Holland’s Orthodox rabbis and congregations are split over whether women should be allowed to be elected to congregational councils. Although, until recently, all Orthodox rabbis in the Netherlands ruled that women could not serve, Chief Rabbi Eliezer Berlinger recently permitted a woman to serve on the congregational council of the town of Bussum, about 25 kilometers east of Amsterdam, and another to serve on the council of Dordtrechi, near Rotterdam.
Berlinger’s rabbinical jurisdiction covers all of the Netherlands except Amsterdam, The Hague, Rotterdam and their suburbs. Rabbis Moshe Just and Hans Rodrigues Pereira of the Ashkenazi Congregation of Amsterdam, however, have ruled that no women can be candidates since halacha forbids it. The new quadrenniel elections for the Amsterdam congregational council are to be held in March. The two Amsterdam rabbis refer to a similar decision made in 1950, to rulings laid down by Orthodox Chief Rabbi Dr. Benjamin Ritter and by German Orthodox rabbis before World War II. They also refer to a similar stand taken by the Religious Council in Israel. The congregational councils of Holland’s Jewish congregations do not deal with religious matters, which are left to the rabbis, but with organizational matters.
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