An idea whose time has come

Andrew Friedman tracks a groundbreaking female spiritual leader.

By ANDREW FRIEDMAN
Jennie Rosenfeld est devenue début février conseillère cultuelle d'Efrat (photo credit: MEIR KRUTER/KRUTER PHOTOGRAPHY)
Jennie Rosenfeld est devenue début février conseillère cultuelle d'Efrat
(photo credit: MEIR KRUTER/KRUTER PHOTOGRAPHY)
STANDING ON the bima (dais) of Mishkan Tzippora synagogue in Efrat, Dr. Jennie Rosenfeld clearly feels at home.
During the course of an hour-long lecture on “Talking to our children about intimate matters: sources from the Talmud,” Rosenfeld easily navigates a series of Talmudic homilies about sexual ethics, followed by a frank question-and-answer session about the importance of discussing sex and love with teenagers. The lecture is polished and scholarly, evidence of her years of yeshiva study and academic research on the topic of sexual ethics for Orthodox singles.
On the surface, there was little of note about Rosenfeld’s talk. Indeed, the sight of a woman teaching Torah is far from unique in the modern Orthodox world, and especially not in Efrat, the thriving city in the Etzion Bloc in the West Bank. On the contrary, Efrat is host to a thriving women’s beit midrash, religious study house, and home to dozens of female Talmudic scholars, advisors on the laws of family purity, rabbinic court advocates and more.
But Rosenfeld’s lecture was far from routine. As a student at Midreshet Lindenbaum, an Orthodox women’s yeshiva in Jerusalem, Rosenfeld is scheduled to receive a heter hora’a, equivalent to rabbinic “My two greatest teachers, Rav Joseph Ber Soloveitchik and the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, both told me 50 years ago as I began my rabbinate that the greatest challenge to this generation would be the role and status of women. Both understood that women were perfectly capable of learning the oral Torah and studying halakha (religious law) on the highest level, both understood that university-educated women with full opportunities in secular society were going to seek leadership roles in the Jewish world, as well, and both created frameworks to enable women’s Torah learning and serious scholarship,” Riskin tells The Jerusalem Report.
He adds that the ordination program at Midreshet Lindenbaum’s Susi Bradfield Women’s Institute of Halakhic Leadership (WIHL) is as rigorous as the parallel men’s program at the Machanaim Yeshiva, Lindenbaum’s “brother school” and the flagship yeshiva of Riskin’s Ohr Torah Stone network of educational institutions.
However, Riskin points out that the women will not be called “rabbi” upon graduation.
“There is absolutely no difference between the heter hora’a and rabbinic ordination,” he notes. “The women are required to pass the same exams given by the Chief Rabbinate – however these are administered in-house and the ordination is not recognized by the Rabbinate.
“But there is a semantic problem with the word rabbi, particularly abroad. There, too many people understand the term ‘rabbi’ to indicate the person who leads services and who reads publicly from the Torah, and I do not believe that a women can perform those functions. So the heter hora’a is certainly not license for anyone to violate the halakha, but it is absolutely, positively a professional degree that should allow our women to rule on everyday halakhic matters and to serve as clergy on any rabbinic staff.”
Surprisingly, perhaps, the question of professional title appears to be a non-issue for many, or perhaps all, of the Orthodox women currently serving in rabbinic, or rabbi-like, positions in Israel and abroad.
As individuals solidly inside the Orthodox halakhic system, none of the American or Israeli women interviewed said they fostered plans, or even hopes, to “break down the walls” of halakha in order to assume roles that have traditionally been reserved for men. All said the issue of professional title was insignificant in comparison to the importance of creating leadership positions in Jewish communities that will allow them to use their expertise in halakha and training in pastoral counseling to contribute to Jewish individuals and communities in need of spiritual leadership.
Like Rosenfeld, all the emerging clergywomen are accomplished professionals with extensive backgrounds in Talmud study and Jewish community work. Some, including WIHL graduates Anat Novoslaski and Idit Bartov, have authored a series of halakhic responsa and are continuing their studies toward secondary ordination to serve on the state religious courts. Others, such as fifth-year student Meira Welt- Maarek, say they have yet to solidify their professional goals. Welt-Maarek says only that she hopes to work with people, perhaps as a school “rabbi.”
STILL, ALTHOUGH graduates say they are unconcerned about their formal professional titles, Rabbi Shmuel Klitsner, director of WIHL, tells The Report that the question of what to call Orthodox women clergy is a relevant one with no easy solution, and is likely to have practical ramifications.
“One possibility would be to call these women rabbanit, but that term traditionally meant “rabbi’s wife.” Another, rabba, the term chosen by Sara Hurwitz upon her ordination by Orthodox New York Rabbi Avi Weiss in 2009, left the program’s first graduates, Novoslaski and Bartov, feeling that the term had a connotation of a Reform or Conservative women rabbi – not a curse, but a term that did not reflect the WIHL program’s demands and training.
It will likely be an issue for the foreseeable future, particularly if female clergy begin applying for state-funded rabbinic positions such as military or hospital chaplains. Those positions currently require traditional Orthodox rabbinic ordination, currently available only to men,” Klitsner says.
Looking through the glass doors into the beit midrash at Midreshet Lindenbaum, there is little to differentiate the study hall from comparable rooms at yeshivas around the world. The room is lined with bookshelves, all weighed down with oversized volumes of Talmud and tomes of Jewish law, as well as with well-worn commentaries on the Torah and Mishna. Rows of student desks are lined with Aramaic-to- Hebrew dictionaries, desktop volumes of the entire Talmud, assorted philosophical writings by Rabbis Abraham Isaac Kook and Yehuda Halevi.
But there is an energy here that is different from men’s yeshivas. For one thing, the room lacks a Holy Ark and a bima to read the Torah – central features in a men’s beit midrash. For another, despite all the volumes, the room is tidy – the desks are not strewn with books. To a certain extent, the tidiness can be attributed to the fact that most of the yeshiva’s students are on holiday, leaving just a few stragglers to hold the fort for the week.
Still, the room enjoys a different feel to a boys’ school. At one desk, two study partners are dissecting Rashi’s comments on the gemara, standard fare for any yeshiva. But while the content of their discussion is identical to any other Torah setting, the exchange sounds civil and polite, lacking the bite and aggressiveness that sometimes characterizes male Torah study.
Out in the hall, the 34-year-old Rosenfeld enters the building out of breath while pushing her four-month-old son in a baby carriage.
Married to an academic carrying out research in the history of halakha, she came on aliya in 2008 and has two other young children. She politely excuses herself while she drops the baby in the child-care center (students pay the cost of the care, but the yeshiva provides space), then sits down in an empty classroom with her morning coffee.
“I grew up in a pretty standard, modern- Orthodox family, but the shul we went to was a [religiously] right-wing Orthodox synagogue in Riverdale, NY,” she relates.
“I started attending the daily minyan when I was 11, and by the time I was in high school I was fascinated by learning gemara, and I knew from an early age I wanted to be a teacher.
“But I had absolutely no dreams of becoming a rabbi. Very much to the contrary – I was always very afraid of ruling on halakhic matters. I didn’t want to take on that responsibility.
While I was writing my doctorate on “Talmudic Re-Readings: Towards a Modern- Orthodox Sexual Ethic” (City University of New York, 2008), I was coming from a place of research, not of making halakhic rulings; that gave me the freedom to say ‘let’s leave halakha aside and mine Jewish sources to find a sexual ethic that can help people, even if they are violating halakha.’ By applying literary theory to the reading of traditional texts, I was able to draw out a sexual ethic outside the realm of traditional Jewish law.”
Eventually, however, Rosenfeld says the nature of her work left her little choice but to become involved in the halakhic process.
After completing her PhD at the age of 27, she co-authored a book, “The Newlywed Guide to Physical Intimacy,” with Dr.
David S. Ribner and quickly emerged as one of the Orthodox world’s up-and-coming authorities on Judaism and sexuality. When she was asked at her lectures “What is the halakha?” – she responded simply “I’m not a rabbi,” and suggested the person take the matter up with his or her halakhic authority.
By the time she had reached her early 30s, however, she began to realize that her response was difficult for many people to accept and left her feeling unsatisfied. Increasingly, it was also tough for her to avoid the practical implications of the lectures and classes she taught on sex and other matters.
In addition, her years of synagogue attendance and interactions with Jewish communities around America and in Israel brought out strong feelings that both men and women in the Orthodox world needed expanded options of leadership.
“After I finished my bachelor’s degree at Stern College, I did an internship at the Beth Din of America, under Rabbi Yonah Reiss working on cases involving agunot, women seeking divorces from recalcitrant husbands.
It was fascinating to see the halakhic process in action, in an area of life where the stakes were very high. I was taken by the process, and especially by the extent to which flexibility enters the halakhic system in places of real need.
“A decade later that fascination came back to me when I kept knocking back questions about halakha, but increasingly I understood that I couldn’t avoid that realm forever.
Around the same time, Rav Shmuel Klitsner reached out to me, told me about a new track in halakha for women and I realized that I needed to overcome my fear of ruling on halakhic matters and gain a more in-depth knowledge of the system.”
IF ROSENFELD’S assertion that Orthodox communities are in need of leadership opportunities for women is considered controversial in some circles, the fact of the matter is that women’s participation in Torah scholarship and communal leadership is on the rise in Jewish communities around the world, and not only among modern Orthodox.
In the Haredi world, women such as Rebbitzens Esther Jungreis, Tzippora Heller, Yemima Mizrachi and others are in and beyond for their talks on a variety of Torah subjects.
While those individuals typically limit their appearances to women-only audiences and very pointedly do not rule on matters of Jewish law, they are indicative of a growing role for women in virtually all circles of Orthodoxy.
Despite that trend, however, no related issue has inflamed the Orthodox world like New York Rabbi Weiss’s 2009 announcement that he would grant rabbinic ordination to Hurwitz, the first graduate of his Maharat Yeshiva’s ordination program. At that time, Orthodox authorities, including the Rabbinical Council of America denounced Weiss as “outside Orthodoxy”, with one individual, Rabbi Avi Shafran of Agudat Israel of America, comparing the ordination of women to placing a cat in a Holy Ark.
According to Klitsner, the main loser from this approach has been Orthodoxy itself, by depriving itself of a reservoir of quality individuals who have much to offer the Jewish people in positions of spiritual leadership. It is a point that is seconded by Weiss.
“When I consider what Rabba Sara Hurwitz adds to our rabbinic staff at the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, it is difficult to imagine that our clergy lacked her voice for so many years. Like all the women we have ordained at Maharat Yeshiva, she enjoys a complete mastery of the Talmudic text, and the human sensibility that she brings to the table is extraordinary – whether teaching in the classroom or acting in a pastoral role in the wider community,” Weiss tells The Report.
LIKE RISKIN and Klitsner, Weiss stresses his view that Orthodoxy is not an egalitarian movement, and there are clear restrictions on women in their participation in religious life.
But all three also make the point that those limitations are few in number and all add that learned, committed women can also play a leadership role even though their full participation in ritual is limited.
“The roles of men and women in Judaism overlap in 90 percent of areas,” Weiss says. “Similarly, in spiritual leadership. When I think of the roles of a rabbi as a pastoral counselor, as a teacher of Torah, as a responder to questions of halakha – women can play equal roles in all of these areas. There are, however, 10 percent of functions that men can do and women cannot do, and conversely what women can do and men cannot do. While women cannot be on a beit din for conversion, a woman spiritual leader can take a female convert into the mikve, something that, of course, a man cannot do.
“Talmudic sources do prohibit those who are not considered ‘kosher’ witnesses from giving testimony and from serving as religious court judges. Traditionally, that certainly applied to women,” says Klitsner. “But, historically, many religious courts have accepted testimony of women on many issues. They did this on the basis of the far-reaching halakhic principle that judges have leeway and because all court cases require the underlying endorsement of the judges’ authority by the litigants. Hence, all judgments were considered to be more in line with the concept of mutually agreed upon binding arbitration.
“In the State of Israel, all courts, including the religious ones, receive this underlying endorsement by virtue of the democratic election of the government. Thus, the State of Israel and its religious courts can choose to accept women both as witnesses and as judges, and this would be halakhically legitimate, and the rulings of women judges considered binding upon the litigants,” Klitsner says.
It remains to be seen the degree to which – if at all – women clergy will be accepted in Israel. In North America, women carry out clerical functions at Orthodox synagogues from Washington to Montreal and further afield. Several modern Orthodox rabbis in Israel have told The Report that women’s ordination was a “natural step.”
In Efrat and other communities around Gush Etzion, reaction to Rosenfeld’s appointment ranged from a communal yawn to stiff opposition. Riskin was forced to scale back advertising for Rosenfeld’s debut event following complaints by several members of the local Religious Council who objected to the council logo being used on a flyer advertising her appointment and debut lecture. Her position is funded by a private donor, not the council, and Rosenfeld works out of the Ohr Torah Stone offices, not at the council. Just two local rabbis attended her inaugural lecture.
Nevertheless, Rabbis Weiss, Klitsner, Riskin and others – and the emerging class of spiritual leaders – say the pendulum has swung in the direction of including women as leaders in the Orthodox community.
“I don’t feel like the ordination of women is a revolution at all. It is simply an idea whose time has come, and we are answering a clear need for the Jewish People,” remarks Weiss.