Elana Sztokman

Reposting a 2007 essay published in the Jerusalem Report entitled "Westward Ho!" Negotiations between university staff and the treasury officially broke down this morning, so it looks like Israel is headed for another higher education strike. Ho-hum, can someone please pass the salt? The incapacitation of our educational system has become so routine that it barely even registers a headline. Over the past two years, we have had an extended teacher strike, a drawn out student strike, a semester-long senior professor strike followed by a junior lecturer strike, and a whole series of parent strikes around the country. This situation should really give us pause. The educational system is, in fact, crashing. I wrote about this last year in an essay published in The Jerusalem Report. I’m reviving the essay here because the situation has only deteriorated. I say this with great sorrow, as someone who spent 13 years at Hebrew University as student and employee, holds a doctorate in education, and not least of all has four children sprawled through the educational system in Israel. The educational system in Israel is very, very depressing. I hope that the next Israeli government successfully places education as the top priority. I have some suggestions for how to do it, but I will wait until the next Education Minister is in place and then post my “Close Down the Education Ministry” post. Stay tuned. Meanwhile, here is my article about higher education in Israel: Westward Ho! Read the rest of this entry →

Miriam sang. Deborah sang. The women in the Temple sang. But today, in modern Israel, women are forbidden from singing, at least in public.

Over the past few months, there has been an increasing number of incidents in which women have been asked not to sing in the Knesset, in the army, and in IDF and Holocaust memorial ceremonies.

But some women refuse to take this quietly. Read about their singing protest on the Kolech blog, Jewish Women's Voice.

Kadima head Tzipi Livni may yet inspire me to break one of my cardinal rules: I may yet hang a nice big sign outside my house that reads Livni for Prime Minister. Read the rest of this entry →

I am thrilled to report that my friend Elise Rynhold is number five on the list of the local Shahar party in Modi’in. That is reason enough for me to vote for Shahar in the municipal elections in November. Elise, a dynamic, super-intelligent, activist and energetic woman, the kind of woman who knows how to get things done and has an amazing head on her shoulders, has spent a good portion of her career in the service of the Jewish people Read the rest of this entry →

One in Nine. That’s how many women will get breast cancer in her lifetime. It is the most common form of cancer in Israel. And it is diagnosed in 4,000 women in Israel each year. Worldwide, a woman dies from breast cancer ever 75 seconds. Read the rest of this entry →

This essay is scheduled to be published in the next issue of Jewish Educational Leadership The running joke in Dr. Shlomi Ravid’s family is that he is a chicken farmer who became a Jewish professional. Put differently, the socialist-Zionist (“sabre”) revolution and ethos has gone a full circle. Ravid, the 55 year-old soft-spoken, blue-eyed, grey-bearded, mild-mannered founding director of the School for Jewish Peoplehood Studies at Beth Hatefutsoth does not possess a demeanor of a man out to change the world. And yet, in his inimitable gentle and caring way, Ravid is doing just that – inspiring virtually everyone he meets and works with to transform Jewish life. In fact, it is perhaps his very kindness that lies at the heart of his vision. Read the rest of this entry →

Over the past two days, I have had fascinating conversations with women in different cities, countries, and communities about the issue of women's participation in synagogue life, especially around the holiday of Simchat Torah. Better to be separate or in synagogue? Better to stand and watch or stay home and read a book? Did you dance with a Torah? Did you read from the Torah? How do these experiences make you feel? What do you think the future holds for women in Orthodoxy? Where do you think Orthodox feminism should be striving for? I would love to publish your impressions. So, women, I encourage you to write about it and I'll post on the blog. Write! Write! Write! The power is in the pen (or keyboard as it were). Publish a comment, or send in a full length post to elana@elanasztokman.com. I'd love to hear!!! With wishes for a wonderful year, Elana Read the rest of this entry →

Another dire portrait of how the status of women continues to regress in the year 2008: Rabbi Shai Piron, hailed as one of the most liberal Orthodox rabbis in Israel, published a ruling in today's Ynet , that women are not allowed to dance with the Torah. The arguments are tenuous at best, and reveal the depth of anti-women sentiment and the rhetorical tools for keeping women down -- even in the most supposedly liberal corners of Orthodoxy. Read more on the Kolech English blog, Jewish Women's Voice. Read the rest of this entry →

Many years ago, I spent a Shabbat in Ramat Gan with my husband and two-year old child. On Saturday night, we had to take a bus home, which had come from the direction of Bnei Brak. When the bus finally arrived, I stepped onto the bus with my sleeping toddler on my shoulder. The bus was packed, and from my standpoint, all I saw were black hats and coats. I began to carefully walk down the aisle looking for a seat, and the men sitting stared back at me and did not move. One man began to get up for me but the man sitting next to him pulled his arm and shook his head, as if to say, I forbid you from getting up for this woman. Only in the back, where there were three or four rows of women, did a passenger get up and let me sit so as not to risk my child getting thrown if the bus were to brake short. My child’s life was not considered important in the face of the real risk: that a man may have to sit near a woman. I have thought about this story many times recently, as the removal of women from public spaces in the haredi world has been given legal status through such things as Egged regulations and so forth. Stories of women getting beaten up for staying seated in the “men’s” section of buses and other places – some of which are now making their way through the judicial system – are of course reminiscent of the American antebellum south and Rosa Parks. This is not separation of the sexes but the elimination of women from public life. It is an entire attempt to pretend that women do not exist, or at least to create an artificial world in which women can be silent and invisible. The latest example of the elimination of women was this week at the Simchat Beit Hashoeva in Meah Shearim. As Ynet reported (hat tip: Joel Katz Religion and State in Israel): Read the rest of this entry →

Incidents of violence against women perpetrated in the name of Orthodoxy have been on the rise in both quantity and severity. A woman was recently beaten up in her home by supposedly "ultra-Orthodox" Jewish men claiming to be acting for the sake of God. These stories remind me of the Crucible, the insane witch hunts that plagued women for centuries. How far have we regressed... Here is the story from Ynet:

In Israel's ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, where the rule of law sometimes takes a back seat to the rule of God, zealots are on a campaign to stamp out behavior they consider unchaste. They hurl stones at women for such "sins" as wearing a red blouse, and attack stores selling devices that can access the internet.