We'll look at the history of women's rabbinic ordination in the Reform, Conservative/Masorti, and Reconstructionist movements before surveying what's happening today in the Orthodox world, with over fifty women who have Orthodox ordination, in the USA, Israel ... and the UK!

This session is part of The 2020 Torah Adar Programme, in memory of Maureen Kendler z'l. We are grateful to the Maureen Kendler Educational Trust for their support of this event via their Scholar in Residence Programme. 

Rabba Dr Lindsey Taylor-Guthartz received her doctorate from University College London in 2016, and Orthodox rabbinical ordination from Yeshivat Maharat, New York, in June 2021. She is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Jewish Studies, University of Manchester, where she is investigating the history and development of Limmud. Lindsey has been an affiliated or associated lecturer at the universities of Cambridge, Oxford, SOAS, King's College London, and Vassar College in New York State. She is also a Research Fellow at the London School of Jewish Studies, and has presented at Limmud in the UK, the Netherlands, and South Africa. Her first book is Challenge and Conformity: The Religious Lives of Orthodox Jewish Women, which was published in 2021 by the Littman Library of Jewish Civilization.

Maureen Kendler died in February 2018 after a short illness. She was an inspirational Jewish educator, writer and broadcaster who believed passionately that Jewish women’s opportunities for involvement in many aspects of Jewish life were limited by a lack of Jewish education. The Maureen Kendler Educational Trust provides bursaries to encourage Jewish women to undertake advanced studies in Judaism so that they can follow Maureen’s example and play more active roles in their communities.