About

The OU’s Women’s Initiative is implementing national programming for women of all ages and stages of life to help each woman find her personal and communal leadership voice.

Programs Include:

  • Lay Leadership and Training: Encouraging and cultivating women to take on significant roles within the community by providing professional development training and facilitating women serving on boards of synagogues and in other leadership positions.
  • Wellness: Developing a platform of courses and forums devoted to women’s health and well-being.
  • Community Learning for Women: Engaging women in regular, weekly or monthly group learning programs.
  • Female Scholars: Facilitating scholars-in-residence series – regardless of synagogue size – that give women teachers and scholars greater opportunity to share their insights.
  • High-level Torah learning Opportunities for Women: Devising continuing learning opportunities for women, including midrasha programs and yimei iyun.
  • Youth: Enhancing the spiritual involvement of young women in our synagogues through mother/daughter weekly learning programs and other iniatives.
  • Synagogue Usability: Sharing best practices for synagogues to encourage female involvement in all aspects of synagogue life, including having the ezrat nashim[women’s section] exclusively available to women at all times of day and the redesign of synagogue spaces to make them “user-friendly” for all congregants, babysitting during programming, etc.