Eleven women’s groups got together last week to challenge gender
discrimination that is written into Israeli law. As it stands, the Law
for Appointing Judges bans women from applying for the position of
Executive Director of the Rabbinical Court. Although such a law would
have no doubt have been thrown out long ago from the American legal
system, in Israel Version 2010, getting this law revoked is harder, it
seems, than bringing the mountain to Moses, so to speak.
Last Wednesday, a group of women’s organizations,
including the Israel Women’s
Network, the Center
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The recent legal victory of Chana Kehat,
founder of the Orthodox feminist Israeli organization Kolech,
has implications for working women in Israel and for feminists
worldwide: The courts ruled that she was fired illegally from the Orot
Teachers’ College in 2005, and that she must be immediately reinstated.
Kehat, who was described by her employers even during the
trial as “an excellent lecturer” argued that she was fired from the
religious Zionist institution because of her feminist views. Rabbi Neria
Gutel,
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When I was an 18-year old yeshiva student, my friends and I would ask
every teacher we had to give us a talk on our favorite topic. And it
wasn’t sex. It was head-covering. Considering that the prevalent issue
on our minds was marriage, we were desperate to get some expert advice
on how to make the biggest choice of our lives: hat or wig, leave out
the ponytail or stuff it in — or for some, like me, to cover or not to
cover.
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The recent arrest of a woman carrying a Torah at the Western Wall is
testing already tense relations between the ultra-Orthodox and other
Jewish groups over issues of religious pluralism in Israel. It has also
prompted accusations that Israel’s national police force is attempting
to reinterpret a Supreme Court ruling on women’s prayer at Judaism’s
holiest site.
Anat Hoffman, chairwoman of the women’s prayer group
Women of the Wall, was detained July 12, as she was leading about 150
worshippers from the Western Wall plaza to Robinson’s Arch, the portion
of the Wall where the group is permitted to read from the Torah.
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