Jewish Feminists Form New Group

A new organization has been established to represent the special interests of Jewish feminists throughout the United States and Canada both inside and outside the Jewish community, it was announced here by Leora Fishman. The group, known as the Jewish Feminist Organization, will concern itself with religious and secular problems and “defend the interests and images of the Jewish women in the community-at-large against stereotyping,” according to Msr. Fishman who was elected to the board of the JFO.

The new group was launched by the National Conference on Jewish Women and Men which met here last week to discuss sex roles in Jewish life, More than 400 persons from cities across the U.S. and Canada attended the three-day conclave. The principal sponsor of the conference was the North American Jewish Students’s Network, an umbrella organization for hundreds of Jewish student groups in high schools and on college campuses.

Assessing the need and objective of the JFO. Ms. Fishman said that “the time has come for women in the Jewish community to organize their strength and pressure the male-dominated power structure for positive change.” Aside from applying pressure, she noted, the organization will set up an information clearing house and speakers bureau “to deal with the hundreds of requests for speakers on the subject of the role of women in Judaism.

CONFERENCE PLAYED A VANGUARD ROLE

Moreover, Ms. Fishman said, it will provide the names of women qualified to speak on what is considered more traditional Jewish topics, “usually reserved for male speakers. The Jewish community today seems to feel that women are only qualified to speak about women. We will push to change that attitude.”

The conference this year differed from the one held last year in that men were involved in this year’s conclave. A spokesman for Network described the conference as playing a vanguard role in bringing Jewish men and women together to deal with sex role related issues as well as to explore them in small groups separated by sex.

Congresswoman Bella Abzug (D., N.Y.), one of the featured speakers at the parley, said the effort to coalesce the thinking and feelings of Jewish men and women around the issues of Jewish feminism “is extremely exciting.” Noting that “in our hierarchy there is a greater tendency to ignore women and not to recognize their leadership” and that prominent Jewish women are rarely called upon to speak out for Jewish causes, Ms. Aug. declared:

“I think the strength of the Jewish people will be considerably improved as we release the capacities and potentials of the total population. That is what it is all about. We are not going to change anything meaningfully as Jews unless we have the men and women working on changing the atmosphere that restricts all of us to maximize our potentials.”