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| Lila Kagedan - first female rabbi of an Orthodox Shul |
It appears that the OU is getting some strong internal pressure as well from its members to retain member Shuls that have violated the clearly stated policy against hiring female rabbis. And by ‘rabbis’ I mean anyone serving in that role regardless of the title they use.
The Forward reports on such pressure based on the fact that the OU is considering expulsion of member
Shuls that continue to violate those rules.
The argument is that it is divisive to expel member Shuls. That
nothing will be gained and much will be lost. I have to disagree.
As I indicated in a previous post on this subject, it isn’t
the OU that is being divisive. The member
Shuls that are bowing to social pressure to violate those rules are. The OU’s expulsion of Shuls hiring female rabbis would be
the same as the NFL expelling a football team that decided it didn’t like the new rules instituted this year and continued to play by the old ones. What kind of an organized
sport would it be if we allowed some teams to violate the rules? It doesn’t
work that way. Surely a religious organization whose leaders have delineated new rules is no worse than the NFL. You either play by the rules or you don’t get
to play at all.
That there are players and coaches of the NFL insisting on letting a
team stay despite violation of its rules because it’s otherwise divisive does not really matter. The NFL leaders based on the expert opinion of the day have determined that those rules are vital to the game. The players and coaches have no standing to dispute that.
You cannot have teams where some play with one set of rules and the other plays with another set of rules. That destroys the integrity of the game. That they may want to start another league where their own rules apply may not be a desired outcome. But this divisive outcome is overridden by the need to prevent serious injuries to its players. If those teams bolt and start a new league, who is being divisive? The NFL? …or the team that insist on its own rules?
You cannot have teams where some play with one set of rules and the other plays with another set of rules. That destroys the integrity of the game. That they may want to start another league where their own rules apply may not be a desired outcome. But this divisive outcome is overridden by the need to prevent serious injuries to its players. If those teams bolt and start a new league, who is being divisive? The NFL? …or the team that insist on its own rules?
I actually wrote about this a few weeks ago responding to
the Forward’s first article on it. And despite my belief that those Shuls asking
to be made exceptions are the ones at fault, it saddens me that all of this is
happening. It is divisive. There is no question about that. And that goes against one of my core issues: Achdus One of
my biggest problem within the Torah observant world is the lack of it. I accuse
both the right and the left of being guilty of that. The right is a whole other
issue worthy of a post of its own. All I will say about that is there is a lot
of misunderstanding by the certain elements of right about what modern Orthodoxy
really is as a Hashkafa. They look only at certain segments of MO and make
judgments about if from that. Which is unfair.
But in the case of the left, you cannot sacrifice base
principles on the alter of Achdus, no matter how important Achdus is. Those
within the OU that argue against expulsion seem to value Achdus over base principles.
Or do not consider what their own rabbinic leaders to have said about it to be
base principles. Which their leadership clearly said it is.
Why am I more upset at this than I am at the rejection from the
right? Because frankly there are rabbinic leaders that do understand what a
modern Orthodox Hashkafa is and do not base it on what they see anecdotally. They
are far more accepting of MO that those among them that have no clue about the Hashkafa.
True, they disagree with the Hashkafa. But it's one thing to
quibble about the value of secular studies as a part of a Yeshiva curriculum.
But it is a very different matter to allow the cultural ethic of egalitarianism to take
precedence over a 3000 year Mesorah. A Mesorah that in the past was rarely tampered
with - and only then on existential grounds (e.g. The Beis Yaakov
Movement). Furthermore only the most knowledgeable and God fearing Rabbonim (No
matter whether they are Charedi, Centrist, or Sephardi) have broad enough
shoulders to do so.
There is not a doubt in my mind that egalitarianism is the
source of new phenomenon of female rabbis. That has been made clear more than
once by Orthodox feminists. Most of those women may have noble goals in
desiring to be members of the cloth. But none of those motives add up to an existential
threat requiring us to abandon 1000s of years of tradition. And yet the desire
among some to assert the justness of the egalitarian cause, they felt moved to
join the Reform Movement and become a rabbi there! (Or at least one has: the former head of Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance (JOFA).
As I have said many times. This entire controversy saddens
me. It's divisive. We need a left wing. They cater to Modern liberal Jews with
little or no background who seek some spirituality in their lives. They would
never be comfortable in the Charedi world or even in the Centrist world.
Because they too have been influenced by the egalitarian zeitgeist. Without a
Left wing, many of them will choose Conservative Judaism as more compatible
with their values.
I think that this is the motivation behind some of the more
serious Rabbis on the left - like Asher Lopatin. In an effort to retain these
Jews they have too easily respond affirmatively to the egalitarian argument. But there is a time to just say no. And they
don’t know how to do that.
