June 2022

By Mira NiculescuI never saw myself as a feminist. That’s because I never had to. I was born in the 1980s in Paris into a secular family. I was raised by an old angry Romanian intellectual (my father) and a nurse/social worker who was really a hidden intellectual (my mother). I never had to be […]

By Beverly Gertler The Unorthodox, a film sponsored by JOFA in the 2019 Israeli Film Festival at the Marlene Meyerson Jewish Community Center in Manhattan,. is based on the true story of the early days of the Shas political party in Israel. As I watched the film, I found myself wondering why JOFA had chosen

By Dvorah Levy As a psychotherapist, I am the instrument of my work.In addition to my degree and education, my own personal experiences and the work I’ve done with myself are what I bring to the individuals and couples who entrust me to help them with their pain and their challenges.I also bring my relationship

By Abby KoganMy teaching experiences began in May of last year when my synagogue’s youth group was planning to do a joint tikkun leil Shavuot program with one of the synagogues in the neighborhood. They wanted teenagers to teach—not only to their peers, but to the adults there too. The theme chosen for the tikkun

“My Body, Whose Decision?” On July 29, at the Sixth Street Synagogue in New York City, JOFA held a panel on reproductive choice, looking at the issue from medical, halakhic, and legal perspectives. Dr. Susan Lobel spoke from her experience as an OB-GYN, describing the medical issues involved in abortion and fertility. Dr. Elana Stein-Hain

By Yonina Bendheim Jacobson A few Shabbatot ago, while speaking about Parashat Korah, the rabbi of our shul took the opportunity to exhort all of the members of the congregation to “stay in [their] lane[s].” He implored them to limit their aspirations to their determined lot, to be happy and content with their place, and

By Karen Miller Jackson Women’s Torah learning, teaching, and leadership is booming in Israel today. The number of beit midrash programs that exist and the number of women studying in them have increased significantly over the past few years. The most significant stride has occurred in the study of halakhah. Training in hilkhot niddah (family

TITLE T/KBy Daphne Lazar PriceI’m so excited about the editorial board’s choice to focus on women’s learning in this issue of the JOFA Journal. The timing is hardly coincidental. As we near the end of the seven-year daf yomi cycle, JOFA wanted to honor and to call attention to the proliferation of women’s scholarship in

Learning from Male and Female Teachers, Teaching Male and Female Students DifferentiallyBy Sharon FreundelFor many years, in the girls’ Tanakh classes that I taught at a Modern Orthodox day school, I would help my students learn how to write and deliver a d’var Torah, which one student would present each Friday. The girls would sit

Sarah Schenirer and the Bais Yaakov Movement: A Revolution in the Name of TraditionBy Naomi SeidmanThe Littman Library of Jewish Civilization/ Liverpool University Press, 2019, $44.95By Roselyn BellIf one wanted to trace the beginnings of formal Jewish education for women in the modern era, one could do no better than to read Naomi Seidman’s Sarah