JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

era, though revived in the late 20th century. Since the mikveh
served as a gathering place for women to socialize and also
to exert authority in the absence of men, its decline undermined
women’s opportunities to assemble away from male
presence. Further, the falloff in adherence to Jewish law weakened
women’s status as sources of domestic and gendered legal
expertise, particularly concerning laws of kashrut. Traditionally
entrusted with responsibility for the laws of *niddah
and kashrut, women had been viewed with the moral trust,
intellectual ability, and religious commitment necessary for
their strict adherence to those often complex laws. Still, male
authorities, whether fathers, husbands, or rabbis, always retained
ultimate control over adherence to laws within women’s
domain.
The modern era opened new public and communal religious
and educational opportunities for women. Pressure
from the changes in secular society that encouraged women
and men to take advantage of equalizing educational and vocational
opportunities affected the Jewish world, too. Educational
reforms in the Orthodox and ḥasidic communities
of Eastern Europe in the early 20th century, led by Sara
*Schnirer, established a network of schools for religious girls,
*Beth Jacob, and the liberal rabbinical seminaries established
in Europe and the United States in the late 19th century permitted
some women to attend courses, although not to receive
rabbinic ordination.
The United States had a small and relatively uneducated
Jewish community prior to the 1880s. Women received only
minimal Jewish education and were not voting members of
the community. The demography quickly shifted at the turn
of the century, as over two million Jews from Eastern Europe
arrived as immigrants between 1881 and 1924. They included
women who had been exposed to political organizing and
analysis, and who soon became major forces in the nascent
labor, socialist, anarchist, and communist movements in New
York and other cities in the early years of the 20th century. Rose
*Schneiderman, for example, was a leader of the *Women’s
Trade Union League, the campaign for women’s suffrage, and
the *International Ladies Garment Workers Union. However,
once those movements were institutionalized – as labor unions
and political parties – women were removed from leadership
positions. Separate women’s organizations also played an important
role within Jewish communal life in the United States;
the *National Council of Jewish Women, founded by Hannah
Greenebaum *Solomon at the 1893 World Parliament of Religions
in Chicago, initially provided educational and vocational
training for immigrants through a series of *”settlement
houses” established in impoverished urban areas.
The Impact of Feminism Since the 1960s
Jewish women, including Betty *Friedan, Gloria *Steinem,
and Letty Cottin *Pogrebin, have been in the forefront of the
Second Wave feminist movement in the United States that began
in the late 1960s. The re-emergence of a Jewish feminist
movement, as part of the Second Feminist wave, led to major
feminism
changes in women’s status in Judaism and to a flourishing of
Jewish feminist scholarship and theology. The most dramatic
change in Judaism for many centuries came with the equality
of women in synagogue worship, a movement led by American
Jewish feminists and which has gradually extended to Jewish
communities elsewhere in the world. The public honoring
of young women in the synagogue, the Bat Mitzvah, became
widespread by the late 1960s, followed by decisions by Reform,
Reconstructionist, and Conservative denominations of Judaism
to include women in the prayer quorum, call women to
the Torah, and allow women to lead synagogue worship services.
Perhaps the most striking transformation from previous
Jewish practice has been the ordination of women as rabbis
(see *Semikhah).
The first ordination of a woman as a Reform rabbi took
place in Germany in 1935; she was Regina *Jonas, murdered at
Auschwitz in 1944. Ordination of women as rabbis and cantors
was initiated in the United States in the 1970s by Reform Judaism
(1972) and was subsequently adopted by the Reconstructionist
(1974) and Conservative (1984 for rabbis, 1986 for cantors)
movements. Several hundred women rabbis and cantors
have been ordained thus far in the United States, and in Britain.
Commissions within the Reform, Reconstructionist, and
Conservative movements have revised the prayer book *liturgy
to use inclusive or gender-neutral language and include
references to the biblical matriarchs as well as patriarchs. Feminist
biblical commentaries, written from a range of religious
perspectives, have also been published (Frankel; Goldstein;
Kates and Reimer). Numerous collections of feminist rituals
and blessings to mark occasions in women’s lives have been
developed, including feminist Passover liturgies, prayers for
the birth and weaning of a baby, and ceremonies for naming
baby girls (see *Birth), egalitarian wedding services for hetero-
and homosexual couples (see *Marriage), and celebration of
*Rosh Ḥodesh, the New Moon, as a women’s holiday.
Within Orthodoxy at the beginning of the 21st century,
women now have opportunities for studying rabbinic texts,
heretofore limited to men. With training in particular areas of
Jewish law, women serve as legal advisors to Orthodox women
regarding issues connected with divorce and niddah observance.
Orthodox women have established women-only prayer
groups and institutions for studying rabbinic texts, and a few
Orthodox synagogues have started to permit women to read
from the Torah under certain circumstances and conditions,
deliver a sermon, and even lead the service. Several clauses
have been proposed for inclusion in the *ketubbah (religious
marriage contract) that would provide recourse for a woman
whose husband refuses to grant her a Jewish divorce, though
none has yet attained universal approval by Orthodox rabbis.
The problem of the *agunah remains a central issue for Orthodox
feminists, particularly in Israel, where the Orthodox rabbinate
has exclusive control over Jewish marriage and divorce.
Organizations of Orthodox women attempting to address the
problem of the agunah include the Jewish Orthodox Feminist
Alliance, and Getting Equitable Treatment.
ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 6 753