Welcome to Heterodox Jewish Woman
All material is available for you to read at no cost.
What will you find here?
The posts and podcast (coming up) will focus on three main areas.
Can I be committed to liberalism but also value national /religious identity?
One of the key elements of a liberal democracy is diversity: the freedom of individuals and communities to be themselves rather than conforming to an oppressive monoculture. Yet liberal democracies also depend on commonly held liberal values.
I believe deeply in the positive potential of multiculturalism (if done right). In my professional work, I help non-Jewish children to learn about my religion, Judaism, and what it means to be part of the Jewish people. I value the British approach that does not insist that we all be the same, in which we learn to value what Rabbi Jonathan Sacks ז"ל called the “dignity of difference.”
Unfortunately, multiculturalism can easily morph into moral relativism, and liberal societies can be destroyed from the inside, by those who use our liberal freedoms to destroy them. So-called “diversity training” often involves illiberal indoctrination in which we are told what opinions we can and cannot hold, which does not really promote diversity at all.
The tension between liberalism and identity poses a particular challenge for liberal-minded Jews, who seek to be expansive in our quest for such values as “Tikkun Olam” but then find that our own experiences as Jews are dismissed while the experiences of other identity groups are celebrated. The challenges faced by Jews are instructive for other identity groups facing similar challenges.
Most recently, I am publishing a series of posts dealing with the consequences of a post-modern deconstruction of religious education in the UK, and the dangers this poses to Jews and other ethno-religions.
How should feminism (Jewish or otherwise) adapt in response to the madness of today’s culture wars and identity politics?
I will be exploring more general questions about the importance of liberalism to feminists as well as its limitations and paradoxes when we confront the reality that men and women are not indeed the same.
How does halachic (law-defined), reality-grounded Judaism rise to the challenge of welcoming transgender Jews rather than pushing them away?
That is, how can one be trans inclusive without either engaging in magical thinking or playing loose with Jewish law? This is a subject on which I can offer a unique perspective (see below). It forces us to re-examine pretty much every issue in Jewish law for which sex matters. I produced a series of shiurim (lectures) delving into this with almost mathematical care, and I will be adapting these as a series of posts and podcasts over the coming months. If this topic is important to you, I want you to be part of the conversation.
Who is Heterodox Jewish Woman?
My full name is Dr Shira Batya Lewin Solomons. I am also called “Rebbetzin Shira” within the small Jewish community that my orthodox rabbi husband and I run out of our house. In my previous life as an Economics lecturer, my students called me “Dr Lewin”. My parents are originally from South Africa and came to the United States to study Mathematics. I was born in the United States, but spent my childhood pretty equally between Israel, South Africa, and the United States, where the rest of my immediate family still live.
I was educated at the University of Chicago (Economics and Mathematics) and then at Harvard, where I got my doctorate in Economics. After a brief stint teaching agricultural economics in Iowa, I then moved to the UK where I have lived for over 25 years. I left academia some twenty years ago to focus on raising my three kids (which is probably best considering the current climate for feminists in academia). I now run a small business with my husband, in which we provide Judaism education to non-Jewish children in non-Jewish schools as part of Religious Education.
My experience moving country to country gives me a particular perspective on multiculturalism, and what it means not to truly belong anywhere.
Why am I writing this and
why do you need to read it?
I launched this substack for several reasons:
1. If I don’t speak up as a Heterodox Jewish Woman, who else will?
Whereas many Jewish women are outspoken as part of the new “heterosphere”, oddly none of these Jewish women seem to tackle issues from a religious Jewish feminist perspective. There are conservative decidedly non-feminist voices such as Dr. Miriam Grossman. There are atheist feminist voices such as Bari Weiss and Nina Paley. But religious Jewish feminist voices that publicly acknowledge the reality of biological sex are hard to find, aside from private conversations and a few brave folks on Twitter (none with big followings as far as I can see).
Mainstream Jewish feminist organisations seem to have a adopted a feminism that is “trans-inclusive” or that at the very least lacks the confidence to stand up specifically for women (biologically defined) or to speak up about the medicalisation of “trans children”. Certainly, I have been disappointed not see any women rabbis (orthodox or not) brave enough to tackle these issues publicly (aside from one who renounced her semicha and became a conservative anti-feminist, which does not really help us here). I know of women rabbis who express private concerns (you are not alone!), but it is too dangerous for them to speak publicly. I was even told in one Jewish cross-communal setting that I could not even say I believed that sex was real, lest it offended someone.
To paraphrase a famous quip from the Mishnah: In a place where there are no Women of courage, it is your duty to step and be such a Woman! Thus hineni! Here I am!
I have a particular skill in analysing arguments, working out when people are speaking utter rubbish, and bringing disparate ideas together to make things make sense. So, I felt a duty to make use of my Chicago education and let my voice be heard to apply myself to shed light on important issues. This applies way beyond the gender debate and mostly recently includes the dangers arising from the movement to “decolonise the curriculum” in UK schools.
I hope that by speaking openly, I can help others to find their own voices. If you are concerned about these matters but must remain anonymous, please contact me privately, so that we can support each other.
2. I am perhaps uniquely placed to contribute to understanding of the Halacha regarding transgender
Once I started to study the Jewish legal issues relating to gender and trans inclusion (or exclusion), the topic pulled me in - because it is just so incredibly interesting (intellectually). Grappling with these issues forces us to re-examine and re-open every single question about what it means to be a religious Jewish feminist, and how and why Jewish law distinguishes between men and women (both in sexual matters and in Jewish ritual matters). The same challenges that I struggled with as a teenager and that filled my university application essays came at me again with a vengeance, and I could not let go. So I did a massive research project and produced a series of shiurim (lectures) on Gender in Halacha, which I will be editing and adapting as substack posts over the coming months.
The more I studied contemporary rabbinic writings to do with transgender Jews, the more I realised how out-dated and inadequate much of this work was. This is primarily because, like so many therapists and medical doctors, rabbis who tackled this topic have tended not to have a proper understanding of the psychological complexities. They have accepted uncritically certain claims now known to be unfounded, such as that people will commit suicide if they do not medicalise.
More recently (at the same time as I was doing my work), Rabbi Aryeh Klapper has produced some excellent work on this topic that is far better grounded. I will reference Rabbi Aryeh, who has published his shiurim (lectures) in a podcast. But my focus is somewhat different from his and I will aim to make my materials accessible to those with a lower level of Jewish learning.
I have learned enormously by speaking to many learned rabbis who know Jewish law at a level that I could not dream of equalling but were not knowledgeable about facts on the ground like I am and were wary to make any public pronouncements on this topic (or even be mentioned by name). By combining my knowledge with theirs, as well as my own life experience as a woman, I believe that I have been able to reach a level of understanding of the halachic issues that is unique, particularly as I have actively sought (and continue to seek) constructive criticism of my conclusions. It is through the community of knowledge that we achieve true understanding of complex problems.
So if you care about how religious Judaism rises to the challenge of how to include transgender Jews in our community without engaging in magical thinking or lessening our commitment to Jewish law, as well as what this endeavour teaches us about religious Jewish feminism, or if you are grappling with similar questions in another faith tradition, then you will want to engage with my material. And I will want to hear from you and learn from you.
Join the conversation
All my posts are public and allow discussion from readers. I want to hear from you!
