This is the Forward’s coverage of Jewish women and women’s issues.
Women
The Latest
-
Opinion Forget Tefillin — Orthodox Women Need Empowerment in Daily Lives
(Haaretz) — It never ceases to amaze us, the Orthodox plebeians, how quickly hordes of bloggers can skew matters out of proportion. Skim the blogs and you will discover the din of rumbling male voices expounding on Orthodox gender roles. Perhaps the voices are predominantly male because men are usually better versed than us women in…
-
Opinion Avant-Garde Aliyah to Berlin
“There’s always this joke that half of Tel Aviv is actually here,” Liad Hussein Kantorowicz told me when I interviewed her in her Berlin apartment. The numbers back her up: According to the latest estimates, 15,000 to 20,000 people have left Israel in recent years to forge a new life in Berlin. Most of these…
-
Life Sarah Silverman Ends ‘Are Women Funny?’ Debate
“Okay, last night I was visited by Jesus Christ, like the Jesus Christ. And he told me he was really bummed by all these people who use my name for intolerance and oppression.” And so begins Sarah Silverman’s latest viral video, in which Christ comes to Sarah’s living room to tell her that she has…
-
Fast Forward Women of the Wall Nearing Agreement With Israeli Government After Months of Negotiations
Women of the Wall is close to approving an agreement with the Israeli government to move the group’s monthly prayer service to a new egalitarian area. The report Monday in Haaretz was corroborated on the organization’s Facebook page. The agreement comes after months of negotiations between the organization and an Israeli government committee. In October,…
-
Opinion The Benefits of a Woman’s Place
It’s probably because I’m male — and Haredi, or “ultra-Orthodox,” to boot — that, much as I try, I find it hard to relate to Jewish women who feel religiously unfulfilled unless they can lead services, read from the Torah or otherwise take up public roles in synagogue life. But there’s another reason, too: I…
-
Israel News Orthodox Growth Tests Multiculturalism in Flashpoint Beit Shemesh
Beit Shemesh: A pessimist could call this city a vision of Israel’s future. The ultra-Orthodox represent, by far, the fastest-growing demographic in the Jewish state, and government statisticians expect their numbers to increase by anywhere up to 700% in the next half-century. Nobody knows what the full consequences will be if there is such rapid…
-
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,…
-
Opinion Why Women Can — And Must — Lay Tefillin
A woman prays wearing tefillin in Jerusalem/Getty Images Must, should, or can observant Jewish women wrap tefillin, or not? This well-worn question was recently revived thanks to the two Modern Orthodox high schools in New York — SAR and Ramaz — that have tepidly embraced female students who wish to wrap tefillin publicly in their…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
Opinion Outrage over Nicholas Kristof’s op-ed on sexual assault of Palestinians is missing the point
- 2
News They texted about Torah and mitzvahs. Feds say they were insider trading
- 3
Opinion I run The Jewish Theological Seminary. Here’s the real story about President Isaac Herzog speaking at our commencement
- 4
Culture At Eurovision, Israel’s near triumph shows the limits of tolerance
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward Feds charge man with organizing synagogue attacks in Europe and NYC on behalf of Iran
-
Yiddish אַ שוועבנדיקע הילצערנע שיל בײַם ווענעציער ביענאַליי פֿון 2026 A floating wooden synagogue at the 2026 Venice Biennale
אין פֿאַרגלײַך מיט די פֿיזישע פּאַוויליאָנען געשאַפֿן פֿון אָפֿיציעלע לענדער איז דער ייִדישלאַנד־פּאַוויליאָן געבויט אויף אידעעס
-
News Mamdani Nakba Day video prompts pushback from Jewish leaders amid rising tensions
-
Yiddish World Molly Crabapple’s book is well researched but ideologically biased