Writing by Dr. Dannielle Blumenthal

Judaism is complete in and of itself; it doesn’t need any “-ism” or any ideology. It doesn’t need Zionism, it doesn’t need DEI, and it doesn’t need any extra thing—it’s all there. We could talk about all the different ideologies and why they are all contained within Judaism, but I want to focus on feminism for a minute.
You know, in Bereshit 2:18, it says, “It is not good for a man to be alone.” This is what Hashem, God, says: “I will make for him an ezer k’negdo.” I will make for him a helpmate who is “against” him. What is God trying to do for man? I’ll explain. We learn that ezer k’negdo means that when the husband is doing the right thing, the woman follows along; when he is doing the wrong thing, she protests vigorously—she opposes him.
Sociologically, the advent of the feminist movement coincided with the rise of the yeshiva movement. You can read Samuel Heilman’s book, The World of the Yeshiva (from the early 1990s), and see the break. The idea that feminism is evil is directly correlated with the rise of “Yeshivish” thinking. It is a very distinct way of thinking—it is not Modern Orthodox. I think they would argue that it is “Torah Judaism,” but the truth is that Jewish people are informed by the world. We are informed by everything, and we use it to make our faith better. At the point where an ideology becomes toxic, we have to stop and examine what it is doing, but that does not mean we reject all outside ideas.
It also doesn’t mean we define Torah by living in some kind of shell or by saying extremist things about women and their roles in the world, whether those views are “super-feminist” or “super-non-feminist.” That is not helpful to women. What is helpful, especially in a time of unbelievable antisemitism, is for both men and women to be strong, to strengthen one another, to strengthen the Jewish family and the Jewish community, and to work together. We must work together to honor the Torah and to speak back against the absolute lies that are being thrown at us—and we all know what those are: horrific lies aimed at justifying yet more genocide against us.