One of the most fundamental principles uniting virtually all Reform, Reconstructionist, and most Conservative congregations (that is, most American Jews) is that of egalitarianism. Hence at a Reform synagogue it is taken for granted that its members would not join a Jewish congregation which was not gender neutral, one which falls short of being fully egalitarian.
Reform, Reconstructionist and many Conservative congregations mean by this that no privileges, duties, ritual honors and positions of importance in the synagogue will be determined, affected, or influenced in any way, by gender. Men and women are equal in all respects. As it has been stressed previously, by now the commitment and devotion to gender equality has become a 21st century axiom.
Prayer books for Jewish worship are gender neutral. Contemporary women have written new prayers for important milestones, events, and rites of passage that they alone experience: for the onset of menses and menopause, for giving birth as well as for infertility, miscarriages, abortions and still births, for surviving the trauma of rape, for becoming a mother in law and grandmother, and even for separation and divorce. Today Jews refer to God in feminine (for example, “Shechina,” translated as Presence, Providence) as well as in masculine terms. Women can become - and have become...
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