When Arlene Agus died shortly before Hanukkah 2024, a bright light was snuffed out for the American Jewish community and beyond.   

Arlene was known for her intense and fervid connection to Jewish liturgy, her dazzling smile, her love of words, music and laughter, and her steadfast commitment to feminism. 

Born to an Orthodox family in Brooklyn in 1949, her Jewish education was courtesy of the Yeshiva of Flatbush and her father, Paul, who, an accountant by profession, also served as a hazzan on Rosh Hashanna and Yom Kippur, and whose command of Hebrew liturgical melodies was deep and inspiring. Whether it was because Paul and Reva had two daughters and no sons, or whether because of Arlene’s musicality and her father’s openness to modernity, Arlene learned her father’s melodies and internalized them. She was the first woman most of us in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s had ever heard leading services, which she did at the New York Havurah and Minyan M’at on the Upper West Side.  

Arlene had a high soprano voice, without vibrato, like that of an angel, and her understanding and command of the prayers was conveyed deeply in her singing. Not everyone was enamored of her voice—the sound of a high female voice leading prayers was unheard of at the time, jarring, even confusing, but ultimately, transformative. She taught other women, including me, the same melodies she learned from her father, and because of her, there are many lay female shlihot tzibbur (communal prayer leaders) who lead services on the High Holidays, let alone daily and on Shabbat and holidays.  

Arlene also learned how to read Torah with trope (cantillations), courtesy of her father’s tutoring, and she was proficient at it. This was just not done in the 1950’s and early 1960’s, in any denomination of Judaism, let alone Orthodoxy.  

Arlene was committed to a Jewish world that would accept the rights of women to reach their full potential as leaders in prayer, chanting from the Torah, becoming rabbis. She would have been happiest had she been able to become an Orthodox rabbi. That being so far out as to seem impossible in 1970, she connected with young women who started a study group to learn about the historic and halakhic restrictions on women’s participation in Jewish communal life. This group morphed into a group of activists, named Ezrat Nashim, that called on and pressed the Conservative movement in America to lift these and other barriers to women. 

Arlene was instrumental in actualizing the first Orthodox women’s service on Simhat Torah in the early 1970’s at Lincoln Square Synagogue in Manhattan. Three members of Ezrat Nashim, including Arlene, chanted from the Torah, over and over, until all the women present had come up for their first ever aliyah, and usually the first time they had ever seen the inside of a Torah scroll. It was an incredibly moving and transformative event. She was involved in the programming of the first National Conference of Jewish Women in 1973, primarily as liaison to Orthodox women. 

Perhaps the most impressive legacy Arlene left was the revitalization of Rosh Hodesh as a woman’s holiday. She knew the midrash that because the women of Israel refused to give their gold jewelry to Aaron for creating the golden calf, God rewarded them with a monthly holiday. How to creatively mark this monthly event, tied to women’s natural monthly cycles, was part of Arlene’s thinking outside of the box, as captured in her groundbreaking article, “This Month is for You: Observing Rosh Hodesh as a Woman’s Holiday,” in the 1976 anthology The Jewish Woman: New Perspectives, edited by Liz Koltun. That there are probably hundreds, if not thousands, of Rosh Hodesh groups now meeting around the world, often through synagogues, is a testament to Arlene’s brilliance. 

Thinking outside the box was a hallmark of Arlene’s personality. She designed and sewed a tallit (prayer shawl) that she felt was more flowing and feminine than the ones she had grown up with. Many sought out her design and Arlene generously shared it. She wore hers for close to 50 years. When she worked for The Greater New York Conference on Soviet Jewry in the 1970’s, Arlene audaciously decided to hand out programs to audience members as they were about to enter Lincoln Center for a performance of the Russian Moiseyev Dance Troupe; the audience was not necessarily amused by the fact that the inside of the program consisted of a condemnation of the treatment of Soviet Jews.  

Many friends were the beneficiaries of Arlene’s way with words and art, creating cards for special occasions, giving of herself generously toward their children, and always demonstrating concern for the health of others. Arlene did not marry or have children of her own, but left many children of several generations who will remember with great love the affection she showered on them. She had fun, with kids and with friends, celebrating her birthday on March 17 with the best of the daughters of Ireland. She sang lustily in Do-It-Yourself Messiah concerts. Perhaps first and foremost, Arlene’s focus for many years was on the health and then decline of each of her parents, often at the expense of her own health and wellbeing. 

Arlene taught us to lift our voices in public, to buck the norms of her day in the name of Heaven and in the service of what she knew to be true—that Jewish women deserve to sit at the earthly table of Jewish leaders and laypeople as equals.