Behind the Headlines Minyan Equality Raises Storm

The latest move by American Conservative Judaism to implement its stated religious philosophy of reinterpreting halacha to relate it to changing societal and personal needs has evoked an outpouring of criticism from rabbinical and lay spokesmen for Orthodox organizations.

By a majority vote the Conservative movements rabbinical Committee on Jewish Law and Standards voted to include women as equals with men in the minyan. Under the committee’s procedures, it was left to the individual Conservative rabbi to apply it in his congregation, Rabbi wolfe Kelman, executive vice-president of the Rabbinical Assembly, the association of Conservative rabbis, predicted the practice would become standard in Conservative congregations within the next two decades.

The basic point of the Orthodox criticism was that the change was a violation of halacha. Among the critics were Rabbi Louis Bernstein, president of the Rabbinical Council of America, Rabbi David Hollander, president of the Rabbinical Alliance, and Rabbi Moshe Sherer, executive president of Agudath Israel of America.

Rabbi Norman Lamm of the Jewish Center of New York, a professor of Jewish philosophy at Yeshiva University, expressed the Orthodox view, in a statement to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, that women are exempt from many requirements obligatory to man. He added that “voluntary assumption” by a woman of a non-obligatory responsibility “does not transform the act into one of halachic obligation” and a woman so doing therefore “cannot be counted as part of a minyan.”

TWO ISSUES GENERALLY IGNORED

In all the uproar, two relevant issues were generally ignored, One was whether Jewish women regarding themselves as bound by halacha generally accepted the halachic definition of their status or whether there was significant and informed dissent among such women within the framework of halacha. The other was whether there was any threat to the unity of the Jewish community, Kial Yisroel, arising from disputes within religious Jewry of such apparent ferocity.

There are Jewish women who accept the halacha as binding but contend it has been adapted to changing conditions in the past and can be adapted in the present to end what they consider their second class status. A number of such women, identifying themselves as both Orthodox and Conservative, formed an organization called Ezrat Nashim to press the rabbinate for such changes.

In March, 1972, several Ezrat Nashim members, speaking at a session of a Rabbinical Assembly convention, listed the changes in halacha they considered necessary, starting with acceptance as members of the minyan. Others included permission to function as cantors and rabbis in the synagogue and to be considered as bound to perform all commandments equally with men.

A young wife of an Orthodox rabbi, who is not a member of Ezrat Nashim but in sympathy with its goals, told the JTA she supported the Conservative ruling and hoped that Orthodox Judaism would eventually move in that direction. Mrs. Blu Greenberg, wife of Rabbi Yitzhak Greenberg, contended that women did have a secondary role and that there was “nothing inherent” in halacha mandating such a role.

Mrs. Greenberg, who teaches religious studies at the College of Mount Saint Vincent, suggested that one barrier to needed changes was that possibly a majority of Orthodox women accepted the arguments of male expounders of the tradition that women were in effect equal but separate. She declared that traditional Judaism would undergo a “tremendous enrichment” If women received “full equality” with men in Jewish Law.

FEARS OF SPLIT UNFOUNDED

Cooperative effort between the three wings of American religious Judaism has been in effect for years, particularly in such agencies as the Synagogue Council of America, the New York Board of Rabbis and similar local rabbinical boards throughout the United States.

The JTA asked Rabbi Kelman and a Reform rabbinical spokesman whether the denunciations from Orthodox spokesmen on the minyan ruling, particularly renewal of demands that the Rabbinical Council and the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America withdraw from the Synagogue Council of America–made again by the Agudath Israel–might have a damaging effect on existing patterns of Jewish religious cooperation.

Rabbi Joseph Glaser, executive vice-president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis (Reform), responded that the dispute, sparked by “the new militancy of the heretofore moderate and reasonable Rabbinical Council,” posed the threat of a “kulturkampf” in Jewish religious life and could jeopardize the religious community’s hard-won unity.

Rabbi Kelman did not share such fears. He said there had been two groups in American Orthodoxy for the past 20 years, the “militant separatists” and the “cooperators.” He said the latest Orthodox reaction represented a development which was neither new nor unpredictable and that it would make “absolutely no difference” in existing cooperative efforts. He asserted the Orthodox militants would remain militants and that the cooperators would continue to cooperate.

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There will be no Dally News Bulletin Sept. 28 because of Rosh Hashana.

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