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]
Silver 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 millenia. 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.'
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.
Avraham Haim Yosef (Avi) haCohen Weiss is an American Open Orthodox ordained rabbi, author, teacher, lecturer, and activist who led the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale in The Bronx, New York until 2015. He is the founder of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah for men and Yeshivat Maharat for women, rabbinical seminaries that are tied to Open Orthodoxy, a breakaway movement that Weiss originated, which is to the left of Modern Orthodox Judaism and to the right of Conservative Judaism. He is co-founder of the International Rabbinic Fellowship, a rabbinical association that is a liberal alternative to the Orthodox Rabbinical Council of America, and founder of the grassroots organization Coalition for Jewish Concerns – Amcha.
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.
Koren Publishers Jerusalem is an Israeli publisher of Jewish religious texts. It was established in 1961 by Eliyahu Koren, with the aim of publishing the first Hebrew Bible designed, edited, printed, and bound by Jews in nearly 500 years. It produced The Koren Bible in 1962, The Koren Siddur in 1981, and the Koren Sacks Siddur in 2009, in addition to numerous editions of these books and other religious texts in Hebrew, English, and other languages.
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.
Inauguration of a Torah scroll is a ceremony in which one or more Torah scrolls are installed in a synagogue, or in the sanctuary or study hall of a yeshiva, rabbinical college, university campus, nursing home, military base, or other institution, for use during prayer services. The inauguration ceremony is held for new and restored scrolls alike, as well as for the transfer of Torah scrolls from one sanctuary to another.
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.
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.
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.
Simchah Roth was an Israeli rabbi and a scholar who edited the first prayer book of the Masorti movement. He advocated veganism.
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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