by Ilana Kramer
In Joining the Sisterhood: Young Jewish Women Write Their Lives (State University of New York Press, $18.95), editors Tobin Belzer and Julie Pelc open the floor to young Jewish women, ranging from their late teens to early thirties, ranging from secular to Orthodox; lesbian, bisexual, and heterosexual; women of color, poets, students, novelists, educators and professors. This is the generation who grew up knowing that women could be rabbis, that Orthodox women could be feminists, that Jewish women could be not only teachers but also doctors, and that bat mitzvah ceremonies were a given and not an anomaly. Write Belzer and Pelc, “Today, there are young Jewish women who engage in almost every aspect of religious and cultural Jewish life.” They also claim that “our unique perspectives have remained largely invisible.”