People

2007-08 Research Associates and Visiting Faculty

Ronit Irshai

Visiting Lecturer on Women's Studies and Judaism

email: rirshai@hds.harvard.edu   phone: 617.384.8323

Ronit Irshai is a lecturer of Jewish philosophy and feminism and a faculty member of the Gender Studies program at Bar-Ilan University. She specializes in modern and contemporary Jewish philosophy and philosophy of halakhah (Jewish law), with a particular emphasis on fertility issues and feminist criticism. She teaches courses concerning feminist jurisprudence and Jewish law, Judaism and feminism, and bioethics and feminist criticism.

Dr. Irshai's current research interests focus on the gender project within the philosophy of halakhah. At Harvard Divinity School, she will continue to work on that project, which aims to develop a blueprint for a feminist approach to the philosophy of halakhah and to exemplify its application through an examination of the principle of "dignity" (kevod ha-zibbur, kevod ha-beriyot) in Jewish tradition.

Ronit Irshai received her PhD in philosophy from Bar Ilan University in 2006. Her dissertation, titled "Fertility, Gender and halakhah: A Feminist Perspective on Modern Responsa Literature (Contraception, Abortion, Artificial Insemination, In Vitro Fertilization and Surrogate Motherhood)," received an award for outstanding research in Jewish law and philosophy of halakhah from the Weiler Fund at Bar-Ilan University Faculty of Law, and scholarship for excellence, from the Bar-Ilan University Shupf Fund. It will be published by Magnes Press, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Dr. Ronit Irshai is also a research associate at Beth Morasha's Center for Ethics, Judaism and the State. She is a member of the governing board of Kolech—the forum of religious feminist-orthodox Jewish women in Israel which seeks to promote issues related to the status of women in Israeli society, and primarily to the struggle against the religious establishment in matters of marriage, divorce, and sexual harassment.

Photograph courtesy Ronit Irshai.