Elana Sztokman
By Elana Sztokman
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Life How Women’s Exclusion Threatens Coalition Gov’t
Update, January 18, 11:27 a.m.: The High Court today ruled that the committee that appoints religious judges must have women on it, and that women’s representation on this and other committees must be sealed with legislation. Until the issue of women’s exclusion is fixed, the committee is not allowed to appoint dayanim, or religious judges….
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Life On Teaching Talmud and Sex Toys
Dr. Jennie Rosenfeld is equally at home teaching a page of Talmud and showing women how to use a vibrator. Dr. Rosenfeld, 31, who co-authored the book “The Newlywed’s Guide to Physical Intimacy,” which the Sisterhood weighed in on here, is also an Orthodox Jew, and her expertise in sex education is aimed at an…
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Life Women-Only Fertility Conference Is No Answer
Pressure against the Pu’ah to abstain from holding a conference for men only on fertility and Jewish law seems to be working. As of this morning, 9 out of 10 Israeli doctors scheduled to speak had withdrawn. In addition, the Ethics Board of the Physicians’ Union announced that from now on doctors will not be…
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Life At Gynecology Confab, No Women Allowed
Imagine a medical conference dedicated to women’s bodies in which no women are allowed to speak or even sit in the audience. No, this is not a Victorian novel or the back room of an old-fashioned gentlemen’s club. This is Israel 2012. For the fourth year in a row, Pu’ah, a publicly funded organization dealing…
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Life Siddur: ‘Thank God for Making Me a Woman’
Equality for Jewish women is not a 20th century invention. A siddur, or prayerbook, from the year 1471 contains an alternative text to the much abhorred “shelo asani isha” blessing that thanks God for “not making me a woman,” a text that is not only misogynistic in content but assumes that the person holding the…
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Life What ‘Provocative’ Justifies
I would like to take a moment to consider provocative women. After all, those of us who are following events in Beit Shemesh have heard a lot about this subject. A woman trying to hail a taxi in Beit Shemesh and then spat upon was called “provocative” by Haredi men around her. Tanya Rosenblit, who…
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Life Was Yesterday’s Rally Really About Gender?
Last night, Israel’s first mass demonstration in protest of the increasing waves of Haredi violence against women took place in Beit Shemesh. It was a remarkable event, in its strength and diversity. There were speakers representing a range of organizations, Knesset members from five different political parties — including three women, two of whom are…
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Life Take Back the Discourse
Israel’s Minister of Culture and Sport Limor Livnat was doing well for a while in her efforts to combat gender segregation. But then she, like others before her, fell into an all-too familiar trap: religious politics. Livnat, a leading Israeli legislator recently decided to take a vocal lead protesting gender segregation in the public sphere….
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