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| Lila Kagedan - first female rabbi of an Orthodox Shul |
It appears that the OU is getting some strong internal pressure 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.
Te 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, it the member Shuls that are bowing to pressure to violate hose rules. It would be like expelling a football team from the NFL that decided it doesn’t like one of the new roles instituted this year and insisted they be allowed to play based on the old rules. 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 newly defined rules is not worse than the NFL. You either play by the rules or you don’t get to play at all.
That there are members of the OU that insist on letting a Shul break the rule may be divisive, but it is the Shul doing it that is. To continue with the sports metaphor, if you want to play I the NFL you must follow the rules. If they want to start another league where those rules don’t apply let them. One might call that divisive to – and detrimental to the game. Maybe we should avoid the possibility of a new league forming and allow those teams that want it, to play by the old rules. If the NFL decides those rules are important to the game, they will have no choice but to expel that team that insists upon it. Who is being divisive? The NFL? …or the team that insist on breaking the 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.