"I had never considered myself religious. I am the daughter of a secular city, of the generation that witnessed the Holocaust to ask: 'Is God dead?' For me as for other Jewish feminists, religion perpetuated the patriarchal tradition that denied women access to Judaism's most sacred rituals and enshrined them within the strict confines of their biological role. The Judeo-Christian religion kept alive that feminine mystique which was at the heart of the problem.

It took the confidence born of the women's movement for me and other Jewish feminists to embrace our Jewishness, but in a new way. We took the task of making Judaism accept that women are equal to men in the sight of our God." [Betty Friedan, Life So Far: A Memoir (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), 330.]