Pope Francis has called for the Church to create a deeper
theology of women though he has ruled out women’s ordination. But how can Christianity and other religions carve out roles for women that do not cast them as second-class citizens?
Could Judaism point the way?
Where do women stand in world religions today?
From recent developments, pronouncements and events, a very complex picture emerges. Not least complex is the position of women within Judaism, one of the smallest, numerically, of world religions.
Until the nineteenth century, when the Reform movement in Judaism emerged in Germany, Orthodoxy prevailed and women, with the exception of a few historic figures, were confined to the home and, within the synagogue, to the ladies’ gallery or behind a mechitza or partition – often a curtain.
The rationale behind this separation, derived from the period of the Talmud and Mishnah, the oral commentary on the Torah, or Law, was that a woman and her body could distract men and lead to impure thoughts during prayer.
In the Hebrew Scriptures, there were more than a handful of prominent women, not least the four “matriarchs” Sarah, Rebecca, Leah and Rachel; the prophetess and sister of Moses and Aaron, Miriam; and Deborah, the judge and prophetess. The Moabite convert Ruth, the ancestor of King David, and Esther, the Jewish wife of Persian monarch Ahasuerus, also play significant roles in Jewish tradition.
With the various conquests and expulsions the Hebrew people were subject to, and the later extensive history of persecution, Jewish Orthodoxy became more stringent affecting, among other aspects, the role of women in worship.
One exceptional woman in Talmudic times was Bruriah. The daughter and wife of prominent rabbis, she was quoted as a “sage”. Later in history, two women served in the capacity of rabbi, without formal ordination. One was Asenath Barzani in the seventeenth century, who served as a rabbi among Kurdish Jews, and the second was Hannah Rachel Verbermacher who was rebbe in a Hasidic community in Eastern Europe in the nineteenth century.
Nonetheless, the likelihood of there being an Orthodox woman rabbi in our time has, until very recently, been something virtually impossible to contemplate. And Orthodoxy is still the largest faction in Israel, France and the United Kingdom. In the United States, however, where the Jewish population at close to six million is almost as large as that of Israel, Orthodoxy is a minority bloc, with the majority of practising American Jews belonging to Conservative or Reform communities.
It is probably because of American Orthodoxy’s minority status that a striking development has taken place within the last few years. This is the emergence of an Orthodox seminary in New York where women are prepared for ordination. The seminary is known as Yeshivat Maharat – yeshiva being the Hebrew word for seminary and maharat being the acronym of the Hebrew words meaning “teacher of Jewish law and spirituality”.
The dean of the seminary, Rabba Sara Hurwitz, was ordained by two Orthodox rabbis. However, the fact that she called herself “rabba” – the feminine version of “rabbi” – caused such outrage among many in the Orthodox community that, as a compromise, it was agreed that a graduate of the seminary would be known as “maharat”.
Three women graduated from the seminary last month and have already been hired by congregations in Montreal and Washington alongside serving male rabbis. However, a pioneering educator of Orthodox girls, who was in the audience at the graduation ceremony, commented that the title “maharat” is like graduating from medical school and not being allowed to call yourself a doctor.
While these women will, in some ways, be spiritual leaders of communities, they will continue to face several restrictions under Orthodox Jewish law. They will sit separately during services, they will not be permitted to read from the Torah and they will not be counted in a minyan – the quorum of 10 worshippers required for the recitation of certain prayers, including the Kaddish, which is often referred to as the mourner’s prayer. The concept of the minyan comes from the biblical account of Abraham’s attempt to save Sodom and Gomorrah from destruction. It was recounted that Abraham made a pact with the Divinity that if he could find 10 righteous men, the cities would not be destroyed. He was unable to find the necessary quorum.
Away from the US, there has been some, if limited, progress. In Israel, for the first time there were two women on the 11-member committee to oversee the elections for the chief rabbinate held at the end of July. And a group of Israeli women has gone to the law courts to try to force the Orthodox authorities to allow them to become supervisors of kashrut – the process to ensure that food products and restaurants are kosher.
In Britain, there have been many women rabbis in the Reform and Liberal movements, among them Baroness (Julia) Neuberger and Rabbi Laura Janner-Klausner, current head of the Movement for Reform Judaism. However, the Masorti, or conservative, movement in the UK has no women rabbis as yet.
Most significant, in London, in Israel and in Toronto, as well as in some American cities, is a recent development known as “Partnership minyan”, a term used by the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance to describe a prayer group that conforms to the strictures of Orthodox Jewish law while allowing some part of the services to be led by women as well as men.
There have also been some Orthodox women-only services, for example to read the scroll of Esther, which is recited every year at the festival of Purim, commemorating the deliverance of the Jewish people in Persia from the plot to destroy them instigated by Haman, the royal vizier to Esther’s husband, King Ahasuerus.
However, the “partnership minyan” is certainly an advance on a women-only prayer group. Not surprisingly, it has faced considerable criticism from many in the Orthodox community.
In some world religions there has been substantial recognition of the importance of women. The Dalai Lama, for example, has said he would be delighted if his successor were to be a woman and there is currently in Tibet a female Buddhist lama, Khandro Rinpoche who, at the age of two, was recognised by a senior Buddhist spiritual leader as the reincarnation of a female lama born in the nineteenth century.
Nearer to home, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby has also expressed his conviction that a woman will one day fill his role and has been outspoken in his support for women bishops. Despite the surprise defeat of the women bishops measure by the vote of lay members of the General Synod last year, the subject is back on the agenda and it is thought that final approval could be given to the new legislation by the end of 2015.
As for the Catholic Church, Pope Francis, in his impromptu press conference on the papal plane returning from Rio on 28 July, repeated the “definitive” teaching of John Paul II that the door is closed to women’s ordination. Nevertheless, he said the Church needs a more profound theology of women, pointing out that Mary is more important than the Apostles. He added: “It is not enough to have altar girls, women readers or women as the president of Caritas … Women in the Church are more important than bishops and priests.”
In Islam, men and women generally worship separately. Women are not usually allowed to lead mixed prayers. Again, the United States is the country where Muslim women have become more prominent in worship and there are several communities in which women have led mixed prayers. While it is unlikely that women will imminently be ordained as imams, there is an African American Islamic scholar, Amina Wadud, who has been called Imam Amina Wadud. Of course, in many Muslim countries, outside the religious sphere, a woman’s capacity for self-expression is greatly repressed.
In Hinduism, while many female deities are worshipped, a woman’s role is generally viewed somewhat traditionally as the key figure in facilitating the continuation of the family lineage. Indeed, the male-dominated aspect of the Hindu religion was brought home to me recently when I learned that the 10-year-old son of my Hindu neighbour, herself a consultant gynaecologist, was obliged to perform as the chief officiant at the cremation ceremony of his grandfather in London and later at the ceremony of scattering the ashes in the River Ganges, because he was the only direct male descendant.
If I can end on a personal note, I must say that there is one Jewish ritual that I am determined to carry out and that some Orthodox rabbis do not permit women to perform.
This is the recitation of the Kaddish. Composed for the most part in Aramaic, with the exception of the exhortation of peace with which it concludes, it is basically an exaltation of the name of the Almighty and contains nothing that refers to sorrow or death. Nevertheless, the fact that it is recited in conjunction with the death of a close relative is why it is often thought of as a mourner’s prayer.
Reciting Kaddish has been of great importance for me since the untimely death of my beloved brother 13 years ago. I recited the prayer at a Masorti synagogue virtually every Sabbath morning for 11 months. This gave me strength and when the time came to stop, I experienced a tremendous feeling of loss.
Since then on every yartzeit – the anniversary of his death – I recite the Kaddish for him again. It has become a very important day.