Published in Association with the Solomon B. Freehof Institute of Progressive Halakhah General Editor: Walter Jacob+

"As gender equality spreads throughout society, including its religiously observant sectors, traditional communities turn to their guiding sources to re-examine such questions. This book highlights the wealth of Jewish legal material surrounding gender and prayer, with particular focus on traditional services and the communal quorum, or minyan"--Provided by publisher"--

Baile provides sources on issues such as marriage, divorce, birth control, abortion, lesbianism, and communal worship and rape.

Demonstates through different essays Jewish Womens movement rides the fine line between tradition and transformation.

Often when people have become alienated from their religious backgrounds, they access their traditions through lifecycle events such as marriage. At times, modern values such as gender equality may be at odds with some of the traditions; many of which have always been in a state of flux in relationship to changing social, economic and political realities. Traditional Jewish marriage is based on the man acquiring the woman, which has symbolic and actual ramifications. Grounded in the traditional texts yet accessible, this book shows how the marriage is an acquisition and contextualises the gender hierarchy of marriage within the rabbinic exclusion of women from Torah study, the highest cultural practice and women's exemption from positive commandments. Melanie Landau offers two alternative models of partnership that partially or fully bypass the non-reciprocity of traditional Jewish marriage and that have their basis in the ancient rabbinic texts.

A classic for more than 20 years, this thought-provoking volume explores the role of Jewish women in the synagogue, in the family, and in the secular world. Greenberg offers ways to change present Jewish practices so that they more readily reflect feminine equality.

Winner of the National Jewish Book Award for 1998. How can women's full participation transform Jewish law, prayer, sexuality, and marriage? What does it mean to "engender" Jewish tradition? Pioneering theologian Rachel Adler gives this timely and powerful question its first thorough study in a book that bristles with humor, passion, intelligence, and deep knowledge of traditional biblical and rabbinic texts.