The Schmooze
Women are more empowered, but there is still some way to go
As we approach International Women’s Day, the CEO of the United Synagogue writes about the changing role of women in the organisation
March 5, 2025 15:56
As we approach International Women’s Day, the CEO of the United Synagogue writes about the changing role of women in the organisation
March 5, 2025 15:56ByJo Grose
I was lucky enough to grow up in a synagogue in Manchester made up of kind, warm, accomplished and charitable people. It had a long-standing connection with my family: my great-grandpa led the community from 1914 to 1941 and my grandpa grew up in the house on the synagogue site.
In many ways, the shul was a second home. I grew up playing on the marble stairs and hiding in the choir loft.
But it was also not my space.
No women were involved in the leadership of the shul and women and girls were most likely to be found volunteering behind the scenes. When I questioned this around the time of my bat mitzvah, I was told that women can’t take on public roles because “we would be embarrassed with all those pairs of eyes on us”. I know this is what was said because I included it in an essay that I still have at home. It probably doesn’t take a psychologist to fathom the impact of that comment. As a young woman in an Orthodox shul, I felt excluded from what I perceived to be the centre of community life.
Of course this was decades ago. Much has changed in that community as well as in the United Synagogue, the charity I now lead. So why raise this today?
I raise it because as we approach International Women’s Day I know some women and girls still feel excluded from shul.
I am clear that in halachah, Jewish law, it is men who have an obligation to daven in a minyan and that our services are led by men.
I also know from my experience in community development that participation in Shabbat morning services is only one access point to Jewish life. Our most successful communities offer multiple opportunities for women and men to live, learn, lead and grow Jewishly. Studies consistently show that for children, it is what happens at home – more broadly than just in shul – that has the greatest impact on Jewish identity.
Over the past 20 years, I’ve been lucky enough to belong to a community that welcomes women’s leadership and involvement, and I’ve seen countless examples of positive female engagement across different United Synagogue shuls.
I’m proud of our achievements in recent years, but finding more ways to include women in community life remains a key priority.
We are making significant progress. Alongside our rebbetzins and incredible educators, we are developing female religious leaders with a depth of Torah knowledge who teach, inspire and care for members at critical moments in their lives. They show women and girls that the shul space is for them and enable them to make sense of key moments in their life, explaining halachah and rituals and bringing greater religious meaning and values to the context in which we live.
For this reason, we established Ma’aleh, a high-level learning programme for women taught by South Hampstead’s Rebbetzin Lauren Levin and Rabbanit Shani Taragin from Israel. The energy in their beit midrash is in itself wonderful, but it also demonstrates that women’s voices, teaching, involvement and leadership belong at the heart of our communities.
Our Centre for Rabbinic Excellence provides quality training and support for rebbetzins, and the graduates of the Chief Rabbi’s Ma’ayan programme regularly teach across our communities.
Women’s Hallel, Kabbalat Shabbat and Megillah readings are the norm across many United Synagogue communities, and it is commonplace to hear women reciting and responding to Kaddish in our shuls.
There is an ever-increasing number of ways for bat mitzvah girls to mark this milestone in our shuls, and the layout of our shuls is changing to allow for greater inclusion of women. Our annual Women’s Shabbat sparks an array of community events focused on female engagement, often coordinated by community women’s officers, which is now a formal role on shul executives.
We are successfully lowering the barriers to women’s engagement, but there remains much more to do, including removing the obstacles faced by single women and mothers.
I owe it to the teenage Jo who was told that Jewish leadership and involvement wasn’t for women. We can’t afford to lose our women and girls.