Gender Equality and Prayer in Jewish Law

As gender equality has spread throughout society, including its religiously observant sectors, traditional communities turn to their guiding sources to re-examine old questions. This book opens the reader’s eyes to the wealth of Jewish legal material surrounding gender and prayer, with a particular focus on who can lead the prayers in a traditional service and who can constitute the communal quorum—or minyan—that they require. With honesty, transparency, and rigor, Gender Equality and Prayer in Jewish Law is a powerful resource for grappling with these complex questions. The authors not only explore this specific issue in depth, but they also model how we can mine the Jewish legal tradition for its underlying values, enabling its complex sources to serve as effective guides for contemporary communal decision-making.

Rabbi Ethan Tucker was named one of America’s Top 50 Rabbis by Newsweek from 2012 to 2013, and is cofounder and the yeshiva head at Mechon Hadar, where he serves as chair in Jewish Law. Ordained by the Chief Rabbinate of Israel he is a cofounder of Kehilat Hadar and a winner of the first Grinspoon Foundation Social Entrepreneur Fellowship. He lives in New York City. Rabbi Micha’el Rosenberg is an assistant professor of rabbinics at Hebrew College. He was ordained by the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, holds a doctorate in Talmud and Rabbinic Literature from the Jewish Theological Seminary, and is an alumnus of the Wexner Graduate Fellowship program. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.