TorahMiTzion
Feature
|
In this Feature:
» Women Scholars of the Past
» Rav Hirsch
» Girls' Education in Israel
» Girls' Education in the US
» The 'Rav'
» The Teacher of Us All: Nechama Leibowitz
» Post High School Torah Study
» The 1970s and Onward
» Further Reading
Talmud Torah K’neged Kulam- The study of Torah is equivalent to all Mitzvot.
Women have now become an integral part of this most fundamental aspect of Judaism, the study of Torah itself. There are now yeshivas, day schools, and learning opportunities for girls and women from nursery through old age. Women can study Chumash, Nach, Halachah, Kabbalah, Jewish philosophy, and, in recent years, even Gemara.
Women Scholars of the Past
|
Though the modern era is the first in which Jewish women have studied on a broad scale, today’s women are not the first to have delved into the study of Torah. Throughout the ages of Jewish history there have been individual women who became noted for their accomplishments and their knowledge of Torah. A few examples include: Bruria (Eretz Yisrael, 2nd century), wife of the Talmudic sage R’ Meir, who is famous as the only woman in Talmudic literature whose views on halachic matters were seriously considered-and accepted-by the scholars of her time; Rashi’s learned daughters, Yocheved, Miriam, and Rachel (France, end of 11th-beginning of 12th c.), believed to have written responsa and to have put on tefillin daily; Rivkah bas Meir Tiktiner (first half of 16th c.), the first woman to write a Yiddish ethical work, the Meineket Rivkah (published posthumously in 1609); Asnat Barazani (Kurdistan, 1590-1670), leader of the yeshiva in Mosul and writer of a (lost) commentary on Proverbs; the poetess Rachel Morpurgo (Italy, 1790-1871), a descendant of the Ramchal who wrote Hebrew poetry and a Misheberach supplication for the return of the Karban Pesach; and Sarah Rebecca Rachel Leah Horowitz (Poland, 19th c.), who wrote the T’chineh Imohos (Supplication of the Matriarchs), a tri-lingual prayer for Shabbat Mevarchim ha-Chodesh.
These women were, however, the exceptions, not just in Jewish society but in the Christian and Muslim societies in which the Jews resided. While the Gemara itself is divided on the issue of women’s Torah learning-“Ben Azzai claims that each man must teach his daughter Torah, while Rabbi Eliezer argues that he who teaches his daughters Torah perpetuates foolishness” (Talmud Bavli, Masechet Sotah)-as a practical matter, the question was generally not relevant to the average woman of any religion. Jews, including Jewish women, were generally more literate than their host societies, but women who did read were far more likely to read Yiddish or Ladino than Hebrew, and their Hebrew knowledge was unlikely to exceed that needed for saying prayers.
Rav Hirsch and his Legacy: Germany, Poland, Britain |
All this changed in the modern era, when girls’ education became more common in general European society, as well as in Jewish society under the auspices the growing Reform movement.
|
|
The educational standards established by Hirsch- secular as well as Judaic studies, schools for girls as well as boys-have served as the philosophic and pedagogic foundation of modern Orthodox Jewish education. The legacy of Hirsch can be detected within the bais yaakovs, yeshivas, and day schools that have been established throughout the Jewish world.
In fact, the effect was almost immediate. On Shabbat Chanukah 1915, a Polish refugee woman in Viennaheard a shiur quoting Hirsch and began to then examine his Horeb and The Nineteen Letters. That young woman was Sarah Schneirer (1883-1935), who credited these works as her inspiration for what became her life’s work: founding the Bais Yaakov movement. Schneirer was an unlikely revolutionary - a pious seamstress living in Poland. Yet she recognized what even the rabbinic leaders of her native land had yet failed to grasp: the growing dichotomy between Jewish boys and girls. Unlike their German counterparts, Eastern European Orthodox girls received no formal Jewish education, and many even attended Polish state schools. Sarah Schneirer encapsulated this crisis when she wrote in her diary, “While the fathers of those girls are probably studying Gemara and the mothers poring over Tze’enah u-Re’enah [a religious text in Yiddish geared for women], leaders of a Polish Jewish girls’ club were turning on lights on the Sabbath.” In response, Schneirer sought to create a Jewish educational system modeled on Hirsch but that would be accepted in the more conservative Eastern European community. Schneirer received the blessing of the Belzer Rebbe (R’ Yissacher Dov of Belz, 1845-1927) for her endeavor, although he forbade the daughters of Belzer Chassidim from sending their own daughters. However, the Chafetz Chaim (R’Yisrael Meir haCohen Kagan, 1838-1933) threw the weight of his rabbinic approval behind the heretofore unheard of concept of systematic schooling for Eastern European Orthodox girls. The Gerrer Rebbe(the Beis Yisrael of Ger, R’ Yisrael Alter, 1894-1977)also became a strong supporter of the movement. Feeling it incumbent upon her to transmit R’ Hirsch’s legacy, Sarah Schneirer taught Chumash based on Hirsch’s commentary (even requiring the study of German so as to learn Hirsch in the original), and lectured on The Nineteen Letters to each seminary class. The comprehensive seven-year curriculum also included Tefillah, Tanach, and Jewish history, laws, and customs, all taught in Yiddish, as well some secular studies, including selected German literary classics, and Polish to the extent mandated by the government. Talmud, the core of the boys’ yeshiva system, was not taught, in keeping with the traditional view that girls ought not study this text. Schneirer was aided in her work by R’ Dr. Leo (Shmuel) Deutschlander of Berlin, who in turn brought in other teachers from Germany, graduates of R’ Hirsch’s educational system
Beginning in 1917 with one small school in Cracow, the system grew rapidly. Although Bais Yaakov, as part of Agudas Yisrael, took a non-Zionist position, they even sponsored hachsharot-preparatory training centers for young women who wanted to settle in Palestine. Support for Bais Yaakov in Britain and the United States came primarily from more liberal Orthodox elements of the Jewish community; in the United States, this support was under the auspices of the American Beth Jacob Committee, which included R’ Leo Jung (1892-1987; his wife’s sister taught at the Cracow seminary), Cyrus Adler (1863-1940, president of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America), and philanthropist Frieda Schiff Warburg (1876-1958). By the end of the 1930s, on the eve of World War II, there were about two hundred and fifty schools in the network, with over forty thousand pupils.
In 1925, a Bais Yaakov Teacher’s Seminary was established in Cracow, enabling the system to become self-sustaining. To lead the seminary, Schneirer turned to another “product” of the Hirschian legacy, German-educated Dr. Judith Grunfeld (née Rosenbaum, 1902-1998), who herself had attended the high school founded by R’ Hirsch. Grunfeld later married R’ Isidor Grunfeld (1900-1975), who would become Dayan Grunfeld of the British Chief Rabbinate after the couple’s move to England, where Grunfeld herself served as headmistress of London’s Jewish Secondary School, “Shefford” (a town in the British countryside where Grunfeld cared for the student body of the JSS, as well as refugee children from the Kindertransport, during WWII), and the Avigdor Primary School. Along with Avigdor Schonfeld (1880-1930), who created the Jewish Secondary School Movement in Britain, and his son, Solomon Schonfeld (1912-1984), who expanded it, Judith Grunfeld is credited as one of the primary architects of Britain’s modern day school system.
Girls’ Education in Israel
|
R’ Hirsch’s legacy played a part in the development of girls’ education in Israelas well. Education in the Old Yishuv, which numbered about 25,000 in 1880, initially resembled the traditional educational system of the immigrants’ home communities. Thus, the East European Jews maintained the traditional cheder, Talmud Torah, and yeshiva, with Yiddish as the language of instruction, and the Sephardim sent their boys to the kutub, where they studied in Ladino or Arabic. A little Hebrew was taught, mostly as the “holy tongue.” Few girls, if any, attended the schools. The first school for girls in Israel opened in Jerusalemin 1854. A decade later, the French Baron Lionel de Rothschild assumed sponsorship of the school, renaming it the “Evelina de Rothschild School” after his recently deceased daughter.
|
|
Flora Randegger settled twice in the Land of Israel. She first arrived there in 1856, one of the few to settle in Israelas a single woman. Her goal was to establish an educational institution for girls that would combine limudei kodesh with the study of secular subjects, including European languages and agriculture. But she was unable to achieve her goal. Several months after her arrival, she met with philanthropist Moses Montefiore, who promised to secure her a teaching position in a Jerusalemgirls’ school. This too failed to materialize. Flora married and the couple left Jerusalem, ultimately returning to Trieste. They returned in 1864 when Flora was invited to serve as principal of Rothschild. However, opposition to the school from the Yishuv rabbinate prevented Randegger from attaining this position, and due to various difficulties, she and her husband returned to Trieste a year later. Despite all her disappointments, she wrote in the diary she kept for over twenty years that, given the opportunity, she would have returned to Israela third time.
Some years later, the Evelina de Rothschild School was transferred to the authority of the Anglo-Jewish Association, which changed its language of instruction from French to English. In 1900, the Association, which had continued to expand the Rothschild school, appointed Annie Landau as its principal.
Hannah Judith (Annie Edith) Landau (1873-1945) had been born in London to a strictly Orthodox family, who sent her to the Jewish High School in Frankfurt to receive a traditional Jewish education. There she studied with Mendel Hirsch, son of R’ Samson Raphael. Thus Landau, who led the first girls’ school in Israel, guiding the formative State’s early generations of women, was also influenced by Hirsch. Annie Landau combined ardent British patriotism (and true British etiquette) with a passion for Torah and Mitzvot, an enthusiasm she transmitted to her students throughout her lifetime as principal of Rothschild. Even religious families who had initially boycotted the school ultimately sent their daughters to study under the tutelage of the strictly observant “Miss Landau.” By 1913, “Miss Landau’s girls” numbered nearly six hundred; many others were turned away for lack of space. The beloved Landau, whose home became virtually a salon for the English and Jewish elite of Eretz Yisrael, was often referred to as the “Queen of Jerusalem,” and her seventieth birthday celebration was attended by hundreds of the leading members of Yishuv society.
From 1918 until the establishment of the State, the Jewish community began to establish a nationwide network of schools for both boys and girls, religious and secular. By 1920, there were two recognized categories of Jewish schools in Palestine: “General” and “Mizrachi”; by the eve of Israel’s independence, Mizrachi schools represented twenty-four percent of all Yishuv schools. The country’s first Bais Yaakov was established in 1934, the first school in what would become a nationwide haredi girls’ educational network encompassing fifteen thousand students in over one hundred institutions. In 1953, the Mizrachi network, which then encompassed about sixty thousand students and three thousand teachers, became the official “State Religious Schools” component of the national school system. Educational opportunities for religious girls have since increased dramatically: From four girls’ high schools in the early decades of the State, there are today about seventy girls’ yeshiva high schools, forty-five ulpanot (boarding high schools) and fifteen midrashot (post high-school institutions) in cities, towns, and yishuvim throughout Israel.
Girls’ Education in the U.S.
|
In the United States, there were few opportunities for Jewish girls to receive a religious education prior to the twentieth century. Different educational movements were initiated and abandoned, each sponsored by the ensuing wave of American Jewish immigration-the Sephardic-run Sunday Schools (initiated by Rebecca Gratz), the German Reform-sponsored congregational day schools and Hebrew Free Schools, and the Eastern-European-style Talmud Torahs. But while the first boys’ yeshiva opened in 1886, (Etz Chayim, the forerunner of Yeshiva University), girls had to wait over forty more years for their own day school.
|
|
In 1929, the Shulamith School for Girls was established by Nacha Rivkin (1900-1988) to provide a Jewish and secular curriculum akin to that of boys’ day schools. It was an unusual combination-an American Mizrachi endeavor which was modeled on the Agudah-sponsored Bais Yaakov movement. It synthesized the concept of Jewish education for girls developed by Sarah Schneirer and her colleagues with a religious Zionist, modern Orthodox philosophy. Shulamith was guided during its early years by Judith (Berlin) Lieberman (1904-1978), grandaughter of the Netziv (R’ Naftali Tzvi Yehuda Berlin, 1817-1893), daughter of Mizrachi leader R’ Meir Berlin (Bar-Ilan, 1880-1949) and wife of the Jewish Theological Seminary’s rector R’ Saul Lieberman (1898-1983), who became the school’s Hebrew principal in 1941 and then served as dean of Hebrew Studies, educating successive generations of “her girls” for nearly 30 years.
The first coeducational elementary school, the Conservative-orientedCenterAcademyof the Brooklyn Jewish Center, had been established in 1927. The first Orthodox coeducational elementary school, the Yeshiva of Flatbush, was founded the following year. In 1937, R’ Joseph Lookstein (1902-1979) established the RamazSchoolin Manhattan. That same year, Rav Joseph Soloveitchik, who had accepted the position of Chief Rabbi of Bostona few years before, founded the MaimonidesSchool. The Rav gave his personal approbation to the Jewish education of girls, both in “his” school and on a communal level.
Shulamith, Yeshiva of Flatbush, Ramaz and Maimonides were Orthodox, but all were committed to “bi-cultural education… the integration of Judaism and Americanism” (in the words of Ramaz founder R’ Joseph Lookstein). All emphasized religious Zionism, a Hebrew-oriented (rather than Yiddish) Jewish Studies department, and an academically demanding secular education that was geared to future college attendance.
|
|
On the other hand, 1937 also saw the opening of the first Bais Yaakov (or Beth Jacob) on American shores, an elementary school established in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Williamsburg by Sarah Schneirer’s protégée, Rebbetzin Vichna (Eisen) Kaplan (d. 1986). In transplanting the paradigm of educational institutions for girls that combined rigorous textual study with moral instruction and strict religious observance, Kaplanwas aided by other former students of Schneirer, including Basia (Epstein) Bender (d. 1996) and American-raised Chava (Weinberg) Pincus (1914-2002) who had traveled to Cracow during the inter-war years to attend Schneirer’s school.
They, in turn, were following in the footsteps of Fruma Leah (Pollack) Mandel (b. 1882), who in 1923 had initiated Friday night learning sessions for religious girls at her home in Brooklyn’s Brownsville neighborhood. Like her role model, Sarah Schneirer, Mandel was caught between parents who deemed her classes “too conservative” and those who deemed her innovation “too radical.” Nevertheless, her Bnos Yaakov groups soon had over two hundred participants, ranging from “Buds” (five- to seven-year-olds) to Shomrei Hadas (young married women). The groups spread to other communities, including New Haven, Connecticut and Elizabeth, New Jersey. In 1935, Mandel founded the first haredi girls’ elementary school in America, “Bais Rochel” of Williamsburg, with fifteen students, and in 1936, an evening high school and seminary, which merged with the Bais Yaakov institutions after Kaplan’s arrival in New Yorkthe following year.
By the late 1940s, girls who sought to continue on for an Orthodox high school education had a small but diverse number of options. The first Bais Yaakov high school was established by Rebbetzins Kaplan and Bender in Williamsburgin 1948. The Central Yeshiva High Schoolfor Girls, a Mizrachi girls’ school like Shulamith, was established that same year as the first women’s component of Yeshiva University. New York’s coeducational institutions also established high schools, Ramaz in 1945, and the Yeshivah of Flatbush in 1950.
Each of these schools generated many others. In North Americatoday, it is rare to find a girl from an Orthodox family who does not attend a day school or yeshiva; there is a school to fit the ideological and intellectual bent of every student.
The “Rav” |
Rav Joseph Ber (Yosef Dov) Soloveitchik (1903-1993), the authority of modern Orthodoxy, in life, for most of the twentieth century, and in legacy, ever since, provided a halachik and philosophic basis for the continued development of Jewish education for religious girls.
As noted previously, in 1937 R’ Soloveitchik founded the Maimonides Schoolin Boston. He insisted that female students receive precisely the same education as their brothers - mandating that they too study Gemara, specifically Seder Moed and Masechet Chulin, which contain practical halachot. According to some of the Rav’s students, R’ Soloveitchik saw this not as an innovation but as the natural extension of the Chafetz Chayim’s original endorsement, applied in an era where additional education had become necessary as a counterforce to greater crises of faith in the Jewish community. He felt that as women’s secular education had increased, it was necessary to enhance their Jewish knowledge proportionately, lest their religious identity pale in comparison to the intellectual stimulation of Western culture. Thus he wholeheartedly lent his support to the expansion and flourishing of women’s Torah study, and in 1977, gave the opening shiur at the inauguration of Stern College’s new beit midrash program.
The Teacher of Us All: Nechama Leibowitz(1905-1997)
|
No discussion of women’s Torah learning is complete without a reference to Nechama Leibowitz.
Born in 1905 in Riga, Latvia, Leibowitz was educated in Berlin and made aliyah with her husband when she completed her doctorate. As a woman of both unusual “people skills” and unusual intelligence, Nechama was a natural teacher, who began training other teachers while she was yet in her twenties, and later published Chumash teaching guides. Her unique contribution to the study of Chumash lay in her ability to make the Biblical commentaries accessible and comprehensible to students of different backgrounds. The “teachers’ teacher” traveled around the country on buses, in taxis, and on airplanes, teaching Chumash and commentaries to teachers, new immigrants, soldiers, kibbutzniks and thousands of ordinary people, though she was also appointed a professor at Tel-Aviv University in 1968. Between 1954 and 1961 she published “Studies in Parshat HaShavua,” which laid out her unique perspective on the commentaries of each parsha, from Rashi to the most modern. (These were subsequently printed in book format and translated into several languages.) Nechama Leibowitz received the Israel Prize in the Field of Education in 1956.
In 1942, some of Leibowitz’s students asked if they could continue studying her material even after the school year had ended. She mailed them her worksheets (gilyonot), filled with challenging questions, and personally checked every one of the answers. Word spread. Eventually this “correspondence course” grew to include thousands of participants: young and old, religious and secular, kibbutzniks and city-dwellers, from throughout the Landof Israel. Yet the humble Nechama Leibowitz insisted that everyone call her “Nechama” and refused to let newspapers interview her or to have people come just to observe her, declaring, “I am not a museum!” She died in 1997 at the age of 92. In accordance with her request, on her gravestone was written only “Nechama Leibowitz: Teacher.”
Post-High School Torah Study
|
In the early and mid-twentieth century, there were few options available for women who sought to continue their Torah studies beyond high school. The few post-high school institutions included the first Bais Yaakov Teachers Seminary, established in Brooklyn in 1945, and the American institution most directly influenced by the Hirschian derech:the Rika Breur Teacher’s Seminary, named for the wife of its founder, R’ Hirsch’s grandson R’ Joseph Breuer (1882-1980). Like his maternal grandfather, R’ Breuer saw the education of women as integral to Orthodox society (he once noted with pride that Sarah Schneirer’s own inspiration had come from the legacy of R’ Hirsch), and upon his arrival in Washington Heights during the 1930s, prioritized the building of a seminary as fundamental to the newly transplanted yekke community.
|
|
In 1954, Stern College for Women was established by Yeshiva University as America’s first liberal arts college for women under Jewish auspices. Its dual curriculum of Jewish and general disciplines was modeled after YeshivaCollege, the men’s undergraduate school that YU had established fifteen years earlier. For the first time, there was sufficient interest among Orthodox families to warrant the establishment of a school that would provide observant women with an environment where they could study advanced secular and Jewish studies together without compromising their religious standards.From thirty-two students, Stern enrollment rose to five hundred during its first few years.
About a decade later, Irish-born oleh Dr. Yehuda Cooperman realized that religious high school girls in Israelhad developed expectations of high-level Jewish studies in their students but provided them with no forum for furthering their Jewish education beyond high school. Teachers’ seminaries existed, but they were not challenging enough for many of these young women hungry for further Jewish knowledge. Consequently, Cooperman created the Jerusalem College for Women, popularly known as the Michlalah, emphasizing close textual analysis of Tanach. Although technically a teachers’ seminary, it set a higher standard than most seminaries, and many young Israeli women attended more for their own intellectual and spiritual development than to train as teachers. A one-year program for Americans was also created.
|
|
The 1970s and Onward
|
After the Six-Day War, several factors contributed to the further development of women’s higher Jewish learning in Israel. The “search for meaning” sparked during the 1960s, which also led to the beginning of the ba’al teshuvah movement, meant that throngs of people were searching for a new understanding of values and of their ethnic identity. American rabbis who had come to Israelin the wake of the war began to open yeshivas for male returnees to Judaism-and their newly religious female counterparts craved the same resources. Young women born into Orthodox families also found their Jewish education to be limited and so began to come to Israel after high school for a year of intense Torah study and spiritual growth.
R’ Chaim Brovender, a doctoral student in Semitics at the Hebrew University in the late 1960s, helped create the first ba’al teshuvah yeshivas for men and women, in conjunction with the Itri yeshiva. Unlike that of Michlalah or BJJ, the curriculum for R’ Brovender’s female students included Talmud as well as Tanach. In 1976 he founded the Bruria Beit Midrash, using the (traditionally male) chavruta model of the yeshiva. This eventually became Midreshet Lindenbaum, which was integrated into the Ohr Torah Institutions in 1986.
Stern College too responded to the currents of the time. In 1977 Rav Soloveitchik gave the first Gemara shiur to the newly established Stern Beit Midrash, initiating the revamped Judaic Studies program at Stern, a response to their more learned student body’s desire for the most advanced Torah education. Then in 1979, R’ David Silber, a musmach of Yeshiva University’s Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, established the Drisha Institute for Jewish Education in New York City, a non-denominational institute where women could study and analyze texts to an unprecedented degree. Drisha initiated a Scholar’s Circle Program, where women dedicate three years to intensive study of Talmud and halachah.
But it is Israel which has been at the forefront of the movement towards advanced Torah studies for women. During the early 1980s, Chana Safrai, now professor of Jewish Thought at Hebrew Universityand the Shalom Hartman Insitute, established the Judith Lieberman Institute, which broke new ground in Israeli women’s mastery of Jewish texts. Currently, in addition to Midreshet Lindenbaum, which came to encompass the high-level Bruria Scholars Program, as well as a post-high school seminary and a Hesder-type program for religious girls in the IDF, two primary institutions for advanced Torah learning for women are Matan and Nishmat. Matan was founded in 1988 by Malka Bina, a Michlalah graduate who had previously taught Talmud at Bruria. Matan provides women the opportunity to engage in textual study of Torah she-b’chtav andTorah she-be’al peh, and offers the three-year Talmudic Institute, where women receive a stipend enabling them to engage in full-time study of Gemara and Halachah, a Scholars program, a graduate program in Tanach, a mother-daughter pre-bat mitzvah learning series, and classes for the general public. Chana Henkin founded Nishmat in 1990 to provide a forum for Israeli and American women of varying ages and Jewish backgrounds to gain entrée into the world of Jewish law-to acquire an understanding not just of the “what” of Halachah but of the “why,” the body of reasoning, underlying it. “The Rabbanit” and other scholars guide students, from the beginners’ class through the Machon Gavoha “Kollel,” towards a deeper understanding of Torah.
Some other institutions where women study in a beit midrash framework are: the Bar-Ilan University Midrasha where, in addition to their university studies, women undertake a Jewish Studies program parallel to the Bar-Ilan men’s kollel program; Beit Midrash Hagavohah l’Nashim at Kibbutz Migdal Oz where young women study for a year before national service; and the Kibbutz Hadati women’s Hesder program combining army and study at Kibbutz Ein Hanatziv. In addition, there are fifteen religious Zionist post-high school midrashot, where girls do not learn Talmud but engage in serious textual study of Tanach and its commentaries, as well as learning Halachah and Hashkafah.
And as they have since the founding of Michlalah and BJJ, 18-year-olds from all streams of Orthodoxy, from the U.S., Canada, South America, Europe, South Africa and Australia, continue to flock to schools with names like Midreshet Moriah, Orot College, Machon Gold, MMY, Midreshet Harova, Bnos Chava, Maor, and Hadar, for the intensity and excitement of a “year in Israel.”
The unprecedented number and quality of women Torah scholars has also led ultimately to the creation of formal roles for women,as learned women have taken on new positions in Jewish life, especially those which enable them to guide and assist other religious women. This phenomenon is exemplified by the development of the Yo’atzot Halachah (Halachic advisor) and the To’anot Beit Din (Rabbinic court advocate):
|
|
In 1990, R’ Shlomo Riskin of Efrat initiated the first course to qualify women as advocates in the Israeli rabbinic courts. Initially, Israel’s chief rabbis had to approve a change in the law from one requiring rabbinic advocates to be graduates of a “yeshiva” (which excluded women) to one that insisted only that the candidate come from any recognized Torah institution (which includes women). Since then, after passing the advocate tests of the Israeli Rabbinic Court, these women can represent women-or men-in divorce cases, and particularly, can defend agunot. By 2000, there were sixty such advocates. They staff the Yad l’Isha Legal Aid Center and Hotline, established in 1997 by R’ Riskin and attorney Susan Weiss, where agunotcome to be guided through the divorce process.
Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, established in New York City in 1999 by Rabbi Avi Weiss, introduced a fellowship program to train both men and women as religious leaders in the community. (The Yeshiva does not offer rabbinic ordination to women; women who complete the program can attain the title of madricha ruchanit). Several of these women have gone on to fill educational and pastoral roles in New York City institutions.
Women have also begun to write based on their studies of both Torah and Halachah. Torah of the Mothers: Contemporary Jewish Women Read Classical Jewish Texts (2000)and Jewish Legal Writings by Women (1998) are recently published volumes which give voice to the new insights of women Torah scholars.
As Pirkei Avot says, “Turn it and turn it, for everything is encompassed within it,” so the saga of women’s Torah learning is a story that continues to be told. Jewish women the world over now devote their hearts and minds to the inexhaustible and eternal wellspring of the sacred texts that define the Jewish people as a nation.
For Further Reading
|
§ Abramowitz, Leah. Tales of Nechama (2003).
§ Benisch, Pearl. Carry Me in Your Heart: The Life and Legacy of Sarah Schenirer(2003).
§ Dansky, Miriam. Rebbetzin Grunfeld: The Life of Judith Grunfeld, Courageous Pioneer of the Bais Yaakov Movement and Jewish Rebirth(1994).
§ Elper, Ora Wiskind, and Susan Handelman. Torah of the Mothers: Contemporary Jewish Women Read Classical Jewish Texts (2000).
§ Ehrenpreis, Yaelle et al. From Zelmanowitz to Selman: Four Generations of an American Jewish Family (forthcoming).
§ Finkelman, Shimon. “Mrs. Fruma Leah Mandel.” Jewish Observer, vol. 27, no. 10(Dec. 2004).
§ Furstenberg, Rochelle. “The Flourishing of Higher Jewish Learning for Women.” JerusalemCenterfor Public Affairs 429 (May 1, 2000).
§ Gurock, Jeffrey S. The Men and Women of Yeshiva: Higher Education, Orthodoxy and American Judaism(1988); Ramaz: School, Community, Scholarship and Orthodoxy (1989);and “Resistors and Accomodators: Varieties of Orthodox Rabbis in America, 1886-1983,” in The American Rabbinate: A Century of Continuity and Change 1883-1983, edited by Jacob Rader Marcus & Abraham J. Peck (1983).
§ Halpern, Micah, and Chana Safrai. Jewish Legal Writings by Women (1998).
§ Hyman, Paula, and Dalia Ofer. Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia (2005).
§ Joselit, Jenna Weismann. New York’s Jewish Jews(1990).
§ Jung, Leo, ed. The Jewish Library: Volume 3: The Jewish Woman (3rd series) (1934).
§ Katz, Y. Levine. “The Woman who Translated the Haggadah into Italian” (Hebrew). Kolech 67: 2-4.
§ Levy, Bryna Jocheved. “Sense and Sensibilities: Women and Talmud Torah.” Jewish Action,vol. 59, no. 2(Winter 1998).
§ Peerless, Shmuel. To Study and to Teach: The Methodology of Nechama Leibowitz. (2003).
§ Rubin, Devora, comp. Daughters of Destiny: Women Who Revolutionized Jewish Life and Torah Education (1988).
§ Unterman, Yael. Nechama Leibowitz - Teacher (forthcoming).
§ Wolowelsky, Joel B., ed. Women and the Study of Torah (2001).
Submitted: 1/Apr/2005
Comments
on this news item:
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
Prof. Judaic Studies