On Discrimination Against Women and the Essence of the Chief Rabbinate (Column 725)
This week (Mon.) the High Court of Justice (Bagatz) ruled that the Chief Rabbinate’s policy preventing women from sitting for rabbinic ordination exams is discriminatory and must be annulled. The panel was headed by Deputy President Justice Solberg, himself a religious man. The expected condemnations promptly arrived (to my delight, there were also other voices). No need to elaborate: interference by a secular authority in matters of halakha and religion, progressivism, ignorance, lack of fear of Heaven, and so on. Rabbi Ze’ini outdid himself, explaining with his renowned moderation and “good taste and sense” that obeying the High Court is a case of “be killed rather than transgress.” I can already foresee what will happen next. The Rabbinate will dig in and look for workarounds (they’ll define the women’s exams differently); eventually things will calm down and everyone will carry on as before.
This, of course, recalls the example I’ve cited more than once: the Shakdiel case. There too, a petition was brought to the High Court against the Chief Rabbinate, which opposed appointing a woman to the religious council in Yeruham. You might have gathered there was a wall-to-wall rabbinic consensus—Haredi and non-Haredi alike—that the matter was forbidden (for it is, as “everyone knows,” a grave and explicit prohibition in the Torah; and it is also “known” that the men there are all paragons of Torah and piety). There too, Justice Menachem Elon, an observant Jew and Torah scholar, chaired the panel, and those heretics ruled that women must be allowed to be elected to religious councils. The predictable outcry was heard there as well, but immediately afterward women were appointed all over the country and everything was fine. I’ve mentioned before that when I lived in Yeruham, the Haredi community insisted on appointing from its slate a secular woman to the religious council over a religious man. The “die rather than transgress” prohibition evaporated into thin air. The difference now is that in our case the step must be taken by the Chief Rabbinate itself, so here—unlike in Shakdiel—there will first be evasion, and then the grave prohibition will dissipate.
I should note that Justice Solberg (whom, like Rabbi Ze’ini, I’ve known since his childhood in Haifa. One more disclosure: my son, Moshe, clerked for him at the Supreme Court. Another disclosure: we have no personal relationship), is not only a religious, God-fearing man but also a judge with a distinctly conservative jurisprudence (not for nothing is he the great hope of conservatives and the right at the Supreme Court). That is, he does not tend to interfere with decisions of government bodies unless strictly necessary. That, too, says something about the nature of the decision reached there.
Instead of explaining my own view on the matter—for anyone who needs an explanation at all—I’ll address Rabbi Ze’ini’s preposterous claims, whose underlying logic stands in inverse proportion to the forcefulness with which he asserts them (as is usually the case), one by one.
Secular Coercion
First and foremost, Rabbi Ze’ini explains that this is secular coercion. Perhaps it’s worth reminding him of a few basic things he seems to have forgotten. Most citizens of the State of Israel are secular and not bound by halakha. Even if a minority were so bound, in a democracy you do not coerce citizens into religious norms they are not obligated to observe (and even those they are). The Chief Rabbinate, therefore, is sinful in its very conception and existence. Explicitly, its entire purpose is to coerce the secular public into religious norms it does not want. Implicitly, its entire purpose is jobs for cronies, corruption, and maximizing the desecration of God’s name and the wrecking of religion. In any case, this body was established by the (secular) state and derives its authority (to my regret) from the state and its laws. The Chief Rabbinate is not a religious body in any sense. It is a secular state office charged with a few functions—each unnecessary—that the state decided upon under pressure from self-interested religious actors. Needless to say, its officeholders are not selected on the basis of fitness for the job but by connections and party affiliation. No one considers their suitability, Torah stature, or any other substantive criteria, God forbid. On the contrary, my impression is that care is taken to place unworthy people there precisely to ensure the body remains forever irrelevant and continues to provide employment services for the in-group. Contrary to what many think, gilded robes do not transform unlearned folk lacking all skills and character into Torah sages. Therefore, any assertion that this body has religious standing or authority—let alone talk of “do not deviate” or “the greats of the generation” and other Torah-demeaning phrases used in these contexts—displays a complete misunderstanding. This is a “by-appointment” rabbinate (mat’am), in the lowest sense of that term in Haredi literature (where it is often used in a highly tendentious way and divorced from the facts). In our case, the “by-appointment” rabbinate—once a phrase that reeked of carrion up to the establishment of the state and beyond—has become, among Haredim and their partners (and associates), a sublime ideal.
The rub, within this ugly religious coercion just described, is that this corrupt and unnecessary body is granted state-sanctioned monopoly powers to grant rabbinic certification and appoint rabbis (at the last minute, the “Rabbis Law”—the employment law for the draft-dodgers and the corrupt of Shas—was averted), and of course to register marriages and recognize or not recognize them, a monopoly over kashrut, veto power over conversions, and so forth. Any sensible person knows that these exams and appointments mean nothing and attest to nothing. Yet the law granted appointments and approvals of this corrupt body legal standing. Thus, those examined there can receive various appointments (unless they have a Haredi workaround, of course—the mouth that forbade is the mouth that permitted), and these exams were granted the status of an academic degree, which also grants pay scales and other consequences in Israel’s labor market. Likewise, at the Higher Institute for Torah at Bar-Ilan University, they asked me repeatedly and recommended that I take the Rabbinate’s exams (it’s a requirement there—unless you have a doctorate; that’s what saved me). Needless to say, I refused. By the way, I gave permission to students who studied halakha with me to sit the Rabbinate’s exams. A testament to their marvelous consistency.
Hence, the entire essence of this corrupt, God-desecrating body is, of course, religious coercion. As for Rabbi Ze’ini’s claim that High Court intervention in its dark conduct is secular coercion—the most generous thing I can say is that it’s infantile. Apparently, Rabbi Ze’ini expects the secular public to hand authority over its life to a benighted rabbinic body representing perhaps ten percent of the citizenry, which will decide who gets state money and when, who is married and who is not, who may marry and who may not, who is Jewish and entitled to citizenship under the Law of Return and who is not—and after all that, to give it these powers absolutely, without the ability to supervise its conduct or voice an opinion on these matters. Bow down and keep quiet.
To sharpen the point, I must add that in principle the High Court has the authority and right to intervene even in decisions with a distinctly religious-halakhic character. This is not interference in religious affairs but in the affairs of a government ministry. Anyone unwilling to accept the High Court’s secular decisions (especially those of the “secular heretic” Solberg) is welcome to conduct his affairs privately, not via state institutions. The High Court should not be intervening in the activity of religious courts of one community or another (unless red lines are crossed), but when it comes to a secular government ministry like the Chief Rabbinate, the Court must intervene to prevent discrimination and improper conduct (that is, to shut the institution down; proper conduct has not been observed there for some fifty years).
If such bowing does not occur—Heaven forbid—i.e., if the High Court dares to set proper norms for the state’s religious-coercion office, then, according to Rabbi Ze’ini, we have secular coercion. Hard to believe, but that is his claim. Lest we forget, this is an intelligent person, a clear Torah scholar, highly educated, a PhD in mathematics—by all accounts someone who should understand something about logical and halakhic reasoning, and no doubt he does. On such things and the like, our master and chief rabbi George Orwell the elder, of blessed memory, said: there are claims so stupid only intellectuals can make them.
Preliminary Note on the Core Question
Beyond the question of authority and who is coercing whom, we must discuss women’s rabbinic status as such. I’ll preface by noting that the discussion is not about appointing them to a rabbinic post but about the exam itself, especially the bonuses it confers even on one not appointed as a rabbi. The question is whether they may sit for the exam, not whether they may serve as rabbis. The Court itself notes this, assuming (wrongly) that barring women’s appointments is certainly a halakhic decision and, as such, is left to the Rabbinate. They seem to think there is a halakhic bar to appointing women to the rabbinate.
I’ll comment on that below, but here I’ll emphasize again that this concerns appointing women to the position of a government functionary, not a rabbi. A city rabbi or neighborhood rabbi is a state bureaucrat and has nothing to do with being a “rabbi.” Where do we find a prohibition on women serving as bureaucrats? Have we returned to a ban on conferring public office upon women? Even if such a ban existed (it does not), perhaps first abolish the High Court, since women serve there; not to mention women’s testimony in the courts (not just in religious courts); indeed, shut down the courts and replace them with rabbinical courts. Likewise for women in positions of authority—Heaven forbid—throughout the economy and the civil service. As for politics, thank God we are on the right path to great salvation: the few women now in office in this government are on their way out (though as for the particular women currently there—perhaps it is indeed good if they disappear).
Is the Discussion Halakhic?
This discussion is plainly not halakhic. Rabbi Ze’ini himself does not raise a single halakhic argument—because there isn’t one. If so, even by his own lights it’s far from clear why the decision should be left to the Rabbinate and a religious body. This is the policy of several men in black suits (some of whom recite Hallel on Independence Day), but it is certainly not the position of halakha and/or the Torah. On this matter there are at least differing rabbinic opinions. So why should a benighted state-religious body, which does not represent the religious public and certainly not the secular public, decide policy for us all—and coerce it upon us? Is this the body the religious public would want defining what is right and what is not?
Up to this point, Rabbi Ze’ini essentially argued that irrespective of the substantive question—whether women may serve and/or sit exams—there is an issue of authority and coercion. It cannot be, he claims, that a secular body decides such a matter, even if it decided correctly. In his view, this is secular coercion, and I’ve explained why that is nonsense. Now let’s turn to the issue itself.
Rabbi Ze’ini’s Claims: Unity
Rabbi Ze’ini offers several arguments why women should not sit for the Rabbinate’s exams (I address only what appears in the article).
Schism of the people:
“In addition, I’m amazed he doesn’t understand the inevitable result of this ruling: a rift among the Jewish people into mutually hostile streams—as in the past, Pharisees, Sadducees and Boethusians. This will dismantle the Chief Rabbinate of Israel and divide the people—and I know that national unity is dear to Justice Solberg.”
This is truly wonderful. It seems that, in his view, the current situation—excluding 50% of the public because of the tastes of 10%—is a state of marvelous unity. This is the demagogue’s way since time immemorial: calling everyone to unity, meaning “all of you join me—my path and my views—so as not to harm unity.” In that sense, Korah too yearned for unity. I am sure that if Moses and Aaron had agreed with him and met all his demands, he would not have stirred any dispute.
Rabbi Ze’ini’s Claims: Time-Bound Positive Commandments
Now we arrive at a truly surprising and wondrous claim:
“First, halakhically, a woman is not obligated in all the commandments; she is exempt from time-bound positive commandments and barely obligated in a quarter of the mitzvot. How can a person not obligated in the commandments presume to judge and decide in all halakhic matters?! Have you ever heard of a judge who is not obligated by all the laws?!”
Where’s the line? If she were obligated in 80% of the commandments—then yes? Why would she be allowed to rule on the remaining 20%? By this “sound” reasoning, an Israelite cannot sit on the Sanhedrin. Do you know how many commandments concern a priest’s impurity and the Temple and its sancta? Quite astounding, isn’t it? And this is his main, first argument on the issue. I won’t even get into the fact that the Chief Rabbinate does not rule on any matter involving time-bound commandments. It deals with personal status (marriage and divorce, conversion) and with kashrut. All of these are areas in which women are certainly obligated. By the way, may men rule on the laws of niddah, zavah, and mikva’ot? But it seems Rabbi Ze’ini is not troubled by such trifles. When drafting make-believe arguments from wherever, one lacks the luxury of checking them in detail. And this is the central argument he presents first and most elaborately. Unbelievable.
Rabbi Ze’ini’s Claims: Appointing Women to a Rabbinic Post
His second argument is:
“Second, the Torah disqualified a woman from heading a rabbinic system, so it is incomprehensible how a judge who is not a halakhic decisor interferes in halakha and determines what it should rule?!”
I’m truly curious to see where the Torah disqualifies a woman from heading a “rabbinic system.” What “rabbinic system” is there in the Torah at all? To head the Sanhedrin? By that same (non-existent, in my view) law, a woman could not serve as even a regular judge. And in any case, the Rabbinate’s exams are not “heading a rabbinic system.” We are dealing with granting a license to render halakhic rulings, not a license to head any system, and certainly not to serve in it de facto.
Beyond that, the very assumption (also shared implicitly by the justices) that appointing women to the rabbinate is halakhically prohibited is, in my view, incorrect. There is no barrier to appointing a woman to any position of authority, including halakhic ruling. True, Maimonides, Hilkhot Melakhim 1:5, writes this about women (as well as converts). But in my view that is only because it was once socially accepted that a woman would not hold office. In my article about the status of the convert (about whom the same law is stated—and I am truly eager to see Rabbi Ze’ini and the Chief Rabbinate as a whole come out against appointing a convert to a state position, or even against his sitting for the Rabbinate’s exams), I explained that this is not a law but a social norm that received halakhic imprimatur—and rightly so, given the social reality at that time—and I proved this in several ways. The same holds for women.
I would note that in Column 712, where I discussed the links between religion and culture, I showed how cultural norms enter the corpus of religious-halakhic norms and unjustifiably acquire binding, timeless status. I think women’s status is a prime example of this. Even where there is a clear, agreed-upon halakha—where it is crystal clear that we are dealing with halakha proper—there may be room to hesitate before changing the law due to changed circumstances (see my article on annulling and changing regulations, and in Columns 475–480 on Modern Orthodoxy). All the more so where there is no real halakhic bar, there is certainly no reason to fear change.
Just as it is now obvious to any sensible person that women can study Torah—despite Hazal’s harsh statements on the matter—there is no reason not to appoint someone worthy (but not to appoint her just because she is a woman, in the name of sacred equality, as is the current tendency) to the position of “rabbanit.” In my view, there is no bar to appointing a woman as a rabbanit, even to head any system whatsoever. By the way, for the position of judge, there is already a Tosafot stating that women are qualified (Niddah 49b; 17a; and elsewhere, learned from Deborah the prophetess), though many disagree; it is worth relying on that view when it seems correct and when circumstances require.
The Hard Question
The interview with Rabbi Ze’ini ends thus:
“The Chief Rabbinate of Israel is a state body; it cannot refuse to obey a High Court ruling. What do you propose it do?”
If the Chief Rabbinate agrees to carry out this ruling, it will immediately forfeit its status as the Chief Rabbinate. Every religious Jew will be entitled to disagree with it on any matter, since it becomes secular! That is exactly what the Haredim have done for decades, and now a religious judge is giving them the imprimatur.
Rub your eyes in disbelief. Is it not already the case that any Jew may, and in fact does, disagree with it? Look—Rabbi Ze’ini himself disagrees with it here (and later). The man lives in la-la land, as if we were dealing with a Sanhedrin about which it is said, “Do not deviate,” rather than a gang of corrupt bureaucrats. His fear that the Rabbinate will “become secular” is a joke. As I’ve explained, it is entirely secular, since it was established by and derives its authority from secular law. Somehow, Rabbi Ze’ini presents here a naïve religious-Zionist conception, as if the Chief Rabbinate were the restoration of “your judges as at first,” as though a Sanhedrin were here drawing its mandate and power from on high. Unbelievable.
Here is the continuation:
“So you’re saying the Rabbinate must not obey the High Court’s ruling?”
There is coercion here upon all Israel against halakha; therefore, the principle of “be killed rather than transgress” applies!
Unbelievable. This nonsense—which is not only non-binding but also untrue—becomes, for him, a fundamental principle so severe that one must give one’s life rather than violate it. Virtually a decree of religious persecution.
No wonder even the interviewer couldn’t stay indifferent:
“To that extent?”
If the rabbinical courts do not invalidate this ruling, they are tantamount to courts of the secular system, disqualified from ruling any matter of Torah law. We do not want a “by-appointment” Rabbinate, as in exile. This is coercion at the heart of post-modernism, which seeks to erase every difference of any kind—between men and women, between Jews and gentiles—there is no greater antithesis to the entire Torah.
Rabbi Ze’ini explains that we do not want a “by-appointment” Rabbinate; therefore, we established with our own hands an institution that is nothing but that. Not only did we establish it—we will fight with all our might, even to the point of martyrdom, to preserve its standing and not harm it. Once again, one cannot avoid another Orwellian gem: “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”
And he adds:
The claim that this is discrimination is an expression of terrible ignorance of Judaism, for the entire Torah is about distinctions—between priest and Levite, Levite and Israelite, Jew and gentile, even between a regular gentile and an idol-worshipping gentile, and many more! When the Temple is rebuilt, will the High Court bar us from disqualifying a gentile to serve as High Priest?! And why not obligate a woman in circumcision to avoid discrimination? We are indeed on July 14, Bastille Day, which blindly made everyone equal, but that is not our way. If anything—why not allow a gentile to sit the exam as well, even a violent man who sunders us? And why not appoint a gentile as a rabbi?
Here too we see a truly embarrassing collection of misunderstandings. No one claims the Torah is egalitarian. Reality isn’t egalitarian either, since women have different sex organs (apropos the foolish example of female circumcision) and less physical strength than men. The question on the table is not equality per se but what we should do when equality is attainable. Should we then fight inequality as if it were an ultimate value? Is inequality, in Rabbi Ze’ini’s view, a Jewish value? At most, one can claim that where necessity dictates and there is no choice, we will not act equally. But to turn inequality itself into a binding value is conceptual confusion. Needless to say, for me this is merely a lower bound: the principle of equality is a democratic and moral value, and therefore every Jew should be committed to it (not merely “not necessarily oppose it”), except where there is a halakhic or other impediment (and even there we should seek a way out if one exists; in not a few cases, it does).
As an aside, I’ll add that there is no bar to a gentile taking the Rabbinate’s exam. On the contrary, the principle of equality says that if he passes the exam, he possesses halakhic knowledge and is entitled to all state-conferred benefits. Appoint him as a rabbi in practice? That is a decision left to the various communities (in my view he is no worse than an LLM bot).
He concludes:
The ramifications of such a ruling could be far-reaching, for if religious Jews feel that the apex of the judicial system harms their religious lives and coerces brutal secular coercion upon them—how will they feel?!
I’ll repeat what I explained above: at most, this mitigates religious coercion; it is certainly not secular coercion.
Closing Words
The question that arises here is: how is it possible that someone who is an unmistakable Torah scholar, so educated and intelligent, comes to say such nonsense? How does it happen that he reaches such extreme, preposterous conclusions based on arguments that don’t hold a drop of water? The Orwell line above (about the nonsense of intellectuals) doesn’t seem sufficient as an explanation.
I think I’ll borrow here from Dawkins. He writes that in every group there are good people who behave well and bad people who behave badly. But only in religious groups will you find good people who behave badly (because they believe their religion compels them). In the next column I’ll approach this from a different angle; here I’ll only say that this statement is infuriating and imprecise—but we must honestly admit there’s something to it. For my part, I would replace “religious” with “zealotry” or “fundamentalism/dogmatism.” Now, paraphrasing Dawkins, I will say that in every group there are wise people who say sensible things and fools who speak nonsense. Only in an extreme, agenda-driven, biased group (a church) will you find wise people who speak nonsense.
Discussion
“It has become clear beyond any possible doubt that the integration of religion into the governmental apparatus of a secular state, and the grounding of religious reality upon this apparatus, is nothing but the prostitution of religion for the satisfaction of governmental, party, sectarian, and personal interests. It has been revealed that the true attitude of the ‘religious’ political parties toward the ‘spiritual’ religious leadership, in whose name they waved the banner and which they sought to wrap in a mantle of holiness – the attitude of the religious-Zionists toward ‘their’ Chief Rabbinate and of the Agudists toward ‘their’ Council of Torah Sages – is like the attitude of a pimp toward the prostitute who supports him: when he no longer derives benefit from her, he kicks her.” (Leibowitz)
On the merits, I agree with you. There is no logical reason women should not be examined, and the Rabbinate’s decision is wrong. It is also obvious that there is no prohibition on disagreeing with them and ordaining women outside the Chief Rabbinate.
But regarding High Court intervention, this is the discussion about the limits of its authority, which is one of the reasons for the need for reform. There is a body whose role by law is to handle the issue of rabbinic ordination. The High Court is not supposed to intervene in cases of mistakes, but only in cases of extreme unreasonableness. And you cannot call a position that a large proportion of rabbis hold “extreme unreasonableness.” We are not talking here about the religious authority the Rabbinate lays claim to, but about the legal authority granted to it by the state.
Teaching Torah for pay is in itself a desecration of God’s name and a degradation of religion, regardless of whether the desecrator and degrader is male or female. In any case, everything a salaried rabbi says is presumed false. If anything, better free halakhic guidance from a woman than a paid man.
Most of the public are not secular but traditional, and they accept the authority of the Chief Rabbinate; therefore the Rabbinate certainly has the authority of the mara de-atra here in the state (quite apart from the quality of those appointed within it). Of course, that says nothing about the issue under discussion.
The criticism of the Rabbinate is essential to the discussion of Rabbi Zini’s words. Because of the way it conducts itself and the choice of people, this places his conception in a much stranger and more groundless light.
I answered in detail the question of the court’s intervention in religious questions. It is not intervening in religious questions but in the methods of operation of a secular state institution. That is definitely the court’s role. Whoever decided to establish such an institution and regard it as a religious institution – that’s his problem.
Indeed. Rabbi Yitzhak Hutner pointed this out, comparing the Rabbinate to the Queen of England. He said there are two kinds of revolution in the world: a revolution like in Russia, where they cut off the tsar’s head, and a revolution like in England, where they put the king in a golden cage and took away all his powers.
A major mistake. There is extreme unreasonableness here, because the mode of operation of a secular state institution should follow the values of the state as a whole, not halakhah. Halakhah also endorses nepotism and hereditary transmission of offices. That is why Rabbi Ovadia did not agree to end his term, and also made sure to appoint his sons, although they are plainly unfit. To decide to exclude women categorically from some right the state grants is conduct of extreme unreasonableness. If a community decides not to appoint a woman rabbi, the High Court cannot intervene in that, and I assume it also would not intervene. All the more so since this is about an examination, not an actual appointment. On that there is no halakhic dispute at all.
Absolutely not true. A superficial and unreasonable application of certain sources that are not relevant today.
Apparently we do not live in the same country.
Let’s set the record straight.
The Chief Rabbinate is a religious institution; I don’t know how one can see it at all as a secular institution, though it is under state rule (and let’s set aside for the moment how secular or religious the state is). And as a religious institution it must evaluate its conduct independently in light of religion (halakhah), otherwise it fails in its role (there are boundaries here and there, of course, if it violates explicit law, but that is not the discussion). And the court itself needs to recognize that.
Second, of course it is intervening here in a halakhic question. There are sources in halakhah that address the appointment of women as rabbis, such as Maimonides whom you cited among others, so of course this is a question that must be discussed in light of halakhah. One can argue that Maimonides’ basis is not from halakhah but from the spirit of the times, but that claim must be substantiated, and it is not the basis of the discussion.
If the Chief Rabbinate were discriminating against Mizrahi Jews from approaching and applying for a rabbinic position as compared to Ashkenazi Jews, then there would definitely be room for the court to intervene, because that is clearly not a matter related to halakhah but something procedural.
And third, I don’t quite understand your criticism of the very existence of the Chief Rabbinate. I can understand criticism of the way it conducts itself, but you are speaking here as if the default is that there should not be a centralized body on behalf of the state (which is a Jewish state with a Jewish majority) to manage matters of religion and halakhah in the public sphere, and whoever set up this body under the state must bear the consequences. The Chief Rabbinate was not established by a bunch of Bnei Brak fixers but by Rabbi Kook in order to regulate the religious services of the Jews in the Land – even before the establishment of the state at all!
One son of Rabbi Ovadia (Yitzhak) may indeed be plainly unfit, but there is no doubt that he has enormous support among the Sephardi baalebatim, who are a central target audience of the Sephardi Chief Rabbi. The other sons of Rabbi Ovadia who were appointed to positions were certainly worthy in every respect (at least at the time of appointment).
Credit where it is due for having independently arrived at Tocqueville’s point.
We’re repeating ourselves.
Can Rabbi Kook not be mistaken, in your view? In my view he can, and indeed made use of that ability.
It is known that Rabbi Elyashiv of blessed memory held that one could support third-rate rabbis getting there so that they would not honor that body; I do not know whether he meant that people should come to despise it, aside from Neturei Karta perhaps.
I understood the entire column except for one parenthetical remark, namely what Rabbi Zini claimed and why women are not obligated in circumcision in order to prevent discrimination. You wrote: “Reality itself is also not equal, since women have different sexual organs (apropos the stupid example of circumcision for women).” That is your wording up to here! As far as I know, the Torah commanded circumcision for males and not for females; I have no idea why, especially since we do not expound the reason for the verse. And regarding what reality is like there for women, how can one know what goes on there if halakhah says it is forbidden to look at that place?? How do you know, Michi, what the reality is there? Did you violate that halakhah and look? (Or did you speak about it with some woman and believe her? In any case, that is also not respectable.)
What is truly irrelevant is your salaried opinion about the validity of salaried opinions.
Just a small note – the quote you cited here and in the past in the name of Dawkins, in my humble opinion its source is actually Steven Weinberg, and Dawkins (and other militant atheists) merely quote him.
Hello Rabbi, and the points are very precise, but from Rabbi Zini’s point of view the Rabbinate is indeed a body operated by secular people, but one that is supposed to let rabbis decide questions of kashrut, etc., so if he thinks there is a halakhic problem with appointing a woman, then indeed that is a problem within the function the Rabbinate is supposed to manage with the approval of the secular authorities.
That is clear. I would only note that this was not about an appointment.
Pini, why is Rabbi Yitzhak unworthy? Look at Yalkut Yosef and his lenient halakhic power.
The Gemara learns that women are exempt from some positive time-bound commandments from tefillin, which itself is learned from Torah study, where according to the view of the expositor there is a commandment to teach sons and not daughters. It is pretty clear that the reasoning before the expositor was that women then did not belong in study because of their low status. Do you support a conservative midrash that would obligate women today in all the commandments like men?
In principle that is certainly possible. But in such cases one must be sufficiently convinced that this is indeed the reason. Regarding study, it does not seem to me to be because of their low status, but because of the assessment of their learning abilities and the possibility of reaching a good level (so as not to turn them toward frivolity and nonsense). That is not relevant to time-bound commandments. Therefore, in the transition from Torah study to time-bound commandments there is another rationale. They are not exempt for the same reason. In short, in Torah study and testimony there is an expected explanation for the exemption, and therefore there is room to rely on it in order to change the halakhah. As for time-bound commandments, I do not have an expected explanation (except for Abudraham, that the issue is caring for children and the home, which also does not seem convincing to me).
Too many mistakes in the books. When an error is discovered, even in obvious matters, he has great difficulty admitting the truth. He presents others’ views unfairly. Excessive aggressiveness toward others who merely disagree with his father, some of whom are greater than he is. Public statements of low content and style. Those are just headings, and it is not my place to elaborate.
Suppose one does not accept Abudraham. Why do you require such a strong rationale in order to obligate women in all the other positive time-bound commandments? After all, it is clear to you that there was a derashah and human reasoning 2,000 years ago to remove them in an era when all the nations of the world discriminated against them. Even if you are not sure what stood behind it, today when women are pretty much as capable as men, why do you prefer to remain passive as long as you do not have a clear explanation of what was in the expositor’s mind?
For positive time-bound commandments there is also the inference from the very exceptions that the Torah took the trouble to specify that women are indeed obligated in, which the Gemara in Kiddushin explains according to Rabbi Yehudah (three verses coming as one). I think there is an essential difference between Torah, which belongs to them too even though they have no formal commandment to study it, and certain practical commandments from which one can live with being exempt (just as Israelites and Levites are exempt from a large portion of the Temple commandments).
Torah expresses a covenant with the Holy One, blessed be He, and therefore prohibiting them from Torah study requires a sociological reason connected to the historical conditions of those years. That reason was broad. In all the cultures of the world there was a rigid division of labor between women and men: women at home and men outside the home. In the modern world, when every woman has at least ten maidservants in every home (a refrigerator, running water from taps, a washing machine, a dryer, an electric oven, a stove, and more), that division has broken down, as we can see. In that situation the claim that they turn words of Torah into frivolity and nonsense loses its context, and then our original covenant with Torah, which includes them as well, reawakens. A woman can live without an obligation to sit in a sukkah and even without an obligation to study Torah, but in the present reality it is hard to speak about disconnecting a woman from the covenant with Torah without recognizing the price that exacts.
Regarding the halakhic discussion, I am too insignificant to insert my head between you, and let us conclude that “these and those are the words of the living God”…
But regarding High Court intervention – if this were the Ministry of Health, and the Ministry of Health determined that only a licensed doctor and nurse may give medicines, and not alternative healers, and you as a senior doctor argued that this is not correct, would it make sense for the High Court to intervene in the matter?
There is a professional decision here, which I hope even you would admit the majority of the benighted medical community sees as correct. You may indeed be a senior doctor who knows everyone is mistaken and motivated by politics and social conventions, but at the end of the day this is their ‘professional’ opinion.
Does the High Court know how to decide medical matters, and claim that this is discrimination against healers and Chinese acupuncturists? True, there are doctors who agree with it, but this is a dispute within the field of medicine, and it is not the High Court’s role to determine the ‘medical truth,’ even if it is discriminatory.
The Rabbinate is the secular body authorized to make ‘professional’ decisions on matters of religion, just as the Ministry of Health is a secular body whose decisions concern medicine.
High Court intervention in the Rabbinate’s professional domain (which is of course an unprofessional body, a marketplace and politics) is intervention in a professional field that is not its role at all.
Precisely because this is ‘religion,’ it is permissible to trample this professional side called halakhah. If the High Court rules that conversion is discrimination, good for it; it still cannot change the professional truth.
Your approach, in my opinion, is tainted by your personal views that align with the High Court in this area. On the day they decide that a synagogue must also be open to Muslim prayer, and that the Gemara is a book that undermines the democratic system, what will you say then? (Of course I am exaggerating, but that is the idea.)
Precisely given your desire to separate religion and state, and your intellectual ability to distinguish between the body expressing an opinion and the essence of the matter, I would have expected from you, as a lover of Torah detached from politics, not to let the High Court intervene. There is a dispute within the study hall over what the halakhic truth is – the High Court may rule whatever it wants with respect to the state, but it cannot impose with respect to the truth.
The High Court can require that someone be called a ‘rabbanit,’ that she be allowed to take such exams, but it cannot claim in the name of discrimination that a woman is a halakhic decisor. Rabbi and posek are matters of intra-halakhic definition, and we will settle that within the halakhic community among ourselves.
On this matter I agree, for example, with Amir Ohana, who said that he would very much like the state to allow LGBT couples to adopt a child, but not that the High Court should decide it. So too here.
I saw a podcast of yours with Moshe Radman, in which he demonstrated what the religious zealotry of the left looks like, with no ability to listen to the arguments of the other side. In your assessment, does the overwhelming majority of the secular left-wing public in the State of Israel agree with him or not?
You are simply mistaken, and it is evident that you did not read the ruling at all.
Because there are rules of authority. Something decided by a quorum (Sanhedrin or Gemara) requires another quorum to permit it. Therefore, significant positive persuasion is needed to act contrary to this rule. And if there isn’t, then sit and do not act.
I have already explained everything. I see no point in repeating it.
Hard to determine. Clearly the left-wing avant-garde is mostly like that. The Kaplan protesters and Brothers in Arms are almost all like that. But I have no way of knowing how the public with a leftist outlook is distributed (which in any case is a small minority). In any event, these questions are not connected to left and right, so the term “left” here is misleading. It would be more accurate to speak of the anti-Bibi public.
And if you became convinced that indeed most of the population is traditional and from their perspective the Rabbinate represents them, would that change your position?
I did not understand the connection between authority and positive persuasion; could you clarify?
I would note that here https://mikyab.net/posts/76308/#comment-62561 you said one has to look at a concrete case, and I think Boaz brought an excellent concrete case in which it is quite likely that if a Sanhedrin in our day knew the rules of derashot, it would reach a different conclusion.
No. I also wrote in the post that in a democracy even the majority does not impose religious norms on a minority.
The question was not about imposing religious norms but about the religious status of the Chief Rabbinate vis-à-vis believing people. Would you grant it religious status?
The secular people did indeed establish the Rabbinate, but they were essentially different from their progressive descendants of today. No judge would have dreamed of imposing his scale of values on Judaism, whereas today the tendency is to inject that scale of values into every place and every sector (except the Arab sector, of course, because of the sacred “multiculturalism”).
Justice Solberg is indeed considered conservative and right-wing, but his tendency is that of an intelligent minority as such: the man is rather conformist, and so is Alex Stein. Therefore, his ruling and that of his colleagues are only one swallow, to be followed by even more provocative “decrees.” For the trend is progressive activism, likewise.
All this does not negate the fact that contemporary Judaism would also disqualify Deborah the prophetess from a leadership role.
If most of the public chooses it and respects it, then maybe yes. I would probably flee the country.
I explained. The rule is that if a halakhah was established in the Sanhedrin (or in the Gemara), it requires a Sanhedrin to repeal it. When there is positive persuasion of an error or a dramatic change, there is room to consider acting against this rule. But in a situation where there is no clear error, the rule remains in force. To change a halakhah established by a competent institution requires an excellent reason, certainly more than is needed to interpret or establish a new halakhah.
Correct, if there were a Sanhedrin nowadays it might change the law (I am not at all sure, as noted). But there is no Sanhedrin nowadays, and therefore even if it were clear that a Sanhedrin would change it, as long as there is no clear error here, acting otherwise would be acting against a determination of the Sanhedrin, and that requires full persuasion of error.
I really do not understand what is unclear here.
As long as the Rabbinate controls secular people, the secular public must defend itself from it
Pro-ethnic nationalism versus progressivism is clearly right versus left, long before the issue of right and left in economic policy, and certainly in security policy. I believe every true right-winger would choose to return to the 1948 lines and have a Jewish state in which Jews are favored over Arabs (of course not at the expense of justice) – for example in university admissions (which is of course justified), just as family members are favored – rather than a state of all its citizens within the borders of the promised land according to the broadest possible view… And since it is clear that Bibi is only the representative of this dispute – as we saw that all the anti-Bibi “right-wingers” who fought him reconciled themselves to a state governed by a progressive High Court – this is certainly the main dispute between right and left today. By the way, this is true with respect to the entire rest of the Western world.
And see also here:
https://www.facebook.com/shnerb.nadav?locale=he_IL
Sorry, the link was not correct. These are the words of Nadav Shnerb referred to:
“In the past week I listened to a podcast from England, where a professor of history from LSE was interviewed. The topic: Britain is heading toward civil war. Get ready, dear Britons.
I am not a historian, I do not know British social conditions well, and in general I have an aversion to speculations of this sort (‘there is an 18.5% chance of civil war in the next five years’), but the general description of the current situation seemed very interesting to me. In what follows I will try to present, with a few additions, the basic argument, and then I will add my thoughts regarding the parallel situation here.
The political order in our world is based primarily on the concept of nation-states: France for the French, England for the English, Sweden for the Swedes. Exactly how history rolled to this point is a complicated story, but that is the present state of affairs. In nation-states there is some sense of partnership among people (‘we are all Micronesians’) that can be translated into public support for a certain level of mutual assistance within the state (aid, welfare, and the like) and into a shared commitment to mutual defense (security, policing).
And here is the point. In today’s Western world the elites are all post-national. What these elites detest is not some specific aspect of state activity, but its founding principle: they detest the tendency of human beings to cluster on the basis of ethnic or cultural commonality.
The main lever for dismantling the nation-state is immigration. First, lowering immigration barriers allows people of different ethnic origins and foreign cultures to naturalize in the country. Second, the demand for multiculturalism prevents the majority from imposing cultural change on immigrants as a condition for assimilation and neutralizes the processes that might have produced a more homogeneous society. Finally, claims of ‘deprivation’ of various kinds, and the demand for equality of outcomes and not only of opportunities, turn immigrants, de facto, into a privileged group entitled to benefits at the expense of the general public.
As a result of all these processes, the native inhabitants, members of the original nation, become strangers in their own land, discriminated against by the law and humiliated by the media and the elites. A kind of alliance has been created here in which the general public is attacked ‘from below,’ by the immigrants, and ‘from above,’ by its own academic-media-judicial elites. Everyone knows that such a process destroys the sense of mutual responsibility on which the nation-state is built, but the elites are not troubled by that: transferring powers from elected representatives to technocratic bodies, some of them supranational (the European Union, the World Health Organization), empties democracy as a mechanism of government by consent of the governed and in any case obviates the need for national identification as a basis for cooperation among people.
This argument is rapidly becoming the organizing principle of politics in the West. A bipolar party structure is developing on the basis of these two groups, where the ‘right’ becomes synonymous with commitment to the nation-state and anti-immigration, while the ‘left’ is built on the alliance between elites who want to live in Globalistan and immigrants, some of whom want to take as much as possible from society, give as little as possible, and let the world burn. Social unrest that breaks out from time to time fuels the process of separation, and in the opinion of the speaker on the podcast, as noted, the whole business will not end well.
That podcast sharpened for me very much the feeling that the frenzy we are experiencing here is not as unique as it seems; it is basically a reflection of the spirit of the times, a local reflection of a global event. The political methods being used here, including juridification, are not something unique to our holy land. At the same time, I think the Israeli case differs in several respects that should also be considered.
In Israel, the collapse of the nation-state (in this case what was supposed to be the Jewish state) is taking place under violent external pressure. Since the desire to stay alive is a trait that has been under very strong selection over the course of the last three billion years, there still exists a certain level of cooperation for the sake of the state’s survival and the prevention of the slaughter of its Jewish residents. No doubt this phenomenon (shared military service and the like) creates a certain degree of rapprochement.
On the other hand, in Israel the shedding of the national idea has a much sharper impact. For at least the past 1,500 years, the concept of the Jewish people was identified with a religious community. The very concept of secular Zionism was supposed to be the placement of national identification in place of the religious one. Therefore, when the concept of nationhood is discarded, all that remains are the religious practices as a unifying element, and those are practices toward which the Israeli elites feel not alienation but hatred and revulsion. The cultural characteristics of ‘being British’ – drinking tea at four in the afternoon, enjoying Shakespeare, or waxing nostalgic about Nelson’s legacy – are not hated by an elite Londoner; he may even have a positive attitude toward them, he simply does not want to live in a society in which that is the cultural glue. Here, by contrast, it is hard not to notice the deep, animal, crazed hatred of the elites (or at least of their leaders) toward every value or custom that is Jewish-particularistic.
I estimate, or more precisely guess, that the centrifugal forces are stronger. Accordingly, I tend to trust only those who were ‘with us’ during the debate over judicial reform, a debate in which both sides expressed their basic positions well, and I fear those ‘repentants of October 7,’ even if they pour contempt from now until tomorrow on the positions expressed by the newspaper Haaretz, say. The people who portrayed us as fascists and worse, those who went wild in the streets over the reasonableness clause, are not people whose intentions, judgment, or basic fairness can be trusted. Today we have a common goal, saving our lives, for whose sake we cooperate just as the Soviet Union joined the Western powers against Germany; but on the day the reason ceases, the love will cease, and then, I fear, they will stick the knife in our back without batting an eyelid. Trench brotherhood evaporates very quickly, as many Jews learned firsthand after World War I.
Of course I may be mistaken in this assessment. Nevertheless, especially in these days, I would recommend not consuming too much of the saccharine sweetness of ‘togetherness,’ to keep an open mind and a healthy approach of ‘respect him, suspect him,’ and not make any significant gesture without appropriate compensation that hurts the other side. Happy is the person who is always afraid, etc.”
By the way, the argument itself is utterly illogical, because if religion causes good people to act against their nature and do bad things – then the opposite is also true (bad people will do good things), so we are back at the starting point.
He himself (Yitzhak Yosef) censors his father wherever he feels like it.
The question is about the limits of the High Court; each time it chips away more and more at the Rabbinate’s decisions and intervenes in matters of religion
I’m concerned that a somewhat more essential point was missed here. The rabbi repeated his criticism of the way the Chief Rabbinate and its people conduct themselves, and the improper way it operates, but excuse me, this affair can be taken to a more substantive place…
Without addressing the claims the rabbi brought in the name of Rabbi Zini, there is a question here that does need to be considered: the court’s intervention in the area of managing religion in the state. The main work of the Chief Rabbinate in Israel is to provide various religious services to religious citizens in a centralized way (one can argue that it is wrong that it imposes this also on the non-religious, and of course that it is run recklessly without oversight – but that does not upend the discussion). Now comes the question whether a court has any legitimacy at all to come and dictate to the religious body how to conduct itself. I don’t know the rabbi’s position regarding the question of equality in Judaism (I think the rabbi believes there is no unequivocal approach that emerges from the sources, but I don’t know), but in my humble opinion equality is not a central value that dictates what halakhah should look like. And now the court comes from an external standpoint and dictates to the religious body how to conduct itself… and forgive me, but I at least do not think that is the right thing.
Should various changes be made in halakhah in keeping with the spirit of the times? Of course. The rabbi himself holds that morality and religion are two independent categories, and that one should find a middle path between them as much as possible in conflicts. But this should not come from the court; it should come from halakhah or from the rabbis themselves – bringing halakhic arguments (whether from the sources or from common sense) and deciding through halakhah one way or the other (as the rabbi himself did in the third part of the trilogy). But the fact that the court permits itself to intervene in questions that do have treatment in halakhah (as the rabbi cited in the name of Maimonides) is, in my opinion, a very negative opening. An extreme example of this is the struggle over kosher slaughter in Europe, which various antisemites outlawed altogether because they thought it abused animals. This is indeed an extreme example, but dictating how halakhah should be conducted from a place that does not recognize halakhah’s authority can truly lead to disaster.
My point is that this issue can be taken to a more substantive discussion, and I don’t quite understand the purpose of the column. There is a substantive issue here that can be discussed substantively, but bringing arguments from this rabbi or that rabbi and going on at length to refute them, and discussing the actual conduct of the Chief Rabbinate, seems to me a somewhat shallow discourse.