{"id":3428,"date":"2015-11-25T22:09:05","date_gmt":"2015-11-25T20:09:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/?p=3428"},"modified":"2015-11-28T19:11:16","modified_gmt":"2015-11-28T17:11:16","slug":"orthodox-women-rabbis-who-cares","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/2015\/11\/orthodox-women-rabbis-who-cares\/","title":{"rendered":"Orthodox women rabbis \u00e2\u20ac\u201c who cares?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Meesh<\/a>Jewish social media has been bent all out of sorts these past few weeks after the Rabbinical Council of America, one of Modern Orthodoxy\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s key umbrella organizations, passed a contentious resolution<\/a> prohibiting its member congregations from employing Orthodox Jewish women if they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been ordained with the titles Rabbi, Rabba or Maharat.<\/p>\n

The resolution, which squeaked by with just a small margin and was panned even by the RCA\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s president Rabbi Shalom Baum as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153ill-timed\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153unnecessary\u00e2\u20ac\u009d given that the resolution reiterated a nearly identical one from 2010, is an unambiguous attack at the growing \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Open Orthodoxy\u00e2\u20ac\u009d movement and its Yeshivat Maharat<\/a> in New York (as well as smaller institutions in Israel like Rabbi Herzl Hefter\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Beit Midrash Har\u00e2\u20ac\u2122el<\/a>) that have begun \u00e2\u20ac\u201c audaciously in the official eyes of the RCA \u00e2\u20ac\u201c to ordain Orthodox women as rabbis.<\/p>\n

The RCA\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s reactionary slap gave ample fodder to Orthodoxy\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s more progressive pundits to bemoan the rightward drift of the movement; non-Orthodox leaders have been quick to condemn the decision as well. All of which led me to a very strange reaction.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Who cares?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I asked to the surprise of our guests around the Shabbat table one afternoon. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I mean, why are we even having this conversation in 2015? Why should we still be debating whether women can or can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t do this, fill or not fulfill that role? Haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t we moved past that? And in any case, we’re not exactly Orthodox anymore. Our congregation\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s rabbi is already a woman. So why does it get us so upset?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

My wife Jody was quick to answer. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Things that have to do with gender inequality or sexism are bigger than any specific denomination.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153OK, so maybe I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m asking the wrong question,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I responded. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Maybe what I meant to say is, why would someone who cares about women\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s leadership roles choose to stay in a system that denies women the ability to fully actualize their potential? Why aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t they running away from Orthodoxy, like Alice Shalvi did<\/a>, to a framework that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s more welcoming and encouraging?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

In 1996, Professor Alice Shalvi, then the principal of the prestigious Pelech Religious High School for Girls in Jerusalem and the chair of the Israel Women\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Network, astounded the Modern Orthodox community by announcing that she was joining the Conservative Movement. She soon became the head of the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies, the movement\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s theological seminary in Israel.<\/p>\n

Nor is this question of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153why stay?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d limited to just issues of women and Orthodoxy. I could ask it about a whole range of modern day conflicts where western values clash with religious tenets. The problem of agunot <\/em>(get <\/em>refusal) in Orthodoxy is enough to make one head for the secular hills.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not easy to leave a community where you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve spent many years, perhaps your entire life,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d a guest at the Shabbat table said. She was right, of course. It took me more than 20 years to redefine myself as something other\u00c2\u00a0than Orthodox. My reasons for leaving were broader than the way women are treated, although the slow pace of egalitarianism in Orthodoxy definitely played a part. Nevertheless, it was a shock to the entire worldview I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d built up during that time, even though I was returning to something familiar from my pre-Orthodox youth, not heading off blindly into the unknown like Shulem Deen<\/a> or Deborah Feldman<\/a> whose book Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hassidic Roots <\/em>was chosen as one of Oprah\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Ten Titles to Pick up Now.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Once you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve left the system, you start making friends with others who have either gone a similar way or are wavering. One friend has become a closeted atheist; he continues to live in a black-hat Anglo haredi <\/em>community where he acts \u00e2\u20ac\u0153as if.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d His wife knows and has made peace with his self-proclaimed quiet heresy. Another friend has been threatening for years to take off his kippa<\/em>. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153But I would probably lose my job,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he sighs. Every time I see him, his head remains covered.<\/p>\n

Not everyone has such existential angst. An article in Commentary Magazine<\/a> last year by Jay Lefkowitz may help explain why people remain in the Orthodox world even when it comes into conflict with their changing values \u00e2\u20ac\u201c on the role of women or even more heavenly matters. Lefkowitz defines a phenomena he dubs Social Orthodoxy \u00e2\u20ac\u201c \u00e2\u20ac\u009done of the fastest growing and most dynamic segments of the American Jewish community,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he claims.<\/p>\n

Social Orthodox Jews, Lefkowitz explains, are fully observant, but \u00e2\u20ac\u0153not because they are trembling before God.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d They may not be \u00e2\u20ac\u0153sure how God fit[s] into their lives [nor are they certain] if Jewish Law is divine or simply the result of two millennia of rabbinical interpretations,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d but they still get up every morning to pray with Tefillin (phylacteries). They wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think of eating bread on Pesach even though they doubt its origin story.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Much more important to [Social Orthodox Jews] than theology, Lefkowitz concludes, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153is maintaining the continuity of the Jewish people. The key to Jewish living is not our religious beliefs but our commitment to a set of practices and values that foster community and continuity.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Being Jewish, Lefkowitz adds, means \u00e2\u20ac\u0153being a member of a club, and not just any club; a club with a 3,000-year-old membership, its own language, calendar, culture, vast literature including histories and a code of law, and of course, a special place on the map.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Judaism even adds the ultimate physical test for acceptance: circumcision. (It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s pretty hard to fake membership when something so sensitive is at stake.)<\/p>\n

Yuval Noah Harari, author of the best selling Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind<\/em>, describes what makes such a club a religion.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Religion is a system of human norms and values founded on a belief in a super-human order,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he explains. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Super-human\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is not the same as supernatural, Harari stresses. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The theory of relativity is super human, in that humans can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t change the laws just like that.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d But relativity doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t include the second requirement of a religion: that the belief in this super-human order also establishes ways of behaving.<\/p>\n

Harari says that the last 300 years have seen an \u00e2\u20ac\u0153intense religious fervor\u00e2\u20ac\u009d but with an emphasis on what he calls \u00e2\u20ac\u0153natural law religions\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201c capitalism, nationalism, humanism, liberalism \u00e2\u20ac\u201c all with their own immutable super-human (though not supernatural) truths (\u00e2\u20ac\u0153all men are created equal\u00e2\u20ac\u009d) and the legal and behavioral codes that result. In this light Lefkowitz\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Social Orthodoxy seems very much a piece with these more modern \u00e2\u20ac\u0153religious\u00e2\u20ac\u009d systems, despite its ancient Jewish origins.<\/p>\n

That doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t make it any easier to leave, though. If anything, understanding and acknowledging the importance of the social element ought to give one added respect for those who remain, despite the cognitive dissonance that undoubtedly arises.<\/p>\n

Rabba Sara Hurwitz, the first Orthodox Jewish woman to be ordained at Yeshivat Maharat In New York, and now its dean, wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t looking for a way out. She would probably recoil at the appellation of Social Orthodoxy. In an article published a few weeks ago<\/a>, she recalled that when the RCA issued its 2010 denunciation of women with rabbinical titles, she felt \u00e2\u20ac\u0153isolated and unsure of the future of Orthodox women in my position, of which there were very few. She was shocked \u00e2\u20ac\u0153by the threatening phone calls and emails I received.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

But five years later, the train has decisively left the station. Yeshivat Maharat has ordained 11 women and another 22 are currently studying there. Ha\u00e2\u20ac\u2122rel graduates Rabbi Meesh Hammer-Kosoy<\/a> and Rabbi Rachel Berkowitz made news in Israel earlier this year for doing the same. Rabbi Shlomo Riskin<\/a> oversees the Susi Bradfield Women\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Institute for Halachic Leadership at Midreshet Lindenbaum in Jerusalem, which gives women the title of morot hora\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ah <\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u201c essentially equivalent to ordination, although it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not labeled as such.<\/p>\n

After the RCA proclamation, an online petition \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We Support Women in Orthodox Leadership Roles\u00e2\u20ac\u009d garnered more than 2,000 signatures in 48 hours. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Today, I feel 100 percent certain of the future of Orthodox women serving as clergy in halachically <\/em>committed communities across the United States,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Hurwitz says. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Trying to write us out of the narrative is no longer an option.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Those who stay within the system, fighting against the scare tactics of groups like the RCA, deserve our respect and require our support, our lobbying and, yes, our social media outrage.<\/p>\n

So let me ask the question again. Who cares about Orthodox women rabbis? I do.<\/p>\n

This article appeared originally on The Jerusalem Post<\/a> website.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jewish social media has been bent all out of sorts these past few weeks after the Rabbinical Council of America, one of Modern Orthodoxy\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s key umbrella organizations, passed a contentious resolution prohibiting its member congregations from employing Orthodox Jewish women if they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been ordained with the titles Rabbi, Rabba or Maharat. The resolution, which squeaked […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11,3],"tags":[53,108],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3428"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3428"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3428\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3434,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3428\/revisions\/3434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}