Norma Joseph

Background

Joseph was born in Brooklyn to Moishe (Murray) Baumel and Madeline (née Kohn).

Career

In 1990, Doctor Joseph was successful in working with the Federal Government of Canada to pass a law that would protect Jewish women in need of a get. Moishe was a salesman who had emigrated to the United States as a child, and Madeline was a typist-secretary who arrived in the United States as an infant. Both sides of Joseph"s family were heavily engaged in Jewish occupations.

Joseph married Rabbi Howard Joseph in 1965 who, five years later, became the pulpit of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue.

She received her Bachelor of Arts from Brooklyn College in 1966 and Master of Arts from the City University of New York in 1968. In 1995 Joseph earned her Doctor of Philosophy in religion from Concordia University in Montreal, where she is currently the Director of the Women and Religion specialization.

Professor Joseph became associate professor in the Department of Religion at Concordia University in Montreal, where she served in various administrative positions, including director of the women and religion specialization.

Her doctoral dissertation, completed in 1995 at Concordia University, focused on the legal decisions of Rabbi Moses Feinstein concerning the separate spheres for women in the Jewish community. The dissertation was nominated for a Governor General"s Gold medal award for excellence.

Joseph has published widely in scholarly books and journals as an expert in Jewish feminist thought. From the early 1970s she promoted women"s greater participation in Jewish religious and communal life.

Professor Joseph has been particularly active in the issue of agunot, women denied divorce.

Following the Canadian success, Joseph helped form the International Coalition for Agunah Rights (Indian Council of Agricultural Research), an international coalition of women"s groups advocating for agunot.

Achievements

• In 1995, she received the Leo Wasserman Prize for the best article published in American Jewish History that year for “Jewish Education for Women: Rabbi Moshe Feinstein’s Map of America” (volume 83, no 2, 205–222). Her communal work has been recognized by the National Council of Jewish Women (Montreal chapter), which chose her as its Woman of Distinction in 1998. By the Montreal Jewish community, which presented her with the Jacob Zipper Education Award in 2000. And by Jewish Women International, from which she received the Leading Light, Woman of the Year Award in 2002.

Membership

In 1988 Joseph acted as one of the founding members of Women of the Wall, where, alongside Anat Hoffman and other notable Israeli and Jewish feminists, she carried a Torah to the women"s section of the Western Wall. She is a member of the advisory board of Kol ha-Isha: A Feminist House of Study in Jerusalem sponsored by the Conservative Movement. As a founding member of the Canadian Coalition of Jewish Women for the Get (Jewish divorce), she successfully worked with the Jewish community and the Canadian Federal Government to pass a groundbreaking law in 1990 (Divorce Acting, ch18, 211) that would protect Jewish women in difficult divorce situations and aid them in their pursuit of a Jewish divorce.