Exclusion That Creates Mediocrity

Originally published: May 12, 2026

This is an English translation (via GPT-5.4). Read the original Hebrew version.

Article Content

Exclusion That Creates Mediocrity

The ban the OU imposed on appointing women to rabbinic positions runs contrary to Jewish law, but honesty requires admitting: most learned women today are not yet fit for it. On the sorry state of women’s learning in the wake of the controversy over ‘women rabbis.’ In the last issue of ‘Shabbat’ there appeared Tzvika Klein’s article (‘Great Joy’) on the controversy over appointing women rabbis, or by their other name, spiritual-Torah leaders, in Orthodox communities in the United States. The controversy reached its peak with the publication of the legal opinion and directive of the OU (which unites communities from the Modern Orthodox stream) prohibiting all member communities from appointing women to rabbinic roles. The point of departure for this discussion is precisely the legal angle. I have not read the opinion, and so I can only guess what it says. On the legal plane I see no difference between Torah study for women and appointing women as rabbis. If one clings to the language of Talmudic sources and medieval literature, one can forbid many other things that we do not in fact observe (and rightly so). Modern Orthodoxy is supposed to take changed circumstances into account when interpreting legal sources. True, Orthodox Jews do not make hasty changes without good interpretive and legal arguments, but here the arguments are excellent, and I am genuinely astonished by this folly. I will mention here what I have written in the past about first-order as opposed to second-order legal decision-making, that is, decision-making that learns the law from the formulations of medieval and later authorities (written in a completely different context and under completely different circumstances), rather than from the primary sources. The only ones who can establish a prohibition are the Holy One, blessed be He, in the Torah, or the Sanhedrin (and the Talmud, which has the authority of the Sanhedrin) when it interprets the Torah or enacts an ordinance or decree. Nothing more. Even if Rashba or Maimonides say there is a prohibition on appointing a woman to this or that role, that does not mean there is in fact a prohibition. At most they can point us to a source, biblical or rabbinic, from which the prohibition is derived. We must then examine the source: on what type of prohibition it rests—negative commandment, positive commandment, ordinance, or decree—what interpretation it gives the text, and whether that interpretation is not dependent on time and place. With all due respect, neither Rashba nor Maimonides, like no other legal work, has the independent binding authority to create prohibitions in the way the Talmud or the Sanhedrin did. Therefore, to examine the issue we must return to the primary sources and see what they say (for a broad survey, see Rabbi Israel Rozen, ‘Women in Public Positions,’ Tehumin 19, p. 17). A Non-Formal Prohibition. The source for the prohibition on appointing a woman to a position of authority does not appear in the Talmud at all, but in Sifrei. The exposition is cited by Maimonides (Laws of Kings 1:5): ‘a king’ and not ‘a queen,’ and he extends it there to other positions of authority as well (see Igrot Moshe, Yoreh De’ah II, no. 44, which wonders about the source of that extension). This is similar to the prohibition on appointing a convert to any public office (see Maimonides, ibid., 1:4), down to the level of a water distributor. There is not even a hint that these positions are supposed to be specifically religious roles. On the contrary, the term usually refers to governmental office. I have not seen the modern rabbis in the United States objecting to women serving as members of Knesset, ministers, senior officials, and the like. In their opinion they refer to religious roles. What does that have to do with Jewish law? The exposition itself is problematic, since masculine language in the Bible is generic. Is ‘If a man makes a vow’ (Num. 30:3) addressed only to a man and not a woman? The Sages themselves derived that, aside from exceptional cases, each of which requires its own source, the entire law addresses women and men alike; for example, ‘Scripture equated woman to man for all punishments in the Torah’ (Kiddushin 35a). It is clear that Jewish law is not egalitarian, and the status of women is lower than that of men, but a legal distinction between men and women requires a source, and here it is hard to be persuaded that such a source has really been found. Incidentally, the disqualification of women from testimony also rests on a similarly problematic inference (Shevuot 30a): ‘men’ and not women. It therefore seems likely to me that in both of these expositions, the appeal to the verses was after the fact. The Sages decided to disqualify women for substantive reasons of their own (see below), and only afterward attached it to a verse. Beyond the problem with the expositions themselves, there is a fundamental difficulty in the very prohibition on appointing a woman or a convert to positions of authority. Jewish law is full of legal disqualifications from testimony and judgeship. Converts, women, gentiles, wicked persons, the deaf-mute, the mentally incompetent, and minors, relatives, litigants, and others are all disqualified from serving as judges or witnesses. There are firm sources for this in the Talmud and in all the legal decisors, and every yeshiva student has spent no small amount of time on these discussions. The most basic analytic question regarding any disqualification from testimony or judgeship is whether it is an intrinsic disqualification or a suspicion of falsehood. That is, is there a formal legal obstacle that prevents a relative, for example, from testifying on behalf of his relative, or do we reject his testimony because we suspect he will lie? In the case of relatives, for example, the Talmud states explicitly, and so all the decisors rule, that the obstacle is formal and not because of any concern that they will lie. By contrast, I do not know of even a hint of formal legal restrictions on appointments to public office. At most one can find substantive disqualifications there, such as someone suspected of corruption or falsehood, wicked persons, and the like. It seems to me that Jewish law has no rules limiting an unworthy person from serving as a water distributor, a senior official, or someone who gives Torah talks in a community—is that even a position of authority? So why does Jewish law disqualify women and converts from such roles? Female Authors Count for Nothing. Several years ago I wrote an article on appointing converts to public office, positions of authority. There I brought clear proof that this disqualification is social rather than formally legal. I explained that Jewish law instructs us not to appoint converts to positions of authority because the public will not accept their authority, owing to their low social status, which would undermine their functioning on the practical plane. I concluded there that in a proper society, which treats a convert as it should, there is no impediment to appointing him to any position of authority in the world, perhaps except king, and even that is open to discussion. I would like to argue here that the same is true of women. Since we found no legal disqualifications for appointments to public positions of authority, it is reasonable that the disqualification of a woman, like that of a convert, is social rather than formally legal. This also explains the problematic expositions brought to ground these laws. The Sages disqualified converts and women for substantive reasons and attached it to the language of the verses as a kind of after-the-fact textual support. If I am right, then once women attain a different social status, exactly like converts, there is no legal obstacle whatever to appointing them to any public role. It is worth adding here that I sent the above article for publication in Tehumin, and the editors returned it to me on the claim that, from a public standpoint, it was improper to publicize the existence of such a legal prohibition. This would create a desecration of God’s name, because the general public would think, quite rightly, that Jewish law discriminates against converts. I remind you that this was an article explaining that there is no prohibition, and it might in fact neutralize the claims of desecration of God’s name, but the editors preferred to hide this unpleasant issue rather than discuss it openly and honestly. My approach is that such issues should be discussed openly and publicly, not only because of the duty to tell the truth and the duty not to harm converts when there is no legal need to do so, but also for tactical reasons. Sooner or later they are bound to reach the public table, and it is better that when they get there, the answer be ready at hand. If one does not publish such an article, that is precisely when a desecration of God’s name will be created, when the question arises and enters public discussion; and it is inevitable that this will happen. It need hardly be said that Tehumin too is a journal identified with Modern Orthodoxy, which does not prevent it from disqualifying legal and Talmudic articles by women (as Dr. Tova Ganzel has already publicized, and there are others). In an inquiry I conducted not long ago, I discovered to my astonishment that this is the case in almost all Torah journals, including those identified with the modern camp. Thus, for example, the journal Asif, which defines itself as a journal of the hesder yeshivot, not necessarily the most conservative public, was not willing to accept an article signed by a woman even if a man appeared alongside her (something Tehumin apparently would have been willing to do, although its policy seems to change over time). In that journal they made me a degrading offer: remove the author’s name (my student) and acknowledge her help in a footnote. I of course waived the honor and withdrew another article of my own that I had sent them at their request. The explanations I usually received were that the editors want to enable authors from all shades of the religious world to participate (and therefore they always descend to the most extreme and conservative common denominator. It always works in one direction; the conservatives, of course, have no interest in the participation of the modernists). Women apparently are not considered authors whose participation has value. Well, neither are cats. The Burden of Proof Is on Women. I must add here the other side of the coin, although it is difficult for me to say these things as someone who has been active for several years in the field of Torah study for women. As anyone even somewhat familiar with the field knows, the achievements of women’s learning, of which we are constantly told with pride and enthusiasm, are quite miserable. Aside from a mere handful, the best of the women students are roughly at the level of a good full-time yeshiva scholar, and even at that level there are only very few. In the journal established in the women’s midrasha at Bar-Ilan, we can hardly find a woman who can write a Talmudic article at a reasonable level. The truth must be admitted: the women who demand recognition and equality are, in the great majority of cases, not yet truly entitled to them. The burden of proof is on them, and they have not yet met it. There are several objective reasons for this, and I do not rule out (though I do not adopt) the essentialist interpretation—that women are less suited to this kind of study. Among other things, there is no horizon. Women have no vocational horizon in the Torah world, and the boycott of the OU and its friends certainly contributes nicely to that. Beyond that, they have no academic horizon. The inability to publish articles and writings in Jewish law and Talmudic analysis affects both the possibility and the motivation to advance in these fields. We send women who want to advance in the Torah sphere into the arms of academia, and then we are surprised and complain that there are no learned women and that their orientation and mode of study are academic. Beyond that, our society does not allow women intensive, long-term study. There is a lack of learning frameworks that would allow them to develop. The division of roles in the home also contributes, of course. But the low level of demand on the part of the women also contributes, and so the blame lies on all sides: on society as a whole as well as on the women. But even if one looks honestly at the situation and does not prettify it for the sake of political correctness, none of this of course justifies discrimination, nor mindless conservatism. Every female and male candidate must be examined on the merits, and whoever is worthy should be appointed. Likewise, if an article is worthy, it should be published. And if there are no women worthy of office or of publication, then so be it. But not because they are women, rather because they were not found worthy. Although I do not know American Jewry well enough, in my assessment—and this was also reported in the article by those who know it better than I do—this struggle is a quixotic war against windmills and has no chance of succeeding. At most it will create more and more parties and splinter factions defined by sociological baseline markers. Henceforth there will be not only Reform, Conservative, Modern Orthodox, Orthodox, and Haredi (of various kinds), but also several additional intermediate shades. Substantive Criteria Are Needed. I am not at all one of the devotees of unity, and I have no problem with division and stratification. But what will be gained from it? More and more communities will continue to appoint women—most of whom, in my unverified estimate, are not worthy—and the OU will become more and more insignificant. It will gather within it a few communities that observe its absurd guidelines, and lose all the rest. And of course the more liberal communities too will retain their women rabbis in a very egalitarian way, but what will be required of them will be reasonable preaching and minimal expertise in the everyday laws needed for running the synagogue. Lessons at a good analytic level you will not get from them. For moral and social preaching of that sort, one could also hire a priest from the neighboring congregation (many of them preach quite well). We have long accepted that a rabbi in Israel must be a scholar. He is supposed to be capable of producing original Torah scholarship, first and foremost in Jewish law, at a good level. He is supposed to be capable of dealing with complex questions from their sources and of giving an in-depth lesson in Jewish law and Talmud, not merely of quoting precedents he finds in databases. There are, of course, male rabbis who are not like this either, but among the women almost all are incapable of it. I view with great concern a similar phenomenon here in the Holy Land as well. The justified struggle of learned women for equality and recognition is leading to a situation in which women receive the title of rabbinate in various liberal communities and organizations without truly being worthy of it (true, there are men like this too). Women rabbis are sprouting like mushrooms after the rain, but all that is required of them is the ability to read texts in Rashi script—that is, that a page of Talmud not be entirely foreign to them—and perhaps also the ability to gather sources from various databases and from the internet and answer basic questions of Jewish law. It is precisely this unjustified stringency and exclusion that lead to the situation. The OU’s approach is in fact building its own justification. This policy creates the very situation from which it is trying to escape. If substantive criteria were adopted, and rabbis were chosen not according to sex but according to proper criteria, we would all benefit from it: liberals and conservatives, men and women alike. If the OU were to determine that the communities under its aegis may not appoint a male rabbi or a female rabbi without passing examinations that test their knowledge and scholarship, we would all gain. If they were willing to raise the bar and demand a little more than is required by the Chief Rabbinate examinations here (rudimentary knowledge and memorization), then I assume that almost no woman would pass the examinations, but that at least would be an egalitarian and proper policy. The practical result would resemble what they are now trying to achieve, but it would at least stand up to the proper legal and moral tests. And perhaps in the future it would even improve the situation, because a horizon would be created for women who truly are worthy and wish to advance, and the rabbis, including the male ones, would be of an adequate level. As long as this does not happen, we can do nothing but lament the sorry state of women’s learning, and the problematic substitutes that this infuriating conservative approach creates. Rabbi Dr. Michael Abraham is a Talmud lecturer and head of the beit midrash for female doctoral students at the Institute for Advanced Torah Studies, Bar-Ilan University. Published in the ‘Shabbat’ supplement of Makor Rishon, 28 Shevat 5777, 24.2.2017

In the last issue of ‘Shabbat’ there appeared Tzvika Klein’s article (‘Great Joy’) on the controversy over appointing women rabbis, or by their other name, spiritual-Torah leaders, in Orthodox communities in the United States. The controversy reached its peak with the publication of the legal opinion and directive of the OU (which unites communities from the Modern Orthodox stream) prohibiting all member communities from appointing women to rabbinic roles.

The point of departure for this discussion is precisely the legal angle. I have not read the opinion, and so I can only guess what it says. On the legal plane I see no difference between Torah study for women and appointing women as rabbis. If one clings to the language of Talmudic sources and medieval literature, one can forbid many other things that we do not in fact observe (and rightly so). Modern Orthodoxy is supposed to take changed circumstances into account when interpreting legal sources. True, Orthodox Jews do not make hasty changes without good interpretive and legal arguments, but here the arguments are excellent, and I am genuinely astonished by this folly.

I will mention here what I have written in the past about first-order as opposed to second-order legal decision-making, that is, decision-making that learns the law from the formulations of medieval and later authorities (written in a completely different context and under completely different circumstances), rather than from the primary sources. The only ones who can establish a prohibition are the Holy One, blessed be He, in the Torah, or the Sanhedrin (and the Talmud, which has the authority of the Sanhedrin) when it interprets the Torah or enacts an ordinance or decree. Nothing more. Even if Rashba or Maimonides say there is a prohibition on appointing a woman to this or that role, that does not mean there is in fact a prohibition. At most they can point us to a source (biblical or rabbinic) from which the prohibition is derived. We must then examine the source: on what type of prohibition it rests (negative commandment, positive commandment, ordinance, or decree), what interpretation it gives the text, and whether that interpretation is not dependent on time and place.

With all due respect, neither Rashba nor Maimonides, like no other legal work, has the independent binding authority to create prohibitions in the way the Talmud or the Sanhedrin did. Therefore, to examine the issue we must return to the primary sources and see what they say (for a broad survey, see Rabbi Israel Rozen, ‘Women in Public Positions,’ Tehumin 19, p. 17).

A Non-Formal Prohibition

The source for the prohibition on appointing a woman to a position of authority does not appear in the Talmud at all, but in Sifrei. The exposition is cited by Maimonides (Laws of Kings 1:5): ‘a king’ and not ‘a queen,’ and he extends it there to other positions of authority as well (see Igrot Moshe, Yoreh De’ah II, no. 44, which wonders about the source of that extension). This is similar to the prohibition on appointing a convert to any public office (see Maimonides, ibid., 1:4), down to the level of a water distributor. There is not even a hint that these positions of authority are supposed to be specifically religious roles. On the contrary, the term usually refers to governmental office. I have not seen the modern rabbis in the United States objecting to women serving as members of Knesset, ministers, senior officials, and the like. In their opinion they refer to religious roles. What does that have to do with Jewish law?

The exposition itself is problematic, since masculine language in the Bible is generic (is ‘If a man makes a vow’ [Num. 30:3] addressed only to a man and not a woman?), and the Sages themselves derived that, aside from exceptional cases (each of which requires its own source), the entire law addresses women and men alike (for example: ‘Scripture equated woman to man for all punishments in the Torah,’ Kiddushin 35a). It is clear that Jewish law is not egalitarian, and the status of women is lower than that of men, but a legal distinction between women and men requires a source, and here it is hard to be persuaded that such a source has really been found. Incidentally, the disqualification of women from testimony also rests on a similarly problematic inference (Shevuot 30a): ‘men’ and not women. It therefore seems likely to me that in both of these expositions, the appeal to the verses was after the fact. The Sages decided to disqualify women for substantive reasons of their own (see below), and only afterward attached it to a verse.

Beyond the problem with the expositions themselves, there is a fundamental difficulty in the very prohibition on appointing a woman or a convert to positions of authority. Jewish law is full of legal disqualifications from testimony and judgeship. Converts, women, gentiles, wicked persons, the deaf-mute, the mentally incompetent, and minors, relatives, litigants, and others are all disqualified from serving as judges or witnesses. There are firm sources for this in the Talmud and in all the legal decisors, and every yeshiva student has spent no small amount of time on these discussions. The most basic analytic question regarding any disqualification from testimony or judgeship is whether it is an intrinsic disqualification or a suspicion of falsehood. That is, is there a formal legal obstacle that prevents a relative, for example, from testifying on behalf of his relative, or do we reject his testimony because we suspect he will lie?

In the case of relatives, for example, the Talmud states explicitly (and so all the decisors rule) that the obstacle is formal (and not because of any concern that they will lie). By contrast, I do not know of even a hint of formal legal restrictions on appointments to public office. At most one can find substantive disqualifications there, such as someone suspected of corruption or falsehood, wicked persons, and the like. It seems to me that Jewish law has no rules limiting an unworthy person from serving as a water distributor, a senior official, or someone who gives Torah talks in a community (is that even a position of authority?). So why does Jewish law disqualify women and converts from such roles?

Female Authors Count for Nothing

Several years ago I wrote an article on appointing converts to public office (positions of authority). There I brought clear proof that this disqualification is social rather than formally legal. I explained that Jewish law instructs us not to appoint converts to positions of authority because the public will not accept their authority (owing to their low social status), which would undermine their functioning on the practical plane. I concluded there that in a proper society, which treats a convert as it should, there is no impediment to appointing him to any position of authority in the world (perhaps except king, and even that is open to discussion).

I would like to argue here that the same is true of women. Since we found no legal disqualifications for appointments to public positions of authority, it is reasonable that the disqualification of a woman (like that of a convert) is social rather than formally legal. This also explains the problematic expositions brought to ground these laws. The Sages disqualified converts and women for substantive reasons and attached it to the language of the verses as a kind of after-the-fact textual support. If I am right, then once women attain a different social status (exactly like converts), there is no legal obstacle whatever to appointing them to any public role.

It is worth adding here that I sent the above article for publication in Tehumin, and the editors returned it to me on the claim that, from a public standpoint, it was improper to publicize the existence of such a legal prohibition. This would create a desecration of God’s name, because the general public would think (quite rightly, of course) that Jewish law discriminates against converts. I remind you that this was an article explaining that there is no prohibition, and it might in fact neutralize the claims of desecration of God’s name, but the editors preferred to hide this unpleasant issue rather than discuss it openly and honestly.

My approach is that such issues should be discussed openly and publicly, not only because of the duty to tell the truth and the duty not to harm converts when there is no legal need to do so, but also for tactical reasons. Sooner or later they are bound to reach the public table, and it is better that when they get there, the answer be ready at hand. If one does not publish such an article, that is precisely when a desecration of God’s name will be created, when the question arises and enters public discussion; and it is inevitable that this will happen.

It need hardly be said that Tehumin too is a journal identified with Modern Orthodoxy, which does not prevent it from disqualifying legal and Talmudic articles by women (as Dr. Tova Ganzel has already publicized, and there are others). In an inquiry I conducted not long ago, I discovered to my astonishment that this is the case in almost all Torah journals, including those identified with the modern camp. Thus, for example, the journal Asif, which defines itself as a journal of the hesder yeshivot, not necessarily the most conservative public, was not willing to accept an article signed by a woman even if a man appeared alongside her (something Tehumin apparently would have been willing to do, although its policy seems to change over time).

In that journal they made me a degrading offer: remove the author’s name (my student) and acknowledge her help in a footnote. I of course waived the honor and withdrew another article of my own that I had sent them at their request. The explanations I usually received were that the editors want to enable authors from all shades of the religious world to participate (and therefore they always descend to the most extreme and conservative common denominator. It always works in one direction; the conservatives, of course, have no interest in the participation of the modernists). Women apparently are not considered authors whose participation has value. Well, neither are cats.

The Burden of Proof Is on Women

I must add here the other side of the coin, although it is difficult for me to say these things as someone who has been active for several years in the field of Torah study for women. As anyone even somewhat familiar with the field knows, the achievements of women’s learning, of which we are constantly told with pride and enthusiasm, are quite miserable. Aside from a mere handful, the best of the women students are roughly at the level of a good full-time yeshiva scholar (and even at that level there are only very few). In the journal established in the women’s midrasha at Bar-Ilan, we can hardly find a woman who can write a Talmudic article at a reasonable level. The truth must be admitted: the women who demand recognition and equality are, in the great majority of cases, not yet truly entitled to them. The burden of proof is on them, and they have not yet met it.

There are several objective reasons for this, and I do not rule out (though I do not adopt) the essentialist interpretation (that women are less suited to this kind of study). Among other things, there is no horizon. Women have no vocational horizon in the Torah world, and the boycott of the OU and its friends certainly contributes nicely to that. Beyond that, they have no academic horizon. The inability to publish articles and writings in Jewish law and Talmudic analysis affects both the possibility and the motivation to advance in these fields. We send women who want to advance in the Torah sphere into the arms of academia, and then we are surprised and complain that there are no learned women and that their orientation and mode of study are academic. Beyond that, our society does not allow women intensive, long-term study. There is a lack of learning frameworks that would allow them to develop. The division of roles in the home also contributes, of course. But the low level of demand on the part of the women also contributes, and so the blame lies on all sides: on society as a whole as well as on the women.

But even if one looks honestly at the situation and does not prettify it for the sake of political correctness, none of this of course justifies discrimination, nor mindless conservatism. Every female and male candidate must be examined on the merits, and whoever is worthy should be appointed. Likewise, if an article is worthy, it should be published. And if there are no women worthy of office or of publication, then so be it. But not because they are women, rather because they were not found worthy.

Although I do not know American Jewry well enough, in my assessment—and this was also reported in the article by those who know it better than I do—this struggle is a quixotic war against windmills and has no chance of succeeding. At most it will create more and more parties and splinter factions defined by sociological baseline markers. Henceforth there will be not only Reform, Conservative, Modern Orthodox, Orthodox, and Haredi (of various kinds), but also several additional intermediate shades.

Substantive Criteria Are Needed

I am not at all one of the devotees of unity, and I have no problem with division and stratification. But what will be gained from it? More and more communities will continue to appoint women—most of whom, in my unverified estimate, are not worthy—and the OU will become more and more insignificant. It will gather within it a few communities that observe its absurd guidelines, and lose all the rest. And of course the more liberal communities too will retain their women rabbis in a very egalitarian way, but what will be required of them will be reasonable preaching and minimal expertise in the everyday laws needed for running the synagogue. Lessons at a good analytic level you will not get from them. For moral and social preaching of that sort, one could also hire a priest from the neighboring congregation (many of them preach quite well).

We have long accepted that a rabbi in Israel must be a scholar. He is supposed to be capable of producing original Torah scholarship, first and foremost in Jewish law, at a good level. He is supposed to be capable of dealing with complex questions from their sources and of giving an in-depth lesson in Jewish law and Talmud, not merely of quoting precedents he finds in databases. There are, of course, male rabbis who are not like this either, but among the women almost all are incapable of it.

I view with great concern a similar phenomenon here in the Holy Land as well. The justified struggle of learned women for equality and recognition is leading to a situation in which women receive the title of rabbinate in various liberal communities and organizations without truly being worthy of it (true, there are men like this too).

Women rabbis are sprouting like mushrooms after the rain, but all that is required of them is the ability to read texts in Rashi script, that is, that a page of Talmud not be entirely foreign to them, and perhaps also the ability to gather sources from various databases and from the internet and answer basic questions of Jewish law. It is precisely this unjustified stringency and exclusion that lead to the situation. The OU’s approach is in fact building its own justification. This policy creates the very situation from which it is trying to escape. If substantive criteria were adopted, and rabbis were chosen not according to sex but according to proper criteria, we would all benefit from it. Liberals and conservatives, men and women alike.

If the OU were to determine that the communities under its aegis may not appoint a male rabbi or a female rabbi without passing examinations that test their knowledge and scholarship, we would all gain. If they were willing to raise the bar and demand a little more than is required by the Chief Rabbinate examinations here (rudimentary knowledge and memorization), then I assume that almost no woman would pass the examinations, but that at least would be an egalitarian and proper policy. The practical result would resemble what they are now trying to achieve, but it would at least stand up to the proper legal and moral tests. And perhaps in the future it would even improve the situation, because a horizon would be created for women who truly are worthy and wish to advance, and the rabbis, including the male ones, would be of an adequate level. As long as this does not happen, we can do nothing but lament the sorry state of women’s learning, and the problematic substitutes that this infuriating conservative approach creates.

Rabbi Dr. Michael Abraham is a Talmud lecturer and head of the beit midrash for female doctoral students at the Institute for Advanced Torah Studies, Bar-Ilan University

Published in the ‘Shabbat’ supplement of Makor Rishon, 28 Shevat 5777, 24.2.2017

Source: https://musaf-shabbat.com/2017/02/26/%D7%94%D7%93%D7%A8%D7%94-%D7%A9%D7%99%D7%95%D7%A6%D7%A8%D7%AA-%D7%91%D7%99%D7%A0%D7%95%D7%A0%D7%99%D7%95%D7%AA-%D7%9E%D7%99%D7%9B%D7%90%D7%9C-%D7%90%D7%91%D7%A8%D7%94%D7%9D/

Article Content

שתף

Leave a ReplyCancel reply