This is the Forward’s coverage of rabbis, the spiritual leaders of Jewish congregations.
Rabbis
The Latest
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Opinion Why All Jews Should Speak Out About Orthodox Ban on Women Rabbis
(UPDATED) When mainstream Orthodox rabbis repeated their absolute opposition to ordaining women, in a statement issued late on the afternoon of Friday, October 30, I found that my predictable feminist outrage was tempered by an unpredictable shrug. Really, why should I care about what the Rabbinical Council of America says, anyway? I am not an…
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Fast Forward Orthodox Rabbis Group Chooses Confrontation in Feud Over Female Clergy
(JTA) — When America’s main modern Orthodox rabbinical association voted last week to ban the hiring of clergywomen by its members, the question wasn’t whether to endorse women rabbis. It was whether to widen the group’s well-established repudiation of female clergy or keep quiet and focus on finding common ground with modern Orthodox Judaism’s progressive…
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News When Reform Leaders Downplay Charges of Rabbis Behaving Badly
Rabbi Eric Siroka was quietly expelled from the nation’s leading association for Reform rabbis, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, this past spring. At the time, the CCAR said only that Siroka had been expelled for refusing to comply with an ethics investigation. By then, Siroka, a married father with two children, had moved to…
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Fast Forward Dutch Chief Rabbi Speaks Out on Anti-Gay Violence Among Refugees
Reported abuse of homosexuals at refugee centers shows the need for educating refugees to tolerance as soon as possible, Dutch Chief Rabbi Binyomin Jacobs said. Jacobs’ statement Friday followed an expose aired the previous day by the Dutch broadcaster NOS. In it, the country’s main advocacy group for homosexuals, COC, revealed that over the past…
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Fast Forward 40% of Conservative Rabbis Would Perform Intermarriages
A survey of 249 Conservative rabbis finds that almost half have defied the movement’s ban on attending interfaith weddings and that 40 percent would officiate at such weddings if the movement permitted them to do so. The survey, conducted by the New York-based Big Tent Judaism (formerly named the Jewish Outreach Institute) is believed to…
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Opinion Who Says Rabbis Must Be Role Models On Intermarriage — Or Anything Else?
Jane Eisner is right to attribute the change in Reconstructionist Rabbinical College’s intermarriage policy to a disagreement about the rabbi’s role in his or her community. But she misses the reason for this disagreement. : “Clergy don’t reflect their congregations. Clergy lead their congregations — and do so not as leaders who bow to the…
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Opinion Why We Shouldn’t Accept Rabbis Who Marry Non-Jews
Does it make a difference to the larger Jewish community that the Reconstructionist movement has made the regrettable decision to admit and ordain intermarried rabbis? Its adherents are miniscule: Only about 1% of American Jews identify with the movement. Cross the continent and you’ll find slightly more than a hundred congregations. The Reconstructionist Rabbinical College…
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Life The Consequences of Israel’s Closed-Door Politics For Women
Last month, the Religious Courts Appointments committee met all day and into the night behind closed doors to determine who will be a dayan, a religious court judge in Israel. The good news for women is that 22 new dayanim will unlock the religious courts where the high number of judicial vacancies kept women from…
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