Women Rabbis - Women

Women

With some rare exceptions (see below), women historically have generally not served as rabbis until the modern era. Today all types of Judaism except for Orthodox Judaism allow and do have female rabbis.

In Orthodox Judaism, women cannot become rabbis, although there is no prohibition against women learning halakhah that pertains to them, nor is it any more problematic for a woman to rule on such issues than it is for any lay person to do so. Rather, the issue lies in the rabbi's position of communal authority. Following the ruling of the talmud, the decisors of Jewish law held that women were not allowed to serve in positions of authority over a community, such as judges or kings. The position of official rabbi of a community, mara de'atra ("master of the place"), has generally been treated in the responsa as such a position. This ruling is still followed in traditional and orthodox circles but has been relaxed in branches like Conservative and Reform Judaism that are less strict in their adherence to traditional Jewish law.

There were some rare cases of women acting as rabbis in earlier centuries, such as the 17th century Asenath Barzani, who acted as a rabbi among Kurdish Jews. Hannah Rachel Verbermacher, also known as the Maiden of Ludmir, was a 19th-century Hasidic rebbe, the only female rebbe in the history of Hasidism.

The first formally ordained female rabbi was Regina Jonas, ordained in Germany in 1935. Since 1972, when Sally Priesand became the first female rabbi in Reform Judaism, Reform Judaism's Hebrew Union College has ordained 552 women rabbis (as of 2008).

Sandy Eisenberg Sasso became the first female rabbi in Reconstructionist Judaism in 1974 (one of 110 by 2006); and Amy Eilberg became the first female rabbi in Conservative Judaism in 1985 (one of 177 by 2006). Lynn Gottlieb became the first female rabbi in Jewish Renewal in 1981, and Tamara Kolton became the very first rabbi (and therefore, since she was female, the first female rabbi) in Humanistic Judaism in 1999. In 2009 Alysa Stanton became the world's first African-American female rabbi.

In Europe, Leo Baeck College had ordained 30 female rabbis by 2006 (out of 158 ordinations in total since 1956), starting with Jackie Tabick in 1975.

The Kohenet Institute, based at the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center in Connecticut, offers a two-year course of study to women who are then ordained as Jewish priestesses. “Kohenet” is a feminine variation on “kohan,” meaning priest. The Kohenet Institute's training involves earth-based spiritual practices that they believe harken back to pre–rabbinic Judaism; a time when, according to Kohenet’s founders, women took on many more (and much more powerful) spiritual leadership roles than are commonly taken by women today. A Jewish priestess may, according to Kohenet, act as a rabbi, but the two roles are not the same.

The consensus of the Orthodox Jewish community has been that women are ineligible to becoming rabbis; the growing calls for Orthodox yeshivas to admit women as rabbinical students have resulted in widespread opposition among the Orthodox rabbinate. Rabbi Norman Lamm, one of the leaders of Modern Orthodoxy and Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshiva University's Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, opposes giving semicha to women. "It shakes the boundaries of tradition, and I would never allow it." (Helmreich, 1997) Writing in an article in the Jewish Observer, Moshe Y'chiail Friedman states that Orthodox Judaism prohibits women from being given semicha and serving as rabbis. He holds that the trend towards this goal is driven by sociology, and not halakha ("Jewish law"). In his words, the idea is a "quirky fad." No Orthodox rabbinical association (e.g. Agudath Yisrael, Rabbinical Council of America) has allowed women to be ordained using the term rabbi.

However, in the last twenty years Orthodox Judaism has begun to develop clergy-like roles for women as halakhic court advisors and congregational advisors. Rabbi Aryeh Strikovski (Machanaim Yeshiva and Pardes Institute) worked in the 1990s with Rabbi Avraham Shapira (then a co-Chief rabbi of Israel) to initiate the program for training Orthodox women as halakhic Toanot ("advocates") in rabbinic courts. They have since trained nearly seventy women in Israel. Strikovski states that "The knowledge one requires to become a court advocate is more than a regular ordination, and now to pass certification is much more difficult than to get ordination." In 2012 Ephraim Mirvis appointed Lauren Levin as Britain’s first Orthodox female halakhic adviser, at Finchley Synagogue in London.

Some Orthodox Jewish women now serve in Orthodox Jewish congregations in roles that previously were reserved for males. The grammatically correct Hebrew feminine parallel to the masculine title rabbi is rabbanit (רבנית) sometimes used for women in this role. Sara Hurwitz, considered by some the first Orthodox woman rabbi, following correct Hebrew feminized grammar of rav (רב), used the title rabba (רבה). Other women in Jewish leadership, like Rachel Kohl Finegold and Lynn Kaye, do not have official titles, but function as de facto assistant rabbis.

In Israel, the Shalom Hartman Institute, founded by Orthodox Rabbi David Hartman, opened a program in 2009 that will grant semicha to women and men of all Jewish denominations, including Orthodox Judaism, although the students are meant to "assume the role of 'rabbi-educators' – not pulpit rabbis- in North American community day schools.

In Israel a growing number of Orthodox women are being trained as yoatzot halakhah.

…Strikovski and his colleagues aren't willing to confer a title commensurate with experience. Clarifying his position, he laughs, "If a man passed such a test we would call him a rabbi – but who cares what you call it?" he says. "Rav Soloveitchik, my teacher, always used to say: 'If you know, then you don't need ordination; and if you don't know, then ordination won't make a difference.'" Further, the title of rabbi only had meaning during the time of the Sanhedrin, he argues. "Later titles were modified from generation to generation and community to community, and now the important thing is not the title but that there is a revolution where women can and do study the oral law." + – :(Feldinger, 2005)

Rahel Berkovits, an Orthodox Talmud teacher at Jerusalem's Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies, states that as a result of such changes in Haredi and Modern Orthodox Judaism, "Orthodox women found and oversee prayer communities, argue cases in rabbinic courts, advise on halachic issues, and dominate in social work activities that are all very associated with the role a rabbi performs, even though these women do not have the official title of rabbi."

The use of Toanot is not restricted to any one segment of Orthodoxy; In Israel they have worked with Haredi and Modern Orthodox Jews. Orthodox women may study the laws of family purity at the same level of detail that Orthodox males do at Nishmat, the Jerusalem Center for Advanced Jewish Study for Women. The purpose is for them to be able to act as halakhic advisors for other women, a role that traditionally was limited to male rabbis. This course of study is overseen by Rabbi Yaakov Varhaftig.