Rabbi champions role of women in Orthodox Judaism

As a child growing up in Brooklyn, N.Y., Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, now the chief rabbi of the Israeli city of Efrat, assumed that every religious Jewish woman knew how to read Gemara. His greatest example was his maternal grandmother, the daughter of a dayan (judge in a Jewish court of law), with whom he studied the Talmud and who he fondly calls “my first rebbe.” 

“She wanted to learn Chumash, Rashi, Ramban,” he told an attentive audience June 2 at B’nai David-Judea Congregation in Pico-Robertson. “For me, feminine Jewish leadership was natural.”

Riskin, 75, who founded Manhattan’s Lincoln Square Synagogue before moving to Efrat in 1981, was the speaker at a question-and-answer-style talk titled “Orthodox Female Spiritual Leadership: An Idea Whose Time Has Come.” The event was sponsored by B’nai David-Judea — which last month announced the hiring of the first female member of the clergy at any Orthodox synagogue in Los Angeles — and the Shalhevet Institute, Shalhevet High School’s community education program. With more than 100 people in attendance, Riskin spoke about the value of female spiritual leaders and how to handle criticism of the advancement of the role of women in Orthodox Judaism.

Dealing with controversy on this is particularly relevant now for Riskin. The Chief Rabbinate of Israel recently summoned him for a hearing instead of automatically extending his tenure. Although the rabbinate has said that this is standard for municipal rabbis who have reached the age of 75, others have deemed the decision to have been politically influenced by opposition to Riskin’s stance on the role of women in Judaism and the conversion process, among other issues.

His talk cited the many models of female leadership in the Torah, including the judge Deborah, and Abraham’s wife Sarah, who was a prophet, as well as a midrash in which the daughters of Tzelafchad convince Moses of their right to inherit their father’s estate in order to support their mother.

“There’s generally very good acceptance, at least theoretically,” Riskin said, referencing the Sefer ha-Chinuch and the writings of the Chidah, both of which allow women to give halachic rulings. “The material is quite expansive and certainly gives a green light to learn [halachah] on the highest of level.”

But only in recent years have women started to be ordained in the Orthodox movement. One of the earliest was Sara Hurwitz, who graduated from Yeshivat Maharat in 2009. A longtime advocate of female talmudic study, Riskin pioneered the first advanced Talmud study program for women at Lincoln Square Synagogue, nicknamed “Kollelet,” and established a five-year ordination program at Midreshet Lindenbaum seminary in Jerusalem to train women as legal authorities in rabbinical courts.

Riskin explained that he refrains from using the terms rabbi or rabbah to describe ordained women, because he feels the titles imply duties that a woman is halachically not permitted to practice.

“The rabbis at most synagogues are expected to read Torah and serve as a cantor,” he said. “This I do not believe women can do halachically.”

Instead, he prefers the phrase “manhiga ruchanit,” or spiritual leader, the title of the woman he appointed for the community of Efrat this year. When she starts her position in August at B’nai David-Judea, Alissa Thomas-Newborn, 26, will use the title “morateinu,” meaning “our teacher.”

“The most important piece for me is doing the work,” Thomas-Newborn told the Journal. “Title is valuable in enabling Orthodox women who have the necessary training to officially serve the community as well as in honoring the education and skills we have to offer.”

In response to a question on how to respond to public criticism, Riskin discussed the need to balance continuity and change. He recalled overhearing a conversation with former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir at a dinner in Israel where she politely refused the gift of a new style of a Passover hagaddah, saying that it is important that her granddaughter recite the same words that her grandmother had said.

“People want to feel a very deep connection of the generations,” he said. “At the same time, the world changes. Oral law expresses the need for those changes.”

After the event, Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky of B’nai David-Judea said that female spiritual leadership had been a “logical next step” for B’nai David, which has had a female president and for years has had women giving divrei torah, hosted women as scholars-in-residence, and periodically holds Shirat Chana, a females-only minyan.

“We’ve been moving in this direction for a long time and, in that sense, female leadership has become part of our culture,” he said. “You have to create opportunities for people and get the best leadership that you can.”

Rabbi Ari Schwarzberg, director of the Shalhevet Institute, seconded Kanefsky’s opinion.

“In some areas of the community, at this point, I don’t think it’s such a change,” he said. “You see women that are scholars all over the Orthodox world, and over the past several years, whether you want to call it kehillah intern, manhiga ruchanit, many shuls have female spiritual leadership.”

Riskin recalled approaching three leading Orthodox rabbis for advice regarding his decision to let women perform hakafot at Lincoln Square Synagogue. Rabbi Moshe Feinstein warned him that if he didn’t continue the program, some of the synagogue’s women might leave Orthodoxy, and Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik insisted that the synagogue remain Orthodox even with women performing hakafot. Finally, the Lubavitcher Rebbe told him that “not only may you do it, you must do it,” explaining how women have much more natural compassion than men and that “at the time of the Messiah, the woman’s voice will be dominant.”

“I urge you to understand the controversy and even to respect the controversy,” Riskin told his local audience. “What’s frightening to most people is change, and especially changes in places people like to feel familiar in.”

Regarding the current controversy in which he finds himself embroiled, Riskin said the decision for him to remain chief rabbi lies with his congregation.

“I don’t feel at all burnt out,” he said. “I feel very well supported. A rabbi is a rabbi if his congregation wants him to be in office.”

He also believes that it is the congregations, and not the rabbinic bodies, that will ultimately determine the innovations, like female spiritual leadership, that take place. 

“You can’t expect change to be accepted by all congregations,” he said. “That’s one of the glories of talmudic pluralism. My sense is observant congregations are giving women more and more roles of leadership, but these are things time will tell.”