Welcome to the Forward’s Jewish News coverage about feminism and womens issues.
Feminism
The Latest
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Life Abortion Belongs in TED Talks, And Beyond
Last week, feminists launched a flurry of actions demanding the inclusion of abortion rights as a topic tackled by trendy TED talks. A representative from TED, interviewed by Jessica Valenti for her column in the Nation, had deemed the subject too political and controversial. This admission was followed by a petition from NARAL and general…
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Life Orthodox Feminists Are Not Conservatives in Disguise
There is a rumor going around that Orthodox feminists are just Conservative Jews in disguise, or perhaps in denial. I’ve heard this idea in many settings. I was at a dinner last year honoring Jewish feminists when a woman at my table — a Conservative rabbi and prolific writer whom I greatly admire — reproached…
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Life How Tefillin Empowers Me
Editor’s Note: This article is a response to Avital Chizhik’s article which called for Orthodox feminism to seek to open the minds of women, not just to emulate the ritual practice of men. (Ha’aretz) — Dear Ms. Chizhik, I – a high-school student – write to you from a community in which your proposals for…
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Life Untold Story of Jewish Feminist Pioneers
Historian Melissa R. Klapper recently won a National Jewish Book Award for “Ballots, Babies, and Banners of Peace: American Jewish Women’s Activism, 1890-1940.” In the book, Klapper, a professor of history at Rowan University in New Jersey, shows us that decades before Steinem and Friedan became households names, Jewish feminists were already working to make…
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News High School Tefillin Debate Just Tip of Iceberg for Orthodox Jewish Women
(JTA) — The announcement this week that SAR, a modern Orthodox high school in New York, is allowing girls to lay tefillin is helping expose an increasingly sharp fault line within Orthodoxy. For decades, it has been difficult to sort out the precise dividing lines between the varieties of Orthodoxy — ultra, haredi, centrist, modern,…
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Fast Forward Ramaz Would Also Allow Girls To Use Tefillin — Joins SAR
Ramaz, a Modern Orthodox school in Manhattan, has joined SAR in agreeing to allow girls to pray with tefillin, although the school’s principal reportedly says no students are currently doing so. “If a young woman wanted to put on tefillin and tallit, she could daven with us in our school minyan,” Rabbi Haskel Lookstein, the…
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Opinion My Fight To Lay Tefillin At an Orthodox School
A young woman prays wearing tefillin on April 11, 2013 in Jerusalem, Israel. / Getty Images On December 8, 2013, SAR High School principal Rabbi Naphtali Harcsztark permitted students Ronit Morris and Yael Marans to lay tefillin in the school’s daily women’s prayer group, allowing them to do so within the school building. While this…
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Life Elana Sztokman To Leave Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance
Elana Sztokman is leaving the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance after a year and a half as executive director. “It is a mutual parting of the ways,” she told the Forward. She would not elaborate on the reason for her departure, saying that her separation contract prohibits her from talking about the split. Sztokman said she…
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