We love being Jewish women. And not to brag, but we think we are pretty good at it.  In our private lives we raise our children with Jewish joy and Jewish knowledge. In our public lives we are congregational rabbis. We preach, teach, pray, and lead.  We’ve raised a generation of children who never have to ask if a woman can be a rabbi.  

But then, October 7th happened and so much changed.  We felt less safe and less certain. We felt betrayed by a feminist movement that refused to stand with Jewish women. We worried about what our children were learning at school and online. We worried about Israel. And we noticed we were not alone. 

In fact, in this October 8th world, we encountered woman after woman reassessing her life and the life of her family. Mothers changed their children’s schools. Professionals shifted their workplaces – voluntarily or not. Letters to the editor went out and social media posts went up. We painfully lost friends and slowly started to make new ones. The way we thought about the world and our place in it changed. 

That’s all to say, Jewish women are dealing with a lot right now. So we thought we’d send you a gift.  The gift is Modern Jewess – a beautifully snail-mailed monthly envelope which explores what it means to be a Jewish woman today. Within the pages of Modern Jewess you will find personal essays, inspirational Jewish wisdom, kernels of Jewish history, and maybe even a recipe, a word game, or something else a little unexpected. This is our Torah – a shabbos gift that we hope will bring you some spiritual nourishment and intellectual uplift. And we hope that these pages will remind you that you are a part of the greatest family of all time, the Jewish people.