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554 l JUDAISM structionist rabbis today, 105 are women. Over half of the current rabbinical students are women. In 1996, Kolot : The Center for Jewish Women’s and Gender Studies was established at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College to educate and influence future Jewish leaders. The history of women in Conservative and Reconstructionist Judaism in America is one of increasing inclusion and acceptance into the mainstream of American Jewish religious life—both public and private. By the last quarter of the twentieth century, women had moved to the forefront of leadership in many areas, strengthening both denominations with their talent, wisdom , and commitment. SOURCES: The most comprehensive sourcebook on American Jewish women is Jewish Women in America, ed. Paula E. Hyman and Deborah Dash Moore (1997). See also Women’s League Archives, New York, New York, especially Mathilde Schechter, “Aims and Ideals of the Women’s League,” May 1918, “Mathilde Schechter” file. Mel Scult, “The Baale Boste Reconsidered: The Life of Mathilde Roth Schechter (MRS),” Modern Judaism (February 1987): 1–2A; Mel Scult, “Mrs. Mathilde Roth Schechter: Her Life and Letters” (unpublished manuscript); Jacob Kohn, “The Beauty of Mrs. Schechter’s Character,” United Synagogue Recorder (October 1924); Pamela S. Nadell, Conservative Judaism in America: A Biographical Dictionary and Sourcebook (1988); Pamela S. Nadell, Women Who Would Be Rabbis (1998); Seventy-five Years of Vision and Voluntarism (1992); United Synagogue of America, They Dared to Dream: A History of National Women’s League, 1918–68 (1967); Women’s League Outlook (1930– ); Deborah M. Melamed , The Three Pillars: Life, Practice and Thought for the Jewish Woman (1927); Conservative Judaism and Jewish Law, ed. Seymour Siegel (1977); Sylvia Barack Fishman, A Breath of Life: Feminism in the American Jewish Community (1993); Simon Greenberg, ed., The Ordination of Women as Rabbis (1988); Paula E. Hyman, “The Introduction of Bat Mitzvah in Conservative Judaism in Postwar America,” YIVO Annual 19 (1990): 133–146; Marshall Sklare, Conservative Judaism (1972); Beth S. Wenger, “The Politics of Women’s Ordination,” in Tradition Renewed, ed. Jack Wertheimer (1997); Jack Wertheimer , Conservative Synagogues and Their Members (1996); Rebecca T. Alpert, “A Feminist Takes Stock of Reconstructionism ,” Reconstructionist 54 (1989): 18–19; Rebecca Alpert and Goldie Milgram, “Women in the Reconstructionist Rabbinate,” Religious Institutions and Women’s Leadership, ed. Catherine Wessinger (1996); and http://www.rrc.edu/, the Web site of Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. ORTHODOX JEWISH WOMEN IN AMERICA: DIVERSITY, CHALLENGES, AND COMING OF AGE Blu Greenberg ORTHODOX JEWISH WOMEN have lived more than three centuries of Jewish life on these shores. What they have shared in common across the centuries is their ability to remain faithful to Jewish tradition while acculturating to America’s ways, a highly complex task given America’s openness and its melting-pot nature. Still, three centuries is no small measure of time. Despite its relatively small size and shared mission, this group is marked by a high degree of diversity. The diversity re- flects, in part, the many definitions of Orthodoxy, ranging from ultra right to left wing post-modern. But it also reflects the differences in time and in country of origin as the Orthodox emigrated to this country. There have been four major waves of Jewish immigration , and Orthodox Jewish women were represented and played a vital role in each. Indeed, it was the arrival of women that marks the beginning of Jewish settlement in this land. As is widely recorded, Jews date their presence here to September 1654, when twenty-three Jewish persons arrived in New Amsterdam from Recife, Brazil. History also records that other Jews had arrived earlier, but unique to the Recife group were the six women among the twenty-three. The presence of women meant that families would grow, and communities could be built. The single Jewish male immigrants of earlier days did not constitute a viable Jewish presence. In each immigration, women came as members of families, as wives and daughters. Quickly they set down family roots and added stability. But significant numbers also came as single women, pioneering spirits who braved the dual challenges of being uprooted from their homes in the old country and adapting to a new language and culture. The after-pull of these single women, whose siblings often followed them, added to their enormous influence on Jewish life in America. The first Jewish immigrants from Recife were Sephardim , or Spanish Jews, descendants of Jews from Spain and Portugal who had sought refuge in South America as they fled the...

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