A new debate looms over what to call Orthodox Jewish women trained in rabbinic texts and serving the Jewish community as religious leaders. And the ‘R’ word has once again reared its disruptive head. Yeshivat Maharat, the institution that is training women to work as Orthodox religious leaders, has formed its first advisory board and…
Abigail Pogrebin’s story, “The Rabbi and the Rabba,” in this week’s New York magazine, takes an insightful look at the man behind the making of the first woman in America to be ordained as Orthodox clergy, Rabbi Avi Weiss. Pogrebin does a good job of capturing many aspects of Weiss’ complicated personality; his ardent political…
Women cannot be Orthodox rabbis. That much is clear in the resolution passed unanimously at the annual conference of the Rabbinical Council of America, held at the Young Israel of Scarsdale April 25-27. But that is all that’s clear in the resolution, which can be read in its entirety here. On the one hand, the…
In a bold and passionate move, the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance (JOFA) has sent two letters to the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA), a leading Orthodox rabbinic organization, in an attempt to advance women’s leadership roles in synagogues and communities. One of the letters reads: As the major rabbinic arm in the Orthodox world, the…
This will show you never to eat stadium food. At Yankee Stadium yesterday, the wife of a prominent New York rabbi was saved from choking to death by an Army medic who had served in Iraq. It all started when Toby Weiss, wife of Rabbi Avi Weiss of the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, began choking…
When Rabbi Avi Weiss announced in May that he is opening a center for the training of female Orthodox clergy, it was heralded by many as a watershed moment. At the Kolech conference in Jerusalem earlier this month, women’s ordination was much-discussed, the idea endorsed by Rabbi Yoel Bin Nun, and participants decided that female…
One of Sara Hurwitz’s sons recently said more, related to the recent conferral of her new title of Maharat, than many others publicly have. Four-year-old Zacharya told her “only boys can be rabbis.” Hurwitz laughed it off — explaining that her kids don’t get to see her working in her position of leadership at the…
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