by Rabbi Alan J Yuter
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here are that of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of the Union for Traditional Judaism, unless otherwise indicated.
Rabbi Novak Was Right Regrading Women Rabbis, Twice
By Rabbi Alan J. Yuter
On the morning of June 8, 2009, when at night I was to present the Rabbi Saul Lieberman lecture for the UTJ, I had breakfast with Rabbi Avi Weiss. He told me that “’Mahara’t’ [=mashgiha ruhanit] means ‘rabbi.’” A very perceptive visionary and great listener, R. Weiss seemed concerned that UTJ rabbis tend to be hyper-halakhic and oppose women rabbis based on UTJ’s origins in opposition to the Jewish Theological Seminary’s [JTS] decision to ordain female rabbis. I told him that I originally voted for ordaining women to the Conservative rabbinate. Rabbis Novak, Gershfeld, Kimmelman, and Francus, my first year Talmud teacher at the JTS, were very angry with me.
Rabbi Novak reports at https://utj.org/viewpoints/videos/rabbi-david-novak-explains-his-support-for-orthodox-smikhah-for-women/ that he was called a hypocrite for opposing ordaining women when on the Conservative Right and advocating women’s ordination when [a] on the Orthodox Left and [b] when his daughter was studying for Traditional ordination.
Rabbi Novak’s legal Natural Law hermeneutic is grounded in reason, where consequences, apologetics, and ethics inform legal decision making. I am a legal formalist, who asks “is the given act forbidden, required, or by absence of prohibition or requirement, authorized, allowed, and permitted.” At that moment in my biography, I did not distinguish between an act that was permitted but inopportune, bad policy, and situationally unwise. Just because an act is permitted to be done does not make the act the “proper and good” thing to do in historical context. My position was a mistake, and R. Novak’s very proper and well-placed resistance to the JTS’s decision, was retrospectively appropriate. My error was my misplaced belief that Conservative Judaism and its professional virtuosi class of rabbis believed that God authored a Torah compliance to which is mandatory. I naively believed that the Conservative rabbinic elite believed what they proclaimed. Since I could not find any—and I looked hard—ANY halakhic impediment to ordaining women on formal grounds, a position which has not changed because the Torah did not change, and wrongly assuming that my JTS heroes had integrity, I publicly supported JTS’s new direction.
Then Chancellor Gerson D. Cohen sent a letter to the Rabbinical Assembly notifying the membership that now that women will be rabbis, Jewish law needed to be changed—by his apodictic decree—in order for women to function as rabbis. The Rabbinical Assembly was asked to vote on the permissibility of granting women rabbinic ordination, not on counting women in minyan or women serving as witnesses and judges for marriage, divorce, and conversion. R. Novak saw this on the horizon, I did not. One cannot push an envelope, Jewish law, after that law has been through the shredder
Rabbis Lieberman, Halivni, Faur, Zucker, Gershfeld, Dimitrovsky, Zlotnik, and Francus knew what they were doing in opposing the JTS’s ordaining women to the rabbinate. Junior. i.e. untenured JTS faculty knew that a vote against the Chancellor is a veto of their tenure chances. R. Novak saw with his eyes in his head; I naively could not believe that the JTS would betray its heritage. To this day, I have come to appreciate the Orthodox faculty of the Conservative Seminary, because they taught those prepared to listen how to practice Torah as well as how to read, parse, and apply Torah.
In a modern Orthodox context, women’s ordination need not signal a slippery slope. I identify with Open/Modern Orthodoxy because it views and treats Halakhah as law. That is precisely what the American UTJ teaches. Open Orthodoxy’s women rabbis do not knowingly violate Jewish law. These women will permit what the legislated rabbinic law permits. There is no area of Jewish law to which these women are not committed. The fact that our biological ancestors, living in their culture horizon, restricted women’s access to public ritual, does not oblige us.
There is no statutory norm forbidding women’s ordination. If the community is bound by Jewish law, it may be appropriate. This means that Yeshivat Maharat is kosher. When the JTS decided to ordain women rabbis, the goal was not the development of Jewish law, but its nullification. R. Novak saw this and, at the time, I did not.
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Educated and first ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Rabbi Alan J. Yuter earned additional ordinations from Yeshiva University, supervised by Rav Moshe D. Tendler, and the Israeli Chief Rav Mordecai Eliahu. He further received Yadin Yadin from Rav David Weiss Halivni and earned a PhD in modern Hebrew Literature from New York University.
A founding member of the UTJ, Rabbi Yuter served as a faculty member at the UTJ’s rabbinical school and has held multiple pulpits, including extended stints in Springfield, NJ, and Baltimore, MD.
Rabbi Yuter is a prolific writer on ritual and philosophical issues, underpinnings of halakha, Biblical criticism, and much more. His essays can be found on UTJ’s Viewpoints . He is also a frequent contributor for The Institute of Jewish Ideas and Ideals.
In addition to his activities with the UTJ, Rabbi Yuter teaches at Torat Reva in Jerusalem and is associated with the Center for Jewish-Christian Understanding, affiliated with Ohr Torah Stone in Efrat.
Rabbi Yuter and his wife Linda reside in Israel.