Yeshivat Chovevei Torah - Role of Women in Judaism

Role of Women in Judaism

Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, like all Orthodox rabbinical schools, accepts only male candidates for ordination. However, YCT, unlike a number of rabbis and institutions within Orthodox Judaism, has expressed an openness to the possibility of expanded roles for women in ritual life. Founder Avi Weiss explained: "Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School, as an Orthodox institution, requires that its students daven only in synagogues with mechitzot ," wrote Weiss in an e-mail to the Forward. "The phenomenon of women receiving aliyot in a mechitza minyan is currently being debated on both a halachic and communal level within the Modern Orthodox community. YCT Rabbinical School does not currently take a position on this issue."

As a result of this lack of prohibition, some YCT student and graduates have been involved in these types of services. In addition, many YCT students are instrumental in partnership minyanim like Washington Heights' MigdalOr.

In June 2009, Weiss created the title MaHaRaT for Sara Hurwitz. He wished he could have called her a rabbi, stating "She can do 95 percent of what other rabbis do".

Read more about this topic:  Yeshivat Chovevei Torah

Famous quotes containing the words role of, role, women and/or judaism:

    Where we come from in America no longer signifies—it’s where we go, and what we do when we get there, that tells us who we are.
    The irony of the role of women in my business, and in so many other places, too, was that while we began by demanding that we be allowed to mimic the ways of men, we wound up knowing we would have to change those ways. Not only because those ways were not like ours, but because they simply did not work.
    Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)

    Friends serve central functions for children that parents do not, and they play a critical role in shaping children’s social skills and their sense of identity. . . . The difference between a child with close friendships and a child who wants to make friends but is unable to can be the difference between a child who is happy and a child who is distressed in one large area of life.
    Zick Rubin (20th century)

    Other women cloy
    The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry
    Where most she satisfies.
    William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

    Christianity is the religion of melancholy and hypochondria. Islam, on the other hand, promotes apathy, and Judaism instills its adherents with a certain choleric vehemence, the heathen Greeks may well be called happy optimists.
    Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)