When my daughter was about 3 years old, we visited a shul where the men broke into joyous song and danced around the bimah during tefillah. She stood on her chair, clapping and swaying and suddenly turned to me and shouted, “I don’t want to be a ballerina any more! I want to be a rabbi!” Years later, when we planned her bat mitzvah, she insisted she wanted to read her entire parsha and haftarah, even though it was far from the social norm in her day school and there was no minyan in our neighborhood to accommodate her.  

Now, at 15, my daughter is vaguely indifferent about issues of Jewish feminism. She comes to the partnership minyan we started (at her urging!) but has to be coaxed into leading pesukei dizimarah  and reading Torah. Maybe it’s because she doesn’t want to be associated with a cause her parents have championed. Or maybe it’s because she goes to a Modern Orthodox school where there are few opportunities for girls to take leadership roles in tefillah. As a result, her peers are largely uninterested in taking on more responsibility in a minyan, fighting inequities or eliminating double standards. The status quo is comfortable and most teenagers don’t want take an unpopular stance alone. That’s why, as a co-chairwoman of the programming committee for this year’s conference, I believe our middle school track and sessions geared to high school students will be a great opportunity for teens to discuss, among other issues, what they believe and how their actions are shaped by peer pressure. Who knows? Maybe my daughter will wander in and be inspired. I hope so because she’d make a great rabbi. Besides, she hasn’t practiced her pirouettes in some time.

As I look ahead to the conference, the topic that most intrigues me is social justice.  In the early years of JOFA’s existence, we never talked about the relationship between Orthodox feminism and social justice.  As a student of feminist theory and a historian-in-training, I know that feminist organizations and movements often see themselves as agents of larger social change.  More than pursuing merely their own particularized mission, they see themselves as part of a larger mission of transforming the world into a kinder place for women and other traditionally oppressed groups.  Up until this point, when I contemplated the role that social justice should play in JOFA’s agenda, I believed that JOFA had too much work to do just within the parameters of Orthodox Judaism.  We would have no time, energy or resources to pursue or support the greater social change advocated by other feminist organizations. 

 But now I wonder.  Have we “made it” enough to begin to see beyond the struggles we have within Orthodox Judaism?  Are we too particularist if we restrict our social justice agenda to agunot?  Or is it the agunah problem so horrible and intractable that we must give it every ounce of our energy until it is solved?  Should JOFA try to see itself as more of a part of a family of feminist organizations?  Should we have on our agenda the fact that women are a tiny minority of the leadership in Jewish organizations, and that Jewish organizations are notoriously uncommitted to family-friendly work policies such as paid family leave, breastfeeding support, and on-site child care?  How should we chart our course going forward?  I think it might be a time for a broadening of our vision.

 What do you think?  

I have attended each one of JOFA’s conferences, both as a presenter and a participant. The earliest years were heady, deeply meaningful and exciting. We were thrilled to meet other like minded women, feminists who identified as Orthodox women. We spoke with great earnestness and openness about our spiritual, religious and institutional struggles.

And over the past 15 years we’ve made considerable progress. As Batsheva said in her post – her daughter had a bat-mitzvah similar to her brothers’ bar-mitzvha. Partnership minyanim are born at an alarmingly quick pace. The Maharat program has a beginning class. Even popular Israeli TV has women reciting Kiddush on Friday night. (S’rugim)

In the face of those gains, we need to find new inner resources to keep us energized for the future. I’m pleased that the focus of our next conference is to have multiple conversations. Each of us brings to the conference another set of interests. I’m particularly looking forward to the conversations on maintaining and enhancing spirituality in our modern lives. 

I look forward to seeing old and new faces.

At the second JOFA conference I gave the closing speech. It began with “Six weeks ago I a gave birth to a daughter. She came into a world so very different from the one I came into.” And she did. A few weeks ago, that daughter celebrated her bat mitzvah. The bat mitzvah she celebrated was so very different from the one I did, 36 years ago. She leined the parsha and the haftorah at a partnership minyan. I had an aliya. She wore a tallit. She completed seder nezikim and made a siyyum.   My “bat mitzvah” was a picnic lunch with three friends.

Actually, her bat mitzvah looked an awful lot like my brothers’ bar mitzvahs.

What a different world we inhabit today. And how lucky she is – to make her way in this “whole new world” of incredible opportunity for girls and women.   Of course, she and her peers will still have their own challenges ahead of them.  I often wonder how she will react when she hits her own  “brick walls,” but something tells me that she will be okay. We’ve given these girls the strength and confidence and learning they need. We’ve given them the tools to make their own way through the complicated labyrinth we call Orthodox Judaism. They’ll create their own pathways… and then perhaps we’ll be the ones to follow.

It is hard to believe that 3 years have passed already since the last JOFA conference, into which I poured so much of my heart, soul and time (as co-Chair of Programming).  I am excited to join the ranks of the JOFA faithful again in Lerner Hall.  I need the jolt of energy and personal connection that only the Conference can bring.  While we have come so far in all four areas the Conference seeks to explore, so much has remained the same, or worse, moved backwards.  The Conference always provides me with a lift and a spark of inspiration that sends me charging into battle again. 

Since the last Conference, I have joined the board of JOFA and put my first two children into mainstream Orthodox Day School.  Both have been exciting, as well as frustrating endeavors.  To join the ranks of JOFA leadership has been an honor that has allowed me to interact with the greats of Orthodox Feminist Leadership.  I was raised in the trenches of this movement and I feel proud to take on these issues in my own right.   Being a board member has given me the opportunity to voice my concerns and act on them in a real and fundamental way.   It has also provided a window into the slow-moving, often gruelingly political, process that fostering change can be.   

My inauguration into the day school community has been fairly, almost surprisingly, uneventful.  My children have enjoyed smooth transitions, high-quality teachers and minimal drama, yet I find myself with my guard constantly up.   The education of my children has been the issue that has kept me on the ramparts of the Orthodox Feminist movement all these years (as opposed to chucking it all in favor of a more pluralist or denominationally neutral sphere).  I firmly believe that if we raise our children to think more broadly about Judaism, Orthodoxy, gender roles and leadership, many of the issues we struggle  with these days will fade away and a whole new norm will be conceived.  My children are young, so there have been minimal opportunities to offend, and in truth, our school does handle many issues with deft sensitivity.  That being said, there are indications that I cannot let down my guard.  I cannot wait till the issues present themselves.  I need to use these early years to watch and learn what the hashkafa (philosophy) of the school really is and not just what they say it is.   

So, I eagerly await this conference.  I am excited to hear about glass-ceilings being challenged and broken, innovative approaches to learning and age-old texts, new roles being conceived and exhibited.  I look forward to the conversation and the khizuk that comes from rubbing elbows with like-minded people.  I sincerely hope you will join me.