The haftarah for the Torah portion Beshalach begins with a striking description: “And Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lapidot, was judging Israel at that time (Judges 4:4).” For contemporary readers, this verse resonates powerfully. It presents a woman serving in a leadership position of spiritual, legal, and communal authority.
Concurrently, the verse raises questions: How does Deborah’s role align with established Jewish legal categories regarding testimony, adjudication, and rabbinic authority? Can women like Deborah truly function as posekot Halacha, those who answer halachic questions, in a manner comparable to a male rabbinical authority?
This question is especially relevant amid the increase in women who are indeed experts in Jewish Law, yet are still banned by Israel’s Chief Rabbinate from taking halachic exams.
The issue is far from new, however, it has occupied the attention of leading Torah scholars for centuries.
The 12th to 14th century commentaries on the Talmud, known as the Tosafot, raise the issue of Deborah when addressing the legal principle that “all those fit to adjudicate are fit to testify.”
Although the prophetess appears in our haftarah to have served as a judge, according to the principles outlined in the Talmud. If she had not been fit to testify in a beit din or religious court, how could she judge religious matters and questions? How can her role be understood in terms of Jewish law?
In their commentaries on Tractate Niddah, 50a, Tosafot explain that Deborah did not function as a judge in practice.
Rather, she served as the Torah authority who taught the judges, certified them, and was involved in shaping judicial processes without occupying a formal judicial seat. In parallel, she actively engaged the broader Jewish community in the study and observance of Torah and in answering their Jewish legal questions.
This explanation is echoed and expanded upon by later authorities. The 13th-century Sefer HaChinuch writes that a woman who is accepted by the Jewish community as a Torah scholar may answer halachic questions. Once her expertise is widely recognized, no additional credentials are required for her rulings to carry binding authority.
Similarly, 19th-century Rabbi Avraham Hirsch Eisenstadt of Bialystok, known as the “Pitchei Teshuva,” writes in Choshen Mishpat (7:4) that while a woman cannot serve as a judge, she may rule on halachic matters if she possesses the requisite knowledge and the community recognizes her scholarship.
Once again, the prophetess Deborah provides the central proof.
IN THE MODERN era, this position was articulated with particular clarity by Rabbi Eliyahu Bakshi-Doron, the Sephardi chief rabbi of Israel from 1993 to 2003. In his responsum Binyan Av (vol. 1, no. 65), he ruled that a woman may function as a Torah leader, even as one of the gedolei hador, or great leaders of the generation, because such stature depends solely upon the scholarly and moral capacity of the Torah authority. Halachic leadership, he argued, is earned through knowledge, integrity, and service to the community.
In our generation, we are privileged to encounter women whose learning, commitment, and spiritual leadership reflect this tradition. Accordingly, a learned woman may serve the Jewish people by answering halachic questions and issuing rulings, provided her authority is also grounded in communal trust.
Chief Rabbinate continues to bar women from exams
This aspect of the haftara has lasting ramifications on our present reality, as the Chief Rabbinate of the State of Israel continues to bar women from taking its halachic qualification exams. Certification through these exams is required for many official roles in government institutions, such as chaplains in hospitals and prisons, for which women have been deemed ineligible.
The consequences are not merely theoretical. It is deeply troubling that there are no female chaplains even in Israeli women’s prisons, despite the existence of learned, capable, and motivated women who could provide inmates with care and guidance.
In the IDF, where women increasingly serve across nearly every corps, this glass ceiling has only been partially broken. Some women have recently begun to perform as spiritual guides or mentors, but only through intricate legal and bureaucratic workarounds, as the Rabbinate continues to deny them access to the qualifying examinations.
These “rabbinical exams” are not only the gateway to holding formal rabbinic office. They are a required credential for filling any number of government and civil service positions that halacha itself does not reserve exclusively for rabbis.
To prohibit women from taking them on the grounds that doing so would be tantamount to recognizing women as rabbis is unfair to these Torah scholars and, even more importantly, unfair to the greater Jewish community.
Israel’s Supreme Court recently ruled that because women have the ability to serve as poskot Halacha, excluding them from the examinations constitutes unjustified discrimination. Nevertheless, the Rabbinate responded by canceling exam dates, leaving the entire examination process effectively in limbo.
Women must be given the opportunity to take the Chief Rabbinate’s exams. This is not a call to blur halachic boundaries or assign prohibited roles. It is a call to honor Jewish Law as it has been articulated by our authorities across generations.
As the opening verse of our haftarah teaches, Deborah, a woman of profound Torah knowledge, served as a spiritual guide, role model, and halachic decisor for the Jewish people.
Today, we are blessed with many Deborahs, learned, pious, and courageous women capable of spiritual and halachic leadership. Enabling them to serve fully is not a concession but an act of fidelity to the Torah, to Halacha, and to the needs of the world Jewish community.
The writer is president and rosh yeshiva of Ohr Torah Stone.