“There’s a tremendous amount of anxiety among religious traditionalists that when you take one step toward egalitarianism, the floodgates are open and everything that seemed self-evident will no longer be. Men go to work, and women raise children. If you undermine that, you have lost your whole universe.”The Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist movements of Judaism have been ordaining women as rabbis for decades, but the religion's most traditional sect, the Orthodox, remains a lone, minority holdout against egalitarianism. Last year, Orthodox Rabbi Avraham "Avi" Weiss (political
activist and founder of the
controversial, liberal, "Open Orthodox"
Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Yeshiva in New York)
tried to shake things up by ordaining the first female American Orthodox rabbi.
[more inside]
posted by zarq
on Jul 31, 2010 -
35 comments
Tzvia Greenfield is
the first ultra-Orthodox woman to serve in Knesset, the Israeli legislature, representing the left-wing party
Meretz. Her 2001 book
Hem Mefahadim ("They are afraid,") an attack on rightism and insularity among the ultra-Orthodox, drew death threats. Despite her sharp criticism of the religious community ("The big issue here is a very delicate one. That is children. Large families thirty years ago was six children; now there's 13 or 14 - from one wife. I believes the glorification of bringing as many children as possible is a definite way of ensuring women can't bring their advantages into effect - subjugation.")
she still lives an observant life in the ultra-Orthodox community of
Har Nof. "They disagree with my ideas but they know me as religious and halachic person. They cannot see any blemish in my practice except for one thing-
we have a dog." At least one haredi
denies that Greenfield is Orthodox at all. (The dog comes up.)
posted by escabeche
on May 11, 2010 -
56 comments
This year alone, over 20,000 Russian Orthodox pilgrims followed an icon of St. Nicholas from Kirov to Velikoretskoye on foot. The 180km-long pilgrimage through the Russian countryside dates back to the 14th century.
Sergey Kozmin's photos. Some extra info
here.
posted by ersatz
on Aug 15, 2008 -
6 comments
For Orthodox Jewish mothers with small children, the
Shabbat can
be challenging. The answer, for many communities, is the establishment of an
eruv (discussed previously
here, in passing).
This San Francisco Chronicle article details the history behind Berkeley, California's
unique instance. This isn't the first time an
eruv has been attempted in the Bay Area: the failed effort to create one in Palo Alto
was covered by the Chronicle, as well as
the Jewish News Weekly. Berkeley isn't the only United States city with an
eruv—the
Boston eruv maintains a
large list of domestic and international eruvim—nor is it the city with the
most unusual eruv, or even the
largest. Inevitably, perhaps, there's a
blog entirely dedicated to the subject of
eruvim, and
vigorous commentary on the subject from
several others.
posted by scrump
on Jul 7, 2006 -
60 comments
