Leaders of three national groups representing Orthodox synagogues, rabbis and women, jointly expressed regret at the recommendation last week by a commission of the Rabbinical Assembly that women be ordained as rabbis, as another radical break with the mainstream of historical Judaism. It is a specious gimmick rather than 032 genuine effort to bring women into the rabbinate, and it is a tacit admission that Conservativism is in fact, a declining movement.”
This statement was issued by Julius Berman, president of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America (UOJCA), Rabbi Bernard Rosensweig, president of the Rabbinical Council of America, and Deborah Turk, president of the Women’s Branch of the UOJCA.
The statement characterized the Conservative call for women rabbis as “widening its continuing breech with traditional Judaism, and further obliterating the distinction between the Reform and Conservative movements have just awakened to the role of women in the synagogue and Jewish society, the Orthodox community in America opened its first to school to provide women with an appropriate Jewish education over 40 years ago.”
Today, the statement continued, “there are Orthodox educational institutions for women throughout the country with thousands of students, including many schools on the college level, and seven college-level institutions in Israel serving American women. The experience of the Reform Movement, which has ordained women rabbis for several years, has not been successful.
The three Orthodox leaders said that the move to ordain women “is only the latest step in a long road which has seen the Conservative Movement in this country reduced from a large modernizing force to on empty shell. Although it boasts large membership roles, its temples are no longer centers of religious ferment, its youth is not committed to its religious ideology and its only seminary has not grown significantly in 30 years, while it drifts further away from its traditional roots.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
