Jewish Feminism - Participation in Observances

Participation in Observances

In its modern form, the movement can be traced to the early 1970s in the United States. According to Judith Plaskow, who has focused on feminism in Reform Judaism, the main issues for early Jewish feminists in these movements were the exclusion from the all-male prayer group or minyan, the exemption from positive time-bound mitzvot, and women's inability to function as witnesses and to initiate divorce.

According to historian Paula Hyman, two articles published in the 1970s on the role of women in Judaism were particularly influential: "The Unfreedom of Jewish Women," published in 1970 in the Jewish Spectator by its editor, Trude Weiss-Rosmarin, which criticized the treatment of women in Jewish law, and an article by Rachel Adler, then an Orthodox Jew and currently a professor at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, called "The Jew Who Wasn't There: Halacha and the Jewish Woman," published in 1971 in Davka, a countercultural magazine.

In 1972, a group of ten New York feminists calling themselves Ezrat Nashim (the women's section in a synagogue, but also "women's help"), took the issue of equality for women to the 1972 convention of the Conservative movement's Rabbinical Assembly, presenting a document on 14 March that they named the "Call for Change." The rabbis received the document in their convention packets, but Ezrat Nashim presented it during a meeting with the rabbis' wives.

The Call for Change demanded that women be accepted as witnesses before Jewish law, be considered as bound to perform all mitzvot, be allowed full participation in religious observances, have equal rights in marriage and be allowed to initiate divorce, be counted in the minyan, and be permitted to assume positions of leadership in the synagogue and within the general Jewish community. Paula Hyman, who was a member of Ezrat Nashim, wrote that: "We recognized that the subordinate status of women was linked to their exemption from positive time-bound mitzvot (commandments), and we therefore accepted increased obligation as the corollary of equality." Eleven years later, in October 1983, the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS), the main educational institution of the Conservative Movement, announced its decision to accept women into the Rabbinical School. Hyman took part in the vote as a member of the JTS faculty.

Today, women are ordained as rabbis and cantors, and can read from the Torah in front of the congregation and be counted in the minyan, have full participation in religious observances, and be accepted as witnesses before Jewish law, in all types of Judaism except Orthodox Judaism. Women are still not allowed to initiate divorce in Conservative as well as Orthodox Judaism, and are not considered as bound to perform all mitzvot by the Orthodox. However, women have assumed positions of leadership in the synagogue and within the general Jewish community within all types of Judaism.

In 1955, the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards of Conservative Judaism declared that women were eligible to chant the blessings before and after the reading of the Torah. In 1973, the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards passed a takkanah (ruling) allowing women to count in a minyan equally with men. Also in 1973, the United Synagogue of America, Conservative Judaism’s congregational association (now called the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism) resolved to allow women to participate in synagogue rituals and to promote equal opportunity for women for positions of leadership, authority, and responsibility in congregational life. In 1974, the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards adopted a series of proposals that equalized men and women in all areas of ritual, including serving as prayer leaders.

In 1976, the first women-only Passover seder was held in Esther M. Broner's New York City apartment and led by her, with 13 women attending, including Gloria Steinem, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, and Phyllis Chesler. Esther Broner and Naomi Nimrod created a women's haggadah for use at this seder. In the spring of 1976 Esther Broner published this “Women’s Haggadah” in Ms. magazine, later publishing it as a book in 1994; this haggadah is meant to include women where only men had been mentioned in traditional haggadahs, and it features the Wise Women, the Four Daughters, the Women’s Questions, the Women’s Plagues, and a women-centric “Dayenu”. The original Women's Seder has been held with the Women's Haggadah every year since 1976, and women-only seders are now held by some congregations as well. Some seders (including the original Women's Seder, but not limited to women-only seders) now set out a cup for the prophet Miriam as well as the traditional cup for the prophet Elijah, sometimes accompanied by a ritual to honor Miriam. According to Jewish feminist writer Tamara Cohen, the practice of filling a cup with water to symbolize Miriam’s inclusion in the seder originated at a Rosh Chodesh group in Boston in 1989. Miriam is associated with water because rabbis attribute to Miriam the well that traveled with the Israelites throughout their wandering in the desert. In the Book of Numbers, the well dries up immediately following Miriam’s death. Furthermore, some Jews include an orange on the seder plate. The orange represents the fruitfulness for all Jews when all marginalized peoples are included, particularly women and gay people. An incorrect but common rumor says that this tradition began when a man told Susannah Heschel that a woman belongs on the bimah as an orange on the seder plate; however, it actually began when in the early 1980s, while when speaking at Oberlin College Hillel, Susannah Heschel was introduced to an early feminist Haggadah that suggested adding a crust of bread on the seder plate, as a sign of solidarity with Jewish lesbians (as some would say there's as much room for a lesbian in Judaism as there is for a crust of bread on the seder plate). Heschel felt that to put bread on the seder plate would be to accept that Jewish lesbians and gay men violate Judaism like chametz violates Passover. So, at her next seder, she chose an orange as a symbol of inclusion of gays and lesbians and others who are marginalized within the Jewish community. In addition, each orange segment had a few seeds that had to be spit out – a gesture of spitting out and repudiating the homophobia of traditional Judaism.

The first female president of a major Orthodox Jewish synagogue was Gail Billig in 1997, at Congregation Ahavath Torah in Englewood, N.J.