Last month, The International Rabbinic Fellowship, the most liberal of Orthodox rabbinic associations in the US, voted against accepting female members, effectively withholding its recognition for Sara Hurwitz’s rabbinic status. The issue has sparked a lively debate among several Facebook friends about women’s abilities to serve in positions of religious leadership.
Despite having spent my teen years at Rabbi Avi Weiss’s shul, with its gender-equal sanctuary and women’s prayer group, and being educated at such strongholds of progressive women’s education as Frisch, Drisha, and Midreshet Lindenbaum, I still think that the Orthodox female clergy discourse is a classic case of misplaced energies. If the goal of ordaining female rabbis is to show the world that whatever men can do, women can do better, than this is the way to go. However, I am skeptical that ordination for women will introduce more meaning into widespread Jewish observance or bring women into the beit midrash en mass. If anything, Jewish herstory of the last 100 years since the establishment of the first Bais Yaakov in 1917 has demonstrated that working with the establishment, not against it, is by far the most effective path to empowering women.
This becomes especially clear when contemplating the Orthodox community in Israel. Without any fighting and with little fanfare, Israeli women are making huge strides towards extensive Torah learning and religious leadership roles. During the half century since its establishment, Michlala has trained tens of thousands of highly educated women that went on to revitalize religious education. In recent years, Rabbi Brovender found ways to work with the Rabbinate to introduce toanot rabbaniyot (religious court advisors) into batei din, while Rabbanit Henkin’s yoatzot halacha program bestows rabbinic consultancy functions on women with minimal opposition.
A demonstrative standing reception for Sara Hurwitz at last year’s JOFA convention is self-understood at any Torah lesson delivered by a female scholar in Israel. It is precisely this lack of feminist agenda that has advanced women’s standing within the Orthodox community with full support of the rabbinic establishment. From Dana Tirosh’s annual Binyan Shalem conferences, attracting some 5,000 women, to Yemima Mizrachi’s standing-room-only lectures, to Rebbetzin Wertzberger’s 70,000-member-strong Mishmeret Hashalom network, life-long learning and meaningful observance by women are a natural part of any Orthodox community here.
During my senior year in high school, an NCSY director told me that most graduates of traditionally-oriented seminaries are more dedicated to life-long Torah learning than their counterparts at seemingly enlightened women’s “yeshivot.” At the time, I found that hard to believe. Today, almost 15 years after studying at both types of schools, I can attest to the veracity of the statement. Unlike, various Modern Orthodox “scholar circles,” right-wing seminaries do not produce handfuls of high-profile prodigies. They train thousands of erudite women living the Torah values and passing them on to the future generation. Many of these women go on to attain leadership positions, not because they are interested in leadership per se, but because they want to make a difference in what they identify as areas of communal need.
Yeshivat Maharat’s program with its four rabbinic hopefuls might succeed in overcoming the obstacles to ordaining narrowly accepted Orthodox female clergywomen. Yet, I doubt its influence will ever match the possibilities created by women’s initiatives leshem shamayim within the seemingly constrictive confines of rabbinic approval.