The View from the Ladies’ Gallery: Women’s ‘Official’ Life in the Community

Abstract

This chapter documents and analyses women's activity in and experience of formal public worship in the synagogue. The synagogue is central to the performance of male religious obligations, but much less so to the performance of women's religious duties. Many observant women rarely attend synagogue, even if their fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons go every week. Women have mixed feelings about synagogue attendance. Some find it essential to their experience of the sabbath, and some are resigned to their synagogue experience. Women traditionally play no or very little role in life-cycle celebrations. At some synagogues, women's participation is actively discouraged. Women held formal titles in the synagogues of ancient Rome, but there are no further instances of this until the twentieth century. Most Orthodox women emerge from the Jewish educational systems with little competence in reading Hebrew or in studying classical texts. Women find it hard to place acquired knowledge in a wider context, and tend to describe themselves as 'not very learned', ignoring their often immense expertise in areas of domestic knowledge, such as the running of a Jewish household. Women's lack of confidence, text-based knowledge, and training has prevented them from becoming Jewish educators. This survey of women's activity and experience in the 'official' communal sphere clearly illustrates the different attitudes and strategies of the three groups identifiable in the London Jewish community: Haredi, Modern Orthodox, and traditionalist.