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`We Are No Longer A Joke': Twenty-five years after the First National Jewish Women's Conference, the pioneers gather to look back, push ahead.
In 1973, the Reform movement of Judaism had just begun to ordain women rabbis. Overwhelmingly, men still sat on the boards of national Jewish organizations while women tended to serve as unpaid volunteers. It would be another six years before the Drisha Institute opened its doors and pioneered the movement to make advanced Torah study accessible and acceptable for Orthodox Jewish women.
But at the McAlpin Hotel on 34th Street in Manhattan, 500 women gathered together for the First National Jewish Women's Conference.
The word "feminism," however, remains notably absent from the title of the conference Back then, "the word had a bad catch to it and would have deterred many people from coming," said Sheryl Nestle, the conference's chief organizer who now lives in Toronto.
Yet, "there was a feeling that changes was afloat, that you could challenge various institutions and thought processes," recalled Aviva Cantor, who helped Nestel organize the '73 conference. "This event wound up sparking a great deal of thought and action."
Lest anyone forget that historic February weekend, Cantor, a prominent Jewish feminist activist and writer, has been hard at work organizing a 25th anniversary celebration of the First National Jewish Women's Conference. While the original conference took place over Presidents Day weekend, the anniversary will be marked by...