Rabbis' Voice Articles

Dr. Marjorie Lehman, Scholar-in-Residence at Kol Rinah

Kol Rinah is, of course, an egalitarian congregation--men and women participate equally in ritual. But as we know, life is so much more than ritual. Ritual is actually a way of being neater and more orderly than life ever can be. Ritual has fixed rules and structure; life is messy. 

While in our synagogue, ritual is egalitarian, in our society, Jewish and secular, life is not egalitarian. From fixed gender norms to gender inequity to sexual assault and harassment to gender stereotypes, gender is an important part of our lives and the way our world is structured. 

The first time I learned about the category of Jewish laws described as “positive, time-bound commandments,” was in Dr. Marjorie Lehman’s Talmud class my second year of rabbinical school at the Jewish Theological Seminary. The category applies to mitzvot like saying the Shema, which is supposed to be done at particular times in the morning and evening. In that class, we didn’t really interrogate the concept of positive, time-bound commandments and women’s exemptions from them--it was a basic Talmud class. 

But Dr. Lehman has made one of the focuses of her academic work feminist approaches and topics in Jewish studies and Talmud, and I’m so glad that she’ll be with us at Kol Rinah Friday-Saturday November 22-23, 2019. 

Dr. Lehman is a meticulous, compassionate and rigorous teacher and scholar who has also written on Talmud pedagogy (how to teach Talmud), and is working on a feminist commentary to the Talmudic tractate Yoma, that deals with Yom Kippur. More information about her is available here (http://www.jtsa.edu/marjorie-lehman). 

Friday night following services, she’ll speak over dinner on the topic, “You Never Call, You Never Write!”: Breaking the Negative Stereotypes of Jewish Motherhood. 

Saturday morning, she’ll give a sermon entitled, David, His Sons and His Wives: The Challenges of Kinship. 

After kiddush on Saturday, she’ll teach on What the Rabbis Have to Say in Response to the #MeToo Movement. 

She’ll reprise her talk on Jewish motherhood at B’nai Amoona at 10:15am Sunday morning. 

Her visit is sponsored by the Hereld Institue for Jewish Studies at JTS, the Sara and Leo Wolf Education Fund of Kol Rinah, and the Rabbi Bernard Lipnick Foundation for Conservative Judaism.