Men Disappearing From Jewish Life and Leadership

Here’s an interesting article by Michael Paulson of the Boston Globe about the increasing numbers of women in reform Jewish leadership, and the concomitant decline of male participation in the synagogue.
One part of me hates the word “feminization” and the icky connotations that go with it: ie, when women are in charge religion gets soft and fuzzy, loses its intellectual edge, and becomes concerned so much with daily domestic concerns that it fails to address the need for social change (except within the context of “our children’s future”). On the other hand, some of those generalizations exist for good reason. I’m always disappointed when women preachers preach on cringe-worthy lightweight subjects like dieting, constantly use their own children as sermon illustrations, or degenerate into Oprah-esque New Age babble. I don’t see it a lot, but I do see it, and it’s no answer to the stereotypically […]