Women's Gallery: Showcasing Women in Jewish Leadership – Details, episodes & analysis

This podcast is powered by LSJS. Visit lsjs.ac.uk to learn about our Jewish learning journeys & find something that suits you.

I'm delighted to be joined by Rabbanit Nechama Goldman Barash, one of the most refreshing and challenging voices in contemporary Jewish learning. Based in Jerusalem, Nechama teaches Talmud and halachah at the Pardes Institute and Matan, where she's known for tackling some of the most complex questions around gender and relationships with honesty, warmth and depth.

Her recently published book, Uncovered: Women's Roles, Mitzvot, and Sexuality in Jewish Law, offers a fearless, richly sourced exploration of women's ritual obligations, religious identity and sexuality in Jewish law. Nechama's teaching combines rigorous text study with a rare sensitivity to lived experience.

Link to the book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Uncovered-Womens-Mitzvot-Sexuality-Jewish/dp/9655243753

This podcast is powered by LSJS. Visit lsjs.ac.uk to learn about our Jewish learning journeys & find something that suits you.

NEW! Talk to us at womensgallery@lsjs.ac.uk and tell us about amazing women who you'd like to hear interviewed.

Joanne Greenaway is joined by Rabbanit Chana Henkin, founder of Nishmat: The Jeanie Schottenstein Center for Advanced Torah Study for Women in Jerusalem, and Head of its Research Institute.

One of the great pioneers of women's Orthodox Torah scholarship, Rabbanit Henkin has transformed the landscape of women's halachic and spiritual leadership. Together with her late husband, Rav Yehuda Henkin ztz"l, she founded the Yoatzot Halacha programme, training women experts in Jewish law and women's health, whose work has changed the way halachic guidance is sought and given across the Orthodox world.

A beloved teacher and visionary, Rabbanit Henkin has received honorary doctorates from
both Bar-Ilan and Yeshiva Universities and was awarded Israel's prestigious Agrest Prize for
innovative religious education.

She reflects on resilience amid personal loss, explains the vacuum that prompted her to start
the Yoatzot Halacha programme, discusses continuing her late husband's work on women in
halacha and demonstrates how halacha has given agency to women. We discuss the
difference between a yoetzet and a rabbi, and the changing relationships between women
and rabbis in the information age, and she inspires us with a message about serving the
community in the future.

Responsa on Contemporary Jewish Women's Issues (New Expanded Edition) is available here.

To access our full LSJS programme of learning, visit lsjs.ac.uk/learning.

Our new women's gemara course, A Taste of Talmud starts on Wed 22nd October. Book it
for free here.

This podcast is powered by LSJS. Visit lsjs.ac.uk/connect to learn about our Jewish
learning journeys & find something that suits you.

Today I'm honoured to welcome Sharon Rosen, a leader in interfaith peace
building in Israel and around the world. Sharon served as Search for Common
Ground's Global Director of Religious Engagement from 2017 until recently. She
also co-founded and directed Education for Life, an NGO that provides tools for
the development and wellbeing of children within state educational systems. She
was also a faculty member at the Jerusalem Center for Near East Studies,
teaching courses on Bible, gender, and contemporary relevance.

From her father's survival as a prisoner of war and how that projected the family
into Israel as some of the first olim, to the challenge of seeking female leaders to
connect and build bridges with in the Muslim world, this conversation is really
wide-ranging.

Sharon is an expert on designing and implementing interreligious programming
that builds collaboration across religions and promotes peace. She is also an
experienced facilitator in conflict resolution and strategic planning. Her advice for
women and for the world, to amplify feminine traits of caring, compassion, mediation
and dialogue over dominance, strength, assertiveness and competition, demonstrates the
decades of experience it comes from.

This podcast is powered by LSJS. Visit lsjs.ac.uk/connect to learn about our Jewish
learning journeys & find something that suits you.

Rabbanit Nicole Duke is not an obvious leader, but her guidance behind the scenes at
crucial times and life cycle events helps countless people through both difficult
and wonderful times. First she is a shomeret, a kashrut supervisor enabling
kosher functions to take place. She is also responsible for the chevra kadisha -
the organisation dedicated to caring for the deceased and preparing them for
burial - at the main Orthodox cemetery in London, and she single-handedly runs
a hotline advising, guiding and arranging help for people who have just lost a
loved one.

We discuss the emergence of women into these roles and what women can bring
to the world of kashrut in particular, as well as revealing some of the little known
world of what happens when a person passes away.

This podcast is powered by LSJS. Visit lsjs.ac.uk/connect to learn about our Jewish
learning journeys & find something that suits you.

I learn every day with my chavruta in Israel using Sefaria sources. So I'm delighted to be
interviewing Rabbanit Sara Tillinger Wolkenfeld, Chief Learning Officer at Sefaria, the online
database and interface for Jewish texts.

Sara is passionate about Talmud education and about expanding Jewish textual knowledge
and its accessibility for all. She writes and teaches widely about Jewish texts and Jewish
law, and her current projects focus on applying Talmudic ideas to questions of
advancements in digital technology.

We discuss ways she uses AI to improve accessibility on Sefaria, her goals for women's
learning in the future, and worrying trends in access to texts commonly cited by antisemites.

Sara is also a member of Class Six of the Wexner Field Fellowship and an alumna of the
David Hartman Center at the Hartman Institute of North America. She serves as
Scholar-in-Residence at Ohev Sholom Congregation in Washington, DC and her research
and writing focus on the intersection between Jewish ethics and advancements in
technology. Sara's writing has been published in The Atlantic, First Things, and Religion
Dispatches, as well as numerous Jewish publications.

This podcast is powered by LSJS. Visit lsjs.ac.uk/connect to learn about our Jewish learning journeys & find something that suits you. 

What's it like to be part of the Jewish community in Hungary? Home to the second largest synagogue in the world yet a hidden Jewish population that no-one can count, how does it function and what will its future be?

Jewish educator, historian and tour guide Szonja Komoroczy is Vice Rector at the Jewish University of Budapest and has lectured and published extensively in English, Hungarian, Hebrew, and Yiddish. As an educator, her passion is to tell the story behind the facts, and, as a tour guide, to show the stories behind various layers of a city or region - historical, social, and architectural, alike. Behind the scenes, she's something of an unofficial ambassador of the community.

With a PhD and two MA degrees from Oxford and Budapest, Szonja's main field of research and interest is Hungarian Jewish history and cultural history, and she is especially intrigued by issues related to changes in national identity and language choice. I think Szonja's story and that of Hungarian Jewry is not well enough known and I'm really happy for her to share it more widely on this podcast.

For more Jewish learning journeys, connect with us at lsjs.ac.uk/connect. 

This podcast is powered by LSJS. Visit lsjs.ac.uk/connect to learn about our Jewish
learning journeys & find something that suits you.

Dr Tanya White is a much loved teacher at LSJS and Matan, and a lecturer in Jewish
Philosophy at Bar Ilan University. Tanya lives in Israel with her husband and four girls, and
she writes, teaches and lectures on Tanach and Jewish Philosophy. She has a very unique
style that is both inspiring and intellectually stimulating and our students here at lsjs.ac.uk
love her. I always learn so much from her approach and her take on ideas – really profound
and really personal and authentic.

We discuss bridging the gap between israel and the Diaspora, responding to October 7 as
an educator, what's next on the horizon for Orthodox Jewish women, and bringing Pesach
Torah concepts to life.

For more Pesach learning and other learning journeys, connect with us at lsjs.ac.uk/connect.

Today, we're live! I'm at the Orthodox Women's Torah Leadership Convening with Ann
Pava and Elizabeth Walder, trailblazers of Jewish philanthropy, strategically growing the field
of Orthodox Jewish women's Torah leadership.

As we sit onstage at the Convening that Ann and Elizabeth made happen, they reveal how
they choose where to invest, and how they go forward as partners with those organisations
lucky enough to receive their help. We marvel at how far this field has come - programmes in
learning and leadership that are now available for women and girls, and positions held by
women that were traditionally reserved for men. We discuss the challenges for Orthodox
women seeking a career in Torah leadership as well the hurdles we've overcome, and the
work still to do in this field.

Anne Pava is the president of Micah Philanthropies. An activist, philanthropist, thought
leader and community builder, she loves to mentor and empower women, especially to lead,
and to make the world a better place and has been pivotally to the Prizmah Centre for
Jewish Day Schools, the Jewish Federations of North America, the Hebrew High School of
New England and the Jewish Federation of Western Massachusets. She is involved in many
other boards and has won an award for outstanding women philanthropists.

Elizabeth Walder is president and executive director of the Walder Foundation and the board
chair of Walder Operations. She is a lawyer by training and led a multicultural immigration
law practise helping thousands of immigrants reach their full potential. Later she served as
the chief sustainability officer at IDT before establishing The Walder Foundation with her
husband. Through its Jewish Life pillar the Walder Foundation founds many initiatives to
empower Orthodox women's Torah leadership and Elizabeth was awarded the Hinda
Institute's Heroines of Hope award in 2022 given to a visionary broad-minded philanthropist
who personifies leadership and compassion.

Special thanks to Dr. Elana Stein Hain, who organized the convening. (You can hear Jo's Women's Gallery interview with her here.)

Listen to Jo's interview with Rabbanit Michelle Cohen Farber here.

This podcast is powered by LSJS. Visit lsjs.ac.uk/connect to learn about our Jewish
learning journeys & find something that suits you.

Suzy Goldberg is a pillar of the London community who embodies humble leadership. She's
a mother, grandmother, shadchanit (Jewish matchmaker) and Torah teacher of over 30
years. She's also a graduate of the LSJS BA and MA degree programmes in Jewish
Education and she works today with an organisation called Shidduch.im, the UK's
branch of the fabulously-named Saw You at Sinai Jewish dating app, and she's
encouraged, counselled and guided many couples to the chuppah with incredible skill.

We discuss the common thread connecting Jewish education and matchmaking, what it
feels like to watch a couple you connected get married, our responsibility to help people find
their other halves and of course, how to know if this is the right match for you!

This podcast is powered by LSJS - the London School of Jewish Studies. Connect with our Jewish education courses, tours and events, online and in person, via lsjs.ac.uk/connect.

Hadassa and I met over Chanukah when she was in London promoting her new book - a book which has made a huge impression on both me and my daughter. Hadassah started this book project in the wake of October 7th to help parents talk about the trauma of that terrible day, and to cope with the trauma that developed in its wake. Hadassah has emerged as a genuine role model in that sense, and I'm very excited to talk with her more about the book and its impact, as well as about her life, her world, and particularly about parenting. She's a mother of seven which, as a mother of four, sounds impressive!

We talk mother to mother about parenting in the digital age, setting digital boundaries, self
regulation, the power of stories, and resilience. We also focus on taking social responsibility
and connecting with your inner hero, and discover the surprising truth about when she
learned English!

The Heroes of October 7th may be purchased in the UK here, and in the US here.