Luke Ford

Orthodox rabbi Gil Student writes:

On Sunday March 21st, 2009, Rabbi Avi Weiss conferred Yoreh Yoreh ordination on his congregational intern, Ms. Sara Hurwitz. The official certificate does not use the term rabbi but instead Rabbi Weiss invented a new term for this occasion – Maharat (Manhigah Hilchatit Ruchanit Toranit). Note also that Ms. Hurwitz has served for the past five years as a congregational intern and not as a rabbinic intern – the term rabbi is once again not being used. However, ordaining a woman in any way, even if not under the title rabbi, is a significant step in the Orthodox world. This is even more so the case when the ordainee serves in a synagogue pulpit.

I don’t know Rabbi Weiss or Ms. Hurwitz, and my thoughts here are not aimed at them personally but relate to the direction of the segment of the Orthodox community of which they are a part. What I see is support for the role of a woman in being ordained in rabbinic fashion and serving as a rabbi. This is a radical break with Jewish tradition. It is an intentional deviation from Minhag Yisrael, from the unanimous Orthodox view just 25 short years ago (and certainly prior to that). Regardless of what halakhic arguments can be offered on the relevant technical issues (on these issues, see this post: link which will be published in a revised and updated form in my forthcoming book, Posts Along The Way), we must remember that the Conservative movement also has halakhic arguments for its positions. What distinguishes the Orthodox from the Conservative is our allegiance to precedent and tradition. This latest deviation is part of a recent trend among self-identifying Orthodox Jews of deviating from traditional synagogue practices (why is the synagogue always first?).

Like the Reform in the nineteenth century and the Conservative in the twentieth, these recent deviations are accompanied with detailed halakhic justifications. But that does not mean that they are correct when they act to alter the fabric of religious society in ways that had previously been unthinkable. Nowhere to be heard are concerns about communal unity, misperceptions about halakhic malleability and the effects of this decision on the non-Orthodox. Nor is there discussion about the important question – “What next?” This seems to me to be a short-sighted and historically uninformed development.

Mike writes: 1) The Conservative movement’s slide away from halacha began well before ordaining women; permitting a desire to live in the suburbs to override chillul shabbos is as far from halacha as anything. Far further than women rabbis.

2) A great many of the practices raised by the early reformers in 19th century are now commonplace among the Orthodox. We all hear drush in the vernacular, both in the US and in Israel. Girls all learn Hebrew and TANAKH. Perhaps if some of the Orthodox had been quicker to adapt to societal change, the Reform would not have fallen so far from Torah; on the other hand, perhaps had they done so we would all have fallen away from Torah, chas v’shalom.

3) Since both Ms. Hurvitz and R. Weiss are committed to halacha, why do you say there is "no end in sight."? Halacha sets pretty clear bounds.

4) A hundred and 7 years ago Orthodox rabbis were (almost) universally opposed to Zionism and a state. The Rav ZT"L famously (His address to Mizrachi published as "Joseph and His Brethren") said that they were wrong; that the hasgacha pratis had ruled against them. Once me move beyond halacha, our decisions can only be judged in hindsight.

DAVE WRITES: If the right will be silent that’s only because Avi Weiss is a non-entity in their eyes. Just as few battle Reform or Conservative these days, Weiss’s latest innovations hardly create a tremor in the eyes of the rank and file Chareidi. He has long ago distinguished himself from them and since his approach hasn’t taken hold among anyone other than some on the far left-wing of the MO, it’s unlikely that they’ll care much. There may be a few articles lambasting him in the Yated or JO but don’t expect too much.

If anything, the onus is on the MO rabbis since Avi Weiss does occupy space at their table [even if they disagree with him] and it remains to see which approach they’ll take. My guess is that a few hardy souls will protest and the rest will dodge the issue as best as they’re able. It’s a third-rail issue for most and I can’t imagine too many who’ll stand up to him in the open.

RJM writes:
First of all, the point that distinguishes Orthodoxy from Conservative is not their attitude to precedent. It is their attitude to the halakhic system in general. Orthodoxy maintains that the principles of halakha are inviolable whereas Conservative believes they can still be changed to meet new circumstances, adapted to modern mores, etc., all in the name of halakhic evolution.

This does not imply that innovative theory and/or practice do not emerge in Orthodoxy; certainly there is plenty of hiddush, both theoretical and normative, to go around. What makes this legitimately Orthodox is that it is derived from the study and application of the traditional sources according to the traditional methodology.

This is why I think that, while slippery slope arguments make sense and have in fact been borne out in the context of Reform and Conservative where the clear boundaries of the halakhic system have been lost, the same is not true in Orthodoxy where the binding force of halakha is an ever-present reality that will never be challenged or changed. This attitude toward halakha is part of the very definition of Orthodoxy, and one who does not subscribe to this basic notion would likely defect from the movement altogether.

In this case, we are speaking about the subject of women’s "ordination", and all I have heard from you is dogmatic pronouncements about a mistake and a deviation. In an uncharacteristically smug fashion,you talk about remembering and reinforcing "what we already know". You apparently see this development as a terrible tragedy for the Jewish people. As someone who has given much thought to these issues as well, and has arrived at a different view, I felt condescended and was saddened by your words.

It is noteworthy that you have not responded to the actual content of the arguments at hand. I take it from this, and from some of your other comments, that you agree that there is a halakhic basis for what Rabbi Weiss seeks to establish, and that your objections are primarily sociological in nature.

While I sympathize with your concerns, I believe that other changes that have occurred within the context of Orthodoxy – including those pertaining to women’s involvement in learning, Bat Mitzvah celebrations, etc. – have proven that adherence to the principles of Orthodoxy prevent slippery slope kinds of concerns from materializing.

I agree with your assessment that, in the end, silence is the solution. Just as with Bat Mitzvah and women studying Talmud, the concept of female Torah leaders will eventually become a widely accepted commonplace within certain sectors of the Orthodox world – except those, of course, that still avoid celebrating Bat Mitzvot and prohibit women from studying Talmud.

MICHAEL WRITES: All the traditional halakhic sources say we do not save a gentile on Shabbat, except for mishum eiva. Obviously, this means that on a desert island, we wouldn’t save the gentile. But would anyone stand by this today? R’ Aharon Lichtenstein says he’d break Shabbat and do teshuva later; R’ Shlomo Riskin and R’ Nachum Rabinovitch cherry-pick the RambaN; R’ Weinberg and many others (see R’ David Berger in "Egalitarian Ethos for a laundry list of gedolim; I will add R’ Yom Tov Schwarz in Einayim Lirot to the list) cherry-pick the Meiri; R’ Jakobovits uses darkhei-shalom-as-an-ethical-override in a manner highly reminiscent of R’ Berkovits; R’ Amital says that the will of G-d is that we save the gentile even if the halakhah says otherwise.

Surely women in Orthodoxy today must be treated as gentiles are; the sources say what they do, but we must have the perspicacity to recognize that this is outdated. We must be able to recognize as R’ Eliezer Berkovits did, that if korbanot (RambaM), yafet toar (Hazal), milhemet reshut (R’ Kook), goel haDam (Shadal), etc. are all concessions, then so too, the Torah’s laws on women are also concessions. We cannot erase the law, but we can creatively overcome it. For example, regarding gittin, we can use prenuptials to create kiddushei ta’ut, as R’ Dr. Michael Broyde has, following R’ Weinberg and R’ Ovadia Yosef.

I have a friend converting Conservative. She says she chose Conservative because of the egalitarianism, and I asked her, in other areas (kashrut, Shabbat, etc.), why not follow the Orthodox? She told me that if the Conservatives are right here, she’ll trust them across the board.

The difference with early Conservative is that whereas the right-wing of Conservative (i.e. the JTS Talmudic staff) was practically Orthodox, the left-wing was far from. It was only once the RA split from JTS, that Conservative really took a downturn. But I don’t think it is hard to decide whether R’ Avi Weiss is more like JTS or like the RA. I think we can trust R’ Weiss to not take this beyond halakhah; as R’ Weinberg said of R’ Berkovits, he may be radical, but he has tremendous yirat shama’im all the same. See also David Glasner’s words, regarding R’ Moshe Shmuel Glasner (the father of R’ Berkovits’s teacher) at http://www.math.psu.edu/glasner/…4/Dorrev7.html: "To critics, R. Moshe Shmuel seemed to be sanctioning the heretical views of Wissenschaft des Judentum and its American offspring, Conservative Judaism. But R. Moshe Shmuel’s commitment to halakha was absolute, and his conclusions, unlike those of the Wissenschaft des Judentum, rested exclusively on Talmudic and rabbinic sources."

DAVID WRITES: Gil,
I don’t understand your statement in the last paragraph to the effect that the Conservative movement’s allegiance to halakhah disintegrated after female ordination. In 1980 most Conservative Jews weren’t shomer mitzvot and I fail to see how female ordination was a turning point in terms of that movement’s relationship to halakhah. Did their teshuvot become worse after female ordination? Rabbi Halvini et. al. left the movement at that time not because the decision was worse per se than others but because they found the process was disrespectful to their rebbe, Saul Lieberman and they also felt the process lacked legitimacy even by Conservative standards (secular Hebrew literature professors at JTS were allowed to vote on admitting women to JTS etc.).

Many radical halakhic and hashkafic changes (e.g. the assimilation of Zionism into Orthodox halakhah and theology) can be assimilated by Orthodoxy if the change [1] has technical internal halakhic justification and [2] is accepted by a sizable portion of shomerei mitsvot. Conservative p’sak sometimes meets the first test but almost never meets the second (except for using grape juice for kiddush).

MAYA WRITES: Dear R. Student,

Just so you know, it is Ms. Hurwitz, not Mrs. She and her husband have different last names. Could you please correct. I know that Sara was a bit upset by R. Sperber’s calling her Mrs. in his letter to R. Weiss.