When America’s main Modern Orthodox rabbinical association voted last week to ban the hiring of clergywomen by its members, the question wasn’t whether to endorse women as rabbis. It was whether to widen the group’s well-established repudiation of female clergy, or keep quiet and focus on finding common ground with Modern Orthodox Judaism’s progressive wing.
While the Rabbinical Council of America’s membership ultimately voted for the confrontational approach, the margin of victory was narrow, and the group’s president made a point of saying he voted against the motion.
The RCA first addressed the issue of Orthodox clergywomen in 2010, coming out unanimously in opposition. The group reaffirmed that stance in 2013.
The resolution announced on Oct. 30 went a step further, barring member rabbis at synagogues, schools and other Orthodox institutions from hiring women who carry clergy-like titles.
“RCA members with positions in Orthodox institutions may not ordain women into the Orthodox rabbinate, regardless of the title used; or hire or ratify the hiring of a woman into a rabbinic position at an Orthodox institution, or allow a title implying rabbinic ordination to be used by a teacher of Limudei Kodesh [Jewish studies] in an Orthodox institution,” the resolution says.
In addition to noting the closeness of the vote, RCA leaders said that about half the association’s 1,000 members participated.
“The vote count on the women’s resolution was very close,” said Rabbi Mark Dratch, executive vice president. “Many of the people who voted against the resolution weren’t voting against it on the merits, but felt this wasn’t the right way to handle the issue, that it needed to be handled in a more nuanced, proactive and educational manner.”
The RCA’s president, Rabbi Shalom Baum, issued a similar statement in a news release, noting that he, as well as “the vast majority of current officers and rashei yeshiva [yeshiva leaders] with whom he consulted,” felt the resolution was unnecessary and ill-timed.
RCA leaders are doing a delicate dance between their own opposition to Orthodox clergywomen and the growing agitation within some segments of Modern Orthodoxy to allow women access to greater leadership opportunities and ritual roles, such as leading prayer services. On the grassroots level, there is a widening fissure between Modern Orthodox Jews who support pushing the envelope on women’s issues and those who want to hew more closely to tradition.
The envelope-pushing camp, sometimes called Open Orthodoxy, is led by Rabbi Avi Weiss of Riverdale, New York. He founded a progressive Modern Orthodox rabbinical school for men in 1999, Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, as an alternative to Yeshiva University’s rabbinical school; established America’s first and only seminary for ordaining Orthodox clergywomen in 2009, Yeshivat Maharat; and ordained the first American Orthodox Jewish clergywoman, Sara Hurwitz, upon whom he conferred the title “rabba,” a feminized version of “rabbi.”
Hurwitz is now dean of Yeshivat Maharat and a clergywoman at Weiss’ synagogue, the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale. Like male clergy, she delivers sermons, officiates at weddings, brises and funerals, and provides pastoral counseling. Hurwitz has said she wants to see women lead Orthodox synagogues on their own. Her synagogue recently hired its second clergywoman, Rabba Anat Sharbat, a 2015 graduate of Yeshivat Maharat (see sidebar).
In the traditionalist camp are the RCA and Yeshiva University. In 2014, Yeshiva University’s rabbinical school, the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, threatened to withhold rabbinic ordination from a student who hosted a so-called partnership minyan: a traditional prayer service with gender-separate seating, but in which women may read from the Torah and lead certain prayers.
In August, an influential Yeshiva University rosh yeshiva, or rabbinic leader, Rabbi Mordechai Willig, caused a stir by penning a d’var Torah, or homily, suggesting it may have been a mistake to allow Orthodox women to study Talmud given the subsequent campaigns for expanding the religious roles of Orthodox women.
“The inclusion of Talmud in curricula for all women in Modern Orthodox schools needs to be reevaluated,” Willig wrote in his essay “Trampled Laws.” “While the gedolim [Torah greats] of the twentieth century saw Torah study to be a way to keep women close to our mesorah [tradition], an egalitarian attitude has colored some women’s study of Talmud and led them to embrace and advocate egalitarian ideas and practices which are unacceptable to those very gedolim.”
For its part, the RCA has long refused to open up membership to clergywomen, or even male rabbis whose sole ordination is from Weiss’ seminary. Weiss, who was ordained by Yeshiva University, announced earlier this year that he had quit the RCA over these policies. The rabbinic association Weiss co-founded some years ago as an alternative to the RCA, the International Rabbinic Fellowship, admits clergy from both his male and female seminaries.
The haredi Orthodox Agudath Israel of America has taken an even harsher line against the purveyors of Open Orthodoxy, seeking to cast them outside the pale of Orthodoxy. On Nov. 1, Agudah leaders issued a fresh condemnation.
“ ‘Open Orthodoxy’ and its leaders and affiliated entities (including, but not limited to, Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, Yeshivat Maharat, and International Rabbinic Fellowship), have shown countless times that they reject the basic tenets of our faith, particularly the authority of the Torah and its Sages,” the Agudah’s Council of Sages declared in a statement. “We therefore inform the public that in our considered opinion, ‘Open Orthodoxy’ is not a form of Torah Judaism (Orthodoxy), and that any rabbinic ordination (which they call ‘semicha’) granted by any of its affiliated entities to their graduates does not confer upon them any rabbinic authority.”
By contrast, RCA leaders in recent months have sought to steer clear of doing direct battle with Weiss and the proponents of Open Orthodoxy. The RCA says it supports expanded leadership roles for women within the bounds of Jewish law, or what is “halakhically and communally appropriate.” That means no to female rabbis or clergy, yes to female yoatzot halachah — Jewish legal advisers who may serve as authorities on such women’s issues as laws of sexual purity — and female lawyers in religious courts.
“The RCA stands for a lot of positive things about the Modern Orthodox community; unfortunately, we don’t get those out enough,” said Baum, who assumed the RCA presidency this summer. “While I don’t support women as rabbis, I don’t for a second question their motivation, sincerity or commitment to the Jewish community.”
It remains to be seen whether last week’s RCA resolution empowers the organization to take punitive action against rabbis who violate the ban. One thing is clear: The resolution is likely to exacerbate the growing divide within Orthodoxy over women’s roles, mobilizing opposition rather than quelling controversy and unifying the movement.
Hurwitz doesn’t think the RCA resolution will have any impact on Yeshivat Maharat’s clergywomen.
“Our graduates are continuing to do what they’ve always been doing, which is to teach and to serve and to do what they were trained to do,” she said. “We’re continuing to train women, and synagogues are hiring our women. We’re creating facts on the ground.”
Being revolutionary ‘is not how we operate’
sue fishkoff | j. staff
One of the country’s few Orthodox women to hold the title of “maharat” is Victoria Sutton, a graduate of Rabbi Avi Weiss’ Yeshivat Maharat who became director of education and community engagement at Berkeley’s Congregation Beth Israel in September 2014.
In explaining why he hired her, Rabbi Yonatan Cohen told J. at the time that his shul was looking for an assistant rabbi, and when he met Sutton, he realized she was the right candidate.
“It became clear that this would be a natural step for a community that is used to having strong women as educators and role models,” he told J. in 2014.
Repeating his endorsement this week, Cohen said by email: “Our efforts and focus remain on the community and the people we serve. Having Maharat Victoria as part of our leadership team has allowed us to increase religious educational opportunities and pastoral services in ways we could not fathom prior to her arrival. Her time with us has only deepened my conviction — she is the right person, at the right time, for who we are, and for our future.”
Cohen is a graduate of Weiss’ Yeshivat Chovevei Torah and is not a member of the RCA.
Rabbi Joel Landau of Adath Israel Congregation in San Francisco is a member of the RCA and is among those who asked the organization not to issue last week’s resolution — not because he supports ordaining women, which he does not, but because Landau, like the RCA president, felt such a resolution was not the best move. He asked the RCA leadership to form a committee instead, which would hear from both sides “to come up with a clear-cut position as to why we don’t [ordain women] and what we will do. We need to come up with a title, and a course of study, and put this to bed.”
The Orthodox world institutes change slowly, he explained, and Weiss’ “rabba/maharat” innovation is too much, too fast, and not in keeping with Orthodoxy’s respect for authority and its views on female modesty. More Orthodox women are becoming learned in Torah, and new positions are evolving for them, he said, but he questions the motivation of those seeking the titles of rabba or maharat today.
“Is the desire to have women rabbis coming from a holy place, or a secular place? Is it the pure motivation of a woman looking to reach the highest level of spiritual fulfillment, or is there a different agenda at work here?” Answering his own question, he said, “The argument with maharat, with rabba, is that they are meant to be revolutionary. That’s not how we operate.”
At the same time, Landau said he is “grappling” with the fact that Orthodox women now fill public roles such as doctors and lawyers, despite a halachic prohibition on men “staring at women,” which should preclude women from working at such jobs. If that’s acceptable, he wonders, why shouldn’t they be spiritual leaders as well?
“Orthodox women today are engaged in every aspect of life, every leadership sphere. There are women who seek to advance their spiritual capability, and the question is, how do we accommodate it? This should have been dealt with more effectively several years ago, and it hasn’t been.
“I watch the world evolve around me,” he said. “We have standards that don’t appear to be consistent.”