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July 2012 Tammuz 5772  Guarantee the Future of Women's Leadership

Thoughts from Rabba Sara Shifting Expectations: Women + Work I love eating challah, but until recently, I refused to be a "challah Baker." The term irrationally evoked an image of a women chained to her kitchen, slaving away for the sake of others, with no desire or choice to impact the world. This is not who I am. I am an Orthodox feminist, committed to changing the communal landscape by helping Orthodox women advance to the highest echelons of Jewish leadership-- to ordain women as spiritual and halakhic leaders. I am not a challah baker...

Meet Our Newest Faculty and Staff! Devorah Zlochower, Talmud Chair Devorah Zlochower teaches Gemara at Yeshivat Hadar and will begin teaching Gemara at Yeshivat Maharat in the 2012-2013 academic year. Previously, she served as Rosh Beit Midrash at SAR High School where she also taught Gemara and as Rosh Beit Midrash and Director of Full Time Programs at the Drisha Institute for over a decade where she taught Gemara and halakha. Devorah has been a spokesperson for women's learning, religious leadership and ritual participation in her role at Drisha and advocacy work as a JOFA board member. Devorah has served on advisory boards for Sh'ma and AJWS and is on the advisory board for Aaron Academy, a private special education school which her sons attend. Devorah has spoken and written on topics of halakha, women's learning and disability in the Jewish community. Sharon Weiss-Greenberg, Director of Recruitment Sharon Weiss-Greenberg is a PhD candidate at New York University and an alumnus of the Wexner Fellow and Davidson Scholarship graduate program. Sharon has served as the co-director and Orthodox advisor of the Orthodox Union Seif Jewish Learning on Campus Initiative at Harvard Hillel and as a chaplain at Harvard University. During the summers of 2007 and 2008, Sharon was the Rosh Moshava (Head of Camp) at Camp Stone in Pennsylvania. She spent the 2008-2009 academic year studying Talmud and halakha at the Drisha Institute. She recieved her masters in Education from the Azrieli Graduate School of Yeshiva University and recieved a B.A. in Sociology and Jewish History from Yeshiva University.

Student Summer Happenings... Lila Kagedan is teaching at Temple Beth El in Springfield, MA, participating in an innovations in Jewish education conference in NJ, and lecturing in Montreal. Miriam Gonczarska has re-immersed herself in the Polish Jewish community since the conclusion of the academic year. In June, she gave a presentation to theJewish Community of Warsaw, concentrating on her experiences as a Yeshivat Maharat student in the U.S. She participated in an inter-faith conversation about the religious approach to ethics on Polish radio station Radio Dla Ciebe. In August, she will be speaking at the Lauder Educational Summer Camp in Wisla, Poland. She continues to meet with Polish politicians and religious leaders of all faiths. For more information about Miriam's projects in Poland, email miriam.gonczarska@gmail.com Ruth Balinsky Friedman is teaching several classes about Eichah, including classes at the Drisha Institute in both the Summer High School Program and the Evening Class Program. She has also begun teaching a series of 3 classes entitled, "God Enemies and Blame in the Book of Eichah" at the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale. Rori Picker Neiss planned the second Catholic Jewish Emerging Leaders Conference, held on June 18-21, bringing together 50 young Catholic and Jewish leaders. She is also teaching a course at the Brandeis University Genesis High School Program, titled "In Pursuit of Justice."  Want to learn more about our students? You can meet each of them on our website! Guided Study with Rabbi Jeffrey Fox We are living in a time during which rabbinic authority is in flux. For better or for worse, communities no longer rely on a single rabbinic figure. I wonder how the different responses of the rabbis in the Land of Israel on the one hand and the rabbis in Babylonia on the other hand reflect their culture and their own percieved authority? Perhaps we can think about these two very different Jewish communities as models for us today...

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