Jewish Women Living the Challenge: A Hadassah Compendium - Softcover

Hadassah, The Women's Zionist Organization Of America

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1889525049 ISBN 13: 9781889525044

Publisher: Haddasah Women's Zionist, 1998

Synopsis

Jewish Women Living the Challenge is a collection of essays and several moving short stories as well as poetry, biblical passages, rabbinic commentary and Jewish scholarship. This book meets its readers and speaks to them wherever they may be in terms of Jewish background or observance. All of the texts, including biblical passages and rabbinic commentary, are in English. Each chapter concludes with ideas for further thought, discussion, activities and reading, inviting readers to explore and shape their lives within the Jewish community. Like The Jewish Book of Why and Jewish Literacy, Jewish Women Living the Challenge offers tools for building, strengthening or simply better understanding what it is to be a Jew, specifically a Jewish woman, in today's society.

Features:

--Strong thought pieces from distinguished contributors across the Jewish observance spectrum

--Innovative, provocative and versatile suggested activities; ideal for reading groups, independent study, home schooling, educators, community leaders, meetings and conferences

--Bibliographical overview of popular and academic writings for each topic

--Valuable contact information to reach other advocacy and support organizations or to obtain additional Hadassah resources

About this title

About the Author

Dr. Carol Diament is National Jewish Education Director of Hadassah. In 1991, under her leadership, the department was awarded the Shazar Prize for Excellence in Jewish Education in the Diaspora. Her other edited works include Zionism: The Sequel (Pub. Date: Aug/Sept 1998), Jewish Marital Status (1989), Ribcage: Israeli Women's Fiction (1994), Images of Jerusalem: City of David in Modern Hebrew Literature (1995), and Reflections on Jerusalem: City of David in Classical Texts (1995). She received the Simon Rockower Award for Excellence in Jewish Journalism (first prize) for her article "A Nation Divided: How Holy is the Holy Land?" which appeared in Hadassah Magazine. Dr. Diament chairs the distinguished Hebrew Language Committee of the American Advisory Council to the Joint Authority for Jewish Education. She is the first woman to hold a Ph.D. from Yeshiva University in Jewish Studies. A vibrant and provocative speaker, Dr. Diament has engaged both general and scholarly audiences in the United States and around the world.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

(From the Foreword)

In Jewish Women Living the Challenge ... we offer a retrospective ofmore than a decade of publications by the National Jewish Education Department, focusing on women's personal, social, political, and economic lives, in the United States and Israel. Many of our contributors observe that gender roles have changed dramatically over the past few decades--and so, we believe, must Judaism.

Why did we choose to re-examine the status of women in the family, the synagogue, and the Jewish community? Because problems in all of these spheres of Jewish life remain unsolved, despite attainments of recent years....

The articles in Unit 1, "Self," focus on physical and emotional well-being. What is the Jewish attitude toward medical care, preventive health care, and early detection of disease? Dr. Edie Gurewitsch writes that as Hadassah works to increase women's knowledge of medical issues, it fulfills a Jewish moral imperative. Other contributors focus on the meaning of female beauty, on aging, and on the experience of being a widow.

In Unit 2, "Family and Home," we consider some of the many challenges confronting today's Jewish families. Two complimentary articles explore contemporary sexual behavior, an arena where the mores of Judaism and feminism collide. Feminists of all types have faced difficulty as they have faced and revised earlier moral and sexual norms. But Jewish feminists have had a unique task: how to live our lives according to feminist ideals and still follow Jewish traditions. Our two articles offer different responses to this question.

Also in "Family and Home," we examine the factors that make for a happy marriage. We deal with two of the most disturbing problems in today's Jewish family: divorce law and domestic violence. And we look into mother-daughter relationships, as we read of a trip to a mikvah (ritual bath) prior to marriage and then, in a short story, meet an Israeli mother who reconciles with her grown daughter. Finally, we include three essays on interfaith marriage. The National Jewish Education Department explored the rising rate of interfaith marriage several years before the Council of Jewish Federations issued its alarming report in 1990, and two of our earlier articles, both increasingly relevant today, are reprinted here....

In Unit 3, "Women and the Workplace," we examine the contemporary working woman's "juggling act" as she balances job and home responsibilities. Wenote the changes in Jewish women's work force participation that have occurred in our lifetime. In the early years of this century, when American women were needed to fill factory jobs and supplement their parents' or husbands' income, women required and demanded a movement for equality. They sought higher education and political rights--and they won the vote. Yet by mid- century the American (and American Jewish) ideal was the wife whose husband provided entire financial support. With a renascent feminism in the sixties and seventies, numbers of women began entering the work force, taking on jobs that their predecessors had only imagined. In an interview in this section, Judith Lichtman states: "The feminist revolution was really a revolution for both men and women." As more wives have accepted paid employment, more husbands have accepted family and household responsibilities. Nonetheless, Lichtman observes that, even as more and more women work for pay outside the home, caring for the house and children remains largely the woman's task. In this unit we also present a short piece of fiction that explores one of the unresolved problems of the workplace, sexual harassment.

Unit 4, "Social Action," opens with an article that presents Jewish women's earliest demand for equitable treatment under the law--the biblical story of the five daughters of Zelophehad. Jewish women's demands for social justice have been ongoing through history, reflected today by the many Jewish women who work for social justice throughout the world. Alice Shalvi's exploration of women's position in contemporary Israel is but one example.

Also in Unit 4, we explore the American debate on abortion from the framework of Jewish law. Though abortion is not an obviously Jewish issue, Hadassah, as a non-sectarian American organization concerned for the continued separation between church and state, seeks to preserve women's reproductive choice.

In Unit 5, "Spirituality," we explore recent trends in women's religious experiences. Overall, how has feminism affected Jewish spiritual life in America today? We specifically explore women's prayer language, women's grieving, and new women's rituals.

Ultimately, all the articles in Jewish Women Living the Challenge lead to social action. Judaism works to mend and repair the world--tikkun olam. Feminism works to overthrow injustices against women. When Judaism and feminism are brought together, the vision of a better world becomes an attainable goal.

About this edition

• Publisher: Haddasah Women's Zionist
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 1889525049
• ISBN 13: 9781889525044
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 280
• Editor: Diament Carol, Chernov Claudia, Tanenbaum Leora