S I X The Changing Status of Women in Liberal Judaism: A Reflective Critique Rachel Sabath Beit-Halachmi The Changing Status of Women in Modernity The age of modernity was a time of great optimism and hope for progress, for people in general and for Jews in particular. As Western societies began to re-examine and expand the freedom and rights exercised by minority groups, Jews and members of other minority religions were great beneficiaries. Throughout the Western world women also benefited significantly from an expanded understanding of their rights in public and private spheres. By the early part of the twentieth century, women began to take on public leadership roles and have more of a visible impact on society. This move towards greater equality in the public sphere laid the foundation for what later became liberal Judaism’s model of a just society in which men and women are equal. As women gained the right to vote in public elections, many Jews argued that women could no longer be denied the same right within Jewish organizations. The interplay between women’s increased equality at large and that within the Jewish community is also apparent in regard to study, whereby just as with modernity women could for the first time study in secular universities, within the Jewish community they could finally access and study previously inaccessible sacred Jewish texts. Jewish women’s increased involvement and knowledge led to new understandings of gender and religion which in turn dramatically affected two main areas of liberal Jewish life: (1) religious law and practice, and (2) leadership in the synagogue and communal organizational life. The significant change in the role of Jewish women following the Enlightenment makes modernity a dividing line between two types of intellectual and religious views of Jewish women. The first sees women as primarily responsible for the private sphere characterized by the home and family-centred domain, while the second accords women a full (or nearly full) religious agency in the public domain. This dividing line is especially pronounced in the context of liberal (non-Orthodox) Jewish life. Reform Judaism in particular embraced the expanding role of women by granting women full membership in synagogues as well as voting rights, and by gradually permitting women to perform many public ritual acts previously restricted to men. Reform leaders not only argued that women should be Continuum – Judaism and the Challenges of Modern Life Data Standards Ltd, Frome, Somerset – 6/8/2007