Jewish Multiple Identity

Jewishness is often implicitly conflated with maleness since participation in ritual and in textual study was often limited to males. Indeed, like most group identities, especially perhaps in the West, Jewishness is explicitly patriarchal. However, for centuries Jewishness as an identity transmitted at birth has been determined matrilineally. The contribution of women to the transmission and constant renewal of Jewishness is often articulated only in response to feminist critiques of traditional sexism, but there should be no question that women's role as educators and shapers of the sensibilities of new Jewish generations has always been indispensable.