Naomi Ragen is an American-born novelist, playwright and journalist who has lived in Jerusalem since 1971 and who writes regularly in the Jerusalem Post and to her mailing list about Israel and Jewish issues. Naomi has published nine internationally best selling novels, and is the author of a hit play (Women's Minyan) which has been performed more than 500 times in Israel's National Theatre (Habimah) as well as in the United States and Argentina. She is a tireless advocate for women's rights in Israel, campaigning against gender segregation on Israeli buses and bias in rabbinical courts.
Naomi is a sought-after lecturer all over the world. If your group is interested in hosting Naomi, please click here.
Women to the Back of the Bus!!

The latest craze - modesty glasses for Orthodox Jewish men so they won't be able to see women.

I Am Not Sitting in the Back of the Bus - Why, together with other women, I filed suit to put an end to the primitive and degrading gender-segregated bus lines now popping up all over Israel.

Read my original article about how I was attacked by a religious fanatic because I refused to move to the back (the "women's section") of a Jerusalem bus.

Read about an American woman beaten because she refused to move to the back of a Jerusalem bus.

Read my article explaining why segregated buses are just the latest crazy idea of fanatics with too much free time on their hands.

Read about haredi women who want to sit with their families and don't want to be forced to crowd together in the back of the bus.

Israel Bus Rule Sparks Religious Row - How the liberal western media perceive all this fanaticism.

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Jephte’s Daughter

Jephte's Daughter

The pampered daughter of a wealthy Hasidic businessman, Batsheva Ha-Levi grows up in the affluent suburbs
of Los Angeles. But everything changes when she turns eighteen and finds that her loving father has made a secret vow which will shatter her life, forcing her to marry a man she hardly knows and sending her to the exotic, golden city of Jerusalem.  On her wedding day, she enters a strange and foreign world steeped in tradition and surrounded by myth.  Shackled by ancient rules, she soon understands that to survive she will have no choice but to fight for her freedom, to reconcile her own need to live in the modern world with her ancestral obligations, and to choose between the three men who vie for her body, her soul, and her love.

Click the cover image above to order this book from Amazon.

Now a classic listed among the one hundred most important Jewish books of all time, Jephte’s Daughter is bestselling author Naomi Ragen’s beloved first novel.  With poignancy and insight, it takes readers on a groundbreaking and unforgettable journey inside the hidden world of women in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community.

 

REVIEWS:

“First rate.” — Susan Isaacs, author of Long Time No See and Past Perfect
“Terrific!” — Jacqueline Briskin, author of The Naked Heart
“Eloquent writing and vivid characters.” — Publishers Weekly
“Ragen weaves the religious issues throughout the plot so that they become part of the suspense, giving this skilfully rendered page-turner… real substance.” — Jewish Week
“An emotionally potent book.” — Kirkus