The Jerusalem Post reports on the increasing presence of female leaders in liberal streams of Judaism:
Jewish leadership is beginning to show a softer, more feminine face, with women flocking to the pulpit and much of the Jewish world becoming more comfortable with the notion of female religious leaders.
The recent ordination of Alyssa Stanton as the first black female rabbi [pictured above] was indicative of the growing number and diversity of female rabbis worldwide…
“In our American program we have 33 entering students, and 50 percent are women. In our Israeli program, we take much fewer students. Now, there are three men and two women, and we may accept another woman,” said Kelman.
Naama Kelman, the newly appointed dean of the Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem, is the first woman to be appointed to this position in Israel. She was also the first woman to be ordained in Israel. The number of women and men entering the reform seminaries in the United States is now equal, but in past years there have been slightly more female students, Kelman said.
The Reconstructionist Rabbinical College (RCC) noted that the numbers of rabbinical graduates in the Reconstructionist school are approximately equal: 170 men, 161 women. In recent entering classes, though, the number of women exceeds the number of men, approximately 2 to 1.
Leaving aside the issues in traditional Jewish law in regards to female rabbis, I am skeptical about whether the increasing presence of women in leadership roles in the Jewish world will be beneficial for the community as a whole.
First of all, more and more men becoming disillusioned with a Jewish community that is increasingly feminized and alien to them. As I wrote in this post on this article:
Men are disengaging from Jewish public life. It is a real phenomenon, affecting our rabbis, cantors, and educators; our teenage males. and the adult men of our community. While there are several complicated causes, one that cannot be denied is the fact that the temple culture in many locations is increasingly seen by many men as out of balance. By that, I mean it favors the needs and interests of women to such an extent that it can be perceived as ignoring men’s spiritual needs and interests… (emphasis added)
I personally observed this when I lived in Boston and attended a Reform synagogue there:
Although I only attended my Boston synagogue for two years, I can see, in retrospect, what the study meant. Every Sukkot, the synagogue’s group for twentysomethings and thirtysomethings would organize an event named “Salsa Under the Sukkah.” I was never interested in attending because, like most straight, white, young men, I have little desire to dance. I would guess that the only men who wanted to go were: gay, Latin, or badgered into attending by their wives or girlfriends. Men, in general, have no interest in dancing. But since it was largely organized by women, they instinctively decided to have an event that interested women. And I’m sure more guys were turned off. I would have loved to have seen an event like a softball or tennis league.
There were other issues as well. As a Reform synagogue, the congregation focused much of its time on liberal politics and social activism. These are two aspects that appeal mainly to women. As much as I support the right of gay people to marry — the law cannot discriminate on the basis of gender, just like it cannot discriminate on the basis of race, religion or ethnicity — I don’t want to deal with politics in my religious life. There is no religious duty to advocate for gay marriage; I would have preferred to learn Torah. I would bet that other men felt the same way. (Since men are typically more conservative than women, I presume that many generally opposed such actions altogether)…
I was most surprised by the female-centric orientation of the synagogue during the High Holy Days services on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur over the past two years. Two readers — usually teenagers — are brought up to chant a Torah portion twice during each holiday. Out of the eight people I heard chant the Torah in these two years, six or seven of the selected participants were girls. I would have expected it to be divided in half. I don’t know whether the increased presence of girls was intentional or whether only girls volunteered in the first place, but the implicit message in such a service — intentional or not — was that girls were favored over boys. Of course, this is another reason that men may have been turned off.
As this other article notes, liberal Judaism does indeed have “a boy problem.” Men and women are fundamentally different on so many levels — physical and emotional ones as well as regarding their general interests — that the organizational behaviors of most groups will always tend to favor one or the other. (For example, corporations are more “male” while non-profit organizations are more “female.” Think about it.) Liberal Judaism seems to have made a collective decision to focus more on women without realizing that doing so would hurt men.
It is a self-perpetuating cycle. The more that women become rabbis and lay leaders and subconsciously feminize Judaism, the more that men will vote with their feet and leave. When rabbinical schools and synagogues recruit students and lay leaders, they have little choice but to select women because few men are around. And the circle continues.
Perhaps more importantly, I worry that women who became rabbis will face situations like this:
“What do you want to do with your degree in religion?” [my date] asks.
“Become a rabbi,” I say.
If I like him, or think that I might, I’ll do whatever it takes not to tell him that.
“Oh,” he says, and goes quiet. He’s now picturing the rabbi at his home synagogue, comparing me to the bald guy with a gut who dresses up as a baseball player every Purim. “That’s intense,” he says. The R-bomb, it’s fail proof. It always shuts them up…
As I wrote earlier, the author is a victim of her own success: “Men do not want to date women who are significantly more intelligent, richer, or successful than them. Men have an evolutionary impulse to want to be the one who provides and protects. We like this role; it makes us happy.”
I do not have any fundamental or theological issues with women becoming rabbis, but just because they can does not mean that they should. At least not when so many men are leaving Judaism as a result.
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