Rosh Pina is a lay-led independent minyan in Washington, D.C. It meets for Shabbat morning services twice a month in the National Museum of American Jewish Military History (NMAJMH). It also meets occasionally for Friday night and holiday services, in addition to organizing social and educational events such as shabbatonim and parties to celebrate Hanukkah, Purim and other Jewish holidays.
Jewish feminism is a movement that seeks to make the religious, legal, and social status of Jewish women equal to that of Jewish men in Judaism. Feminist movements, with varying approaches and successes, have opened up within all major branches of the Jewish religion.
Tamar Ross is a professor of Jewish philosophy at Bar-Ilan University and a specialist of religious feminist philosophy.
Partnership minyan is a religious Jewish prayer group that seeks to maximize women's participation in services within the confines of Jewish law as understood by Orthodox Judaism. This includes enabling women to lead parts of service, read from the Torah, serve in lay leadership positions, sit in a more gender-balanced format, and in some cases count as part of a minyan ("quorum") of ten men and ten women. Partnership minyanim began in 2002 simultaneously in New York and Jerusalem, and have now spread to over 30 communities in at least five different countries around the world.
Open Orthodox Judaism is a Jewish religious movement with increased emphasis on intellectual openness and a more expansive role for women. The term was coined in 1997 by Avi Weiss, who views halakha as permitting more flexibility than the normal practices of Orthodox Judaism.
Haviva Ner-David is an Israeli feminist activist and rabbi.
Congregation Shaarei Tefillah is a Modern Orthodox synagogue located at 35 Morseland Avenue in the village of Newton Centre in Newton, Massachusetts. In 2003, the synagogue had a membership of 140 families, and in 2012 that number had risen to 220 families. The congregation is notable for the unusual concentration of distinguished scholars among its members.
Women rabbis are individual Jewish women who have studied Jewish Law and received rabbinical ordination. Women rabbis are prominent in Progressive Jewish denominations, however, the subject of women rabbis in Orthodox Judaism is more complex. Although Orthodox women have been ordained as rabbis, many major Orthodox Jewish communities and institutions do not accept the change. In an alternative approach, other Orthodox Jewish institutions train women as Torah scholars for various Jewish religious leadership roles. These roles typically involve training women as religious authorities in Jewish Law but without formal rabbinic ordination, instead, alternate titles are used. Yet, despite this alteration in title, these women are often perceived as equivalent to ordained rabbis. Since the 1970s, over 1,200 Jewish women have been ordained as rabbis.
Orthodox Jewish feminism is a movement in Orthodox Judaism which seeks to further the cause of a more egalitarian approach to Jewish practice within the bounds of Jewish Law. The major organizations of this movement is the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance (JOFA) in North America, and Women of the Wall (WOW) and its affiliates in Israel and internationally, known as The International Committee for Women of the Wall (ICWOW). In Israel, the leading Orthodox feminist organization is Kolech, founded by Dr. Chana Kehat. In Australia, there is one Orthodox partnership minyan, Shira Hadasha, in Melbourne.
Sara Hurwitz is an Orthodox Jewish spiritual leader aligned with the "Open Orthodox" faction of Modern Orthodox Judaism in the United States. She is considered by some to be the first female Orthodox rabbi. She serves as Rabba at the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, and the president and co-founder of Yeshivat Maharat, both in Riverdale, New York.
"Guide for the Halakhic Minyan" is a work published to provide Jewish worship groups, especially Partnership minyans, with halachic sources that support the participation of women in leadership roles in traditional worship services, including the reading from the Sefer Torah, Haftarah, and other special biblical readings, such as the Book of Esther on the Jewish festival of Purim.
Dov Linzer is the President and Rabbinic Head of the Modern Orthodox Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School in Riverdale, New York. He is a teacher, lecturer, podcaster, and author.
Rachel Kohl Finegold is a Montreal-based Open Orthodox Rabba at Congregation Shaar Haashomayim, and the first Orthodox woman to serve as synagogue clergy in Canada.
Malke Bina is the founder and first teacher of Matan Women's Institute for Torah Studies. She has a master's degree in Hebrew Bible from Yeshiva University. She is married to a rabbi and is called by the term Rabbanit, which is less common in Modern Orthodox circles. Bina does not consider herself a rabbi and, at a 2004 conference of Orthodox Jewish Feminists, emphasized her focus on Talmud study. She was interviewed by JOFA in 2006 and serves on its Council of Advisers. She also pioneered women's reading of Megillat Esther on Purim.
Alissa Thomas-Newborn is an American Orthodox Jewish spiritual leader who became the first Orthodox female clergy member to preside in the Los Angeles, California area when she assumed her post as a spiritual leader at B’nai David-Judea Congregation (BDJ) in August 2015. The announcement of her appointment came on May 2, 2015 from the pulpit by the lead clergyman of the synagogue, Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky.
Yeshivat Maharat is a Jewish educational institution in The Bronx, New York, which was the first Orthodox yeshiva in North America to ordain women. The word Maharat is a Hebrew acronym for phrase manhiga hilkhatit rukhanit Toranit, denoting a female "leader of Jewish law spirituality and Torah". Semikha is awarded to graduates after a 3- or 4-year-long program composed of intensive studies of Jewish law, Talmud, Torah, Jewish thought, leadership training, and pastoral counseling. The ordination functions as a credentialed pathway for women in the Jewish community to serve as clergy members.
Lila Kagedan is a Canadian-born Jewish rabbi who in 2016 became the first woman with the title rabbi to be hired by an Orthodox synagogue. This occurred when Mount Freedom Jewish Center in New Jersey, which is open Modern Orthodox, hired Kagedan to join their "spiritual leadership team." She is currently the rabbi at Walnut Street Synagogue, an Open Orthodox synagogue in Massachusetts.
The International Rabbinic Fellowship (IRF) is a Modern Orthodox rabbinical organization founded by Rabbis Avi Weiss and Marc D. Angel in 2007 and soon elected Rabbi Barry Gelman as its president. The group is open to graduates of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah. The group's current president is Rabbi Nathaniel Helfgot. The group is noted for being the only Orthodox rabbinical association to admit women rabbis as members.
Shira Marili Mirvis, is an Israeli Religious Zionist leader and teacher. In April, 2021 she was chosen as the spiritual leader of the Shirat HaTamar synagogue in Efrat, Israel. She is the first woman to hold the position of sole spiritual leader of an Orthodox community in Israel. Marili Mirvis was officially installed by the Chief Rabbi of Efrat Shlomo Riskin. In February 2022 Globes named her one of the 50 most influential women in Israel and in June of that year it was announced that she would be appointed by Religious Affairs Minister Matan Kahana as the interim chair of the Efrat municipality's religious council. In addition, Marili Mirvis is a fellow of the Honey Foundation for Israel.
Dina Brawer is an Orthodox woman rabbi and the founder of the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance division in the United Kingdom. Brawer received her rabbinical ordination at Yeshivat Maharat in the United States and is the first Orthodox woman rabbi to serve in the UK. Brawer's work at JOFA UK focuses on women's rights in Orthodox Judaism and the religious education of adult women in Orthodox communities in the UK.
