Last week, the High Court of Justice gave the Chief Rabbinate 90 days to find a solution to allow women to take exams in Jewish law and receive state rabbinic accreditation.
The ruling came in response to a petition by three NGOs, which argued that women are discriminated against by the state since they cannot obtain beneficial qualifications that men can.
As Jeremy Sharon explained in Friday’s Jerusalem Post, men who pass Chief Rabbinate exams can use these qualifications when applying for other jobs in government agencies, municipal authorities and other statutory bodies, and also receive salary benefits for them.
The three organizations, Itim, the Rackman Center for the Advancement of Women, and Koleich, together with several women seeking to obtain such qualifications, argued in their petition that the refusal of the Chief Rabbinate to allow women to sit for these exams was discriminatory and illegal.
They are right. While mainstream Orthodox Judaism does not yet recognize women as rabbis – that is slowly changing – there is no reason that women cannot take the tests that are otherwise given to men studying to become rabbis. Because of institutions like the Matan Women’s Institute for Torah Studies, Midreshet Lindebaum, Migdal Oz and more, there are women scholars today who are no less knowledgeable and experts in Jewish law and texts than their male counterparts.
Unfortunately, the Chief Rabbinate is still stuck in an anachronistic time capsule in which it believes that it can continue to control religion and strangle any attempt to create gender equality or advancement in Jewish life. Under the leadership of Chief Rabbis Yitzhak Yosef and David Lau, the rabbinate refuses to give such qualifications to women since it believes such a practice resembles non-Orthodox practice, even though the women who are parties to the petition are Orthodox.
This is not new. Last month, Yosef launched a ferocious attack against women who study Jewish law, even within Orthodox institutions.
“How can they be examined on all of ‘Issur V’heter’ (laws pertaining to kashrut)?” Yosef exclaimed. “Do they know the laws of forbidden mixtures of foods?” he wondered. “How could they be examined on all of [the laws of] Shabbat?” he asked at the time.
One proposed solution was to allow a separate government agency or ministry to administer the exams. But that was also deemed problematic, since some state-mandated body will ultimately have to review such tests – and the only one competent to do that is the Chief Rabbinate.
It is time for the government to intervene. Judaism is meant to be accessible to all of the Jews who live inside and outside the State of Israel. The way they practice, what they decide to learn and how they decide to conduct their religious observance is not up to a group of rabbis.
The problem is that due to politics, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Alternate Prime Minister Benny Gantz prefer to punt on these issues time after time. The construction of an egalitarian prayer plaza at the Western Wall – or at the very least the renovation of the existing platform – keeps getting pushed off due to haredi (ultra-Orthodox) objections. Since neither politician wants to rock the coalition, nothing seems capable of moving.
The problem is that Jewish life is progressing; it is changing around the world and in Israel. People are looking for ways to connect – to learn more about their religion, history, heritage and culture. But instead of being brought in, they are turned away. Instead of getting a chance to see the positive, all they see every time they look, are politicians who pose as rabbis and the constant politicization of religion.
Netanyahu has taken credit over the years for breaking up monopolies and lowering the price gouging that used to take place in Israel by creating competition.
That needs to happen also when it comes to religious life. Unless they feel that there is competition, rabbis like Yosef and Lau will never have a reason to adapt or change. They will stick to their ways of presenting a dark side of Judaism that negates people who are different instead of embracing them. That is a stain on the chief rabbinate – and on the State of Israel.