Norma Baumel Joseph, Джозеф, Норма Баумел is a Canadian professor, Jewish feminist, and activist. In 1990, 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. As a professor of Religion at Concordia University and Associate Director of the University's Azrieli Institute of Israel Studies, her research interests include Women and Judaism, Jewish Law and Ethics, Women and Religion, and Food and Religion.
Early life and education
Joseph was born in Brooklyn to Moishe Baumel and Madeline. 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. In 1965, Joseph married Rabbi Howard Joseph who, five years later, became the pulpit of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue. She received her B.A. from Brooklyn College in 1966 and M.A. from the City University of New York in 1968. In 1995, Joseph earned her Ph.D in religion from Concordia University in Montréal, where she is currently the Director of the Women and Religion specialization.
Joseph became associate professor in the Department of Religion at Concordia University, where she served in various administrative positions, including director of the women and religion specialization. Her teaching and research areas include women and Judaism, Jewish law and ethics, and women and religion. 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. She serves on the editorial board of Women in Judaism, on the advisory board of the Journal of Religion and Culture, on the advisory council of JOFA, and on the international board of the Jewish Women's Archive. 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".
From the early 1970s she promoted women's greater participation in Jewish religious and communal life. 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. Joseph has been particularly active in the issue of agunot, women denied divorce. As a founding member of the Canadian Coalition of Jewish Women for the Get, she successfully worked with the Jewish community and the Canadian Federal Government to pass a groundbreaking law in 1990 that would protect Jewish women in difficult divorce situations and aid them in their pursuit of a Jewish divorce. Following the Canadian success, Joseph helped form the International Coalition for Agunah Rights, an international coalition of women's groups advocating for agunot.
Honors and awards
Joseph's dissertation in Religion from the Concordia University in Montreal in 1995 focused on the legal decisions of Rabbi Moses Feinstein concerning the separate spheres for women in the Jewish community and was nominated for a Governor General's Gold medal award for excellence. Joseph won the Leo Wasserman Prize from the American Jewish Historical Society for the best article of 1995 in the journal American Jewish History. She was recognized by the National Council of Jewish Women, 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. Joseph was a recipient of a Canadian research grant: a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council on gender and identity in the Iraqi Jewish Community of Montreal. She is the 2019 recipient of the Louis Rosenberg Canadian Jewish Studies Distinguished Service Award.
Writing
Joseph has edited one scholarly publication, written 16 chapters for various encyclopedias and anthologies, 8 journal articles and completed 2 documentaries. She has published many articles on the Canadian Jewish News, including "We Must Speak out for Israel," "We Won’t Stop Until we Have Equal Rights at the Kotel," "We are all Immigrants," and "Breaking Through Assumptions about Gender and Conflict." Joseph published an article entitled "Orthodoxy And Feminism" in The Edah Journal Volume 1:2. Joseph published an article entitled "Mehitzah: Separate Seating in the Synagogue" on My Jewish Learning.
Films
Joseph appeared in, and served as consultant to, the films Half the Kingdom and Untying the Bonds…Jewish Divorce.
