Susan Silverman (born May 10, 1963) is an Israeli-American Reform rabbi and religious activist.
Susan Silverman (born May 10, 1963) is an Israeli-American Reform rabbi and religious activist.
Susan Silverman is the sister of actress Laura Silverman and comedian Sarah Silverman. [1] She is married to Yosef Abramowitz. In 1997, she and her husband, co-authored the book Jewish Family and Life: Traditions, Holidays, and Values for Today’s Parents and Children. [1] She worked as a congregational rabbi in Maryland, and as a Jewish educator in Boston, and moved to Israel in 2006. [1]
Silverman and her daughter Hallel Abramowitz are members of Women of the Wall, and in 2012, they were arrested for wearing prayer shawls at the Western Wall. [2] [3] News of this went viral after Sarah Silverman tweeted her support. [1]
In 2013, Silverman was named one of The Jewish Daily Forward's "Forward 50", [4] and the Jewish erotica website Jewrotica.org named her one of the world's ten sexiest rabbis. [1] [5] [6]
In 2015, Silverman was present when some of the Women of the Wall read from a full-size Torah scroll during their monthly prayer service at the Western Wall. Torah scrolls at the Western Wall are usually stored in the men's section. On April 20, a group of male Jewish sympathizers handed them a Torah scroll. Some Haredi Orthodox men tried to take the Torah away from the women but were removed by the police and the women continued their prayer service. [7] [8] Susan claimed she chased away a man attempting to seize the Torah by threatening to touch him, saying, "I ran towards him with my hands in the air and shouted: 'I'm a woman! I'm a woman!' and he ran away because he didn't want me to touch him." [9]
Silverman lives in Jerusalem and has five children; two were adopted from Ethiopia. [6] In the wake of the Amy Coney Barrett Supreme Court confirmation hearings, Silverman wrote an article discussing the use of Barrett's adopted children by both her detractors and defenders in terms of Silverman's own experience as an adoptive mother. [10]
She has written articles for MyJewishLearning.com and the book, Casting Lots: Creating a Family in a Beautiful, Broken World, which was published by Da Capo Press in March 2016. [11] She also wrote the piece "Personal Reflection: Becoming a Woman of the Wall", which appears in the book The Sacred Calling: Four Decades of Women in the Rabbinate, published in 2016. [12] [13] [14]
In 2017, she founded "Second Nurture", an organization dedicated to supporting the path from foster care to adoption. [15]
Women in Judaism have affected the course of Judaism over millennia. Their role is reflected in the Hebrew Bible, the Oral Law, by custom, and by cultural factors. Although the Hebrew Bible and rabbinic literature present various female role models, religious law treats women in specific ways. According to a 2017 study by the Pew Research Center, women account for 52% of the worldwide Jewish population.
A siddur is a Jewish prayer book containing a set order of daily prayers. The word siddur comes from the Hebrew root ס־ד־ר, meaning 'order.'
The Western Wall (Hebrew: הַכּוֹתֶל הַמַּעֲרָבִי, romanized: HaKotel HaMa'aravi, lit. 'the western wall', is an ancient retaining wall of the built-up hill known to Jews and Christians as the Temple Mount of Jerusalem. Its most famous section, known by the same name, often shortened by Jews to the Kotel or Kosel, is known in the West as the Wailing Wall, and in Islam as the Buraq Wall. In a Jewish religious context, the term Western Wall and its variations is used in the narrow sense, for the section used for Jewish prayer; in its broader sense it refers to the entire 488-metre-long retaining wall on the western side of the Temple Mount.
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.
Women of the Wall is a multi-denominational Jewish feminist organization based in Israel whose goal is to secure the rights of women to pray at the Western Wall, also called the Kotel, in a fashion that includes singing, reading aloud from the Torah and wearing religious garments. Pew Research Center has identified Israel as one of the countries that place "high" restrictions on religion, and there have been limits placed on non-Orthodox streams of Judaism. One of those restrictions is that the Rabbi of the Western Wall has enforced gender segregation and limitations on religious garb worn by women. When the "Women of the Wall" hold monthly prayer services for women on Rosh Hodesh, they observe gender segregation so that Orthodox members may fully participate. But their use of religious garb, singing and reading from a Torah have upset many members of the Orthodox Jewish community, sparking protests and arrests. In May 2013 a judge ruled that a 2003 Israeli Supreme Court ruling prohibiting women from carrying a Torah or wearing prayer shawls had been misinterpreted and that Women of the Wall prayer gatherings at the wall should not be deemed illegal.
Dawidh Ḥanokh Yissḥaq Bar-Ḥayim is an Israeli rabbi who heads Machon Shilo, a Jerusalem-based rabbinical court and institute of Jewish education dedicated to the Torah of Israel.
Shmuel Rabinovitch, also spelled Rabinowitz is an Orthodox rabbi and Rabbi of the Western Wall and the Holy Sites of Israel. In his duties as Rabbi of the Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem, Rabbi Rabinovich maintains the historic traditional Jewish practices of the Wall as a site of orthodox Jewish prayer and ensures that notes placed in the Wall are removed and treated consistent with tradition and halakhah. He escorts visiting heads of state and foreign dignitaries during visits to the Wall, and has published on the Jewish laws and customs of the Western Wall.
In Judaism, especially in Orthodox Judaism, there are a number of settings in which men and women are kept separate in order to conform with various elements of halakha and to prevent men and women from mingling. Other streams of Judaism rarely separate genders any more than secular western society.
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.
Deborah Brin is one of the first openly gay rabbis and one of the first hundred women rabbis. She is now the rabbi emerita of Congregation Nahalat Shalom in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Women for the Wall, sometimes abbreviated as W4W, is a grassroots Jewish women's traditionalist organization founded in April 2013, formed in opposition to the Women of the Wall (WoW), a Jewish women's group promoting egalitarian prayer at the Western Wall, the Jewish holy site in Jerusalem.
Yeshivat Maharat is a Jewish educational institution in The Bronx, New York, which is the first Orthodox-affiliated 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, albeit controversial, pathway for women in the Orthodox Jewish community to serve as clergy members.
Tziporah Heller Gottlieb is an American-born Haredi educator, author, and speaker based in Jerusalem. She is a senior faculty member at the Neve Yerushalayim College for Women, principal of the Bnos Avigail seminary on the Neve campus, and a lecturer for the online Jewish college, Naaleh.com. She specializes in textual analysis of Biblical literature and Jewish philosophy, and exploration of the role of women in Judaism. The author of eight books, she is also a weekly columnist for the Hamodia newspaper.
Aviel Barclay is a Canadian soferet. On October 6, 2003, she became the first woman to be traditionally trained and certified as a Jewish scribe, an occupation held by men in the Orthodox tradition. She completed her first Torah scroll in fall 2010 under the auspices of the Kadima Women's Torah Project in Seattle, Washington. She is the subject of the 2005 television documentary Soferet.
Shlomo Einhorn is an Orthodox rabbi that has previously served as Dean of School at Yeshivat Yavneh in Los Angeles. He is also a lecturer, educator, and author.
Vanessa L. Ochs is an American scholar of religion at the University of Virginia, an ordained rabbi and an important figure in the fields of Jewish feminism and Jewish ritual. She is a member of the Jewish Studies Program at the university, where she teaches courses in Judaism, the anthropology of religion, and spiritual writing.
This is a timeline of LGBT Jewish history, which consists of events at the intersection of Judaism and queer people.
Timeline of attacks against synagogues in Israel documents anti-Semitic attacks and vandalism against synagogue buildings and property in Israel. Vandalism of synagogues is not uncommon in Israel.
Lesley Sachs is an Israeli social activist and leader of battles for gender equality and religious freedom, CEO and Artist. She served as the CEO of The Israel Women's Network (IWN), the Israel Religious Action Center (IRAC), the World Union for Progressive Judaism (WUPJ) and Women of the Wall (WOW).
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