{"id":1721,"date":"2018-08-15T08:55:48","date_gmt":"2018-08-15T12:55:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/?p=1721"},"modified":"2018-08-15T18:03:25","modified_gmt":"2018-08-15T22:03:25","slug":"rabbi-novak-was-right-regrarding-women-rabbis-twice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/2018\/08\/rabbi-novak-was-right-regrarding-women-rabbis-twice\/","title":{"rendered":"Rabbi Novak Was Right Regarding Women Rabbis, Twice"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rabbi Novak Was Right Regrading Women Rabbis, Twice<\/strong><\/p>\n

By Rabbi Alan J. Yuter<\/p>\n

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 \u201c\u2019Mahara\u2019t\u2019 [=mashgiha ruhanit] means \u2018rabbi.\u2019\u201d\u00a0 A very perceptive visionary and great listener, R. Weiss seemed concerned that UTJ rabbis tend to be hyper-halakhic<\/em> and oppose women rabbis based on UTJ\u2019s origins in opposition to the Jewish Theological Seminary\u2019s [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.<\/p>\n

Rabbi Novak reports at https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/videos\/rabbi-david-novak-explains-his-support-for-orthodox-smikhah-for-women\/<\/a> that he was called a hypocrite for opposing ordaining women when on the Conservative Right and advocating women\u2019s ordination when [a] on the Orthodox Left and [b] when his daughter was studying for Traditional ordination.<\/p>\n

Rabbi Novak\u2019s legal Natural Law hermeneutic is grounded in reason, where consequences, apologetics, and ethics inform legal decision making. I am a legal formalist, who asks \u201cis the given act forbidden, required, or by absence of prohibition or requirement, authorized, allowed, and permitted.\u201d 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 \u201cproper and good\u201d thing to do in historical context. My position was a mistake, and R. Novak\u2019s very proper and well-placed resistance to the JTS\u2019s 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\u2014and I looked hard\u2014ANY<\/u><\/strong> halakhic <\/em>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\u2019s new direction.<\/p>\n

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\u2014by his apodictic decree\u2014in order for women to function as rabbis.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 One cannot push an envelope, Jewish law, after that law has been through the shredder<\/p>\n

Rabbis Lieberman, Halivni, Faur, Zucker, Gershfeld, Dimitrovsky, Zlotnik, and Francus knew what they were doing in opposing the JTS\u2019s ordaining women to the rabbinate.\u00a0 Junior. i.e. untenured JTS faculty knew that a vote against the Chancellor is a veto of their tenure chances.\u00a0 R. Novak saw with his eyes in his head; I naively could not believe that the JTS would betray its heritage.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

In a modern Orthodox context, women\u2019s ordination need not signal a slippery slope. I identify with Open\/Modern Orthodoxy because it views and treats Halakhah<\/em> as law. That is precisely what the American UTJ teaches. Open Orthodoxy\u2019s women rabbis do not knowingly violate Jewish law.\u00a0 These women will permit what the legislated rabbinic law permits.\u00a0\u00a0 There is no area of Jewish law to which these women are not committed.\u00a0\u00a0 The fact that our biological ancestors, living in their culture horizon, restricted women\u2019s access to public ritual, does not oblige us.<\/p>\n

There is no statutory norm forbidding women\u2019s ordination. If the community is bound by Jewish law, it may be appropriate. This means that Yeshivat Maharat is kosher.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n\n

<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 \u201c\u2019Mahara\u2019t\u2019 [=mashgiha ruhanit] means \u2018rabbi.\u2019\u201d\u00a0 A very perceptive visionary Continue Reading »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":1722,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[85,82,78,76],"tags":[],"coauthors":[86],"class_list":["post-1721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-denominations","category-halakhah","category-modern-judaism","category-womens-forum"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1721"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1721\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1726,"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1721\/revisions\/1726"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1721"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}