"Naomi Ragen's first play premiered in 2002 at Israel's National Theater, Habimah, and had its American premiere at Duke University in North Carolina in 2005. It is based on a true story: a Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) woman, wife of a rabbi, mother of twelve, leaves her family for unspecified reasons. The woman is punished; the community's "modesty squad" prevents her from seeing her children, and the friend she is staying with is physically attacked. Desperate to regain access to her children, she determines that the women of her community must stand in judgement, hoping that once they hear the truth of why she left, they will allow her to be reunited with her children."--BOOK JACKET.

Spiritually nourishing approaches to help you become more insightful, inspired parents and raise soulfully engaged children. Kipnes and November share their hard-won parenting techniques and spirit-filled activities, rituals and prayers to help you cultivate strong Jewish values and cherished spiritual memories in your own family.

Rabbi Moshe Meiselman addresses the attitude of Jewish law to women and how the Jewish tradition views the contemporary challenge of feminism. He discusses in detail such current issues as creative ritual, women in a minyan, aliyot for women, talit and tefillin. The question of agunah is also given lengthy consideration. The author mixes current issues with scholarly ones and gives full treatment to other issues such as learning Torah by women, women position in court both as witnesses and as litigants, the marriage ceremony & marital life. — Amazon.com.

A provocative look at the inner world of Orthodox Jewish men who attend partnership synagogues

For many centuries Jewish prayer was so dominated by its male creators and male readers that the Jewish woman's role in prayer seems to have been all but obliterated. Yet Jewish women have always prayed and, before prayer became standardized into a formal liturgy, Israelite women offered up spontaneous petitions and hymns to God as freely as did men. While they may not have been able to help constitute a minyan, and while many did not know Hebrew or Aramaic, women produced and used material for prayer at home. The Yiddish tkhines had its origin in a form of supplicatory prayer in the Talmud, whose original intent was to allow for individual private devotion during the standard prayer service. The private Yiddish prayers and devotions for Jewish women continued to use this term. They emerged in the world of premodern Ashkenazic Jewry and represent one of the richest and least-known forms of Jewish religious literature. Because modern sensibility seemed to reject them, and because Yiddish was quickly forgotten by second and third generation Jews in the West, they have been sadly neglected. Although a few have been individually translated into English, this is the first bilingual anthology ever to appear. The prayers in this volume are characterized by a highly personal and intimate style and mark occasions in the religious calendar, such as the Tkhine for the Blessing of the New Moon, as well as occasions in the life of a woman, such as the Tkhine for a Mother who Leads Her Child to Kheyder for the First Time. The tkhines are of great appeal and value to those who wish to hear the voices of Jewish women in history, study Yiddish literature and culture, or create new expressions of spirituality.

RABBI DR. ELIEZER BERKOVITS' FINAL BOOK, Jewish Women in Time and Torah, is a critical examination of the status of women in Halakhah. It offers a coherent theological approach by which the eternal Divine nature of Torah must be upheld, and yet also recognize that the ever-changing status of women, reflected in our sacred texts, is linked to historical and social movements of humanity in the world at large. Berkovits makes several suggestions, based on a thorough examination of halakhic sources, to improve that status. The author' s basic thesis is that the inferior status of women is a vestige of ancient culture. In the course of time, women have gained certain rights. But, Berkovits emphasizes, more remains to be done, especially in the spheres of ritual participation and marital rights, areas in which he makes a number of concrete halakhic suggestions. For example, he suggests that adequate halakhic justification exists for women to take upon themselves the mitzvah of donning tefillin or establishing their own prayer groups, as well as women reciting Shabbat kiddush for men or participating in a mixed-gender zimmun for Grace After Meals.

This collection of biographies of brave and brilliant Jewish female role models--selected in collaboration with Ruth Bader Ginsburg and including an introduction written by the iconic Supreme Court justice herself-- provides young people with a roster of inspirational role models, all of whom are Jewish women, who will appeal not only to young people but to people of all ages, and all faiths. The fascinating lives detailed in this collection--more than thirty exemplary female role models--were chosen by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, or RBG, as she was lovingly known to her many admirers. Working with her friend, journalist Nadine Epstein, RBG selected these trailblazers, all of whom are women and Jewish, who chose not to settle for the rules and beliefs of their time. They did not accept what the world told them they should be. Like RBG, they dreamed big, worked hard, and forged their own paths to become who they deserved to be. Future generations will benefit from each and every one of the courageous actions and triumphs of the women profiled here. RBG's Brave & Brilliant Women, the passion project of Justice Ginsburg in the last year of her life, will inspire readers to think about who they want to become and to make it happen, just like RBG.