Suchergebnisse

Twenty-five years ago, a group known as Ezrat Nashim challenged the Conservative movement to provide women with equal access to the religious and educational institutions of Conservative Judaism. While most of the demands made by Ezrat Nashim have now been met, the Conservative movement has by no means achieved the full integration of women into religious life. Moreover, it is unclear how Conservative Judaism has responded to feminism; has the Movement become "engendered" or has it merely allowed women to do those things previously restricted to men? This article explores the impact of feminism on Conservative Judaism from the personal perspective of the author, a graduate of the Jewish Theological Seminary and an active Conservative Jew.

This paper examines the role of ritual purification in the lives of female descendants of the Spanish crypto-Jews. For some descendants, the discovery of crypto-Jewish heritage has led to a desire to reclaim the Sephardic faith of their ancestors. At the heart of this reclamation process is the adoption and practice of Jewish rituals and customs. Among the rituals that have become especially important for female descendants is the act of ritual immersion. Through an ethnographic study of crypto-Jewish culture in the Americas, this research analyzes the role of mikveh in the lives of women who have chosen ritual immersion as a symbolic act of return to Judaism.

The immigration of anusim or crypto-Jews to New Spain took place from 1492 to 1700. The first to arrive came from Spain with the conquerors and colonizers; Portuguese anusim started to arrive in 1580. Hostility and secrecy played an important role in the adaptation of anusim to life in America because they had to keep their religion in secret. Mexico offered a familiar culture and the possibility of contact with the mother country. Family structure was centered upon the mother. The role women played in the preservation of Judaism was very important, since they were responsible for the way in which the religion was passed on through several centuries even when they were isolated from centers of worship.

AbstractIn the biblical book of Leviticus, the whole life of the Hebrew people is codified under the aspect of purity and impurity, and the reintegration into purity. When read in the light of gender, these prescriptions show that women are twice as impure as men, while their monetary value is half. Using the semiotic approach developed by A. J. Greimas, this study shows that, beneath the religious discourse obscuring this valuation, is an equally gendered ideology. The source of this valuation is not the foundational events which engender mosaic law, but its roots are to be found in deeper mythical ground. For the condition of women to change, the issue of their impurity—inferiority must be treated at this level. A striking example illustrating this argument is the persistence of purification rites related to the menstrual cycle in modern Orthodox Judaism. Over the course of centuries, the code that contains them has become obsolete. Nevertheless, they remain in place through successive reinterpretations, which do not address the real reason for their existence.

In spite of a common assumption that most major sources of immigration to Israel have dwindled, it seems there are always new waves of Jews, sometimes from the most unexpected places, ready to return from their diaspora to their "homeland." The discovery and the dramatic exodus of Ethiopian Jews, for example, was completely unforeseen by the founders of the state. So too was the influx of Jews from the crumbling Soviet Union, whose prospects of immigration and even of survival as Jews seemed most unlikely only a few years ago. Some Jewish romantics are still looking for the "ten lost tribes" hidden in distant, exotic lands. No doubt, one can always discover, away from home, some rituals and traditions reminiscent of Judaism. I remember my own youthful fascination with the fate of the lost Israelites banished from their land, who ended up beyond the mythical Sambation river. No less enchanting were the stories of the Jewish kingdoms headed by heroic warriors and queens. Those mythical Jews seemed far more appealing than many of the men and women I met in my neighborhood.