On the Principles, while there were different lists, their differences are significantly less significant than we tend to think. And I disagree about the halachic system question– every list assumes a sense of what Torah is and how halachah works, and my argument is that this push did and does not follow proper halachic process. And that’s where the split comes.

I think my fundamental question at this point is do you think someone could, in good faith, look at the way women are treated in halacha and the torah and think that giving women the title of rabba is not incongruous with those values and, perhaps even suggested by those values?

As to the remaining points, I think your first and second paragraphs contradict. That is in the first you admit that the title change does not effectuate a role change. In the second you say titles, by themselves, don’t matter. If her role doesn’t change and changes in title cannot by themselves change the role of a person – once again I have to ask – what is the big deal? You say it is that now she has the same title as a man. Unless of course you actually believe that the title is of great significance itself, who cares that she now has the same title? Her role is the same as it was before the title change?

I will check your Mission of Orthodoxy post but I think you have to admit that there are many respected Orthodox thinkers, some of whom I believe have published in Tradition, that argue that there isn’t any single binding list of ikarim of faith (see rambam,Rav Yosef Albo, and Hasdai ben Abraham Crescas each articulating different lists.) In any event, no list requires accepting a halachik system in which there is a vision of womanhood that forbids rabbas. Your position, however, requires that all orthodox Jews accept a conception of torah womanhood that does not permit for rabbas. If no rabbas is not an ikar, then there is no split until those frontier pushers announce that they reject the broader idea that there is a halachic value system that needs to be consulted in the halachic process.

I am sorry you were troubled by my answers. I did not say there was a single version of Torah womanhood, I said that the people who are granting the title of “Rabbah” refuse to articulate their version of Jewish womanhood; I further said that since the conferring of this title was not going to change Sara Hurwitz’ functions at the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, and based on comments she has made in very public fora, the goal seems to be to give her the equal title to “rabbi” for a man. It was that to which I was objecting.

On your first concern about title, I disagree– seeking out a title for its own sake is itself an example of losing sight of a clear Jewish value. I would say the same for a man who insists on getting the title of rabbi and using it just to puff up his own image. The reason for any title is that it might open opportunities to contribute in ways that you could not in the absence of that title. The examples of the Rov and the Rebbe, zt”l, are odd, since they did not seek those titles, they had them thrust upon them– had the populace of HIR insisted on calling Sara Hurwitz “Rabba” despite her protests to the contrary, that would be a different conversation.

Most Torah authorities do very much include a list of tenets, and there is more agreement about them than you think (see my Mission of Orthodoxy posts, at blog.webyeshiva.org). One of those tenets is a version of halachic process, and part of halachic process, to my understanding, is building new ideas from the foundations set by the Torah. Not doing so is itself a straying from Orthodoxy, in my understanding. When you say “halachic bounds” my point is that if you try to build halachic arguments while ingnoring the ideals the Torah lays out, there is no way for your arguments to be halachic.

Thank you for taking the time to respond to my post. I find some of your answers troubling and will try to explain why. Before I reach any comments on your response, I’d like to point out that the very idea of a single unified Torah conception of womanhood is problematic. Many people have posted that the idea behind not obligating woman in time bound mitzvas is that woman need to be home to take care of the children. This of course is not the only reason given. Some, such as Rav Hirsch I believe, articulate a view that woman have a higher level of holiness and thus need fewer commandments to guard against the impure. Certainly these two different reasons would give rise to very different ideas of the Torah vision of womanhood.

1)The underlying assumption to your first point is that granting the title of rabba is equivalent to announcing that men and women are the same for all purposes. I just don’t see how you get there. Certainly Judaism sees the difference between men and women as containing much more than the fact that one can gain the title rabbi and the other cannot. That the granting of the title of rabba is so egregious as to violate the fundamental deorita conception of the difference between men and women has not been demonstrated. I suspect people of good intentions and with loyalty to halacha can come down on either side of the issue and that those that support the title of rabba do not, in doing so, concede that the torah sees no differences between men and women. However, if you take the position that someone who supports the rabba title does necessarily say that there is no difference between men and women please say so and explain why.

2) Your second claim is that the title is not of such importance. Further you claim, people who care about a title cast a cloud of suspicion over their motives. This claim suffers from two flaws. First it starts with the assumption that any woman who argues for the title of rabba immediately should be viewed with suspicion and creates a presumption of ill motives which, I am fairly certain, is not a Torah approach to viewing others. Second, it assumes that the title is not important. This is clearly flawed since we both know men are willing to spend significant resources to get the title of rabbi. Further the title clearly grants some amount of authority and reverence which is why Rav Soloveitchik ztl is known as the Rav and Rabbi Menachem Schneerson ztl is the Rebbe. Why cannot woman of good motive think that their best way to contribute to the spiritual community is if their voice has the additional backing of the title rabbi? Why must we question their motives?

3) This is the most problematic point and one that I find truly frightening. You concede that their might be a practical solution but argue that we cannot include people who don’t agree with your metahalchik views on woman or (to be more generous) don’t think that on the issue of woman in Judaism there is a discernible metahalacha. As far as I know most torah authorities do not propose a list of tenets, and those that do propose different sets (I know there has been much writing on what, if any, ikarim can be asserted.) Certainly no one proposes that a belief in a discernible “womanhood metahalcha” is a tenet of Judaism. So long as the compromise is within halchik bounds or has a halachic justification, even one you don’t agree with, I fail to see the problem. Idea tests are not generally a part of orthodoxy and I certainly don’t see why we would set one up around this issue.

I think I overstated my comfort with the title change; I meant that “a” title wouldn’t bother me, but one calculated to give women the exact same role as men bothers me alot. So, e.g., Maharat itself isn’t as much of a problem as the fact that as soon as she got it, Sara Hurwitz was telling anyone who would listen that that meant she was a rabbi. That move, from advancing women’s spiritual opportunities to giving women the same exact rights and roles as men, is identifiable non-Orthodox and must, to my mind, be fought with all possible strength.

I think there are different kinds of women out there– the women who want to advance themselves and their relationship with God would not, I think, get caught up in titles so much as in whether they have the opening to give and grow as would best benefit them and the Jewish community. The women to whom a title is sooooo important raise my suspicions about the purity of their motives. I note here, by the way, that Orthodox Judaism is suspicious of *all* titles, for men as well as women, and the reasons to insist on a title, or on honor, are *all* seen as a means to an end, effectively advancing the cause of God and Torah. I once asked a rabbi for advice on how to react to someone who mistreated me, and was told that if it was in private, I should ignore it, but in public, (I was serving in a communal role at the time) I had to protect the respect given to that office. So that if people get too insistent on titles, I have worries about that.

My point was to show that there are significant limits to the “halachically authentic” changes we can make to gender roles, and that dealing with those who refuse to recognize those limits is not a possibility. It would be– in an exaggerated version– like trying to work out an accommodation with those who deny the Divinity of the Torah. Yeah, we might find a middle ground, but we would have thrown out our basic assumptions in doing so. My piece was aimed at showing that Torah tells us of an irreducible truth about gender differences; those who deny that truth are different than me in more than their specific views, they are so different from me, we almost cannot have a conversation.

Social norms have a role to play in some areas of halacha, but in the unchangeable *de-oraita* laws, much less so. When the Torah says men must be this and women must be this (e.g., not obligated to be part of the public community, with all of those ramifications), that is a universal statement, not a social norms statement, and we have to construct our social norms according to it. And, as a last point on this, not all social norms are good, even as we rush to adopt them. Too many Orthodox Jews are willing to ignore the deep problems in Western culture, particularly around gender issues, and just say that those are the norms we should adopt. I believe the Torah tells us it ain’t so.

Thank you for your enlightening comments. I know this is a limited space but in reading your comments some interesting points seem to emerge.

First, you admit that the title change does not bother you as much as the concern that it evinces a view of halacha that you do not consider legitimate. However, at the same time you critique the “frontier pushers” for failing to define their halachic conception. Why are we threatening to tear the modern orthodox community apart because of a decision that isn’t of much concern, per se, on the suspicion it evinces a view of halacha that non-frontier pushers hypothetically wouldn’t agree with?

Second, given that the title change isn’t much of a concern, per se do you see how some woman might feel put off and even marginalized that it is the issue of a title change that is admittedly not a concern per se, that is causing such tensions?

Thirdly, even if the frontier pushers did not adhere to a halachicly acceptable view of womanhood on the basis of modern conception of gender roles and society is that a basis for rejecting them outright. What if halachikly authentic changes in the gender structure of the orthodox community can be made that alleviate their concerns? Why create a divide where one need not exist?

Lastly, and I have no training in halacha so please correct me if I am wrong, but I cannot see why there isn’t a role for social norms and understanding in this arena. Certainly you could claim that the halacha gives us an eternal criteria or conception of what womanhood is but that the conception is not static. I think it is useful to think of the eternal torah concept as a sphere on a spectrum of social norms. The sphere tells us the limits and dimensions of womanhood – it is a locus of general principles. However where that sphere lies on the spectrum of social norms is a choice we have to make taking both halachik and societal norms into consideration. In this model the eternal rules that allow us to construct a halachik view of womanhood remains unchanged even if woman’s role in the community does not.

The major problem with your analysis is that it is by necessity built upon impugning the motives of others. The “frontier pushers” as you describe them, may be doing things based upon impure motives, ergo we cannot take the chance to entertain the specific facts and logic of their positions. This approach is a very very slippery slope. Besides the simple fact that an individual can be totally wrong on one issue but totally right on others it seems to me that basing a view on your own perception of what “God would have wanted” is inherently subjective and weakens your argument beyond measure. Judging properly means judging the black letter facts at hand without automatically questioning the motivation of one of the parties.

Sins of motive certainly do exist, but it seems to me to be beyond human capacity for one to truly know the motive of another (its pretty hard to even know ones own motive). For me, this area is rightly the exclusive purview of God. We are behaving improperly if we preemptive believe evil about others. It is the beating heart of Hilchot Deot to love and preemptively believe good about our fellow Jew.

In my view the proper view is to avoid sociology as grounds for strengthening or weakening Halacha. If there is not black letter Halacha on the subject (which it seems to me there is not), we should neither erect new boundary’s nor limit experimentation within our communities.

Your goal is girded by several assumptions, which I am not going to delve into but rather just point out:

A) One can derive normative societal and gender values out of halakha or specific halakhot.
B) There lies at the core of this value strata an unchanging, unyielding “-hood.”
C) You, or perhaps others, have the wherewithal to tease out of specific halakhot this grandiose, eternal core of “-hood” that will lie in direct conflict with recent advancements for women. (Is this only limited to the rabbinic sphere? What about Knesset members? Israeli judges? etc, etc.)

I wish I had the personal time to go into depth on each of those points but I do look forward to reading your exploration on the WebYeshiva blog.

Kol Tuv,

Ben Greenberg