A Woman Among the Chief Rabbis?
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
As the race to choose the next chief rabbis heats up in Israel, a new lawmaker is proposing appointing a female religious figure to serve alongside them. She says that she will propose legislation to introduce the role.
Aliza Lavie of the centrist Yesh Atid party wrote today that there should be a female in the Chief Rabbinate. Her role would be “to explain to women in particular and to families the way of the Jewish tradition of the generations.”
Lavie is one of the founders of Kolech, the Religious Women’s Forum in Israel, and an active Orthodox feminist. The chances of her proposition coming to fruition is slim, but it will hopefully stimulate discussion on the male-dominated nature of Israel’s religious establishment.
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
