There was an exciting energy at the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance conference. Speakers in both the plenary and individual sessions, such as emerging star Lisa Schlaff, made far-reaching statements and bold suggestions about issues ranging from marriage and sexuality to halachic ingenuity. Participants responded in kind with creativity and courage, revealing what seems to be…
At last Sunday’s conference of the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance there was an interesting session titled “Rediscovering Mikvah: Creating a New Construct in Thinking about Mikvah.” Given my increasingly ambivalent relationship to my own mikveh practice, I slipped away from all the sessions on Orthodox women and leadership that I needed to attend to for…
Early Sunday morning, I shlepped my tired self through the rain — taking the subway up to Columbia University — to cover the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance conference. At the end of a long day, I came away energized. At the First International Conference on Feminism & Orthodoxy back in 1997, there was something electric…
It’s a story of a Sisterhood post done good. Last month, Elana Sztokman, a regular contributor to this blog, proposed a model for infusing Orthodox day schools with the kind of feminist values that have informed partnership synagogues and have advanced women’s leadership roles within Orthodoxy. The buzz that her blog post generated secured her…
It’s been three years since JOFA’s last national conference in New York, which may explain the seam-bursting program, with more 50 different sessions in the less than 24 hours. It seems that organizers of the 2010 conference, which begins Saturday night, have decided to cram three-years’ worth of pent-up Jewish feminist activity and thought into…
Feminism has no doubt transformed Orthodoxy over the past three decades. Women have gone from begging to hold a Torah on Simchat Torah to holding their own services, to creating partnership synagogues in which women take active roles alongside men in running the service. It’s not only about women learning Talmud, but also about being…
Two fabulous Jewish magazines have new issues out that are must-reads for anyone interested in Judaism and gender. The first is Lilith’s new issue, which proclaims, in big black letters on a red background, that “Boys are the New Girls.” It’s an interesting premise, highlighting the much-needed attention paid lately to boys. Boys — and…
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