changes in the text, usually omitting virtually all financial elements of the document and ensuring that obligations be assumed by both partners. Those who choose to use nontraditional marriage documents often do so fully cognizant that they thereby depart radically from tradition and that no halakhically [Jewish legally] sanctioning community stands behind these new texts. Rather than emulating the public nature of the traditional text, these tend to be rather private documents, expressing the feelings and commitments of the couple rather than the communal nature of the institution of marriage that is implied by use of the traditional text
Proponents of these new texts further argue that even if more traditional communities reject the legitimacy of creative ketubot, that rejection will have no bearing on a couple’s marital status. Because Jewish law effectively recognizes common-law marriage, even the most traditional communities, they assert, need to recognize these arrangements as marriage, even if a ketubah is not included. The argument for the new marriage documents, despite their lack of universal acceptance, has been voiced most eloquently by Rabbi Daniel Leifer [a Conservative Hillel rabbi who was an early supporter of the havurah movement]
“Those who think that they can achieve major halakhic change within the existing Jewish community will perhaps be disappointed by my perspective. I believe, however, that those who are struggling to change Orthodox halakhah and/or the minds of the traditional Orthodox decision-makers are wasting their time and energy. It is my conviction that change is effected through the creation of new alternative and rival Jewish rituals and halakhic forms which will ultimately effect and bring about change in the traditional forms and the traditional community.”
ADDRESSING THE AGUNAH PROBLEM
Before concluding our discussion of the ketubah, mention of another common emendation to the traditional text is in order. This emendation addresses the ever-vexing ethical problem of the agunah, the Jewish woman whose husband refuses to grant her a religious divorce. In response to this agonizing dilemma, the Conservative movement began widespread use of an additional clause [in the ketubah] written by the eminent Talmudic scholar Dr. Saul Lieberman. The “Lieberman clause,” as it is known, stipulates that the bride and groom agree that their lives will be conducted according to Jewish law and that, in the event of a divorce, they agree to follow the dictates of a given beit din (Jewish court).
Thus, if the husband refuses to issue a get (a traditional Jewish writ of divorce), the beit din will order the husband to do so; if he refuses, the theory goes, his wife can petition a secular court to compel the husband to issue a get or else find him in breach of a contract, namely, the ketubah he signed at the time of his marriage.
The Reform movement has not adopted any parallels to the Lieberman clause, because that movement does not require a get for the dissolution of [a marriage]. In the Orthodox community, where the problem of the agunah is unfortunately a serious one, [halakhic prenuptial agreements are being promoted by some prominent Orthodox rabbis].
A DISCUSSION
ABOUT THE POSITION OF JEWISH WOMEN IN ISRAEL
The Jewish Agency for Israel
This should begin with a survey of the position of women in Judaism – an extremely contentious issue. In the last generation or so, the position of women in the Jewish tradition has become a veritable battlefield for modernists and traditionalists. People on both sides of the issue have come to see the issue itself as a barricade that must be stormed in order to save Judaism from the grasp of the forces (the other side) who would undermine it and potentially destroy it. Many aspects of Judaism have been seen as a battleground over the last two hundred years. Since the coming of the Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment, the fight over the modernisation of Judaism has been joined on a whole host of different issues. Different generations have embraced and emphasised different causes, depending on the specific historical circumstances. Each generation has fought its own battles, and the forces of tradition and modernity have faced off against one another over many different things. Indeed, it was the Haskalah which first put the question of Jewish education for girls centrally on the agenda of the Jewish world.
However, there is no denying that despite some important changes that have developed over the years regarding the question of a woman’s place in Judaism, it is really the last generation that has seen the topic turn into one of the cutting-edge issues within the Jewish world. The world of Jewish feminism has developed strongly and enormous changes have been felt in both the Orthodox and non-Orthodox worlds.
The very question of the role of women in Judaism continues to arouse strong emotions; to many people, the subject itself is taboo. In the last thirty years, especially since the rise of the Jewish feminist movement that has often attacked the traditional culture of Judaism as being sexist and unjust, dozens of books and articles have been written about the role of women in Judaism. Many of these are apologetic in tone, seeking to justify the tradition. The approach of this school of thought is, broadly speaking, that women are “separate but equal” in the Jewish tradition; that men and women are relegated to different realms of activity within Jewish life, and that within the separate realms the man is a king and the woman a queen. In other words, difference does not mean that one group is preferred over the other. Rather, it is stated, both genders reflect the work of G-d, who intended different spheres of activity and complementary roles for them both.
Many have criticised this position. There are those who criticise from within the world of belief in G-d. Their argument, they say, is not with G-d but rather with what men, as the primary interpreters of G-d’s word, have done with the word of G-d. The argument goes that they have abused and misrepresented the instruction book that they were given, namely the Torah. They point out that in the division of roles according to gender, almost all the prestigious ones have been assigned to men.
Men are the almost exclusive stars of Jewish history in the public arena; all public functions within Judaism and the Jewish community have traditionally been seen as the exclusive preserve of the male sex. Moreover, the scholarly arena that has been the centre of prestige and respect within the Jewish community since at least the destruction of the Second Temple, has once again been assigned exclusively to the realm of the man. Men are responsible for the development of the liturgy where, for example, they are required to recite every day the blessing to G-d “who has not made me a woman.” The problem, according to this perspective, is sociological rather than theological.
Less traditional critics have brought G-d into their argument, seeing the divine texts as man made and arguing that the very concept of G-d and G-d’s deeds that has developed within Judaism is a result of male dominance and male construction of the sacred texts. All the inequalities that have developed within the Jewish tradition according to this approach must be seen as the responsibility of the men who both wrote and interpreted the traditional texts
JEWISH FEMINISM
Israel AND Juaism Studies,
the Education Website of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies,
Avril Alba, Director of Education, Sydney Jewish Museum, 2006
The 20th century witnessed a radical change in the traditional roles of women throughout the western world. The experience of suffrage in the first half of the century, followed by second wave feminism in the 60’s and 70’s ushered in far reaching changes in women’s roles and identities, in both the personal and public spheres. While change comes slowly to established religions, the influence of the feminist movement has made inroads into the practice of all world religions and this influence is apparent in the practice of Judaism in all its diversity throughout the last century and into the present.
The role of women in Judaism has always been central and it is important to note that women have largely been treated with respect and dignity both in Jewish religious law and Jewish communal life. Yet while women’s roles were valued, and even at times exalted, they were limited and the traditional roles of wife and mother were the dominant frameworks within which female Jewish identity was expressed.
As women began to challenge traditional roles, many questions arose concerning the ‘source’ of women’s inequality within Judaism. This problem was approached from a variety of perspectives but the central question could be formulated thus: Is women’s inequality in Judaism a sociological or theological problem?1 If the former, then what is in need of change are the various organizational and communal frameworks that keep women from achieving full equality within the Jewish world. However, if the latter, then it is Jewish belief itself - its theological foundations, textual canons, religious law and rituals - that is in need of examination and review. While the distinction is not absolute since sociological and theological concerns necessarily intersect, it is with these two central issues that Jewish feminism has been primarily concerned.
How Jewish feminists have responded to these questions has rested largely upon their view of Judaism itself, based in their interpretation of the binding (or not) nature of Halacha (Jewish law). Thus, the changes that have taken place regarding the role and participation of Jewish women in Jewish life over the past century have taken place primarily within the boundaries of the various streams of Judaism. Sociological changes came first to those movements such as the Progressive (Reform) movement. In its understanding of Halacha as historically contingent, the Progressive movement rejected those aspects of Jewish law that, for example, precluded women from undertaking leadership roles such as those of the rabbinate. It is no coincidence that the first movement, therefore, to ordain women as rabbis was the Progressive.
Within the Orthodox movement, changes in women’s roles have been slower, largely due to the Orthodox understanding of Halacha as divinely given, and therefore immutable. This is not to suggest that changes in Halacha are not evident in Orthodox practice, however, the process of change is much slower and is subject to traditional laws of interpretation and implementation. The Orthodox movement has produced many outstanding female scholars and activists such as Nehama Leibowitz and Blu Greenberg, whose commitments to both the practice of Halacha and to full equality for women have led to major innovations with regard to women’s participation in ritual practice and communal leadership within the Orthodox world2. Thus, while Orthodox seminaries will still not ordain women as rabbis, there are now more and more Orthodox women undertaking traditional forms of Jewish study and an Orthodox feminist movement (JOFA)3 has been formed in North America. Some current developments in some Orthodox congregations include the creation of women-only tefilla (prayer) groups in which women are encouraged to lead services and read from the Torah and modified Bat Mitzvah services which allow girls to read Torah (excluding blessings).
Within the academic world, interest in Jewish feminism has flourished. Scholars have researched the roles of women throughout Jewish history, uncovering little-known episodes of Jewish history and practice such as the creation of ‘women’s prayers’ in the Yiddish-speaking communities of Eastern Europe and the remarkable lives of Jewish women such as Bruriah, a Second Century Talmudic scholar and Gluckel of Hamlen, a Seventeenth Century German Jewish wife, mother of twelve, business woman and diarist. Within Jewish communities, feminist concerns have contributed to the development of more gender-inclusive language in prayer, the creation of new women’s rituals and the revival of traditional women’s festivals such as Rosh Chodesh (New Moon) ceremonies.
Despite the amount of change that feminism has wrought in the Jewish world, its effects are really only beginning to be felt. While once ‘radical’ changes such as the implementation of Bat Mitzvah ceremonies (acting as the equivalent of the male ritual of Bar Mitzvah) are now commonplace, other issues such as the inequalities in Jewish divorce law remain unresolved. Yet even with regard to this vexed issue some positive change is apparent, with women learned in Jewish law now acting as advisors to rabbinical judges in Israel.
Theological issues pertaining to the characterization and roles of women in traditional texts continue to be the subject of feminist scholarship. Yet while the issues are many and the process of change is slow, it seems fair to posit that as we enter the 21st century the role of women in the Jewish world is perhaps at its most vibrant and diverse, with women assuming leadership roles both in religious and communal structures at unprecedented levels.
WOMEN IN THE ISRAEL DEFENSE FORCES
Wikipedia (Main article: Women in the Israel Defense Forces)
(This is included as it is a unique case study of the role of women from the entire population with a legal obligation to serve within a single organisation)
Israel is one of only a few nations that conscript women or deploy them in combat roles, although in practice, women can avoid conscription through a religious exemption and over a third of Israeli women do so.As of 2010, 88% of all roles in the IDF are open to female candidates. and women could be found in 69% of all IDF positions.
According to the IDF, 535 female Israeli soldiers were killed in combat operations in the period 1962–2016, and dozens before then. The IDF says that fewer than 4 percent of women are in combat positions. Rather, they are concentrated in "combat-support" positions which command a lower compensation and status than combat positions.
Civilian pilot and aeronautical engineer Alice Miller successfully petitioned the High Court of Justice to take the Israeli Air Force pilot training exams, after being rejected on grounds of gender. Though president Ezer Weizman, a former IAF commander, told Miller that she would be better off staying home and darning socks, the court eventually ruled in 1996 that the IAF could not exclude qualified women from pilot training. Even though Miller would not pass the exams, the ruling was a watershed, opening doors for women in new IDF roles. Female legislators took advantage of the momentum to draft a bill allowing women to volunteer for any position, if they could qualify.
In 2000 the Equality amendment to the Military Service law stated that the right of women to serve in any role in the IDF is equal to the right of men.[ A study of women in the IDF from 2002 to 2005 found that women often exhibit "superior skills" in discipline, motivation and marksmanship. However, the study noted that women still face gender discrimination in the IDF. Women have served in the military since before the founding of the state of Israel in 1948. Women started to enter combat support and light combat roles in a few areas, including the Artillery Corps, infantry units and armored divisions. A few platoons named Karakal were formed for men and women to serve together in light infantry. By 2000 Karakal became a full-fledged battalion, with a second mixed-gender battalion, Lions of the Jordan (אריות הירדן, Arayot Ha-Yarden) formed in 2015. Many women also joined the Border Police.
In June 2011 Maj. General Orna Barbivai became the first female major general in the IDF, replacing head of the directorate Maj. General Avi Zamir. Barbivai stated, "I am proud to be the first woman to become a major general and to be part of an organization in which equality is a central principle. Ninety percent of jobs in the IDF are open to women and I am sure that there are other women who will continue to break down barriers."
In 2013 the IDF announced they would, for the first time, allow a (MTF) transgender woman to serve in the army as a female soldier.
Elana Sztokman notes it would be "difficult to claim that women are equals in the IDF". "And tellingly, there is only one female general in the entire IDF," she adds.In 2012 religious soldiers claimed they were promised they would not have to listen to women sing or lecture, but IAF Chief Rabbi Moshe Raved resigned because male religious soldiers were being required to do so. In January 2015 three women IDF singers performed in one of the IDF's units. The performance was first disrupted by fifteen religious soldiers, who left in protest and then the Master Sergeant forced the women to end the performance because it was disturbing the religious soldiers. An IDF spokesperson announced an investigation of the incident: "We are aware of the incident and already began examining it. The exclusion of woman is not consistent with the values of the IDF." Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon has also arranged for women to be excluded from recruitment centers catering to religious males. As the IDF recruits more religious soldiers, the rights of male religious soldiers and of women in the IDF come into conflict. Brig. Gen. Zeev Lehrer, who served on the chief of staff's panel of the integration of women, noted "There is a clear process of 'religionization' in the army, and the story of the women is a central piece of it. There are very strong pressures at work to halt the process of integrating women into the army, and they are coming from the direction of religion." Sex segregation is allowed in the IDF, which reached what it considers a "new milestone" in 2006, creating the first company of soldiers segregated in an all female unit, the Nachshol (Hebrew for "giant wave") Reconnaissance Company. "We are the only unit in the world made up entirely of female combat soldiers," said Nachshol Company Commander Cpt. Dana Ben-Ezra. "Our effectiveness and the dividends we earn are the factors by which we are measured, not our gender."
The Jewish Woman Chabad
The Role of Women Judaism 101
Women in Judaism Wikipedia
The Jewish Woman Mikvah.org
International Council of Jewish Women Jewish Womens Archive - Encyclopedia
Orthodox Judaism in the United States Jewish Women’s Archive
Reform Judaism in the United States Jewish Women’s Archive
Jewish Women vs. the Jewish State New York Times, Leslie Sachs, July 1, 2017
The Jewish Women’s Renaissance Project
Reading the Jewish Woman on the Elizabethan Stage
Jewish Women in the Great Depression Advice from the Jewish Transcript
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JEWISH WOMEN IN JUDAISM
In April 2018,
ten women graduated from the Chief Rabbi’s Ma’ayan Programme, having completed 18 months of learning and training to become high-level educators for the Jewish community, as well as advisors in the area of Taharat Hamishpacha (laws of family purity) and women’s health issues.
The Ma’ayanot have a great deal to offer communities and the Office of the Chief Rabbi would be pleased to discuss various options with you to find a way to maximise benefit in your community. MORE INFORMATION
