NEW YORK (JTA) — Growing up in a Modern Orthodox community in South Africa, Sara Hurwitz never imagined that she would one day become a clergy member. The Conservative and Reform movements have been ordaining female rabbis for decades. But in the Orthodox world, women are barred from many… Read more »
Tagged rabba
Orthodox Union asks women clergy to change their titles
NEW YORK (JTA) — Following its rabbinic ruling prohibiting synagogues from hiring female clergy, the Orthodox Union is pressuring synagogues that have hired the women to change their titles. In February, the Orthodox Union, an umbrella Orthodox Jewish group, issued a Jewish legal ruling by seven rabbis that bars women… Read more »
With resolution against hiring women rabbis, RCA votes for confrontation
NEW YORK (JTA) – When America’s main modern Orthodox rabbinical association voted last week to ban the hiring of clergywomen by its members, the question wasn’t whether to endorse women rabbis. It was whether to widen the group’s well-established repudiation of female clergy or keep quiet and focus on finding common ground with modern… Read more »
Tefillin policy tip of the iceberg for Orthodox women
The announcement last week that SAR, a modern Orthodox high school in New York, is allowing girls to lay tefillin is helping expose an increasingly sharp fault line within Orthodoxy. For decades, it has been difficult to sort out the precise dividing lines between the varieties of Orthodoxy —… Read more »
For graduates of Avi Weiss’ academy, ordination comes with controversy
NEW YORK (JTA) — More than three years ago, following a broad Orthodox backlash to his decision to ordain a woman with the title “rabba,” Rabbi Avi Weiss made a promise: He wouldn’t do it again. So when Yeshivat Maharat, the school founded in 2009 by the New York… Read more »