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The new issue of Meorot contains an article by me, giving a means by which one might justify women writing Torahs.
It's a question of language. I myself don't choose to live under a system which limits one's participation in communal life based on gender, but many people do. This article is for them, and by extension all of us who care about the fusion of halakha and egalitarianism, because we all tread the same road, we just wear different shoes.
All the time, on the boundaries of egalitarian thinking, questions are being asked about just what women can do within the limits of this system. A hundred years ago it was whether women were permitted to learn Torah; some say yes, some say no. Whether women were permitted to be shul presidents. Whether women were permitted to say kaddish. To have women's prayer groups. To read Torah in shul. Always, the conversation is opened, and at first it's a lone few voices and a lot of vehement opposition; over time the conversation grows and becomes less threatening, and people become accustomed to the issues and start thinking about them, and some people will decide one way, and some the other. Women learning Torah in the non-egal world is now pretty widely-accepted, but it took a hundred years.
With this article, I wanted to contribute to the beginnings of the conversation. In the long view, it doesn't matter if right now people jump down my throat and say I'm talking rubbish; what matters is that the conversation is open and ideas are out there. What I've done may not be particularly compelling, but it may be that someone else will be able to use it as a starting-point for something more compelling.
It's a question of language. I myself don't choose to live under a system which limits one's participation in communal life based on gender, but many people do. This article is for them, and by extension all of us who care about the fusion of halakha and egalitarianism, because we all tread the same road, we just wear different shoes.
All the time, on the boundaries of egalitarian thinking, questions are being asked about just what women can do within the limits of this system. A hundred years ago it was whether women were permitted to learn Torah; some say yes, some say no. Whether women were permitted to be shul presidents. Whether women were permitted to say kaddish. To have women's prayer groups. To read Torah in shul. Always, the conversation is opened, and at first it's a lone few voices and a lot of vehement opposition; over time the conversation grows and becomes less threatening, and people become accustomed to the issues and start thinking about them, and some people will decide one way, and some the other. Women learning Torah in the non-egal world is now pretty widely-accepted, but it took a hundred years.
With this article, I wanted to contribute to the beginnings of the conversation. In the long view, it doesn't matter if right now people jump down my throat and say I'm talking rubbish; what matters is that the conversation is open and ideas are out there. What I've done may not be particularly compelling, but it may be that someone else will be able to use it as a starting-point for something more compelling.
