Women are championing social change

Lesson plan
Designed for: 
Seminaries, communities
In Western society, women's participation in public spaces is expanding, a process whose main engine is women's movements that aim to create social change. Women's participation in social circles also inspires the desire to be partners in public spaces of Jewish life. In traditional and religious society in Israel, processes of religious extremism have been taking place in recent years, one of the products of which is the exclusion of women from the Jewish public space on the grounds that their participation in these spaces is a violation of halakhah. These opposing processes cause gender movements in the Jewish space to push to narrow the gap in radical ways that may harm the family and community and their central values. Identifying traditions that allow women to be partners in the Jewish public space and understanding the centrality of the family in building a reformed society make it possible to initiate a process of change in the status of women without dismantling other value frameworks.