Tova Hartman & Shira Hadasa Pursue Gender Equality in Jewish Orthodoxy

Tova Hartman is a 53-year old psychologist and Jewish scholar, an Orthodox Jewish woman mounting her own challenge to the religious patriarchy, writes Kevin Douglas Grant for the Religion News Service.

“Shira Hadasha came about after trying to change a lot of the local shuls and not succeeding,” she said, using the Yiddish word for synagogue. “We understand and accept that our agenda does not resonate yet with modern Orthodox establishment shuls and that’s OK. They don’t want to change, and they don’t have to.”

Women and men continue the traditional practice of being divided in Shira Hadasha but the Torah sits in the middle, making it equally accessible to both genders.

Rabbi Ya’acov Ariel, the chief rabbi of Tel Aviv’s Ramat Gan district, has called Hartman’s group “the product of a radical feminist agenda.”

“Men who come to the synagogue to pray do not want to be distracted by the prominent appearance of women,” Ariel said.

In Chicago, Hartman has the support of Rabbi Asher Lopatin of Chicago’s Anshe Sholom B’nai Israel modern Orthodox synagogue.

“Tova is one of my heroes,” Lopatin said. “Especially for Orthodoxy, feminism is a foreign, scary concept. But there’s a feminine side of men and a feminine side to prayer, and that makes us better Jews.”