Rabbanut Exams and Women: Historic Breakthrough?

The Supreme Court of Israel has ruled that women must be allowed to take the same rabbinic qualification exams, administered by the State-recognized and publicly funded Chief Rabbinate (the rabbanut), as men. This does not mean that the Rabbinate must ordain women but it opens other possibilities: https://www.timesofisrael.com/chief-rabbinate-must-open-rabbinical-tests-to-women-high-court-rules/

This announcement and the joyful reception of this ruling by some is a perfect example of the complexities of Jewish religious feminism altogether and Orthodox feminism, in particular.

Yes, the ruling breaks down a door of discrimination, at least on paper (we have yet to see the rabbanut’s reaction and what it will take to get the ruling enforced, if it is), and is historic for that. To those unaware that, for years, women have not just been taking the same rabbinic exams as men but also receiving Orthodox s’mikha, ordination, from a number of institutions in Israel and elsewhere, as well as privately, this can sound like a first-time break-through for women. It isn’t. Though one can hope that it may have other beneficial consequences, establishing a precedent that all State-supported rabbinic institutions and religious schools, or who knows, even political parties, can’t discriminate against women (as in, running for and serving in Knesset on haredi lists, which currently bar women), or discriminate in the salaries, benefits, and advancement opportunities women receive. That, indeed, would be historic. Many do not know that rabbis in this institution swear allegiance to the State of Israel, but not to its laws. This allows for discrimination against women, including extortion for divorce, that can’t be contested in Israeli courts.

So much for potentially beneficial implications of the ruling. There are plenty of weighty, problematic implications, as well.

Will women passing these rabbanut exams be given the same placement and positions men get, for instance, in the rabbanut’s lucrative and fiercely protected kashrut certification division?

Then there is the matter of the rabbanut as an institution. Established under the Ottomans and continued by the British Mandate to serve their respective interests with regard to Jews subject to their rule, it has absolutely no Jewish, no rabbinic, lineage or warrant. To cite traditional terminology, its existence exemplifies hukkat hagoy, alien practices that Jews are forbidden to emulate– never mind, in the administration of rabbinic law. Allegations of corruption and lawsuits against the rabbanut for abuse of power and heavy-handed tactics of intimidation to protect its financial interests have been lodged for years by journalistic and Orthodox rabbinic sources alike. A simple search for “corruption in the Chief Rabbinate” yields numerous published sources, citing the rabbanut’s kashrut certification, conversion practices, divorce courts, and nepotistic administration, in particular. It is no accomplishment to be admitted to its ranks, even by a side door into a side chamber. The rabbanut should be made irrelevant by using alternatives to its services, and abolished. Any legitimate functions can be handled without this monstrous, embedded bureaucracy and its ways of operating.

If this is about high-level learning leading to ordination for women, or just certifying to level of learning achieved, there are honest Orthodox institutions in Israel that have ordained women for years, including Beit Midrash Harel https://www.har-el.org, and Pardes. Others are mentioned in the Times of Israel report (link, above) about the court’s ruling. Some women do the learning and take the exams without wanting or receiving ordination, that is, do what this supposed breakthrough is supposed to accomplish.

The huge problem with all such ordinations, or in the rabbanut’s case, women having a professional say about halakhic matters under its auspices, is that having women adjudicate misogynistic, abusive halakha just as men have and do—the egalitarian solution–is no accomplishment but a travesty.

The halakhot of marriage and divorce are inherently, egregiously abusive to women. Kinyan and kiddushin—“acquisition” and “sanctification”—legal acts by which halakhic marriage is enacted unilaterally by the husband, with divorce similarly the husband’s unilateral choice and act, are the source of iggun, women’s marital captivity. Whether or not a given halakhic marriage eventuates in the woman being held in marriage against her will (an agunah), extorted, abused by the baal and by rabbinic courts, this manner of enacting marriage in itself is fundamentally degrading to women. It is  no accident that the term for “husband” in halakha is “baal,” meaning, “owner, master.” Do re-read birkat erusin, recited at start of the wedding ceremony and understand what is transpiring there, legally; the status change that blessing enacts. The woman’s sexuality and reproductivity are traded there, passed from the authority her father or other male “guardian” exercise over it (do adult men have “guardians” under halakha?), to her new baal, who “acquires” it. She stands there, silent, passive, as her body is transacted by men, the blessing’s repeated, “us.” Then, there is a huge upsurge in music and the mortifying, “mekudeshet! mekudeshet!” (sanctified), proclaimed after she reecives the ring, having been acquired for licit sex by her baal and forbidden to other men (not so, the baal to other women), sanctified sexually to her husband exclusively.

About systematic abuse of women in rabbanut divorce courts, listen to the podcasts of toenet rabbanit, rabbinic pleader, Rivka Lubitch and attorney Nitzan Caspi Shiloni, of the Center for Women’s Justice. Read Dr. Susan Weiss and Netty C. Gross-Horowitz’s, Marriage and Divorce in the Jewish State. If women don’t rule differently about all this, what is the point of their being authorized to have a say? Coopting women into adjudicating this system could absolve men of the charge of misogynistic abuse. Historic achievement?

I have a new book coming out in a few weeks, entitled, Jewish Marital Captivity: The Past, Present, and End of a Historic Abuse. As a Jewish social historian and an engaged, religious, feminist Jew, I discuss all this, its history and current realities, and document systemic abuse from the 7th century Middle East to today, across all Jewish communities, ethnicities, and halakhic custom. I also document assertive and often transgressive actions by pre-modern, wholly traditional Jewish women, living in traditional communities—there was nothing else– to avoid falling into marital captivity and to exit it when trapped. Their bold, decisive actions affected Jewish law and practice. They did not have official training or titles but they knew halakhic rules and practices and what it took to protect themselves in real life.

And no, halakhic prenups are no solution to halakhic marriage and divorce and marketing them as if there violates the Biblical prohibition of misleading the ignorant and vulnerable, lifnei iveret lo titen mikhshol. Prenups are contracts. Contracts are broken all the time, and were throughout Jewish history, very much including extensive prenuptial contracts that were standard in all premodern Jewish communities. To have even a chance of being enforced when violated, such contracts must be litigated, which litigation, or the mere threat of which, functions no differently than primary get extortion to pressure the woman, structurally disadvantaged in halakhic divorce, to accept a bad deal and pay ransom to exit the marriage.

So, I am definitely not celebrating this ruling. Presenting it as is a great achievement misleads about the rest of all this.

The goal of religious feminism, and all the other kinds, is not that women become honorary men, doing exactly as men do, speaking as men do, using male pronouns and verbs about ourselves in everyday language and male language about ourselves and about God in prayer, or getting educated and authorized to rule legally as men have in wholly androcentric, patriarchal systems, joining the system in treating women as Other.

Sorting all this out and building an alternative is far from simple but one thing is certain: egalitarianism is prerequisite only; necessary but not at all sufficient. We need feminism.

There are real, if far from simple or easy paths to better for women and for Jewish religious practice. Those paths begin and continue with the full and unadorned truth.