Orthodox women rabbis
Your correspondent Mr Abbot Katz (Letters January 23) asks Rabbi Miriam Lorie – albeit without giving her the courtesy of her title – about aliyot for women. As a student and admirer of Rabbi Lorie, might I be permitted a reply?
The Shulchan Arukh, the normative code of Jewish law since the 16th century, rules that all may be included in the seven aliyot on Shabbat, including a woman and a child. It makes the reservation that a woman’s public Torah reading would infringe the dignity of the community (OH 282:3).
When the Shulchan Arukh was composed, public Torah reading was carried out by a designated individual – the ba’al koreh – so a woman receiving an aliyah, like a man in our synagogues today, would never have needed to read from the Torah. Rabbi Moses Isserlis, whose additions made the Shulchan Arukh acceptable to Ashkenazi communities, notes that not all of the seven aliyot on Shabbat may be given to women and children: at least one should be reserved for an adult man, even if no Cohen or Levi is present.
If Mr Katz searched for my podcast, Torah Reading by Women, on any of the usual platforms, he could review these sources himself. Women who are members of Orthodox synagogues, if they are marking the anniversary of a parent, the birth of a child, or celebrating their child’s bar or batmitzvah, should ask their rabbis, “If a man would be honoured with an aliyah on this occasion, why not a woman?”
Benedict Roth
Chair, Kol Rina Partnership Minyan
Rabbi Guttenberg (There is no halachic room for Orthodox communities to have a woman rabbi; January 16) is correct that the claim that “Rabbinic authority emerges from a halachic system with defined parameters”. However, rabbinic authority depends on judicial authority, which ended with the Court of Ravina and Rav Ashe, as stated explicitly in the Talmudh (BT Bava Mesiya 86a). Legal semichah ceased after the dissolution of the National Court and, an attempt in the16th century notwithstanding, it is unclear even to Maimonides how to restart it (MT Sanhedrin 4.1). The modern title of “rabbi” and the semichah ceremony by which it is conferred is consequently a convention rather than a halachic reality; if Maimonides did not believe that he himself had semichah, then the Orthodox claim of “participation in a continuous chain of religious authority” is somewhat of a legal fudge, and Rabbi Guttentag surely knows this.
He himself is engaging in precisely what he accuses the proponents of women rabbis of doing: redefining rabbinic titles in an attempt to replace it while retaining its name.
Judicial authority and rabbinic authority are not the same thing, and a public affairs soundbite is not halachah.
Daniel Jonas,
N3
Lessons on Palestine
Regardless of who specifically wrote the Palestine lesson plan Bristol NEU members prepared, (NEU teachers’ “appalling” lesson plan days after October 7 attack, January 23), it can be inverted.
Was Israel entitled to fight the raiders Hamas sent into Nir Oz, Beeri and other places? Are the 30,000 rockets fired at Sedrot, Ofakim and other towns “terrorism”?
Who opened the fighting on October 7, 2023? What happened to the Bundists after the Bolsheviks came to power? Why did the actual two-state situation in 1949-1967 NOT work? Why did wars break out in 1956 and 1967?
Is the “Hamas view that armed conflict is the best way to solve the issues” an acceptable position? If Arabs have the right of self determination in a state in Palestine, why not Israel?
Do the settler colonialists of the Americas, Australia and Turkey have rights to a state ?
Frank Adam
Prestwich
To get more from opinion, click here to sign up for our free Editor's Picks newsletter.