New at the Orthodox Caucus

The Orthodox Caucus is expanding the "Women and Orthodoxy" section on its website and has begun a new initiative focusing on women in leadership positions, together with YU's Center for the Jewish Future (according to the CJF's recent newsletter):

As part of its ongoing commitment to creating more leadership roles for women in the Orthodox community, The Orthodox Caucus (www.ocweb.org), hosted by Yeshiva University and working in conjunction with the Center for the Jewish Future, is building a national network for women in leadership positions. The first step, reports Orthodox Caucus Executive Director Jordana Schoor, will be an online forum, followed by initiatives to piggyback onto professional conferences and to create small mentoring circles.

“The dearth of women in leadership positions hurts the Jewish community,” Schoor said. “It deprives the Orthodox community of potential talent and important opinions, and disempowers women seeking to dedicate their talents to Orthodox Judaism.” The new network, Schoor added, will provide a virtual community for “women to share their successes, challenges, and failures; then we’ll be able to cull from that forum the issues they’re facing and determine how to help them succeed.”

It is certainly noteworthy that the Orthodox Caucus itself has hired an Orthodox woman, Jordana Schoor, as Executive Director. Also worth reading is Jordana Schoor's thoughts on how women's roles within the home have quietly been transformed.