Welcome to Breaking Down Patriarchy. I'm Amy McPhee, All the Best. When I was eight years old, my family moved from Seattle, Washington, to a suburb of Denver, Colorado. And one of the very first friends I made in Denver was a Jewish girl named Laura. I remember jumping on her bed with her at her house. I remember this very clearly because I think it was one of my very first memories in Denver and one of my very first friends.

So I really, really loved her.

And as we were jumping on the bed, I don't know how it came up, but we started talking about religion.

And I remember very clearly her telling me all about the Torah and all about the book of life.

And I actually have very vivid memories of what that kind of seemed like to me in my mind all the way back from when I was eight years old.

And thus began my lifelong love and sense of kinship with the religion of Judaism. Many of my closest friends

throughout my life have been Jewish. And during college, I chose to study abroad in Jerusalem

for five months, where I studied Judaism, Jewish civilization, and the Hebrew language alongside

Islam, Arab civilization, and the history of Palestine. I was also lucky to have several beloved

Israeli-American neighbors in Northern California. And finally, as I open with my personal connection

to our topic today, I have to point out once again how many of the authors we've read on this

podcast have been Jewish, from our very first authors that we read,

Rianne Isler and Gerdalear, through Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem and Judith Plaskow and

others, I have been astounded at the contributions of Jewish women to the field of feminism and

gender studies. So it is with great enthusiasm and excitement that I introduced today's book, New Jewish

Feminism, Probing the Past, Forging the Future. And welcome to the podcast, the editor of this book,

Rabbi Elise Goldstein. Welcome, Rabbi Goldstein. Thank you. Thank you so much. I'm so excited to

have you here today. And I just want to thank you for this book. You wrote some

essays in the book and then edited the whole thing. And I'm excited to hear about the process

of how you put this work together. But first, I'll just introduce you with your professional

biography as one of the first women rabbis in Canada. Elise Goldstein has broken down barriers by founding

inclusive communities for learning and prayer. Goldstein graduated from Brandeis University in 1978

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