Celebrating Jewish Womanhood

I wanted to celebrate the differences inherent in the sexes rather than diminish them; to unravel the mysteries of what it meant to be a woman... what it meant to be a Jewish woman...

There will come a time, blessed and welcomed by all, when the feminine will have greater access to transcendent consciousness, and when that happens, she will bestow and man will receive from her...

Torah does not support asceticism, the closed walls of a monastery and a life apart from the bones of the body. We are asked to eat the cookie – or kasha – but to ever remain the master of that act...

Within the context of our society, women are required to function on a more sophisticated level than ever before, occupying professional positions that require higher knowledge...

I'm often asked: Where are the feminine voices in Jewish history, the feminine role models? Why are they not leading the way?

The Torah's account of the petition presented to Moses by the daughters of Zelophehad is relevant both to women seeking Halachic support for change, and to the rabbis who are ruling on their questions

I would describe myself as a Chassidic feminist. The two terms are not mutually exclusive, though their combination is not without tension...

You can’t do your job as a mother, as a wife, if you’re single, or as a member of a community, and live Jewishly, properly, if you’re not inspired yourself, if you don’t know what it is all about.

The issue is even more baffling than you think. Most of the guidelines for prayer, we learned from a lady named Chana who lived about 3000 years ago. Yet all the dominant roles in communal prayer are given to men!

A woman must cultivate a relationship with her Creator and use her mind to its fullest capacity. Only then, asserts the Akeidat Yitzchak, can a woman fulfill her second role as Chava, 'mother of all life', a role which crowns the role of isha.

...I listened carefully to what Esther Kosovsky and Tamar Frankiel had to say as we talked about some provocative and pointed issues. Their unswerving conviction in their own rich experience as observant Orthodox women speaks for itself.

The innovations and increase in Torah study of recent generations connects to and is emphasized more in relation to women...

Torah learning for Jewish women has been revolutionized. No longer must women strive to learn as men, but rather women are now revealing and celebrating their own unique ability to learn as women.

A circle has no beginning or end, and every point is equidistant from its center; so it is for souls. Truly, it is impossible to rank them, for each is the most beloved in the scale of values that is its perfected virtue...

A personal account of the Lubavitcher Rebbe's attitude towards Feminism

Before we can understand the differences between men and women, we must first understand the differences between masculine and feminine.

The Hebrew name of the first woman, Eve, is Chavah, which means "the source of life." It was Chavah who participated first in the primordial sin, which introduced death to the world. Chavah is the archetypal woman; every woman can thus rectify the primordial sin...

Those who refer to the biblical story of Eve as a Divine endorsement of sexism are overlooking a simple truth: a curse is not something that should to be the way it is -- it's something that should not be the way it is...

Man seeks woman and woman yearns for man. But the trick is learning to contract in order to come together...

First tries are usually chaotic. Yet the Torah offers us different methods of capturing the chaotic energies of beginnings and turning them into productive and stable states that can be used over and over again.