Leah Shakdiel introduces masekhet Tamid, opening up its account of daily Temple worship, and noting the importance of continually striving to link our ancestors' spirituality with our own.
Leah Shakdiel was born in Jerusalem in 1951 to a family of Modern Orthodox pioneers. She moved to Yeruham, a small development town in the Negev Desert, in 1978, with a group committed to Halacha, social responsibility, peace, and ecology. She is married to psychologist Dr. Moshe Landsman, and is mother of Rachel (36), Tzvi (34), and Pinchas (32), and grandmother of Toviya (13), Channah (11), Miriam (10), and Batya (6).
Leah has a BA from Bar Ilan University in English and French Literatures. Her other studies include Bible and Oral Law, Jewish Thought, Jewish History, and Education. She taught Hebrew and Jewish studies, developed teaching materials, trained teachers, coordinated and directed projects and institutions in the areas of education and community. She has taught courses on Jewish feminism, state and religion, and Israeli society, at the Schechter Institute and at Sapir College.
Leah is socially and politically active on behalf of peace, empowering the disadvantaged, civil and human rights, and feminism. She has published academic and popular articles in all these areas. She served as the first Yeruham town council female member ever (1983-8), and in 1988 became Israel’s first female member of a local Religious Council, following a successful struggle that ended with a landmark Supreme Court decision. As a School for Educational Leadership Fellow (1994-6) she developed a model for feminist pedagogy for Israel. She is the recipient of the Yig'al Alon Prize for Lifework as Pioneer (2009), the Israeli Parliament Distinction for Women Leading Change (twice, 1999, 2015), and the New Israel Fund UK Prize for Human Rights (2014). She currently teaches in various post-high school pre-military programmes, and is studying towards Orthodox rabbinical ordination in Beit Midrash Har'el, Jerusalem.
