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Get StartedThank You, God...For Not Making Me A Woman?
Shelo Asani Ishah: Why Thank God For Not Being A Woman?
We live in a post-Frozen world. A world where women are not damsels in distress, helplessly waiting to be saved by men - they're quite capable of saving themselves, thank you very much. The old-world notion that women are somehow inferior to men is slowly becoming a thing of the past.
But that leaves us with a problem - because one of the prayers that Jewish men say every morning reads, "Blessed are You, God... for not making me a woman" (“Baruch atah Hashem… shelo asani isha.”) What do we make of this blessing — and what does it imply about the role of women in Judaism? Is it a relic of a bygone era, something to leave behind? Is there a fundamental gender inequality in Judaism? Or is there a different way to understand the meaning behind the blessing of “shelo asani ishah”?
Rabbi David Fohrman
Founder and Lead Scholar
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