Sitting comfortably in his living room in his home in Efrat, Rabbi Herzl Hefter, dean of Beit Midrash Har’el, outwardly, at least, does not resemble the teachers of my long-ago yeshiva days.
The 66-year-old Hefter, with a trim beard flecked with gray, wears a purple shirt, dark pants, and comfortable shoes. He informs me that he recently returned from Nepal, climbing the six km. Island Peak with two of his sons. Few of my teachers made those sartorial choices, and their climbing was restricted to stairs, for the most part.
The word har’el in Hebrew means “the mountain of God.” Extending the climbing metaphor a bit further, Hefter says, “I like the metaphor of climbing a mountain as a personal journey and a challenge. In Nepal, I saw a sign on the wall in a guest house that read, ‘You are the mountain.’”
Torah study for women in Israel has advanced a great deal in recent years. Institutions such as Matan, Nishmat, Migdal Oz, and Midreshet Lindenbaum have introduced programs for women in Talmud and Jewish law. But Beit Midrash Har’el, which Hefter founded in 2013, is the only Orthodox program in Israel that awards smicha – rabbinic ordination – to both men and women studying together.
Hefter, a graduate of Yeshiva University in New York, studied for 10 years at Yeshivat Har Etzion and was ordained by Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein (1933-2015), the noted rabbinic authority who headed Har Etzion together with Rabbi Yehuda Amital (1924-2010). Hefter taught at the kollel at Yeshivat Hamivtar and Yeshiva University’s Gruss Kollel and served as head of the Bruria Scholars Program at Midreshet Lindenbaum. He also taught at Yeshivat Mekor Chaim in Moscow and was rosh kollel of the first Torah MiZion Kollel in Cleveland.
WHAT WAS the genesis of joint rabbinic studies for men and women?
In the late 1980s and early ’90s, recalls Hefter, he was teaching male rabbinical students at the Gruss Kollel in the morning, and would frequently teach their wives at the Bruria Scholars program in the afternoon.
“Because I taught in these two advanced programs, people would ask me, ‘Do you think about how men learn differently than women? What about women getting smicha?’ Even then, I thought the question wasn’t about men receiving smicha or women receiving smicha – the question was about quality control of smicha in general.
“There were some women I would give smicha to, and frankly, there were some men who received smicha that I wouldn’t have given it to. But it wasn’t my decision.”
Over time, says Hefter, he began to become disaffected with the religious establishment, initially because of the attitude toward women and eventually with the attitude toward the “other” – people who are different. He points to a passage in the prayers for the congregation recited on Shabbat morning which epitomizes, in his opinion, the secondary position of women in the eyes of the sages. The text reads:
“May He Who blessed our fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, bless this entire holy congregation, together with all the holy congregations, them, their wives, and their sons and their daughters, and all that belongs to them.”
Says Hefter, “The members of the congregation are considered the congregation, and they have their wives.” In that sense, the women were considered separate and not part of the congregation. Referring to the ancient prayer, he concedes, “That represented the reality of the time. You can’t judge the past according to the way you see things today, but we still have to be open to how things are going.”
Hefter’s disaffection with the religious establishment extended to the National Religious world (dati leumi), though he was a member of that group, and his children have attended schools in that stream.
“I felt some sort of dissonance. I was very connected to what I received from Rabbi Lichtenstein and Rabbi Amital, but I was feeling more distant. And also, as time went on, I started studying Hassidut.”
Nevertheless, Hefter continued teaching in various National Religious institutions, but he would, as he puts it, grumble to himself while at home. “My wife would say, ‘It’s not healthy for you. You have to do something. You have to write, and you have to do something with what you are disaffected about.’”
The turning point came when Hefter spent a year as a fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute. He was approached by a student who asked if he would consider tutoring him in Yoreh Deah, the section of the Code of Jewish Law studied by rabbinical students for rabbinic ordination. Yoreh Deah focuses on laws dealing with meat and milk, mixtures, mourning, conversion, marriage, divorce, and family purity. Hefter replied that he would agree to teach a class on the subject if a group of students could be assembled.
Recounting the conversation, Hefter says the student asked almost offhandedly, ‘Would you teach men and women?” Hefter replied in the affirmative and began to teach the laws of Yoreh Deah once a week in a Jerusalem synagogue to a mixed group.
EARLY ON, he says, two women who were students of his at Midreshet Lindenbaum years earlier, Meesh Hammer-Kossoy and Rahel Berkovits, asked him if he would give them smicha, together with the two men who were studying for ordination in the group.
“I said, ‘Look, I don’t have a problem giving smicha to women, but it’s not accepted in the Orthodox world, and I’m not world famous. Smicha is about recognition, so it won’t do anything for you if I give you smicha.”
Hefter said he would ask Rabbi Daniel Sperber, a well-known professor of Talmud at Bar-Ilan University who also served as a synagogue rabbi in Jerusalem, if he would agree to sign the smicha certificate. Sperber agreed to test the students with Hefter and sign their rabbinic ordination documents, assuming they had shown mastery of the material. Two years later, in 2015, Hefter and Sperber granted smicha to rabbis Rahel Berkovits, Meesh Hammer-Kossoy, Lev Eliezer Israel, and Ariel Evan Mayse.
Hammer-Kossoy, who today serves as rosh beit midrash (head of the study hall) at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies, says that Hefter presents a singular combination of scholarship and principles. “He is so deeply steeped in tradition and Jewish law and Talmud and is so aligned with what he believes as the right thing to do. He is not bogged down in politics and is so courageous because he is someone who is so located in the Orthodox world.
“He put himself on the line out of pure principle – that is tremendous, but in his teaching, he is so traditional. His depth of knowledge is in a special league.”
Following the first smicha ceremony, the program grew, reaching 25 students, but it still met once a week. In 2017, Beit Midrash Har’el received a matching grant from the Lindenbaum family, enabling the yeshiva to become a full-time program that met three times a week in the Kehilat Yedidya synagogue in Jerusalem’s Baka neighborhood.
Today, Har’el meets in the Ohel Nechama synagogue near Beit Hanasi, between the Talbiyeh and Old Katamon neighborhoods, where many Anglos live. While many students are native English speakers, the classes are in Hebrew. Each year, a different area of Jewish law is studied so that students can enter the program throughout the learning cycle.
“What moved me,” says Hefter, “is that the Torah has to be real, and to make it real, instead of writing about it and arguing about it, I just wanted to do it. Women’s smicha is just an instance of that. It’s not the thing itself. The thing itself is that there are things in the world that exist now, and the way people feel about things and the way they think about things now is very different than the way people thought about things.
“You can come into our beit midrash and can see that men and women are learning together, and the sky has not fallen. It looks normal.” He notes that the students choose their study partners; some men study with men, some women study with women, and some men and women study together.
Hefter says that students are admitted to the program based on an interview that he conducts to judge knowledge of the texts. Generally, most of the students have previously attended women’s seminaries (midrashot) or hesder yeshivot.
The students have varied backgrounds. One woman in the program is a psychiatric social worker. Another student is studying for a doctorate in “the idea of the self” in early Kabbalah. Next year, he says, a Chabad couple from Moscow who moved to Israel will be studying in the program.
“They are all outstanding people because you have to be a little bit different to come to us. So you have people who are willing to think independently.”
WHILE THE Beit Midrash Har’el rabbinic curriculum features study of the standard sections of Jewish law traditionally studied for ordination, it does include some courses that one might not find in a typical yeshiva, such as creative writing, comparative religion, spiritual counseling, and the study of Hassidism.
Hefter explains that creative writing is important because interpretation is an essential and critical part of life. “Creative writing makes you realize that you have to interpret yourself,” he says, “and people need to learn to use themselves as a resource.” For his comparative religion courses, he has brought in a pastor, a Tibetan monk, and a sheikh to speak to the students.
Reflecting whether women rabbis approach Jewish law differently than male rabbis, Hefter says, “I think that when men and women study the smicha material together, not only would the woman be different than a male rabbi, but the man who studied with a woman will also be different from someone who didn’t study with women.”
The study of the laws of niddah (family purity), says Hefter, is one example of greater understanding fostered by having both men and women students. He notes that one of the women in the class suggested that had women been among the rabbinic sages of old, they might have considered menstruation as more than an issue of ritual impurity. The woman, a medical professional, remarked, “I think that a blessing should be recited for getting your period because it shows that your body is working. It shows your body is working because, very often, people’s bodies don’t work.
“Women have miscarriages, and women have all sorts of disorders. When I get my period, it shows that my reproductive organs are working.” Says Hefter, “Where do you get an insight like that?”
AT THIS point in his life, Hefter enjoys what he does and feels fulfilled in his work. He is aware of the criticism he has received from other wings of Orthodoxy but says, “I didn’t have a choice, and it has to do with faith in the Torah. Because if the Torah can’t be in the world in a real way, then it has failed.
“I realize that there are different communities. I don’t think they have to have women rabbis in Mea She’arim. But if in a community where it is recognized that women should be treated equally, then it’s like saying, ‘Go to medical school, but we’re only going to call you a nurse.’
“The problem isn’t about women. The problem is, what does it say about you as a human being that you’re willing to do that to someone? It’s a much bigger issue. It’s not about women. It’s about the Torah in the world.
“When people want spiritual fulfillment, they shouldn’t go to India. They should want to come to Bnei Brak – but they don’t. They don’t come to Bnei Brak, and they don’t come to Efrat, either. The spiritual searchers are looking elsewhere, and that means we’re doing something wrong.
“I think we have to look at ourselves. It doesn’t mean that I have all the answers. I just want to present an approach, take this approach and use it, and see what you come up with. I think the Torah is going to change. It already changed, but when men and women study together, the whole thing changes.”
What would Hefter’s revered teacher Rabbi Lichtenstein think of his endeavor? “He probably wouldn’t have been happy,” he replies, “but Dr. Tova Lichtenstein [Rabbi Lichtenstein’s widow] told me that he would have respected my decision because I was trying to be honest. Originally, she said to me, ‘You’ve gone very far from Yeshivat Har Etzion.’ I said, ‘No. Everything I do is because of Yeshivat Har Etzion.’
“I have Rav Aharon’s voice in my head – not in terms of ‘do this or don’t do that.’ It’s that I have to be honest. That’s what I got from him, and in that sense he would be happy.”■