This article is well worth a read. It gives an insight into the extreme misogyny that is ingrained in Orthodox Jewish culture. I was aware that religious jews were misogynistic in that women were segregated from men in the synagogue and forced to sit at the back ... but the extent of treating women as second class citizens in relation to faith is really very shocking.
Opening up about Open Orthodox misogyny
JONAH RANK March 31, 2014, 6:02 am 139
What I am about to describe is a personal story, and some microscopic insights into the liberal Jewish religious world. I am about to describe Jews who get a lot of press, even though their population is few. But, what else is new in Jewish history?
A Personal Story
When I was soon to graduate college, I knew I wanted to be a rabbi. I found myself vacillating between two rabbinical schools: the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) and Yeshivat Chovevei Torah (YCT).
JTS and Conservative Judaism
JTS is home to Conservative Judaism: a bastion of (somewhat) traditional Jewish life, where women are included in all aspects of ritual life. At JTS, women are ordained as rabbis, women are invested as cantors, and women serve as heads of our institutions (and so do men).
Conservative Jews—as an overall demographic—have a less constant, or certainly outwardly less vocal, relationship with exclusively Jewish expressions than Orthodox Jews. As one example, a Conservative Jew might pray weekly (once on Shabbat), rather than 3 times a day. On the books, the ideal Conservative Jew would probably pray 3 times a day, just like an Orthodox Jewish man. After all, that is the way that the Jewish tradition understands the role of prayer in Jewish life.
So, why would the Conservative Jew not pray 3 times a day?
Conservative Jews and Conservative Judaism
Conservative Judaism and the Conservative Jewish people are two separate things.
Conservative Judaism is a philosophy, and a way of life. Conservative Judaism is rooted in a German tradition of historical criticism and intellectual honesty. Occasional doses of liberal politics have prodded Conservative rabbis towards rereading traditional sources of halakhah (Jewish law), ruling new inclusive decisions for its laypeople: permitting women full participation in religious life, permitting a kohen to marry a woman who has previously been divorced, permitting gay Jews to become rabbis and cantors, and more.
Conservative Jewish people alone are not Conservative Judaism itself. Conservative Judaism is a philosophy, and Conservative Jews are people. Just as all religions have a disparity between its leaders and its followers, Conservative Judaism is no exception. Its rabbis and cantors and educators have, for the most part, been in touch with the philosophy of Conservative Judaism. Its laypeople have been overall less religiously engaged.
Despite their different religious lifestyles, many lay Conservative Jews have felt comfortable around their leaders. A Conservative synagogue typically is a place where a Jew who does not rest on Shabbat can feel comfortable attending services, without being judged for not observing Shabbat in the way the religion dictates. In fact, in most Conservative synagogues, most Conservative Jews currently do not observe Shabbat or keep kosher in the way that the ideals of Conservative Jewish philosophy would articulate. But some do. Some are “growing” in their observance. Some are “waning.” Conservative synagogues are a home and a safe space for checking in with Jewish identity and Jewish practice.
Wherever you fall in the spectrum of observance, Conservative communities are there to support you.
The Lonely Man of Observant Conservative Judaism
I had grown up in the Conservative Jewish world. I was in the minority of Conservative Jews who prayed three times a day, kept kosher, and observed a Shabbat full of “Don’ts” (“Don’t sew,” “Don’t cut,” “Don’t write,” “Don’t light fires,” “Don’t play music,” etc.). I had at some point convinced myself that, the more joy I can bring to my Jewish practice, the more attractive I could make Jewish practice look to those who were not observant. If I could do that—I told myself—then I could get more Conservative Jews on my team (the team of observant Conservative Jews).
After several years in college working in a subset of the Conservative Jewish community, I found myself unconvinced. No matter how joyous or welcoming I could be, Conservative Jewish practice was still… Jewish. It was still religion. For Jews who grew up without Shabbat or kosher food restrictions, this whole observant life could be overwhelming. It’s nice to have a happy role model, but what good does that do? Yes, progress was being made, but it was slower than I wanted.
I was distraught.
The way I saw it in the moment: My team was losing. I needed to switch teams.
Meanwhile In Riverdale
Not long before I began college, Rabbi Avi Weiss, a controversial rabbi in the Modern Orthodox community called for the founding of an “open” kind of Orthodoxy. This open Orthodoxy would be welcoming of people who are not Orthodox (or not yet Orthodox), and this open Orthodoxy would be forward-thinking about the communal roles of those who had been marginalized in the Orthodox world.
Rabbi Weiss was no stranger to controversy. He was an expert in Orthodox Jewish political theater—between having been arrested, and having arranged many protests both through and far away from his synagogue in Riverdale, NY.
In addition to his unusual politico-theatrics, Rabbi Weiss even authored a relatively permissive book on the role of women in halakhah. Regardless of his own showmanship, the consequences of his book on women were grave. Once a community’s women begin to participate in Jewish rituals in varying degrees, a community’s “Orthodoxy” is questioned. Avi Weiss’ Orthodoxy became suspect.
YCT and Open Orthodoxy
With not more than a small following of Orthodox Jews still willing to acknowledge Avi Weiss as “Orthodox,” Avi Weiss founded YCT and, with it, Open Orthodoxy.
A little over a month ago, the Modern Orthodox (i.e., somewhat centrist, but still relatively liberal) Yeshiva University (YU) came down on students who participate in partnership minyans—prayer spaces where women are allowed to lead prayers that are not obligatory, so men recite all the prayers that are actually obligatory. YU’s probation signaled Modern Orthodoxy hardening its opposition to women’s leadership in prayer life.
This has left YCT’s Open Orthodoxy as the last holdout of American Orthodoxy willing to condone partnership minyans.
This would not be problematic if YCT’s Open Orthodoxy were independent of the Orthodox world.
Free To Make Someone Else’s Decisions
Rabbi Avi Weiss, who recently argued that rabbis should be free to make their own decisions about Jewish law, condemned Rabbi Darren Kleinberg in 2008 for sitting on a conversion court facilitated by a Conservative woman rabbi. After all, an Orthodox rabbi should not be presiding over a Conservative conversion, nor acknowledging a woman as a member of a religious court. Had Rabbi Weiss followed his own thinking regarding the necessity of every rabbi to act according to one’s own interpretation of Jewish law, then Rabbi Kleinberg could have expanded the limits of Open Orthodoxy to be accepting of women in religious courts, or accepting of Conservative conversions. (For the record: one friend of mine, who converted through a Conservative rabbi, was not permitted to start his studies at YCT until he converted again through an Orthodox conversion.)
Although Rabbi Weiss ordained Sara Hurwitz in 2009, he only gave her the title Rabba (“female rabbi”) in 2010. Agudath Israel and the Rabbinical Council of America both criticized Weiss for doing something that is prohibited in Orthodox circles: ordaining a female rabbi. Weiss, who has argued that rabbis should be free to make their own decisions about Jewish law, apologized and said that he would never again bestow the title of “Rabba” on women. Rabba Sara Hurwitz, since 2009, has run her own institution for ordaining women with the title “Maharat” (a Hebrew acronym for “female Jewish legal, spiritual Torah teacher”), the bewildering title she was given when she was first ordained.
The YCT boys get to be rabbis with suspect Orthodox ordination, and the women get to be something completely unheard of: a maha-what?
The Visit
I visited YCT, seeking a rabbinical school that would—rather than give me the tools to work with less observant gender-equal communities more observant—give me the tools to make more observant communities of misogynistic Jews less misogynistic. I wouldn’t dare use the m-word (“misogynistic”) at the time. After all, it’s just ritual life. Then again, if synagogue is the public sphere, then a womanless synagogue is a public sphere from which women are erased.
Apparently at the time, I didn’t care.
Not too long into a day of visiting YCT, I met boys who grew up Reform, Conservative, and secular. I do not recall meeting anyone who mentioned growing up Orthodox, but I do recall the director of their Beit Midrash program telling me that I am probably not Orthodox enough for the school—even if I could (at the time) tolerate separate seating for men and women, or use an Orthodox prayer book to thank God for not making me a woman. But my tolerance was not enough. The school had a policy that none of their students may pray in a space where men and women sit together. Mixed sitting would not be Orthodox enough.
(A few years later, by the way, that same rabbi who told me I was not Orthodox enough went to B’nai Jeshurun’s Simchat Torah celebrations with gender-mixed seating and musical instruments that are prohibited on festivals in Orthodox law. He no longer was teaching at YCT. Perhaps he too was not Orthodox enough.)
Not Orthodox Enough
The day I visited YCT, I followed around a student who grew up Conservative and had been teaching at a Conservative synagogue. Not long afterwards, he dropped out of YCT. I found this out when I saw him leading services at a Conservative synagogue.
Being “Orthodox enough” is hardly defined by having a certain theological bend. It is hardly associated with a nuanced approach to eating kosher food. It is hardly associated with a sort of moral integrity, or a commitment to a certain degree of Jewish knowledge, or a certain Shabbat observance. Being “Orthodox enough” is about how much women can be a part of Jewish life.
If your women are rabbis, you are not Orthodox enough. If your women are fulfilling some obligatory commandment on behalf of men, you are not Orthodox enough. If you are a woman who wants to be a recognized Jewish leader on par with a rabbi, you are not Orthodox enough.
So when Rabbi Weiss articulates that a rabbi has the right to make one’s own decisions, I suppose it’s just a fluke that he felt the need to apologize for making Sara Hurwitz a “Rabba.” If he were consistently as brave as he has advocated, Open Orthodox leaders maybe would have the courage to expand the circle of Orthodoxy and make a space for women. Instead, it is a cowardly spurned denomination that just isn’t Orthodox enough.
“Open Orthodox” and “Orthodox enough” ultimately become synonymous with “accepting that women are not people who should make a difference in Jewish ritual life.”
The YCT Boys
If it weren’t for the less- than-40% of YCT’s students who grow up Orthodox, the more-than-60% of theretofore-not-Orthodox Jews who attend YCT could barely support the notion that there’s something truly Orthodox about YCT’s student population. Then again, YCT would not even have an “Orthodox enough” standard to live up to. Their school would be able to permit its students to do as Rabbi Weiss has argued for: making decisions about what is right in their own eyes. Instead Rabbi Weiss, who is hardly Orthodox enough, is concerned with making YCT’s boys Orthodox enough.
If I were a single male without many serious prospects of having children (as I was when I considered YCT some years back), I too could sit awkwardly on the denominational fences, unsure of the necessity of women’s empowerment. And that’s called “male privilege.”
Believing that I would not have helped perpetuate a cycle of vicious emotional violence against women by joining up with a religious outlook that unnecessarily excludes women would have been delusional. And more than that, it would have been unholy.
YCT has a track record of recruiting undecided young men into a liberal form of Orthodoxy that is not recognized in the Orthodox world. In doing so, YCT wins over Jews at the perfect moment of apathy—when they do not care about women. These Jews have not yet realized the ramifications of excluding women from Jewish ritual. The men of YCT are undoubtedly unaware of the damage it causes to women to be told that they cannot be equal to their male counterparts. If these men in fact are aware of the damage, then they are plain old misogynists.
The Misogyny of Orthodoxy
To tell a woman that she is ritually insignificant is a way of delegitimizing women. To delegitimize a woman is misogynistic—hateful of women. Because Orthodoxy by definition (the way it is seen by Open Orthodoxy) delegitimizes women every time she is denied a religious privilege, Orthodoxy is a misogynistic system.
I cannot blame YCT boys who have not yet taken in how Open Orthodoxy inherently marginalizes women. But I do blame any Open Orthodox leader who is telling Open Orthodox students that Open Orthodoxy is no more misogynistic than any other kind of Judaism. And I do blame YCT for luring boys into a misogynistic rabbinate by offering something that no American liberal rabbinical school can offer: free tuition and a living stipend.
Open Orthodoxy is a welcoming space for women, only if compared to other forms of Orthodoxy. But Open Orthodox rabbis know better. If they want to read halakhic approaches to the inclusion of women, they can read the writings of Rabbis David Fine, David Golinkin, Susan Grossman, Joel Roth, Mayer Rabinowitz, Michael Rosenberg, Phillip Sigal, Ethan Tucker, and others. One would be hard-pressed to find an unsound halakhic argument in their responsa advocating for egalitarian Jewish practice.
The path to emancipating women in Jewish ritual and leadership life has already been treaded. Open Orthodoxy’s refusal to accept that perfectly logical Jewish legal writings permitting women to function as equals with men is not because of Orthodoxy’s marriage to Halakhah. Halakhah permits women to be fully functional members of Jewish ritual communities. The only excuse at this point is misogyny.
Stuck
I don’t want to be stuck.
Open Orthodoxy might be open to conversations about change, but Open Orthodoxy has yet to prove to me that it is open to enacting meaningful, welcoming change that can transform the Jewish world. Words that don’t lead to action are mere chatter. I want to see the Jewish world change. I have been impressed by the way I have seen observant egalitarian communities grow gradually over the years and progressively rethink Jewish life in a halakhic framework—and this has not come out of YCT.
As a senior in college reflecting on YCT, seeing myself there just seemed impossible. I couldn’t see myself becoming Orthodox just so that I could be Orthodox enough. And I couldn’t see myself pretending to be Orthodox enough.
I knew that I had to go to JTS. I couldn’t lie about the God in whom I believe—the God who sees misogyny as a chillul hashem—a disgrace to God. My God is gender-blind. The God who says that a partition between men and women is kosher is the same God who says that there are no trans* people in the universe. To me, that God is just a hurtful fiction.
If the God of YCT is a God who renders women ritually insignificant, then the religion of YCT—the religion of all Orthodoxy—is a God of hate. The God in whom I believe welcomes and honors people of all genders as people made in God’s image. My God is a God of love.
YCT is stuck in a misogynistic model that they are too cowardly to escape. All they need to do to get out of the cycle is to speak up for themselves, to make the perfectly halakhic decision that women may act as equals alongside men—that gender does not matter. But they won’t.
In a world that so desperately needs change, YCT is too scared of making change happen.
Taking Advice
Advice for anyone considering YCT as their rabbinical school (or Yeshivat Maharat as their semi-rabbinical school): Take Rabbi Weiss’ advice, and seek a rabbinate where you get to make your own decisions. Since Open Orthodoxy will not permit that, you’ll have to look elsewhere.
I made the decision that I want a rabbinate where I can stand up for my beliefs. I selected JTS for this purpose.
I chose an education that is teaching me to find my values, and to challenge them, as I listen for them in the chorus of Judaism’s many voices—from its Biblical foundations, to its Midrashic retellings; from the Talmudic debates on law, to the responsa of contemporary halakhic decisors; from critical philosophers to mystical kabbalists; from the prose and poems of Jewish writers, to the narratives of Jewish historians. When I encounter Jews and Judaisms of bygone eras—when I bring my entire being into the Jewish tradition—I am not listening for the single voice of a monolithic Orthodoxy (“Orthodox,” coming from the Greek words for “right opinion”); I am listening to the polyphonic symphony of Jewish history. My standard is not whether I am Orthodox enough. My standard is whether I am Jewish enough.
I know that some people—myself included—have been sold by YCT’s free tuition, its living stipends, and its commitment to a particular form of traditional Talmud study (a form of Talmud study offered for a similar cost at egalitarian Yeshivah environments such as Nishma, the Conservative Yeshiva, SVARA, or Mechon Hadar—and YCT students are aware of this, for many of them are alumni of these institutions which ask that their students spread Torah to the egalitarian world).
I could never again consider YCT. I believe that neither Torah nor money should ever come at the expense of the spiritual lives of 50% of my community. Nothing is worth the cost of degrading even one human life. (Doesn’t the Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 107a, tell us that degrading others guarantees us no place in the world to come? Doesn’t Bava Metzi’a 58b tell us that degrading a single person makes us akin to a murderer?)
Deciding between Open Orthodoxy and an egalitarian Judaism is not a choice between two equally righteous forms of Judaism. It is a choice between misogyny and equality; emotional murder, or being present; baseless hatred versus thoughtful love.
When I was deciding between JTS and YCT, I did not know what I know now about Orthodoxy’s systemic misogyny. I sincerely believe that most prospective YCT students don’t, and I hope that they don’t make the same sinful choice I almost made.
A Judaism for the 21st Century
Whatever liberal form of Judaism I seek will undoubtedly take its shape in a community of Jews with varying observances: folks with fewer Shabbat rituals, others with more Shabbat rituals; people with fewer kosher food restrictions, some with more food restrictions; and so on. My job as a rabbi will not be to watch a static community stay “Orthodox enough.” My job as a rabbi will be to facilitate moving social, educational, and spiritual programs and rituals through which Jews grow into and deepen their different Jewish journeys. My job will be to honor the dignity of where everyone is coming from, where everyone wants to go, and where everyone stands now.
If that’s not the work that a rabbi is supposed to do in the 21st century, then I don’t know what is. The future of a liberal egalitarian Judaism excites me.
I’m not Orthodox enough, and I am proud of it.
blogs.timesofisrael.com/opening-up-about-open-orthodox-misogyny/