Bitya Rozen-Goldberg had no idea she wanted to be a rabbi when she immigrated to Israel from France 11 years ago. In the years since settling in Jerusalem, the 33-year-old tour guide studied Talmud in numerous female settings. But as “female rabbi” has long been an oxymoron in the Orthodox world, she never thought she…
The past two weeks have been historic for Jewish women. Orthodox women in both and New York were ordained as clergy – although with a variety of titles from Maharat to Rabba to Rabbi, but effectively all as rabbis. While Yeshivat Maharat is now the veteran institution with five years of experience at this, Yeshivat…
Two women ordained as Orthodox rabbis this week will be entitled “rabba,” the female form of “rabbi.” They will be joining the only woman who had the title until now, Sara Hurwitz of the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale’s synagogue in the Bronx. Rahel Berkovits barely managed to say a couple of sentences from the short…
Three years ago this month, Rabba Sara Hurwitz made history in the Jewish world by becoming the first publicly ordained female rabbi in the Orthodox community. Since then, the 35-year-old mother of three has been working as Dean of Yeshivat Maharat, an institution dedicated to training women Orthodox clergy, as well as working as Rabba…
In 1997, Blu Greenberg chaired the first International Conference on Feminism & Orthodoxy. About 400 attendees were expected and more than 1,000 showed up, hungry for a community of other women committed to both traditional Jewish life and their own religious potential. The Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance, which was born of that first gathering and…
Another “rabba” is slated to be ordained next month by the Academy of Jewish Religion, The Jewish Week reports. (The Sisterhood will have more on this shortly.) Chabad.org has a story about “The Heart That Sings,” a movie with an all-female cast. The film was screened in 11 cities during the Passover holiday; audiences were…
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…
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