Women's Voices of Renewal within Tradition

Abstract

Women's voices are widely expressed in current movements of rejuvenation of Jewish traditions. These moves raise tensions within the religious world and the civic legal realm. In focus here is a much-debated instance: the nearly 30-year effort by Jewish women to pray in a group in song and read from the Bible at the holy site of the Western Wall in Jerusalem. The group is called the Women of the Wall (WoW). In addition to the women's rights of speech, discussion here highlights the need to recognize duties of respect for the women's voices. The Jewish and democratic values which constitutionally define Israel found the basis for these duties. Moral analysis does, as well. Both Jewish and Kantian thought are seen to conceptualize the essence of freedom as obligation, from which arise duties of respect for the other. Duties of respect are indeed owed to WoW by the other worshippers at the Western Wall, as well as by the rabbinic authorities in control of forms of prayer at the site. The coherence between Jewish and democratic values in their conception of the relation between freedom and duties of respect support the coherence between the two sets of values defining the State of Israel.

Keywords: women, voice, speech, expression, respect, dignity, Kant, Judaism, Western Wall, Jerusalem, prayer