Holy Rebellion

Ronit Irshai is Associate Professor and the head of the gender studies department at Bar Ilan University; a research fellow at the Shalom Hartman institute in Jerusalem (For pluralistic Judaism), a member in the board of the Reckman center at Bar Ilan University (For women’s rights) and a member of “Kolech” – A religious feminist forum.

She published a series of articles on halakhah (Jewish Law), theology and gender, Jewish sexual ethics, Jewish religious feminism, etc.

Her first book: Fertility and Jewish Law: Feminist Perspectives on Orthodox Responsa Literature was published by Brandeis University Press in 2012. The second book on abortion was published in Hebrew by Magness press in 2022, and the third book on Modern-Orthodox Feminism in Israel (together with Dr. Tanya Zion-Waldoks) will be published by Brandeis University Press in spring 2024.

Dr. Tanya Zion-Waldoks, Assistant Professor at the Seymour Fox School of Education at Hebrew University, is a gender scholar, feminist activist and mother of four. Tanya is fascinated by the intersection of religion, gender, and politics, with a focus on education and social change. Current research explores feminist activism and women’s political subjectivities in religious communities or traditional contexts in Israel, examined through qualitative studies with a comparative lens. In addition, she explores issues of gender equality in education and anti-racist activism in Israel. Her work has been published in leading journals such as Gender & Society, Signs, AJS Review. Tanya received her PhD from Bar-Ilan’s Gender Studies program, a Kreitman and Israel Institute post-doctoral fellowship at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and a Rothschild and ISF postdoctoral fellowship at the “Center for Culture, Society and Religion,” Princeton University.