Women and Judaism

Tova Warburg Sinensky “We are commanded to love God, exalted be He, to meditate upon and closely examine His mitzvot, His commandments, and His works,...

Two readers respond to Michael Broyde's recent article on time-bound commandments. Leah Sarna critiques Broyde's omission of female scholarship, and Avi Siegal argues that Broyde's unifying theory skews the data.

Sarah Rindner draws on L. Frank Baum's Wizard of Oz, and what the classic story says about the role of women in Orthodox Judaism.

Leah Sarna argues that this is the Passover to tell the stories of enslaved Jewish women: of the victims of October 7, who were and likely still are subjected to sexual violence, and of the heroic women in the era of the Exodus, who fought to ensure the perpetuation of the Jewish people.

Elli Fischer contributes to the Lehrhaus Symposium on the recent OU statement regarding female clergy.

Rachel Levmore asks whether Internet feuds are the proper way to adjudicate halakhic matters.

Leah Sarna addresses the perceived disconnect between the ideal Torah U-Madda lifestyle and the gendered reality of advanced Torah study for women.

Yaakov Jaffe explains how Biblical grammar and parables come together in Amos to teach us about women's Talmud Torah.

How successful is the new book, Reclaiming Dignity: A Guide to Tzniut for Men and Women, at setting forth a new Torah-based vision for modesty? Laurie Novick offers a careful review, carefully considering both the personal essays and halakhic/hashkafic analyses set forward in this important work.

The new book Reclaiming Dignity is taking the Anglo Jewish world by storm. Why? Emmanuel Bloch, who wrote his dissertation on the subject of tzeniut, argues that the work capitalizes on and extends a new, revolutionary halakhic and conceptual framework for tzeniut that has emerged only in recent years - one that offers a lens to the “soul of contemporary Jewish Orthodoxy.”