Jofa Recent Media

JOFA on the MapThis summer, JOFA Chicago launched the Ahuzat Nahala Beit Midrash, a new Torah learning initiative accessible to all members of the Chicago community. The beit midrash is ...

By Eliezer Hirsch The topic of the synagogue mehitzah has generated impassioned discussion spanning more than a century. Widely debated in the United States throughout the twentieth century, mehitzah (and ...

By Blu Greenberg Item: A Modern Orthodox community in Queens, New York, celebrating an aufruf, holds Shabbat services in the social hall of the local yeshiva. The opaque mehitzah separating ...

Walls and Mehitzot: A Big DifferenceBy Bat Sheva Marcus Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,And spills the upper boulders in the sun,And makes ...

By Rachel Kohl Finegold “But where will you sit?” That was the very first question I was asked by the very first reporter to interview me after I was hired ...

Brandeis University Press/HBI Series on Jewish Women, 2015, $40 (paperback), $34.99 (ebook) By Roberta Rosenberg Farber The family is an institution most of us take for granted. We grow up ...

Illuminations and Commentary by Debra BandHoneybee in the Garden, 2016, $49.95By Roselyn Bell Debra Band’s new volume of illuminated texts for Kabbalat Shabbat and Friday night home rituals is both ...

By Michael J. HarrisVallentine Mitchell, 2016, $36.94By Roselyn Bell What is Modern Orthodoxy? Michael J. Harris, a rabbi serving the Hampstead Synagogue in London as well as an academic with ...

By Yehudit Robinson I didn’t expect to say Kaddish with any regularity. When my father, Morris Robinson, died in late January 2020, I intended to recite only the three Kaddishes ...

By Michal S. RaucherIndiana University Press, 2020, $24.Reviewed by Roselyn Bell If you are tired of Ḥaredi women being portrayed as oppressed, uneducated, and subservient to their husbands, Michal Raucher’s ...

By Rabbi Daniel Sperber, Afterword by Rabbanit Dr. Michal TikochinskyMaharat/Urim Publishers, 2020, $27.95Review by Debbie WeissmanIn the Bible, there are many important female figures—although many fewer than the male figures—occupying ...

By Noam StadlanThe discussion of abortion in halakhah begins with the life of the mother. Pikuaḥ nefesh, the obligation to preserve life—in this case, the life of the mother—trumps every ...

By Nancy SinkoffWayne State University Press, 2020, $34.99Review by Roselyn BellLucy Dawidowicz was not a feminist, nor was she Orthodox, yet much in her life experience and in her intellectual ...

It’s Both Public and Private By Pam Scheininger The Call for Articles for this edition of the JOFA Journal began with this hook: “Our awareness of our human capacity for ...

In Shifra’s ArmsJewish Unplanned Pregnancy Serviceswww.jewishpregnancyhelp.orgHelpline: 888-360-5872Textline: 646-632-8547 JScreenSaliva-based screening for genetic diseases common among people of Jewish ancestryBased at Emory University’s Department of Human Geneticswww.jscreen.org IWSTHAB“I Was Supposed to ...