For several years, Phyllis Binik-Thomas dreamt of becoming a storyteller, or maggid, to take her commitment intergenerational Jewish communication to another level. She wasn’t going to let cancer prevent her from reaching that goal. As beaming family and friends gathered in her Cincinnati living room, Binik-Thomas was ordained as a maggid educator on Tuesday afternoon…
Bitya Rozen-Goldberg had no idea she wanted to be a rabbi when she immigrated to Israel from France 11 years ago. In the years since settling in Jerusalem, the 33-year-old tour guide studied Talmud in numerous female settings. But as “female rabbi” has long been an oxymoron in the Orthodox world, she never thought she…
Last year’s Maharat graduation ceremony / Robert Kalfus Two dramatic moments punctuated yesterday’s graduation ceremony of the New York-based Yeshivat Maharat, the rabbinical academy for Orthodox women, which ordained its second class of women who will serve Orthodox communities as poskot — halakhic decisors and advisors. They were granted the title “Maharat,” and acronym for…
The rabbinical school of Yeshiva University, previously said to be withholding ordination from a student who held a partnership minyan in his home, now says it will grant the student ordination. “An agreement has been reached and the student will be receiving Semikha,” Y.U. spiritual leader Rabbi Yosef Blau told the Forward in an email,…
In 1997, Blu Greenberg chaired the first International Conference on Feminism & Orthodoxy. About 400 attendees were expected and more than 1,000 showed up, hungry for a community of other women committed to both traditional Jewish life and their own religious potential. The Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance, which was born of that first gathering and…
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