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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Sotah

Sotah

Beautiful, fragile Dina Reich, a young woman in Jerusalem’s ultra-Orthodox haredi enclave, stands accused of the community’s most unforgivable sin: adultery.  Raised with her sisters to be an obedient daughter and a dutiful wife, Dina secretly yearned for the knowledge, romance, and excitement that she knew her circumscribed life would never satisfy.  When her first romance is tragically thwarted, she willingly enters into an arranged marriage with a loving but painfully quiet man.  Dina’s deeply repressed passions become impossible to ignore, finding a dangerous outlet in a sudden and intense obsession with a married man, with terrible consequences.  Exiled to New York City, Dina meets Joan, a modern secular woman who challenges all she knows of the world and herself.

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

Set against the exotic backdrop of Jerusalem’s glistening white stones and ancient rituals, Sotah is a contemporary story of the struggle to reconcile tradition with freedom, and faith with love.

The Hebrew version of Sotah

“The pleasures of Ragen’s book arise… from thought-provoking comparisons of Israeli Orthodox and American Jewish life.”
Publishers Weekly

“Richness of faith and family lovingly evoked, with the other side–religious and cultural intolerance–equally given its due.”
Kirkus

“Sotah is a passionately honest novel. Gripping from start to finish.”
Maisie Mosco