Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women's Studies and Gender Issues articles from March 2011

Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women's Studies and Gender Issues archives from March 2011

Response to Alan Jotkowitz.(Abortion and Maternal Need: A Response to Ronit Irshai)(Critical essay)
March 22, 2011... I wish to relate to several important points noted by Dr. Jotkowitz and clarify them more fully. In my opinion, the most plausible reading of the rabbinic sources indicates that a fetus does not have the status of a person under Jewish law....

Hormonal intervention for religious concerns: a halakhic and ethical discussion.(Report)
March 22, 2011... Introduction: The Laws of Nidah We will begin with a short background regarding hilkhot nidah (laws of impurity due to uterine discharges), with an emphasis on the impact of these laws on those who observe them. The ritual status of nidah...

Hormonal intervention for religious concerns: a response.('Hormonal Intervention for Religious Concerns: A Halakhic and Ethical Discussion')(Critical essay)
March 22, 2011... The topic of the article "Hormonal Intervention for Religious Concerns: A Halakhic and Ethical Discussion" is an important one, and I am glad that it has been addressed in Nashim. However, as a post-denominational rabbi with expertise in the...

"Dear Rabbi, I am a woman who ...": women asking rabbis questions, from Rabbi Moshe Feinstein to the Internet.(Essay)
March 22, 2011... Introduction There are many stories about women asking rabbis questions. Most of the time, they involve a woman, a dead chicken and a rabbi, the point of the story being that the rabbi issued a lenient decision regarding the kosher status of...

Holiness streams toward the future: sexuality in Rav Kook's thought.(Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak Hakohen Kook)(Essay)
March 22, 2011... Introduction I will tell you, sir, a most important principle: The most enlightening outlook on the subject of beliefs and views, as with all lofty matters, involves leaving the narrow sphere where one finds conflicting opinions...

A Torah scroll.(woman scribe Shoshana Gugenheim; Kadima Reconstructionist Community in Seattle, Washington)
March 22, 2011... "A Torah scroll, tefillin, or mezuzot that were written by a heretic, a traitor, an idol worshipper, a slave, a woman, a minor, or an apostate, are invalid..." BT Gitin 65b I am not a heretic who has gone back and pardoned her ways. I am...

Ruth Lamdan: Sefer Tikkun Soferim of Rabbi Itzhak Tzabah.(Book review)
March 22, 2011... Ruth Lamdan Sefer Tikkun Soferim of Rabbi Itzhak Tzabah Tel Aviv University: The Goldstein-Goren Diaspora Research Center, 2009. 264 pp. In Hebrew. Leafing through this collection of centuries-old documents, introduced and annotated...

Dvora E. Weisberg: Levirate Marriage and the Family in Ancient Judaism.(Book review)
March 22, 2011... Dvora E. Weisberg Levirate Marriage and the Family in Ancient Judaism Lebanon, NH: Brandeis University Press-UPNE, 2009. In the dedication of her book to her late teacher Baruch M. Bokser, Dvora Weisberg invokes the statement of R....

Elly Teman: Birthing a Mother: The Surrogate Body and the Pregnant Self.(Book review)
March 22, 2011... Elly Teman Birthing a Mother: The Surrogate Body and the Pregnant Self Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2010 Elly Teman's Birthing a Mother begins by describing the generally negative, at best highly suspicious public...

Tsipy Ivry: Embodying Culture: Pregnancy in Japan and Israel.(Book review)
March 22, 2011... Tsipy Ivry Embodying Culture: Pregnancy in Japan and Israel New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2010. 298 pp. Embodying Culture offers a systematic comparison of the management of pregnancy in Israel and in Japan. Tsipy Ivry,...

Dina Pinsky: Jewish Feminists: Complex Identities and Activist Lives.(Book review)
March 22, 2011... Dina Pinsky Jewish Feminists: Complex Identities and Activist Lives Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2010. 137 pp. Dina Pinsky's Jewish Feminists: Complex Identities and Activist Lives is a slim book that makes a contribution to...

Rokhl Faygenberg: Strange Ways (Of fremde Vegn).(Book review)
March 22, 2011... Rokhl Faygenberg Strange Ways (Of fremde Vegn) translated by Robert & Golda Werman Jerusalem: Gefen, 2007. 191 pp. Translations into English of fiction by Yiddish women writers are still relatively rare, so the translation of...

Jennifer Heath (ed.): The Veil: Women Writers on Its History, Lore and Politics.(Book review)
March 22, 2011... Heath (ed.) The Veil: Women Writers on Its History, Lore and Politics Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008. 346 pp. Women's veiling has become the subject of intense scrutiny in recent years, particularly in the Islamic...

Infidelity and intimacy in nineteenth-century Vienna: gender and orthodoxy as reflected in the responsa of Rabbi Eleazar Horowitz.(Critical essay)
March 22, 2011... The mere mention of nineteenth and twentieth-century "Jewish Vienna" conjures up images of assimilated Jewish men such as Sigmund Freud, Arthur Schnitzler and Otto Weininger. (1) In their writings, these members of the Viennese cultural...

The participation of Jewish women in public rituals and Torah study 1845-2010.(Chronology)(Essay)
March 22, 2011... There is no question that Jewish women today play a much greater role in public Jewish ritual life and Torah study than they did 165 years ago. Today, women in many parts of the Jewish world participate freely and regularly in roles that were...

Introduction.
March 22, 2011... The responsa literature--compilations of legal opinions written by rabbis in response to specific queries or cases--is one of the largest branches, if not the largest branch of Jewish literature. Menachem Elon estimated in the 1970s that at that...

"Those self-assured women": a close reading of Rabbi Moses Feinstein's responsum.
March 22, 2011... Rabbi Moses Feinstein, one of the most respected and prolific writers of responsa (Jewish legal rulings) in the twentieth century, formulated decisions based on a strategy of insider/outsider; of keeping men and women, Jews and non-Jews,...

Divorce out of love: a sixteenth-century woman's story.(responsum by the great posek Rabbi David ben Solomon ibn Abi Zimra)(Critical essay)
March 22, 2011... Introduction Tractate Gittin opens with a mishnah about a writ of divorce (get) brought by a messenger from a husband who is far away from his wife. Why, one wonders, does the Mishnah's tractate on divorce start this way? Why wouldn't it...

"A woman on the bimah means ignorant men": women's Torah reading and modern Orthodox identity.(Critical essay)
March 22, 2011... If responsa from past eras can serve as historical records of the concerns and values of their times, what may contemporary responsa teach us? In a time when women can and do write responsa for the Conservative movement, Orthodoxy remains the...

Abortion and maternal need: a response to Ronit Irshai.('Gender Perspectives in Halakhic-Decision Making: Abortion as a Test Case')(Critical essay)
March 22, 2011... Introduction Dr. Ronit Irshai, in a thoughtful analysis of the halakhic attitude towards abortion, advances the thesis that the halakhah has been influenced by a specific regressive attitude towards women. In particular, for ideological...