When you hear the words “Modern Orthodox,” images of women’s liberation don’t necessarily come to mind.
But in the Bay Area, you might need to reevaluate that notion.
Local Modern Orthodox rabbis say that women are leading the way when it comes to reviving their synagogues.
“She really runs the show, probably more than I do,” says Rabbi Shlomo Zarchi of Congregation Chevra Tehilim in San Francisco, referring to his wife, Chani, who runs the synagogue’s programming.
“Everybody used to be referred to Mrs. So-and-So with their husbands’ names,” Chani Zarchi explains. “That has all changed.”
While Modern Orthodox rabbis in other parts of the world might struggle as their attitudes toward women change, things are different in the Bay Area.
“The community wants women more involved,” Chani adds as she feeds her toddler, the couple’s third child. Chani, a true multi-tasker, not only teaches Hebrew school at Congregation Chevra Tehilim, she also leads an evening prayer class.
“The issue is not male or female,” says her husband. “The issue is having people who are passionate about Jewish life.”
Zarchi credits this change to the education of young women, such as his four sisters, who, he says, attained “an equal education in their studies of the Jewish text.”
“Women are more Jewishly educated than they were 25 years ago,” he says.
In the Bay Area’s Modern Orthodox synagogues, it’s not uncommon to see women studying the Torah. Over half of the students in Rabbi Judah Dardik’s study classes at Congregation Beth Jacob in Oakland are women, he says. His Wednesday Torah study class, in fact, is “about 75 percent women.”
Girls have had bat mitzvah ceremonies for years at Beth Jacob, but now Dardik says that the bar mitzvah celebrants are leading Torah readings for women after the Kiddush.
Moreover, the presidents of both Beth Jacob and Chevra Tehilim are women.
“I don’t know how many women are presidents of Orthodox synagogues,” says Zarchi. “It’s been a big blessing for our congregation.”
Julie Ovadia has been president of Beth Jacob for close to two years. (Max Brown, her father, led Beth Jacob from 1954 to 1961.)
“If you look around the synagogue, there are very active women running this place,” Dardik says. “The leadership of women around here is very natural. People step up when we ask. It’s not an issue.”
But the role of women isn’t so cut-and-dry at other local Modern Orthodox synagogues, however. Congregation Adath Israel in San Francisco is going through some growth spurts when it comes to women’s roles.
At the moment, “we’re dealing with bat mitzvahs,” says Rabbi Joshua Strulowitz, referring to what girls should or should not do during their bat mitzvah ceremonies. (Bat mitzvahs are a fairly new practice in the Modern Orthodox tradition.)
“I try as much as possible to stay clear to anyone who has a specific agenda,” says Strulowitz, who has been at Congregation Adath Israel since September this year.
His aim, he says, is to “look at the big picture, meaning what’s important in Judaism.”
Next year will mark the first time that a girl will have a bat mitzvah at Adath Israel since Rabbi Strulowitz arrived.
During a recent conversation about the event, he says, people were asking, “What can she do? What can she not do?”
“But that conversation is going away from the direction that I want it to,” he adds. “I say, ‘What’s the purpose of the bat mitzvah? How can we make it meaningful for everyone?'”
Certainly, local Modern Orthodox women are as engaged as ever, both intellectually and culturally.
Asked if the role of women in local Modern Orthodoxy has changed significantly in the past decade, Chani Zarchi of Chevra Tehilim says, “Absolutely!”
“With anything, if you have two people looking at the same topic, you’re going to get two different points of view,” adds Chani.
“Women see things that the men don’t — and never will.”