“I GREW up in an Orthodox community. I know that when I was born my father said, ‘What a shame, it’s a girl.’ I know that there were no ceremonies to welcome my arrival within the community. I know that no matter how hard I worked in Hebrew school and how many prizes I won, it didn’t really matter. At the age of thirteen, only the boys would have the official ceremony of the Bar Mitzva, which welcomed them into the world of men. And I have spent hours in synagogue sitting watching the men read from the scrolls, organize the services, and ignore the women completely. ….

“… I recently saw a photograph of a Hasidic celebration for the anniversary of the rabbinic scholar, Maimonides. Again, I found myself looking at the newsprint on the page trying to find someone who might look like me, a grown woman and a mother. But along the rows and rows of blackbearded men with dark hats and white faces I didn’t see a single woman. Once again, they had simply disappeared, as if they didn’t exist at all.

“That’s how the extreme Orthodox and Hasidic men like to have their women. They believe that women are wicked, unreliable, sexual temptresses, who are put on earth to lead men into evil ungodly ways and tempt them to stop observing the laws and commandments of Judaism.”

— The Hole in the Sheet: A Modern Woman Looks at Orthodox and Hasidic Judaism, Evelyn Kay (Lyle Stuart, 1987)

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