Rivkah Walton, ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal, Rabbinic Smicha Program Department, Department Member. Studies Jewish Studies, Judaic Studies, and Judaic.Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies. By: Rabbi Gail Labovitz. Associate Professor of Rabbinics. Again according to the Times of Israel report. Women have been traditionally exempted . Welcome to my website! Rabbi Dina-Hasida Mercy. ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal Ordination Program Ordains Nine: Five Rabbis, Two Rabbinic Pastors and Two Hazzanim. This, then, would include many actions (i. Jewish holidays (which are by their nature conditional on time). But well before the modern period, even at the beginnings of rabbinic Judaism, there are also three times when the Talmud cites Rabbi Yehoshua, a rabbi of the mishnaic period, who says that women are obligated to perform acts specific to three Jewish holidays. One of these is lighting the Hanukah candles. Also significant is the single reason he finds applicable to all three occasions. A woman certainly lights (a Hanukah lamp), since Rabbi Yehoshua said: Women are obligated to (the commandment of) the Hanukah light, for they too were part of the miracle. The exclusionary practices at the Kotel should be opposed as a violation both of civil laws of equality and of valid Jewish practice. What does it mean that women ? The first is fairly obvious. Each of these holidays marks an occasion in which the entire Jewish people was threatened . This is, in fact, the explanation found in the Jerusalem Talmud (Megillah 2: 5, 7. Purim. Bar Kappara said: It is required to read it in the presence of women and in the presence of children, for they too were at risk. According to this understanding, in each of the events celebrated by these holidays, a woman or women had a significant hand in bringing about the events and miracles celebrated by the holiday. In the case of Purim, this is relatively straight- forward. After all, the megillah that women are required to read (or hear read) is named for a woman, Queen Esther. Without her intervention, Haman. Similarly, there are multiple women who could be named as actors in the redemption of the Israelites from slavery, such as the midwives Shifra and Puah, or Miriam; in addition, various rabbinic midrashim tell us that the women of that generation were especially righteous and that it was due to their actions that the people were able to persevere in slavery and because of their merit that the people were ultimately taken out to freedom. One well- known story about a woman is found in the apocryphal Second Book of Maccabees, chapter 7, and elsewhere in Jewish tradition. This is the mother of seven sons (she is unnamed in Maccabees but in some versions she is called Hannah) who are martyred one by one when they, with her urging and support, refuse to abandon Jewish practice by eating pork or worshipping idols; she too ultimate dies of grief or as a martyr. Another legend (I found a version in Otzar Ha. The JSLI Rabbinical School offers a fully online course of study to qualified students, leading to Rabbinical Ordination- Semicha- after one year of study. The ALEPH Rabbinic Program curriculum requires a minimum of 60 units of study spanning an array of subjects and disciplines, representing the equivalent of five years of full-time graduate level study, including both academic. Laura Duhan-Kaplan Or Shalom Synagogue. Women’s Studies Program, 1994-2000. Midrashim, Hanukah p. Yohanan the High Priest. The local ruler had decreed that all newly married Jewish women would be brought to him first on their wedding nights. This young woman stood up at her wedding feast and tore open her clothing before all. Her horrified brothers rushed to punish her, but she rebuked them: . A third female- centered episode that comes to be associated with Hanukah (and is sometimes conflated with the previous story) is that of the apocryphal Book of Judith (even though the original version states that it takes place under the reign of the Assyrian king Nebuchadnezzar, well before the time of the Maccabees). Judith, a wise and beautiful widow, infiltrates the enemy camp and attracts the amorous attention of the general Holofernes. Under the guise of reciprocating his desires, she joins him in a banquet and when he becomes drunk and passes out, she beheads him and sneaks his severed head back to the Jews, who are then able to rout their enemies. As we light our candles this Hanukah . Perhaps even an act as seemingly small as smuggling a Hanukah menorah into the women! She is the author of Marriage and Metaphor: Constructions of Gender in Rabbinic Literature, published by Lexington Books. Prior to joining the faculty of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies, she also served as a senior research analyst for the Feminist Sexual Ethics Project at Brandeis University and as the coordinator of the Jewish Feminist Research Group, a project of the Jewish Women's Studies Program at the Jewish Theological Seminary.
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