Rabbi Simcha Krauss (1937-2022) was a leading figure of Modern Orthodox Judaism and an advocate for women’s rights within Orthodoxy. He created a rabbinical court to support women whose husbands refused to divorce them. He studied at Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin in Brooklyn, where he received his rabbinical ordination from Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner in 1963, and later studied with the Modern Orthodox luminary Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik. He served as a congregational rabbi for decades, first in Utica, New York, and later in St. Louis and in the Hillcrest neighborhood of Queens, where he led the Young Israel of Hillcrest for 25 years. He taught Talmud at Yeshiva University and began to get more involved in issues related to the role of women in Orthodoxy. In the 1990s, he began supporting the practice of women’s prayer groups, in which women gathered to worship together without men and often to read from the Torah together, a ritual traditionally only performed by men in Orthodox communities. In 1996, his wife became the founding principal of Maayanot Yeshiva High School for Girls, one of the first Modern Orthodox high schools to teach Talmud to women.