‘Dear Nomi,” began the email from the esteemed rabbi, “it was a great pleasure speaking with you yesterday and learning about your incredible work. Since then, I’ve done some research, which has unfortunately revealed that were I to agree to teach [a Torah] course under the auspices of JOFA Australia, some of my current writing and teaching projects would be directly and immediately harmed at considerable personal cost.”
Ah, I thought, another male Orthodox rabbi who has once again decided to be a gatekeeper of access to Torah study for women.
As the founder and inaugural president of the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance in Australia, I have been determined to change the status quo for Orthodox women in my community and open up new Torah learning opportunities.
The types of courses that I have brought to Australia include teaching women to become kallah (“bridal”) teachers and mikveh (“ritual bath”) ladies via the Eden Center, teaching women how to write an op-ed via the Op-Ed Project and courses on the intersection on mental health and Halacha run by Maaglei Nefesh.
Hardly controversial stuff
However, in the three years of running an Orthodox feminist alliance, I have experienced – on multiple occasions – the lengths some male rabbis will go to prevent women from having access to Torah knowledge.
Perhaps naively, I never anticipated that many rabbis and Torah leaders would feel reluctant to work with me.
You see, as one person told me somewhat unhelpfully: “If you just rebranded and removed the word feminism, more people could work with you.”
What is so controversial about Orthodox feminism? A lot of the opposition to it is irrational, but I think it boils down to a few key reasons.
Some Orthodox rabbis get nervous when Orthodox feminism encourages women to believe that they can have a greater role in our Orthodox tradition. Other rabbis become concerned that once women are given access to deep level Torah knowledge, they will demand solutions to longstanding Halachic issues, such as agunot (“women waiting for a Halachic divorce”) or access to religious leadership which may be outside the confines of what they deem “acceptable.” And yet another group of rabbis fears that if women are trained to understand the Talmud – which for generations was not taught to women – they will add new interpretations on areas of Jewish law which will radically alter the tradition.
Australia is so far from the global Jewish centers in New York and Jerusalem, that our communities sometimes get overlooked and forgotten. I was born in Australia, as were my parents and some of my grandparents. The women in my family never had access to Torah study like I did. The older I got, the more determined I became, that other women in my community should also have access to Torah study.
I COME from a long line of Orthodox rabbis. As I raise my own family with a deep love of Torah and tradition, it has become clear to me that Orthodox feminism is the natural vehicle to push for change in Australia. Orthodox feminism encourages women to have a greater role in all areas of Jewish life while maintaining a deep reverence and love for tradition.
In fact, in 2019, fed up with not having any local access to high-level Torah study in my hometown of Melbourne, Australia, I became the first Australian woman to enroll in the four-year ordination program at Yeshivat Maharat in New York.
Yeshivat Maharat is revolutionary. Founded in 2009 it became the first institution in the world to ordain Orthodox women as rabbis. It offers a robust study program that allows women to study Torah that their grandmothers’ would only have dreamed of.
The Orthodox yeshiva program changes the status quo for women by refusing to play gatekeeper on Torah learning for women who crave and deserve to study it at the highest levels of scholarship.
After enrolling at Maharat I started studying Torah with a group of brilliant and thoughtful women from around the world, who like me, cared deeply about the future of women in Orthodox Judaism.
As a young mother with four children and a busy career as a journalist and lawyer, I was not looking for a new profession per se, but I also knew that I didn’t want my children to grow up in Australia without Orthodox female leadership.
I was drawn to Maharat because I was driven by a desire to create change in my community and break up this rabbinic gatekeeping that exists in so many orthodox spheres, where women are deemed “not worthy enough” and declined opportunities to learn and study Torah. Women are refused opportunities by rabbis who are too scared to teach them because they feel insecure in sharing this knowledge with women.
So, I decided to change the status quo. I want little girls to grow up and be able to imagine themselves in leadership in ways I never saw. I want little girls to see Torah learning as their right and opportunity, despite what some Orthodox rabbis may think.
As much as certain rabbis would like to hold back the advancement of Australian women learning Torah, those days are over.
I think that the women in my community deserve the best opportunities.
WHEN I graduated from Yeshivat Maharat last week, I returned to my community looking forward to continuing to push for change. Hashem gave the Torah to all the Jewish people – women included – and women deserve to have their voices heard.
So, despite my disappointment at receiving the aforementioned rabbi’s email, I didn’t respond to him. I didn’t think I needed to.
Instead, I did what I do best in such circumstances: I picked myself up, squared my shoulders, and repeated a mantra that I live by: Women deserve to learn Torah and male gatekeepers do not get to decide whether women in Australia should have access to such courses or not.
And then, I found another teacher.
The writer is founder and inaugural president of the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance in Australia. Last week, she graduated from Yeshivat Maharat and became the first Australian woman to complete the four-year rabbinic ordination program.