Chief Rabbinate must allow women to take rabbinical tests, High Court rules

The Chief Rabbinate of Israel will be required to open its rabbinical tests to women, the High Court of Justice ruled on Monday.

The landmark ruling stops short of stating that women are entitled to be ordained as rabbis. However, it is being viewed as a significant step forward in advancing the status of female Torah scholars in Israel.

“This is an enormous achievement for the State of Israel in that the court recognizes women Torah scholars and their achievements,” Rabbi Seth Farber, founder of ITIM, a nongovernmental, Jerusalem-based advocacy group for reforming Israel’s religious bureaucracy, told JNS on Tuesday.

The organisation filed the petition seven years ago with six women, including Farber’s wife—Michelle Cohen Farber, a prominent Talmud scholar—in addition to the Rackman Centre for the Advancement of Women’s Status and the Kolech Religious Women Forum.

He noted that the High Court case intentionally differentiated between the right to take the rabbinical exam, which measures efficiency in Jewish law or halachah and gives economic and social standing, and ordination of women, which is anathema in the eyes of the ultra-orthodox.

Still, the decision was expected to raise the ire of the Chief Rabbinate, with an expected showdown in three months when the next rabbinical tests are offered.

A spokesperson for the Chief Rabbinate said that the ruling was being studied.

Last year, an internal power struggle involving politics, nepotism and the role of women delayed the selection of Israel’s chief rabbis.

 

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