My fellow Orthodox rabbis need to take a stronger stance against guns
Our emergency plans will only go so far to save lives. What would really make a difference is immediately reducing the number of guns in our country.
RCA
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Fast Forward Orthodox Rabbinical Group Condemns Trump Over Charlottesville
The largest body of Orthodox rabbis in the United States released a statement on Wednesday condemning President Trump’s continued comparisons between white supremacist marchers and counter-protestors in Charlottesville, Va. “There is no moral comparison,” the president of the Rabbinical Council of America, Rabbi Elazar Muskin, said in a statement. “Failure to unequivocally reject hatred and…
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Community Rethinking Orthodoxy in Trump’s America
David Weiss Halivni, a renowned Talmudic scholar, once quipped that he could not pray with the people with whom he talked, and could not talk with the people with whom he prayed. In other words, those with whom he could talk – who could discuss religious ideas beyond accepted norms – insisted on living the…
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Life Do You Want Me to Leave Orthodoxy? An Open Letter to the RCA
Dear Rabbinical Council of America, Do you want me to leave? Do you want 17-year-old girls who care about Judaism to leave Orthodoxy? Do you want them to leave Judaism altogether? Because that is what is going to happen if you don’t give us a seat at your table. I am a 17-year-old girl who…
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Life I’m an Ultra-Orthodox Rabbi and I Support Women’s Ordination
A few years ago, I received a call from a Hasidic Rebbe from a small synagogue in Brooklyn. In a mix of Yiddish and Hebrew, the Rebbe asked me, “could you help me write up a semichah [ordination certificate] for a woman?” The question didn’t faze me so much, my only question was “what type…
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Life Female Clergy Are Key to ‘Sacred Continuity’
Ironically, Friday’s announcement by the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA) is an acknowledgement of the reality and impact of Orthodox women clergy. We are facts on the ground. I am the Rabba the RCA is decrying. I received ordination from Yeshivat Maharat in June this year and fully consider myself a member of the clergy….
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Life How to Fix Orthodox Conversion in America
Last year I discovered that my rabbi, Barry Freundel, filmed me naked while I was in the mikveh bathroom preparing to convert (during a “practice dunk”) and while converting to Judaism. After outrage and sorrow, I felt fear. Fear for the integrity of my conversion with his name at the top of my documents. At…
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Breaking News Rabbinical Council of America Conversion Panel Issues Recommendations
A committee established by the Rabbinical Council of America to review its conversion processes has submitted its report featuring recommendations in nine areas of the process. The review was put in place nine months ago after one of the RCA’s leading conversion rabbis, Barry Freundel, was arrested on voyeurism charges. Freundel was sentenced to 6…
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