Tiptoeing towards a more liberal outlook
CHIEF RABBI Ephraim Mirvis’s publication of a guide for Jewish schools on LGBT+ pupils was the most significant document of his five years in office. Released on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, it was hailed as a first of its kind for Orthodox education anywhere in the world.
The Chief Rabbi was not rewriting halachah or giving his blessing to same-sex relationships. His was a message of inclusion, focusing on the duty of care schools owed to LGBT+ pupils and showing this duty flowed from Torah values. Producing his guide in association with KeshetUK, the LGBT+ Jewish group, was brave — given the uproar that erupted across Orthodoxy last year over Sephardi head Rabbi Joseph Dweck’s lecture on gay love. Not all in the Orthodox world were enamoured of the Chief Rabbi’s initiative, but criticism of it was muted.
Earlier in the year, Rabba Dina Brawer made history as the first woman from the UK to be awarded Orthodox semichah when she completed her rabbinic studies at Yeshivat Maharat. The Orthodox establishment here, as in the USA, does not yet recognise such qualifications but Rabba Brawer has since settled in the States. However, an American rabba is due to arrive in the UK as scholar-inresidence on behalf of the the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance.
The Chief Rabbi, meanwhile, confronted with the demands for a greater role for women, staged the inaugural Neshama women’s Torah festival and celebrated the first graduates of his Ma’ayan course for women’s educators. One of the most venerable institutions, the London School of Jewish Studies, formerly Jews’ College, appointed its first female chief executive, Joanne Greenaway.
Across the seas, the American Conservative movement bowed to social reality and allowed its rabbis to attend — though not officiate at — interfaith weddings.
Twenty-five years after his version of Genesis appeared, Californianbased scholar Robert Alter published his complete English translation of the Hebrew Bible earlier this month.
Large tracts of their sacred texts remain unfamiliar to many of the People of the Book, but this lucid rendition, widely acclaimed for its sensitivity to the original Hebrew should make the Tanach an open book once more.
Alter’s bible makes the Tanach an open book