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Changing Synagogue Roles
P A G E 3
From the 1920s to the 1960s, Jewish women formed auxiliaries to make their synagogues beautiful, warm, and inviting. Auxiliaries educated their members about Jewish ritual observance, taught them new ways to celebrate holidays, and raised funds for community programs.
During that
same period, increasing numbers of their daughters participated in the evolving bat mitzvah — a coming-of-age ceremony observed at age thirteen. By the 1970s, influenced by the feminist movement,
Conservative and Reform women demanded the right to lead services and read from the Torah (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) and to become rabbis and cantors. Still other women gained reknown as writers of liturgy.
Women in the Orthodox movement still feel that their position at home is a sufficient responsibility and honor, and that they need not demand equality within the synagogue.
top photo Janet Pink and parents during her bat mitzvah at Adath Jeshurun Synagogue, Minneapolis, MN, 1983. Courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society.
inset photo, top left: Gift shop at Temple of Aaron, St. Paul, MN, 1957. Synagogue gift shops have been effective fund-raisers for women’s auxiliaries. They sell both religious items and a variety of Israeli decorative wares. Courtesy of the Jewish Historical Society of the Upper Midwest.
inset photo, middle right: Mount Zion Auxiliary women creating a festive Sabbath table, St. Paul, MN, 1949. Through table settings such as this one, the Sabbath was “modernized.” Courtesy of the Jewish Historical Society of the Upper Midwest.
inset photo, bottom left: Examples of needlepointed Torah mantles from various Twin Cities synagogues. Courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society.
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