If I had $1,400,000,000...

.No I did not buy a lottery ticket. I spent the $2.00 on a delicious doughnut at Tel Aviv Bakery on Devon in West Rogers Park. And I have money left over. I think I'll put it in the Pushka. However if I find a ticket in the street... well, you never know. I will check the numbers to see if I won. Whats that? You don't think it's very likely to find a lottery ticket on the street? You're kidding - Right? Likely??? Well... it may not be likely. But it's possible. People lose things all the time.

Update
Did  not find a lottery ticket. So I didn't win anything. On the bright side, it didn't cost me anything either.

 

Public Rebuke of Rabbi Daniel Eidensohn

The controversy over the release of a woman from her status as an Agunah has been the subject of the Daas Torah blog run by Rabbi Daniel Eidensohn for quite some time now. In virtually all of his posts on the subject he wasted no time besmirching the reputation of 2 respected Rabbis - elders in their 90s - for permitting that woman to re-marry. 

He and many other rabbis rejected outright the Heter (Halachic permission)  they used for her to remarry. Since she has remarried based on that Heter, Rabbi Eidensohn and the rabbis who rejected it characterize this couple as adulterers in the Halachic sense.

I am not here to dispute or support that Heter. But even assuming Rabbi Eidensohn is correct, the way he is handling this is beyond disgusting. His latest post has actually asserted that he will no longer publish any comments critical of him. Thus it will be Rabbi Eidensohn that has the last word. 

I responded nonetheless with the following:

You won't be publishing this, but I'm going to tell you anyway since you will in fact be reading it before you delete it.  

It is not your view about the halachic issues involved here that is in question. You may in fact be right. Indeed the consequences of those actions are serious. It is the way you handled it by besmirching the Chashuva Rabbonim whose views and actions you criticized. In doing this in such a public manner, you have lost your Chezkas Kashrus among so many of your former supporters - of which I counted myself as one. 

How sad it is for someone with your talent - and all the contributions you have made to Klal Yisroel in other areas - to have fallen so low. I cannot tell you how disappointed I am in you - someone I used to admire so much.  I'm actually thinking about publishing this comment on my blog so that my views will be known by more people than you. Because you deserve a public rebuke.

Open Letter to Open Orthodoxy

By Rabbi Francis Nataf 

Rabbis Eichenstein and Lopatin what once was  - could once again be

The following article by Rabbi Francis Nataf appeared in the Times of Israel. It makes eminent sense to me. Despite my strong criticism of the movement, I never wanted them to be ousted from Orthodoxy. To the contrary, I practically begged them to stay. Unfortunately they have done nothing to allay my concerns – concerns which many of us in the ‘center’ have expressed many times. If they make these corrections they will be welcomed back with very open arms.  At least as far as I am concerned. And I think many others who share my concerns. His words follow.

While I have decided to maintain the public nature of this letter, I am pleased to report that it has already elicited a positive response by at least one of the main leaders to whom it is addressed. My hope is that its publication will help and not hurt the maintenance of unity in the Orthodox camp.

While I have decided to maintain the public nature of this letter, I am pleased to report that it has already elicited a positive response by at least one of the main leaders to whom it is addressed. My hope is that its publication will help and not hurt the maintenance of unity in the Orthodox camp.

In a recent essay, I wrote about what I admire in Open Orthodoxy (I have since learned that is a label that some of its leaders would prefer to no longer use). No matter what happens in the future, I will continue to admire these points and many others.

It is precisely because of my admiration for — and sometimes even identification with — Open Orthodoxy that I write this letter. I think you should already know that when the critique is coming from people like Rabbi Shmuel Goldin and Prof. David Berger, it may be time to listen. Besides long being identified with the liberal wing of Modern Orthodoxy, both men have been known for their thoughtfulness, intellect and sensitivity. At the risk of redundancy, I will add my name to those who feel it is time for Open Orthodoxy to take stock of where it is, not just as a favor to us, but — more importantly — as a favor to itself.

Much of what passes for critique these days is just self-serving harangue and rabble-rousing. No doubt, Open Orthodoxy is tired of having to deal with so much of that since its inception. And it could be that after getting so much unfair criticism, it has become immune to all criticism, even when it is in place. Yet our tradition tells us quite clearly that the wise man loves critique. Difficult though it may be, I call upon you to realize that there are some very important questions now being raised by those who think of themselves as your friends.

Indeed, accepting the critique of others is what kept many of Judaism’s most important movements within the pale, to the benefit of those offering the critique, as well as those accepting it. It is what kept the followers of Rambam from reducing all of Judaism to a metaphor for Greek philosophy. It is also what kept the early Kabbalists from turning into polytheists, substituting the sefirot for God Himself. More recently, it is what kept Hassidut from antinomianism and its turning away from the centrality of Torah study and observance. I need not point out that movements that rebuffed legitimate critique fared less well.

Rabbi Goldin raised the issue of method, Prof Berger of substance. To address the first, there are many — even within Open Orthodoxy — who have misgivings about the confrontational style adopted by several of its most prominent exponents. Personally speaking, I believe that much more is accomplished by those that seek a broader consensus for moderate change than those working for radical change within more narrow confines. 

But more immediately relevant is that if Open Orthodoxy cannot control its firebrands from burning bridges to the mainstream, it should not be surprised to wake up to a situation where these bridges no longer exist. In such a situation, it will have defined itself out of Orthodoxy on sociological grounds, if not necessarily on substantive ones.

Unfortunately, however, there are true substantive issues that threaten to pull us apart as well. Prof. Berger focuses on the authorship of the Torah and Yeshivat Chovevei Torah’s inability — or lack of desire — to provide clear red lines on what is probably (along with the nature of Halacha) Orthodox Judaism’s most important issue. 

To be fair, YCT President Rabbi Asher Lopatin endorsed the traditional understanding of revelation at Sinai. But, by the same token, he has — so far — refrained from placing any alternative as outside of Orthodoxy’s boundaries. This is not the place to go into the intricacies of this issue, which I and others have discussed in other forums. Suffice it to say that while Judaism’s red lines are intentionally fuzzy, there is no question that they exist. And one of the major items defining Orthodoxy as a movement has been its willingness to unapologetically proclaim and defend those boundaries.

There are other issues, but my point is not to create a laundry list of complaints. It is to simply say that it is time to listen.

I appreciate the desire to hold on to people on the religious and intellectual left. There has always been a tacit understanding that an individual need not follow every belief or law to have a place within the Orthodox community. Hence, all sectors of Orthodoxy would do well to continue to make room for those Jews who disagree with us and to do everything we can to make them feel welcome.

But there are limits. One of them is that the leadership, both in the yeshivot and in the synagogues, has always supported a series of public red lines that define the community’s contours. It is really not about defining others, it is about defining ourselves.

The point is that for Open Orthodoxy to be Orthodox, it cannot be open to everything. And though it may hurt some people by saying so, it will ultimately hurt many more if it does not.

Supporting Israel: Clinton Versus Obama

Former President Clinton and Prime Minister Netanyahu

The following Op-Ed by Gil Troy appeared today in JTA. Even though President Obama has been supportive of Israel in many ways, I think Gil's got it just about right. It follows in its entirety.

WASHINGTON (JTA) — By now it should be obvious how absurd it is to call President Barack Obama Israel’s “best friend” ever, as Thomas Friedman of The New York Times has claimed.

A Blame Israel Firster, Obama won’t use his moral authority to try stopping the instigators of this latest spate of violence, the Palestinians. Unfortunately he never learned from his Democratic predecessor how to tell the good guys from the bad guys in the Middle East.

While Bill Clinton also endorsed a Palestinian state, and also felt frustrated with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he blamed the Palestinians for terrorism and Yasser Arafat for derailing the peace talks in 2000. Clinton finger-pointed when necessary, not always retreating into “cycle of violence” moral equivalences.

He distinguished between Israeli willingness and Palestinian foot-dragging. He never confused Israeli innocents with Palestinian terrorists. This Democratic president clearly stated that “the PLO must do everything it can to end terrorism against Israel.” With his down-to-earth “Bubba” style, he denounced terrorists as “the forces of doom and gloom,” while advising the Palestinians that “struggle and pain and destruction and self-destruction are way overrated, and not the only option.”

Bill Clinton was an empath. He conveyed his love for Israel with words, gestures and flourishes. Heartbroken when an Israeli fanatic assassinated his friend Yitzhak Rabin, Clinton captured the world’s anguish with his famous “Shalom, chaver” sendoff. On Saturday, Clinton will speak at a rally in Tel Aviv to mark the 20th anniversary of Rabin’s murder.

Clinton charmed Israelis, reassuring many who felt he pressured Israel to relinquish too much territory to the Palestinians. Even when Netanyahu’s obstructionism exasperated him, Clinton palled around with Bibi. Obama has scowled.

Visiting Israel in March 1996 following two suicide bus bombings, Clinton defied the Secret Service by visiting Bet Chinuch, a Jerusalem high school mourning three students. The president called two recovering victims on the phone. Later that day, and visibly moved, he told young Israelis: “We know your pain is unimaginable and to some extent unshareable, but America grieves with you.” He called terrorists “destroyers” gripped by “that ancient fear that life can only be lived … if you’re hating someone else.” He backed up his words with $100 million in anti-terror funding.

Clinton differentiated between Israeli openness, even if wary, and Palestinian resistance, even if camouflaged. My new book, “The Age of Clinton: America in the 1990s,” retells how when Arafat made his unprecedented 24th White House visit in January 2001, shortly before Clinton left office, the president was fuming. At Camp David the previous summer, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak had offered to withdraw from most of the 1967 territories and compensate the Palestinians with land swaps. Arafat never even counteroffered.

The oleaginous terrorist tried flattering the president, calling him a great man.

“I am not a great man,” Clinton replied, “I am a failure. And you have made me one.”

Clinton later explained: “Arafat never said no; he just couldn’t bring himself to say yes.” Mourning Arafat’s “error of historic proportions,” Clinton would speculate, “Perhaps he simply couldn’t make the final jump from revolutionary to statesman.”

Also in January 2001, Clinton, in his characteristically colloquial way, warned the Palestinians: “There will always be those who are sitting outside in the peanut gallery of the Middle East urging you to hold out for more, or to plant one more bomb.” He begged them to resist those luring them to “the path of no.”

Today, Palestinians have again erupted in violence, but Obama lacks Clinton’s moral clarity.

“We continue to stress to leaders on both sides the importance of condemning violence and combating incitement,” Obama’s press secretary, Josh Earnest, has said. This mealymouthed amoralism reinforces Obama’s technocratic urging of both parties to try to “tamp down rhetoric that may feed violence or anger or misunderstanding.”

The Clinton-Obama contrast reflects two conflicting worldviews. Clinton entered office as such a national security novice that Ronald Reagan had to teach him how to salute. But Clinton’s passivity amid massacres in Bosnia and genocide in Rwanda transformed him. He realized that when America doesn’t lead, evil flourishes. He became a neoliberal interventionist, deploying the military to advance Western values in Kosovo and expressing zero tolerance for terrorism.

A postmodern power skeptic, Obama harbors more doubt about Western values and America’s ability to lead the world constructively. Emphasizing America’s limits, morally and strategically, Obama wants to woo the developing world.

Regarding the Middle East, Obama should learn from Clinton that Palestinian desires to exterminate Israel — expressed through incitement and terrorism — remain the biggest obstacle to peace. If Obama, like Clinton, held Palestinians responsible for turning toward terrorism, he would be treating them as mature decision makers, not infantilized victims.

Even with Obama’s military generosity to Israel, a true friend, let alone a “best friend,” would not always blame Israel first, or obscure Palestinian responsibility by blaming both sides, especially when Palestinians attack Israel. Muddled morality emboldens Palestinian terrorists, who interpret such dithering as greenlighting their bloodlust.

Obama should duplicate Clinton’s moral clarity. Obama must finally, belatedly, blame the Palestinians directly, pressuring Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and company to stop the violence. Obama should disagree with Secretary of State John Kerry, who blamed the settlements — not lies about the Temple Mount — for this latest eruption.

Clinton understood something Obama cannot comprehend: The world’s one-sided condemnations of Israel compound the trauma of Palestinian terror, reminding Israelis of the long history of anti-Semitic oppression — which Clinton frequently acknowledged. As a lonely, too-often-abandoned democracy, Israel responds to support, warmth, protectiveness. Even though many Israelis disagreed with Clinton’s policies, they trusted him, loved him and thus were willing to compromise.

(Gil Troy is a professor of history at McGill University and a visiting scholar at the Brookings Institution. His newest book, “The Age of Clinton: America in the 1990s,” was just published by St. Martin’s Press.)

So True

Orthodox Jewish women, “leadership” and Myers-Briggs

by Julie Rosenzweig

The following is a brilliant article from a website called Medium.com about the role of Jewish women in the 21^st century. It was written by Julie Rosezweig who describes herself as “Jerusalemite, translator/mom”. It is a lengthy article but well worth the read. It follows in its entirety.

For a decade or so now, introversion — somewhat out of character — has been making a public case for itself. An acclaimed 2003 essay in The Atlantic sparked a legitimization process that has culminated in Susan Cain’s Quiet Revolution. Those of us who hated class participation in school are feeling vindicated as major media outlets discuss the ways in which introverted students are unfairly penalized by it; an aversion to small talk is becoming a mark of distinction rather than of inadequacy; and the idea that one can be a leader without having an alpha personality is gaining currency.

Judaism has always valued quietness and non-pushy leadership. Sound bites to that effect can be found in Ethics of the Fathers:

“All my days have I grown up among the wise and I have not found anything better for a man than silence;”

“ One who runs away from honor will find honor chasing after him. One whochases after honor will find honor running away from him.”

 and in Psalms 45:14

“All the glory of a princess is within” (“Kol kevuda bat melech pnima”).

It’s easy enough to relate to the first two of the above quotes. However uncritically we accept prevailing assumptions about innate “leadership ability,” we tend to be pleased — after the fact — when some strong but silent type carries the day. The idea of quiet integrity — of leading by example rather than by virtue of personal charisma or will to power — isn’t really all that hard a sell. Hence the broad public resonance of Susan Cain’s initiative.

The third quote — the one about the princess, a stand-in for women as a group — may, by contrast, seem opaque or problematic to non-Jews or to non-Orthodox Jews, and may even have become something of a trigger to those who identify with “liberal” or “open” Orthodoxy — i.e., to Orthodox feminists.

It is a quote that gives expression to aspects of women’s nature that Orthodoxy takes for granted and proposes to accommodate (obviously, a fraught issue for those who object to the idea of “women’s nature”).

It is also a quote that is used to insist on women’s adherence to a stricter dress code than that which Orthodox Judaism mandates for men — a code that is sometimes spelled out in centimeters and illustrated via humiliating diagrams; it is a quote that is used to quell (or attempt to quell) some women’s sense of being left out at synagogue.

I have issues with Orthodox feminism in its current form; yet even I feel a little rankled when I hear kol kevuda bat melech pnima. There is a religious Israeli women’s magazine called Pnima (“Within”) which I wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole. I don’t like being told my place; no one does.

But I think Orthodox feminism has focused way too much on the extremes to which some segments of Orthodoxy take the reclusive-princess concept. I do think that it has much to learn from the first two quotes.In short, it could use a good dose of Quiet Rev.

As a movement, Orthodox feminism has advanced a number of admirable objectives, such as helping agunot (women “chained” to husbands who refuse to grant them a Jewish divorce), making synagogue more welcoming to women, and opening up to women the world of Talmud study, which had long been restricted to males.

Unfortunately, over time the movement has adopted an increasingly extroverted orientation. This is a problem, not in a “strident feminists get on my nerves” sense, but because a preoccupation with the visible public roles that Orthodox women might conceivably occupy is discrediting the movement, dumbing it down, making it uncomfortable for Jewish women who don’t fit a specific personality profile, and deflecting attention from actual women’s Torah scholarship (as opposed to the credential that qualifies one for a “leadership role”).

I will discuss below how Orthodox feminism’s attempt to extrovertize women’s role in the synagogue can make Orthodox women uncomfortable; I will then look at how women’s Torah/Talmud scholarship is being undermined by an unhealthy fixation on publicly-visible roles for those who pursue such scholarship.

The song-and-dance imperative

An enthusiastically-received essay that was featured by the Times of Israelabout a year ago paints — unwittingly — a troubling picture of what shul life under a highly extroverted Orthofem regime might look like.

The author describes a situation in which a Torah scroll has been passed to the women’s side of a liberal Orthodox synagogue so that the women can dance with it on Simchat Torah (an exclusively male custom until the advent of Orthodox feminism) — but most of the women present turn the offer down.

The essay’s author, acting as a kind of gabbait for the women of her shul, found this objectionable and undertook to persuade, cajole and bargain with the recalcitrant women. This despite acknowledging objective reasons why women might decline the privilege of holding the Torah scroll, such as its heaviness and the fear of dropping it — a fear that would be quite natural for those who have little or no experience handling the sacred object.

She was dissatisfied with — and rejected — a proposed solution in which women would simply dance around a table on which the Torah scroll had been placed. It was that important to her to see no individual woman refuse the role — a very public, attention-attracting role — of holding the Torah scroll in her arms and dancing with it in the synagogue setting.

Of course, there are reasons other than the weight of the Torah scroll why Orthodox women might prefer not to adopt or mimic this particular male custom. Some are reasons of personal temperament (an introverted woman might be perfectly happy standing on the sidelines, observing the action), while others have to do with Orthodox Judaism’s gender distinctions.

Orthodox Jewish men are expected to pray three times a day with a quorum, and to set times for Torah study within their work/life schedule. Women (though they are also expected to pray daily and though many also engage in serious Torah study) are exempt from these specifically time-bound commandments. They have other duties which are no less important.

But these duties (centered around the home and the care of young children) are not bound up with the Torah as a physical object, or with the synagogue/beit midrash as a physical place. In short: they are not publicduties. I would venture to guess that that is why many — perhaps most — Orthodox women feel uncomfortable taking on the shul-based song-and-dance aspects of Simchat Torah. It is not because they feel inferior, or that their duties and activities as Jewish women are less important or less worthy of celebration. It has to do with a sense of impropriety: those who are commanded in and who fulfill “public” mitzvot — who make the effort to attend synagogue services three times a day, every day, and who keep to a Torah study schedule, rain or shine, throughout the year — are entitled to celebrate publicly and physically with the object of their devotion.

It is often argued that today, when women are active in all secular spheres and able to distinguish themselves in prestigious occupations, it makes no sense to exclude them from active synagogue roles. Orthodox feminists maintain that such women are offended by this form of exclusion and that it alienates them from synagogue life.

However, this argument can easily be turned on its head. Women who are challenged and fulfilled professionally (in addition to their traditional home-based roles, which they are seldom willing to entirely relinquish) are unlikely to be seeking their intellectual/spiritual salvation in shul frameworks contrived for the sole purpose of enabling them to mimic men.

Orthodox feminists have made women’s ritual inclusion into a fetish. The childish, tit-for-tat idea that women must do whatever men do, and that theymust especially do the public things that men do, is insulting to Orthodox women who are happy with what they already do, and particularly objectionable to those women who neither seek nor find satisfaction in highly public roles.

I am not trying, here, to summarily condemn Simchat Torah dancing on the women’s side of the mechitza, with or without a Torah scroll. Those women who get a spiritual high from cradling the Torah scroll in their arms are fully entitled to the experience. Just don’t impose it on me, or judge me unfavorably for not participating.

I’m sure the author of the essay meant no harm. But there is a mindset that wounds without intending to do so — it wounds individuals by making incorrect assumptions about their desire for public attention, and it hurts society — including Orthodox Jewish society — by privileging the outward, the extroverted, over the inward and introverted.

Contrived “spiritual leadership”

Back in the 1990s, when the idea of women’s Talmud study was gaining traction, a Jerusalem-based institute called Nishmat developed a program to train and certify yoatzot halacha — female halachic “advisers” — in the sphere of taharat hamishpacha (Jewish family purity).

The candidates recruited for this program were the crème de la crème of erudite Orthodox Jewish womanhood at that time. These were women who already possessed impressive Torah-study backgrounds in areas where females had long been able to distinguish themselves. What the Nishmat program offered was an orderly framework in which women could study Talmud — a sphere of learning that had traditionally been restricted to men — and emerge with a credential.

In a 2013 Jewish Week article, the program’s co-founder, Rabbanit Chana Henkin, sets forth the program’s original rationale: that of creating “a new religious leadership role for Orthodox women,” one that would “meet a need.” Henkin portrays the pre-yoetzet world as one in which women lacked “a properly trained, rabbinically-sanctioned female address” for family-purity issues, and in which “women felt uncomfortable discussing intimate details of their lives with rabbis,” resulting in “improper observance and, often, personal suffering.”

Accordingly, the women admitted to the Yoatzot Halacha program are expected, on graduation, to serve the Jewish community in very specific ways — as counselors fielding taharat hamishpacha questions via a hotline that Nishmat set up for the purpose; as knowledgeable go-betweens for women in need of rabbinical consultation; and as lecturers and advisers to women in their local communities.

To this day the Yoatzot Halacha program is Nishmat’s flagship endeavor, and the yoetzet halacha title is an esteemed one in modern Orthodox circles. I share that esteem, and in no way wish to belittle or disparage the program itself, or anyone involved with it.

What I would like to call attention to, however, is the discourse of “religious women’s leadership” of which the program is a part — a discourse that requires scrutiny.

One can hardly fault a framework for training women to meet actual needs on the ground. Nor is it unreasonable to expect, as the Yoatzot Halacha program does, that applicants will possess the skills necessary for the task in question— including interpersonal skills.

One can, however, wonder what would happen to an applicant who simply wished to study the subject matter but had no desire to serve the public via the channels marked out by the program. Would she be rejected? Does a desire to engage with Talmudic texts at a high level necessarily go hand in hand with an inclination for serving as an accessible, and even highly visible, public resource? Should it?

And is a commitment to visible public service such as prospective yoatzot are expected to demonstrate, demanded of men when they undertake advanced yeshiva studies?

The keyword that pops up continually as one peruses the websites of the various women’s advanced Torah study programs is leadership. Again and again we are told that the women who participate in these programs are chosen not just for their scholarly potential, but also for their “leadership ability.” Nishmat’s Yoatzot Halacha program requires it; Midreshet Lindenbaum’s Halachic Leadership program requires it; even Matan, which offers classes to less-Jewishly-educated women in addition to its elite Beit Midrash programs, and which tends to emphasize “enrichment” over “utility,” aspires to be a “breeding ground” for women “leaders.”

The preoccupation with “women’s leadership” reaches its apotheosis, of course, in the Maharat program at Yeshivat Maharat, whose avowed missionis to provide a “credentialed pathway” so that the Orthodox Jewish community can “attract the best and brightest [women] into the ranks of its leadership.” (Maharat is a Hebrew acronym for “female halachic spiritual Torah leader.”) The institution’s founders “sought to provide a path so that women could achieve positions of leadership within the Orthodox community that were on par with the rabbi.”

Now, introverts aren’t necessarily turned off by the word “leadership.” What might well deter them from a study program, though, is an admission requirement that they “aspire to serve as spiritual leaders.” For sure they would be repelled by an institution whose website proclaims such a requirement at the top of every page. (see logo above)

Would it be so terrible for a woman to simply be a dedicated learner, with no aspiration to be a dynamic spiritual leader? Couldn’t a dedicated learner grow, over time, into a different kind of leader — a strong but silent one? Couldn’t she even surprise everyone — including herself — by suddenly turning into a dynamic leader at some date far into the post-graduation future, under the right circumstances? Why jump the gun?

I’m sure that some men’s Torah study programs talk about leadership, building a “young leadership cadre,” etc., in their marketing material. But where men‘s learning is concerned, I believe that this really is just marketing, and not the essence.

In the male Torah world, no one thinks that a four-year quasi-academic program, however rigorous, qualifies one to be a “spiritual leader,” dynamic or otherwise. At most, it would qualify one to be a teacher, and provide one with a basis for further intellectual/spiritual growth. In fact, the very term “spiritual leader,” when applied to young women (or men) who have trained for the specific purpose of functioning in that capacity, is embarrassing.

Nor does the male Torah-scholarship trajectory involve demonstrating leadership potential in a simplistic, college-application-essay kind of way. No particular personality type is preferred. Though if anything, the intensive, single-minded effort needed to achieve profound Talmudic expertise would seem to favor those who shun the limelight — those with sitzfleisch.

Where does the “visible public role” approach — i.e., the extrovert approach — to advancing women’s Torah scholarship lead?

It leads to a devaluing of women’s Torah scholarship — as may be seen in the way that the yoetzet halacha role is being appropriated or co-opted by other frameworks that feature a “visible public resource” component similar to that of the yoetzet, but without the element of Talmud study.

One such framework is the NILI hotline, in which “trained kallah teachers” offer a family-purity “resource” to Orthodox women in the Chicago area that mimics the service offered by yoatzot halacha.

Kallah teachers — women who instruct soon-to-be brides on the basics of Jewish family purity — may be highly educated, Jewishly or otherwise, in their own right; but their training for the specific task of premarital instruction entails no rigorous textual component or quasi-academic credentialing process. 

In fact there is no standard curriculum for the training of kallah teachers. In past generations, women presumably learned family- purity praxis from their mothers, who may not even have been literate. Kallah teachers add value in terms of providing background on the laws and rituals of family purity; but their authority, such as it is, is not based on scholarly rigor. The role of “facilitating” family-purity questions for married women appears to be a new departure for kallah teachers, who are thus being set up as rivals to yoatzot halacha.

In Israel, the Puah Institute has created a course for would-be community-based “advisers” (they use the term yoatzot) on Jewish-family issues — a course that, in 28 weekly sessions, with no prerequisites, proposes to train women for a role that could easily be confused with that of the Nishmat-certified yoetzet halacha, who studies full-time for two years in order to obtain her credential, and has to demonstrate significant background in Jewish sources in order to be admitted to the program.

And in fact these disparate roles are becoming confounded in the public mind. A recent executive director of the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance,one whom the media look to as an authority on issues relating to Orthodox feminism, has publicly and indiscriminately lumped yoatzot halacha and kallah teachers together in a vicious diatribe against the Orthodox family-purity laws and practices. And a popular blogger on Orthodox Jewish women’s issues, Susan Shapiro, essentially equates the NILI service with that offered by yoatzot halacha, barely acknowledging any difference between the training undergone by the kallah teachers who staff NILI and that undergone by yoatzot.

Could a similar fate be in store for the female “clergy” who are being produced by Yeshivat Maharat? The Maharat program’s focus on training its students for pastoral counseling and community leadership could conceivably backfire. Graduates who go on to occupy such demanding synagogue positions asDirector of Programming, Education, and Community Engagement while also juggling family obligations may not be well-positioned to build credibility as halachic authorities.

Institutions do exist that take a less obviously utilitarian approach to women’s Torah scholarship. In Jerusalem, Beit Morasha has a program that “teaches halakha to women on an exact par in terms of quality and quantity to that which men are expected to achieve in order to pass the rabbinical ordination exams in Israel,” but without aspiring to create spiritual leaders by fiat (although it does incorporate the omnipresent word “leadership” into its name). According to the program’s director, Rabbanit Michal Tikochinsky, the program wasn’t meant to attract “women who were supposed to grow into leadership roles,” but rather women “who were already filling these kinds of positions.” By “these kinds of positions,” Rabbanit Tikochinsky means “women who serve in important teaching positions,” to whom female students should be able to turn when asking “halachic questions.”

Speaking more generally, Tikochinsky notes that “ “the instruction of Halacha by wise women is already an established fact,” and that women “instruct on simple questions and complicated questions, according to their training and strength.”

Here I am moved to ask: is a woman who instructs on simple questions as much a “leader” as one who instructs on complicated questions? Is a woman who issues halachic rulings a leader, but a yoetzet halacha, who merely “advises” other women and consults with ordained rabbis on issues requiring adjudication, not a leader but merely a “service provider?”

Where do you draw the line? Do we even know what we are talking about when we use the word “leader” and the term “leadership ability?”

I propose that we declare a moratorium on the use of the word leadership and its derivatives in connection with Orthodox women and their religious scholarship and employment opportunities. It is not a useful term. It disfavors certain personality profiles, and it contributes to a discourse of outwardness and show that may well be inimical to Jewish values.

What we can and should do is talk about women’s opportunities for distinction — in pure scholarship, in public service, and in spheres that straddle the two.

Imagine...