Lunch & Learn with Pardes

Join us for a lunch & learn with Rabbanit Nechama Goldman Barash of the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem. It will be on Tuesday, February 18, at 12:30pm at Berkeley Hillel.
The topic of the conversation is: Does the gender binary need to exist in traditional Jewish practice?
This session will focus on the differences between men and women in rabbinic Judaism as manifested in both familial and communal space. Does this binary separation still need to exist? We will focus on the different Jewish responses to feminism including prayer services and ordination and how transgender people will potentially force the whole system to undergone significant change.
Rabbanit Nechama Goldman Barash made aliyah from Philadelphia over 20 years ago after graduating from Stern College. She studied for three years in Matan’s Advanced Talmud Institute and finished a master’s degree in Talmud at Bar-Ilan University. She is a graduate of Nishmat’s Yoetzet Halacha program and has been certified to teach brides before their weddings, as well as qualifying as a sex educator through Yahel and the Eden Center. She also studied for three years in Matan’s advanced halakha program, Hilkhata.
She teaches contemporary halakha and Talmud at Matan and Pardes, as well as Talmud and women and halakha in Torah V’Avodah (TVA), a Bnei Akiva gap year program based in Matan. She is an active member of Beit Hillel and participates in interfaith dialogue through Roots, based in Gush Etzion, close to where she lives with her family. She is currently working on a book dealing with matters of gender and halakha.