The recent controversy surrounding orthodox women rabbis has reignited the general debates of gender discrimination in Orthodox Judaism. Jewish law precludes women from participating in many communal functions such as counting in a minyan or serving as witnesses. Since no such law or statute prohibits women from being ordained as rabbis or rabbinic figures – either in the classical or modern sense of the term – it is understandable if some women view their exclusion from leadership positions as a form of institutional misogyny.

However Jewish society has discriminated against both men and women in leadership positions for generations, often with the communal complicity of self-identified feminists. I am referring here to the expectations and demands of the Rabbi’s wife, better known as The Rebbitzen.

The most recent significant communal and continuing “scandal” in Judaism this past year has been the issue of Orthodox women’s ordination. It began when R. Avi Weiss bestowed the newly created title “Maharat” on Sara Hurwitz and forming a new school dedicated to training future Maharats. While this innovation may have attracted some criticism the reaction was relatively minor. But when R. Weiss had “promoted” M. Hurwitz to “Rabbah” the subsequent backlash and rhetoric of “schism” (some even from within his own community) that he quicklybacked off the Rabba designation.

The positive and negative rhetoric over the title “Rabba” (and to some extent over women’s ritual leadership ) alternated between the halakhic – if ordaining women violated any Jewish laws, and the sociological – given the unprecedented opportunities in Jewish women’s education, formal ordination ought to be the next logical step. There has already been much written on this subject from either side of both perspectives which I will not repeat here. However, the passions of both advocates and detractors have obscured the real questions and implications of ordaining women rabbis in any form. In particular, I will argue that the argument over women rabbis – both for and against – have less to do with gender and competency than of religious influence, power, and the public recognition of religious authority.

When Conservative Judaism wrestled with this question in the 80’s, Rabbi Dr. David Novak framed the issue as one of altering the existing religious-political power structure:

Indeed, the question of rabbinical ordination for women epitomizes a confrontation which, in the broadest sense, is political. Feminism is asking the Jewish religious community to reconstitute its political order. A political order consists of institutions which structure relations among its participants. Authorities are those person within the order who determine the meaning of these institutional structures for the participants, that is, they legislate, administer, and, especially, judge. If Judaism is the constitution of the political order of the Jewish religious community, then the authorities in it, certainly since the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E., and probably earlier, have been the rabbis. Inasmuch as women have been excluded from the rabbinate, they have been excluded from authority in the Jewish religious community.

The demand of Jewish feminists that women now be included in the rabbinate can only be considered as revolutionary. Furthermore, this demand epitomizes the confrontation between Feminism and Judaism, since revolutions always seek a radical change in the existing authority which, because the designation of authority in the community, more than anything else, determines the character of the political community (Novak 1984:39).

Based on the text of the RCA’s recent resolution, it appears that the Orthodox rabbinical organization concurs with Novak’s sentiment:

In light of the opportunity created by advanced women’s learning, the Rabbinical Council of America encourages a diversity of halakhically and communally appropriate professional opportunities for learned, committed women, in the service of our collective mission to preserve and transmit our heritage. Due to our aforesaid commitment to sacred continuity, however, we cannot accept either the ordination of women or the recognition of women as members of the Orthodox rabbinate, regardless of the title. [Emphasis added]

The RCA’s argument for not affirming or recognizing women rabbis as “Orthodox” is not based on Jewish law, but “sacred continuity.” In this statement the RCA validates what I described years ago that “Orthodox Judaism” is a social designation for a particular form of Judaism in which the society is itself sacred and the status quo is tautologically reified. For the RCA, internal social politics are indistinguishable from halakha and so a challenge to the political order – the Orthodox franchise – is comparable to challenging to the Torah itself.

But while the political perspective adequately accounts for the positions of the RCA (and presumably others), more explanation is required to apply this explanation for women’s ordination advocates to address the plurality of the arguments.¹

One category of arguments is rooted in simple equality. In the academic sense, if women choose to attain the same knowledge and qualifications as men, then they should have the opportunity to receive the same title. While male colleagues are addressed with designation “Rabbi”, there is no equivalent honorific for women – even those who are equally qualified (or superior) to their male counterparts.

The lack of a rabbinic title for women also has professional and financial implications as well. Certain pastoral fields such as chaplaincies require a clerical title, which would not only limit Orthodox women from those fields but also deprive the fields of talented individuals. Alternatively, advanced degrees tend to demand higher salaries. While the rabbinic field is hardly lucrative, preemptively denying women the title potentially deprives them of financial opportunities.²

While there is truth to these arguments, they all suffer from the same fallacy that no options exist. Specifically, if the title “rabbi” is only a professional degree then even orthodox women would be able to receive ordination through one of the other denominations. That there is no Orthodox equivalent does not by itself restrict the acquisition of the title, but only of the communal acceptance of such a title.

And therein lies the rub. The underlying impetus for Orthodox women’s ordination is not merely in the semantics of creating an honorific, but rather in attaining social religious acceptance and validation for one’s Torah study from within their own Orthodox community.

This point is evident from the controversy itself. Unlike the other denominations in Judaism, there is no official regulating body for Orthodox Judaism,³ and thus there is no legal or halakhic impediment for any woman to call herself “Rabbi” and “Orthodox” simultaneously. However the communal opposition to the title Rabba from the Orthodox world was strong enough to compel R. Weiss to retreat from his position.

Were this a matter a pure ideology, based on the conviction that Orthodox women ought to be able to receive ordination, then such opposition would not matter. Women would be ordained and those who choose to accept or reject such ordinations – and the individual women rabbis as spiritual and educational leaders – would do so as their conscience dictates. However, this would inevitably lead to a controversy over exactly who has the right and authority to determine what meets the social criteria for “Orthodox Judaism.” Self-identification is one solution, but if the self-identification contradicts the establishment, individuals will find themselves excluded from the very communities they profess to identify.

The irony of the dispute over women’s ordination is that both sides are employing similar authoritarian tactics of forcing their authority on the broader community at large. The RCA could argue that it is fact their mandate to do so as a major Orthodox rabbinic organization. At the same time, no one who possesses any sort of rabbinic title has the right to demand or expect others to respect their degree or position as a religious authority. For example, a graduate of Yeshiva University’s rabbinical school should not expect Jews in hareidi communities to seriously acknowledge their ordination and vice versa. In the spirit of egalitarianism, women who wish to be ordained as rabbis have no right to assume that because of their ordination they will be taken seriously as legitimate halakhic authorities, but just like male rabbis, they must constantly and consistently prove themselves to their specific constituents.

In contrast to the above debate, the Tanna Yehoshua Ben Perachya stated “עשה לך רב” – make for yourself a master (M. Avot 1:6). The choice of a spiritual leader is ultimately an individual one, not dictated by society, and there does not seem to be evidence to preclude a woman from being in this role regardless of title. This relationship is ideally a sacred bond, and one which must be entered into freely and nurtured regularly without the burdens of social politics. Similarly, all rabbis and rabbinic professionals must remember that their primary mission is not the defense of “Orthodox Judaism” – by any definition – but rather to teach Torah to the best of their ability.

It is my hope that the Orthodox Jewish collective remember this fundamental principle so that it need not become fractured further in the name of a Torah in which no one truly believes.

Sources:
Novak, David. “Women in the Rabbinate?” Judaism, 33:1. (1984) 39-49.

Say what you will, no one can argue “legal fiction” for this one:


Reposted from last year with better redaction on the image.

Last Saturday night I gave a class as part of the Jewish LES discussion series on the very topic of “Halakhic Ramifications of Eruv Disputes.” Most of the class was an abbreviation of my earlier three part series on eruvin in general.

The issue of eruv on the Lower East Side is particularly contentious. R. Moshe Feinstein, a preeminent decisor of Jewish Law, used to live on the Lower East Side and his son and many students of his still do so. R. Feinstein was particularly strict in prohibiting the construction on any eruv in Manhattan for reasons too complicated to discuss here, and it is allegedly out of allegiance to R. Feinstein’s position on eruv which has precluded its construction to this day.

However, R. Moshe Feinstein has another fascinating responsa regarding the opposition of eruvin in Manhattan, though in conversation it is rarely quoted by his most ardent followers. In response to the question if one ought to protest constructing eruvin in Manhattan, R. Feinstein states that while he personally cannot endorse it, one should not oppose it either since the positions allowing its construction are still legitimate. By all accounts this ought to be considered a very reasonable, respectful position and were it stated 30 years later might even be classified as “pluralistic.”

Here is the responsa in the original with my translation, for which I assume responsibility for errors.

Regarding the “Kol Korei” issue see this wonderful post form Eruv Online.

Being far removed from my alma mater, it is difficult for me to truly have a sense of what happens on campus anymore and second-hand reports fail to adequately capture the full zeitgeist of the community. The most recent controversy around Yeshiva University involves a forum on “Being Gay in the Orthodox World” and the expected. The topic of homosexuality in Orthodox Judaism has long been a controversial issue, one which we discussed years ago in “Lonely Men of Faith, but it is still considered taboo in certain Orthodox circles. Case in point, following said forum R. Meir Twersky responded with a public diatribe lambasting the entire event and its participants. This forum and the aftermath are helpfully recounted in great detail on Curious Jew’s blog. Since I did not attend the event nor did I hear R. Twersky’s statements firsthand I will not address either specifically. However, that such a controversy exists demonstrates that even after 123 YU is still struggling with its own identity as a “Yeshiva”, “University”, and a representative if not champion for “Modern Orthodoxy.”

My 9:00am Sunday morning shiur at The Stanton St. Shul has been discussing as of late topics in Mahchsevet Hazal / Rabbinic Thought and Theology. In today’s class we were discussing various sources regarding Gehenom / Hell (PDF) in the Rabbinic tradition and we came across a fascinating contradiction in the thought of one of the Sages.