Yoetzet Halacha

Shoshana Samuels joined Rinat as Yoetzet Halacha in August of 2011.

The goals of this important post for our membership and the broader Bergen County community are:

• To encourage women to feel comfortable asking all of their questions in Hilchot Niddah in a way that also enables them to share all of the relevant details.
• To give a woman not only a specific response to the issue she is dealing with at that moment but to give her the guidance and general advice that will help her get from Point A to Point B in dealing with her overall situation at the present time and in the future.
• To provide education through shiurim, lectures, and long one on one phone calls so that women understand Hilchot Niddah, feel more in control of what is happening to them and are therefore better equipped to ask good questions.
• To engender positive feelings about the laws of Taharat Hamishpacha, the sensitivity of Rabbanim and how the halachic system works so that couples can observe these laws with greater commitment and less resentment.

Shoshana Samuels moved to Teaneck from Be'er Sheva, Israel, where she and her husband Ayol lived for three years. While living in Israel Shoshana studied at Nishmat’s Keren Ariel Halachic Institute to train to be a Yoetzet Halacha and received a Masters in Jewish Philosophy at Ben Gurion University. She found the intensive Beit Midrash studies at Nishmat to be invigorating and a great continuation of her studies at Yeshiva University’s Graduate Program for Women in Advanced Talmudic Studies. Shoshana teaches Halacha and Gemara at Ma'ayanot Yeshiva High School. She is honored to serve as the Yoetzet Halacha for Rinat Yisrael and the broader Teaneck community.

Shoshana welcomes your questions -- anyone in the community should feel free to contact her privately by phone or e-mail. She fields questions from the greater Englewood, Teaneck and Bergenfield Jewish communities as well as from outside of Bergen County from people who have heard of the Yoetzet initiative through relatives and friends.

To donate to the Teaneck Yoetzet Halacha Initiative, please visit www.rinat.org/teaneckyoetzet.