Women in Jewish Law
Berkovits was critical of the lack of rights a married Jewish woman has in relation to her husband in issues of marriage and divorce. Rabbi Prof. David Hartman said in a March, 2009, lecture about Berkovits that Berkovits was deeply concerned with the treatment of women in Jewish life, law, and practice. He affirmed the equity of women and men within the institution of Jewish marriage, but never advocated any abrogation of existing Jewish law.
Berkovits called for the ethical courage on the part of Jewish legal authorities to put what already exists in principle into practice. He was a major inspiration for many traditional Jewish women who sought to carve out a more equitable position within the boundaries of the Jewish law.
Read more about this topic: Eliezer Berkovits
Famous quotes containing the words women, jewish and/or law:
“The especial genius of women I believe to be electrical in movement, intuitive in function, spiritual in tendency.”
—Margaret Fuller (18101850)
“For every nineteenth-century middle-class family that protected its wife and child within the family circle, there was an Irish or a German girl scrubbing floors in that home, a Welsh boy mining coal to keep the home-baked goodies warm, a black girl doing the family laundry, a black mother and child picking cotton to be made into clothes for the family, and a Jewish or an Italian daughter in a sweatshop making ladies dresses or artificial flowers for the family to purchase.”
—Stephanie Coontz (20th century)
“Every formula which expresses a law of nature is a hymn of praise to God.”
—Maria Mitchell (18181889)