Monday, September 16, 2019 - 7:30pm
Linderman Library, Room 200
Tapping on the Stained Glass Ceiling: The Ordination of Orthodox Jewish Women
Michal Raucher
Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies
Rutgers University
Dozens of Orthodox Jewish women have been ordained as rabbis since 2013, when the first class graduated from Yeshivat Maharat, the only Orthodox seminary ordaining women in North America. Their arduous education and institutional certification have endowed them with ostensible authority. Nevertheless, these women have yet to be widely accepted as rabbis in the particular Jewish communities in which they work. Based on interviews with and observations of women who have been ordained in Israel and North America, this lecture explores how women come to be recognized as Orthodox rabbis.
Michal Raucher is Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies at Rutgers University. Her research lies at the intersection of Israel studies, the anthropology of women in Judaism, and reproductive ethics. Michal’s first book, an ethnography of Israeli ultra-Orthodox Jewish women’s reproductive ethics, titled, “Conceiving Authority,” will be published by Indiana University Press in 2020. Michal is currently conducting ethnographic research on the ordination of women in Orthodox Judaism in Israel and America.
This event is free and open to the public.
For more information contact: Office of Interdisciplinary Programs incasip@lehigh.edu
Department:
Jewish Studies