"Egalitarian Judaism?" Need it Like A Hole in The Head

It really bothers me when I read these articles claiming that all modern Jewish Orthodox  women are waiting for mainstream Orthodoxy to accept egalitarian dovening.

The motivation behind partnership minyanim is to narrow the wide gap between the relative gender equality that Orthodox women experience in their professional and civic lives and the gender stratification they experience in their religious lives. As Josephine Felix pointed out in an opinion piece in Brooklyn’s The Jewish Press, Orthodox women pursue every career imaginable, and in some circles they do it in greater numbers than their non-income producing, Talmud-studying husbands. “They may become CEO of a company, but when it comes to being president of a shul board, they are forbidden by many Orthodox legal scholars. They may be doctors whose decisions impact the life or death of a patient, but when it comes to deciding halacha, they cannot contribute,” Felix writes.
Women are said to be unable to handle the intellectual rigor of Talmud. When Orthodox women are professors or computer scientists, it makes that argument hard to swallow. Women who live in a civic society where male and female lawyers, witness and judges are treated as equally reliable by the courts may question the validity of the ban on female witnesses in Jewish law. Essentially, despite efforts to prevent it, the positive values of human rights and equality that are the fabric of Western culture are absorbed viscerally by women through their lived experiences, and when compared with the values of traditional Halacha, eventually the cognitive dissonance starts to cause a strain.
Orthodox feminists (both male and female) have been campaigning to make changes to prayer and ritual that empower women within the traditional framework. They do not want to leave Orthodoxy for Conservative Judaism. They like the closeness of the community, the way Orthodoxy permeates and informs all aspects of their lives. As Elana Sztokman put it in these pages, they “love everything about Orthodoxy except for the gender thing.”

Read more: http://forward.com/articles/194998/partnership-minyan-and-the-egalitarian-threat/#ixzz2x2LZO3bv

I don't agree. I'm not interested. I don't see being able to lead prayers, aliyot to the Torah etc as the same as being on the board of the shul/synagogue or studying Talmud.

In Aurora Mendelsohn's Jewish Forward article, she extensively quotes Josephine Felix, but in Felix's Jewish Press article nothing is mentioned at all about egalitarian minyanim. Felix's complaints are more about custom than halacha.  Yes, the make up of a minyan and Torah reading etc are halachik questions, while Women's Talmud Study is a matter of custom.

I know many strictly Orthodox Jewish women who study Talmud and teach it.  I davka study Tanach, Bible at Matan, but Talmud is on the curriculum there and at many other schools and institutes for Orthodox Jewish women.  Some of the women who study Talmud may be members of egalitarian minyanim, but for most Talmud for the love of studying Talmud is the focus on and the reason for their studies. It's not to make a modern feminist point.

As I've written before, I don't go for dabbling, and I don't want new requirements. I doven everyday more than once and have no interest in adding Tefillin to my dovening experience/routine. Years ago when I was on the local synagogue committee I did insist on being included in all sorts of decisions and complained about the custom of having "unofficial meetings between mincha and ma'ariv. They did that out of custom, not Law/halacha.

It's human nature to consider oneself in the majority, but I see a danger in the insistence that most Orthodox women in today's world are in favor of these "partnership," aka egalitarian minyanim. I honestly don't see it as the case. I really don't think that most women want more responsibility in their lives.

Most of us are struggling with what we have. Instead of demanding a role in the dovening, let's ask for something much more necessary, the opening of Ezrat Nashim, Women's Sections in synagogues for all the daily prayers. It's very hard for us women when not home to find a suitable location for dovening Mincha, Arvit (Ma'ariv) and saying T'hillim. All over Jerusalem you'll hear calls to gather for Mincha in small synagogues, but those synagogues don't have places for women, or they are full of men. One exception is Jerusalem's Central Bus Station, Egged.

The Male - Female Thing In Judaism

Lady Light wrote a rather thought-provoking post, The Role of Women in Judaism.  Usually I don't get into the issue.  I don't know why davka today I commented on her post.  Having been raised nominally Conservative, including five years (I graduated) of Hebrew School in the Oakland Jewish Center, Bayside, NY, and having come of age when feminism was rising, you may be surprised at my feelings about the subject.

 Here's the comment I left on her blog:

Ironically, I think it was this past parshat shavua, which mentioned that it's forbidden for women to don men's clothes and the opposite, when it hit me that tallit and t'fillin must be included in that. Of course, that's my simple interpretation.

Last year, and G-d willing this year, too, I'll study in Matan. Most of the teachers, especially Tanach, are women, since men just don't know the subject as well. Women spend a proportionately larger time on it, while men concentrate on Gmorah.

I don't go for imitating men. I suffer no envy, as long as I'm not ignored, just because I'm a woman.

Biological men can't get pregnant. There are innate differences between the sexes, as I well know as I prepare to teach high school girls after more than a decade teaching boys. I do prefer teaching boys.

Every morning I'm totally sincere when I bless G-d for making me according to His will. And I'm happy to sit in shul knowing that the food is keeping warm on the platta and I don't have to learn the leining. I can just "meditate" on the words of the prayers and concentrate on G-d.

One of the keys in my philosphy of life is making the best of what we have.

Some of my feelings about this is probably due to the fact that I'm in Israel, and our synagogues and rabbis don't have the same roles as in the galut.

There are things we can't change and can't control.  According to Chazal (our sages) they are:

• when we were born
• where we were born
• to whom we were born

Lady Light mentions the late and revered Bible teacher Nechama Liebowitz as an example of women who were "berated" because they delved in masculine roles.  Many strictly observant Orthodox men attended her classes, because she had more Bible (not Torah) knowledge than one could learn from rabbis in yeshiva.  That's because Bible is mostly ignored in all yeshivot.  Even in relatively "modern" yeshiva high schools in Israel, it's part of the secular "afternoon schedule," along with History, Math, English and Literature.  The rabbis who "berated" Leibowitz also disapprove of that sort of modern curriculum.


I'm not some old-fashioned behind the curtains type of female.  I expect people to read my political observations without taking my sex into account.  I don't consider being female to be something which should hold me back in the blog world, not even the jblog world of Jewish Bloggers.


Honestly I have no desire to be called up to the Torah or be Shaliach Tzibbur for Musaf.  And I don't leave the dovening early to set up the community kiddush either.


From what I've read, just like in many other professions, the Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist and whatever "forms" of Judaism which have admitted women into all ritual roles, now find that men are much less apt to apply.  It has become "women's work."

ה לֹא-יִהְיֶה כְלִי-גֶבֶר עַל-אִשָּׁה, וְלֹא-יִלְבַּשׁ גֶּבֶר שִׂמְלַת אִשָּׁה: כִּי תוֹעֲבַת יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ, כָּל-עֹשֵׂה אֵלֶּה. {פ} 5 A woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman's garment; for whosoever doeth these things is an abomination unto the LORD thy God. {P}(Ki Tetzei)