Feminism

As it turned out, in the spring of 1985, I was to be the first woman so ordained.

We wanted a fun magazine that portrayed women as diverse, smart, soulful, AND sexy—not airbrushed and anorexic—while still telling the truth. So, we created one ourselves.

From this point on, feminist approaches to sexuality were complex and multifaceted...

[T]he needs of Jewish women and girls in both the U.S. and Israel are still not high priorities for our community.

I believe that it took a group of women—including rabbis—to break through the Jewish cultural barrier that saw medical treatment as the only response to illness.

Jewish feminism provided the bridge from one shore to the other.

We knew that Jewish feminism needed to be suffused through all of Jewish practice so that it would be impossible to ignore.

I floated between moments of exaltation at what we were creating and moments of exasperation and tears at the difficulty of it all.

It was obvious that birth was a universal human experience and one that is central to women's lives. Why were there no images?

In a sense, my first protest took place in 1946 when I refused to learn Yiddish (a decision that I of course regret) but insisted instead on learning Hebrew.

[T]he idea of re–writing the Haggadah seemed startling and even blasphemous. Now, 30 years later, this re–writing has itself become part of an emerging Passover tradition.

In the early years of women entering the rabbinate, many women felt were welcomed to rabbinical school on the expectation that we would act like men.

What captivated me was developing what amounted to a “unified field theory” by applying feminist methodology to explain all of Jewish history, culture, and psychology.

I can argue that my chosen path—to fight against physical harm, specifically the terror of violence against women—had its origins in what I had learned in Hebrew School...

There was no territory that our feminist imaginations and visions could not discover, recover, or transform.

This is a narrative of a community that is not in isolation but reflects the polis of the time.

We are an adoptive, multi-racial, two mom family with a mix of Jews birthed, raised, and by choice.

Jane ultimately served over 10,000 women before Roe v. Wade made abortion legal in 1973.

I know now that she lost herself as soon as she married, taking on the persona of the wife she imagined she must be.

You see, I have come to believe The Five Books of Moses are indeed the Five Books of Moses, not the Five Books of G-d.

Besides they told me, ‘only bad girls get abortions.’

The size and diversity of the gathering were strong evidence that we were not just disaffected individuals. We were a movement.