Can Israeli women challenge Chief Rabbinate?

The Beit Hillel organization is considered the liberal standard-bearer of religious Zionism. Its rabbinical leaders have handed down groundbreaking rulings on many matters, including the issue of women as spiritual leaders. It is therefore only natural that the organization has launched a platform that provides answers by women experts on issues of religious law and morality. The initiative has the reserved support of religious Zionism’s mainstream rabbis, but conservative Zionist Judaism, the country’s Chief Rabbinate and the ultra-Orthodox community oppose it.

Question-and-answer (Q&A) sessions are a familiar framework in Judaism, existing for almost two millennia (Mishna and Talmud scholars often used this format). In our days, it has developed greatly with the advent of the internet, enabling people to direct questions to rabbis and adjudicators on religious issues, Jewish law, morality and dilemmas of daily life. One such popular platform on the Kipa website is called “Ask the Rabbi,” and there are others as well. Women, however, are absent from them all.

In recent decades, Torah study by women has grown increasingly acceptable, with many serving as teachers, community leaders and spiritual guides. However, the learned women cannot be officially ordained as rabbis because the Chief Rabbinate has a monopoly on ordaining rabbis in Israel and it refuses to let women take the required exams.

Absent the Rabbinate’s approval, many institutions of religious learning and progressive Orthodox rabbis have begun bestowing the title “rabbanit” — the female form of the Hebrew word for rabbi — on dozens of women who have completed their studies and passed exams.