A sign at the ice cream parlor may caution men and women not to lick cones in public, but the warning didn\’t stop Jewish zealots vandalizing the shop in Jerusalem\’s main ultra-Orthodox neighborhood.
A liberal Orthodox rabbinic group in the United States voted down a proposal to admit women members. The International Rabbinic Fellowship, founded by Rabbis Avi Weiss and Marc Angel of New York, voted down by what is being called \”a close vote\” a proposal to admit women as full or limited members, The New York Jewish Week reported. The Dec. 20 vote came after what the president of the organization, Rabbi Barry Gelman of Houston, told The Jewish Week was a “wonderfully healthy and passionate discussion.”
The leading Modern Orthodox rabbinic association has adopted an official position against the ordination of women, while also encouraging the creation of \”halakhically and communally appropriate professional opportunities\” for female scholars.
The rhetoric on agunot contrasted sharply from that on other topics at the conference, where a sense of confidence bordering on the triumphant prevailed, owing to the substantial progress made in the decade since JOFA\’s founding.
After Hakimi\’s election two years ago, participation of women in religious services became a lightning-rod issue on both sides of the mechitza in the Orthodox congregation.
The question of whether Talmud is indeed part of Jewish learning for girls and women in traditional Orthodox education has come under debate in the last two decades in Orthodox circles.
Mikvah attendance requires conscious, vigorous preparation, including bathing, washing and combing the hair, cutting fingernails and removing all jewelry, makeup or anything that is a barrier between a woman and the mikvah waters. It gives a woman the opportunity to luxuriate in being \”squeaky clean\” and offers a time to focus on the miracles of being a woman.
More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.