Kesher Talk

Orthodox Jewish minyans - for women? The Forward reports on a hopefully growing trend -- actually involving women in prayer and services. How shocking!

About a half-dozen such groups, or minyanim, have sprung up in the Orthodox community during the last year. In some cases women are permitted to lead selected daily or weekly services, while other groups permit all members to read from the Torah or recite the accompanying aliya blessing.

From the outside, this brand of worship appears to occupy a theological middle ground between Orthodoxy's commitment to stringent gender distinctions and Conservative Judaism's 20-year march toward full egalitarianism. But the phenomenon, which still lacks the public imprimatur of a prominent Orthodox institution or rabbi, seems best understood as a grassroots attempt by lay people to revolutionize Orthodoxy.

Organizers of the new prayer groups say most of the participants are looking to expand women's roles, while remaining within the Orthodox communal fold and the boundaries of rabbinic canon law, or Halacha. Still, their innovations reveal the ritual limits of Orthodox feminism, especially when compared to advances in other Jewish denominations.

posted by Howard @ 10/07/2002 09:00:41 AM