Miriam Kosman will be speaking to women in Baltimore on Thursday, October 30th at 8 pm at Bnai Jacob Shaarei Zion
There have been few issues that have caused more internal controversy and dissent in the Orthodox world in recent years than questions of gender roles in the Torah community.
Any discussions on this topic tend to become emotionally-charged confrontations between those who attack the Torah way as hopelessly incompatible with modern feminist-influenced thinking, and those who defend tradition at all costs, choosing to ignore the pointed questions raised by their opponents since, in reality, the answers are not always clear.
Enter Circle, Arrow, Spiral: Exploring Gender in Judaism (Menucha Publishers), a new book by veteran writer and educator Miriam Kosman. A Baltimore-born Bnei Barak-resident, Mrs. Kosman has been on the front lines of kiruv for two decades, working with students at Israel’s leading universities. This experience has meant that she has not been able to dodge the hard questions about women in Judaism that most of us prefer to brush aside.
Extensive research and unflinching honesty have led her to develop a clear-sighted Torah perspective that rises above petty squabbles and media circuses. Rather, Mrs. Kosman’s book takes a loftier view of “male” and “female” as energies inherent in the universe, contained within each of us, and most genuinely honored and expressed in a Torah ideal.
“Is equality a Jewish value?” Mrs. Kosman asks. “Judaism often finds itself with its back against the wall and a pistol to its head about women’s issues. It is interesting that the very religion that has championed the underdog for thousands of years is being held up as hopelessly chauvinistic and patriarchal—for some, Judaism’s approach to women seems impossible to reconcile with the modern psyche.”
In carefully and comprehensively answering these conundrums, Miriam Kosman culls eternal truths from halachic, Aggadic and philosophic sources, drawing heavily on the works of the Maharal, and weaves a breathtaking model that is fresh and expansive.
The book is divided in two parts, with Book I laying the theoretical underpinnings and real life applications, and Book II addressing the thornier current issues (gittin, tznius, women learning etc.).
Mrs. Kosman is a breath of fresh air in a conversation gone stale long ago. Her writing engages the reader to think more clearly and honestly than we are perhaps accustomed to doing, while her real life examples and vignettes capture the reader’s heart. The reader leaves enriched and expanded, with a new conceptual framework on which to hang his understanding of himself, his relationships and, most importantly, the relationship of Klal Yisroel to Hashem.
The reader comes away feeling uplifted and with a deeper understanding of our precious legacy of Torah wisdom. Circle, Arrow, Spiral imparts a gift that is rare in today’s world: clarity where once there was confusion.
