JOFA Conference 2017

Every day tens of thousands of people around the world read one page of Talmud with the goal of completing the entire Talmud in seven years. Regular daf participants and beginners alike are welcome to join us as we tackle today's page. Copies of the text in the original and translation will be provided.

Beruriah speaks with the sharp erudite tongue of the Rabbis - until one day when she doesn't. To what extent does learning Torah encourage women to speak and think like men? How can each learner discover his or her own voice?

Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein zt"l was a leading advocate for close to half a century for intensive Talmud Torah for girls and women in the Modern-Orthodox community. This session will explore the origins of his perspective, the parameters of what it entailed, the impact it had and the directions it did and did not go.

Are three women required to make a zimmun when eating together or is this ritual only optional for women? Do ten women constitute a quorum for zimmun? May men and women join together to create a zimmun of three and may women be counted in the ten with men to add to the blessing of God? How much did women’s knowledge and education affect the rulings of the poskim in this area? These and other questions will be discussed in this session by examining sources from the Talmud through to modern legal Rabbinic literature.

Many are aware of the seemingly insurmountable challenge of Orthodox feminism, that of the reality that it was written by men and, arguably, benefits men. This session will explore today's climate in which learned women are now researching and authoring rabbinic responsa. This session will present the facts on Israeli ground, why this matters, and what challenges lay ahead.

Can we read a woman through the words of a man? Does God talk to women? We will approach these questions through texts that discuss the Sotah, the woman who can only say Amen.

Today many women sit in the sukkah, shake the lulav, hear the shofar and recite the Shma- all mitzvot from which they are exempt- and yet it is still considered taboo in the Modern Orthodox world for a woman to wear either a tallit of tefillin. Why are these two mitzvot treated so differently from the rest? Do the issues surrounding them just stem from social discomfort or is there a halakhic difference that sets tallit and tefillin apart from the rest of the time-caused mitzvot? Is there room for future development with regards to women’s practice of these mitzvot? In this session these issues will be examined and discussed by studying sources from the Talmud through to modern legal Rabbinic literature.