Fundamentalist Muslim women and fundamentalist Jewish women have a lot in common. Both groups live under the forced rules of ancient, male-controlled religious legal systems that place extreme emphasis on women’s body cover as the supreme symbol of righteousness and community purity. In conversations I have had with Muslim feminists over the years, the similarities…
Sisterhood Digest: • A group of religious Israeli women, many of whom live in West Bank settlements, are touting a new approach to raising children that has five-year-olds doing dishes and sweeping floors. “Based on the psychological theories of Alfred Adler and borrowing from traditional Jewish sources, [these women] aim to fight what they see…
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…
I’m going Mormon. After all, I do love watching “Big Love,” and I can’t deny the appeal of having a “sister-wife” who wouldn’t mind doing the laundry for everyone in the family. But mainstream Mormons no longer practice polygamy — it’s been against official church policy for more than a century — so the “sister-wife” situation…
I knew I would regret it as soon as I started typing, but I did it anyway. As much as I try to avoid getting into virtual arguments in talkback-land, this week I found myself unable to restrain myself. The language, it seems to me, is at the root of the problem, and that’s where…
The Sisterhood Digest: • The number of legal abortions in Israel has declined 10% since 2000, the Jerusalem Post, citing Health Ministry statistics, reports — even as Ynet reports that abortions among ultra-Orthodox women in Israel have been on the rise since the beginning of the financial crisis. In Israel, abortions are permitted if they…
While in Target this morning, to grab one of their super-duper-on-sale-cheap netbook computers for my teenage son’s Chanukah gift (I got one of the handful they had delivered overnight, whoo hoo!), I cruised through the girl’s department as I do each time I’m in the store, in search of an appropriately modest skirt or dress…
I love a good frum wedding. No one knows how to party, in the best possible way, like religious Jews at a wedding. Last Sunday, we went to the wedding of the daughter of a couple to whom we’re related by marriage and with whom we’ve become friends. It was a beautiful affair that took…
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