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JTA Many of my fellow rabbinical students and friends are enthusiastic about a new strategy for elevating women’s voices in Torah study into the beit midrash this fall.
The Kranjec Test named for Danielle Kranjec, the Jewish educator who created it holds that collections of texts known as source sheets must include at least one non-male voice. It’s the Jewish studies equivalent of the well-known Bechdel test for film, in which movies pass if they include two women having a conversation about something other than men, and it quickly gained currency among my colleagues.
I resisted the call to include non-male voices every time I taught Torah. Then I tried it. December 30, 2020 5:13 pm A Jewish woman holding a Jewish Tanakh, which includes the books of the Torah, the Prophets and the Writings. (Godong/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
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(JTA) Many of my fellow rabbinical students and friends are enthusiastic about a new strategy for elevating women’s voices in Torah study into the beit midrash this fall.
The Kranjec Test named for Danielle Kranjec, the Jewish educator who created it holds that collections of texts known as source sheets must include at least one non-male voice. It’s the Jewish studies equivalent of the well-known Bechdel test for film, in which movies pass if they include two women having a conversation about something other than men, and it quickly gained currency among my colleagues.
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Rabbanit Jenna Englender dances with the Torah during her graduation ceremony from Yeshivat Maharat in New York, June 17, 2019. (Shulamit Seidler-Feller/Maharat/via JTA)
JTA When Danielle Kranjec committed to using only Jewish texts written by women and queer people in the classes she taught for Hillel International’s Springboard Fellowship, a program that places recent college graduates in positions at college campus Hillels across the country, she knew she was taking on a challenging task.
After all, for most of Jewish history, women weren’t encouraged to take on religious leadership roles or write commentaries on the Torah or Talmud.
When Danielle Kranjec committed to using only Jewish texts written by women and queer people in the classes she taught for Hillel International’s Springboard Fellowship, a program that places recent college graduates in positions at college campus Hillels across the country, she knew she was taking on a challenging task.
After all, for most of Jewish history, women weren’t encouraged to take on religious leadership roles or write commentaries on the Torah or Talmud.
But Kranjec knew that elevating the work of women would be worth the effort, both because doing so would communicate the value of women’s insights to her students and she believes the mismatch between the diversity of the people teaching Torah today and the sources they teach had grown too great. Also, as a Jewish educator and trained historian, she knew there were a plethora of texts that might not be considered “Torah” in the traditional sense but could serve as rich source material.