Chief Rabbi is correct
VChief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis’s record of leadership, integrity, and commitment to all segments of the Jewish community are well-documented and do not need our endorsement. The Chief Rabbi’s judgment and actions regarding the ordination of women reflect the consensus of mainstream Orthodox Judaism globally.
We, like Chief Rabbi Mirvis, admire, respect, and encourage the many women who seek to serve our community. Religiously engaged and educated women have much to offer us all — men, women, and children — and we are stronger and better as an orthodox community when we benefit from their leadership, teaching, and inspiration. We, like the Chief Rabbi, advocate for the creation, expansion, and support of leadership, pastoral, and educational roles for them in ways that are consistent with traditional Jewish law.
Rabbi Binyamin Blau President
Rabbinical Council of America Rabbi Mark Dratch
Executive Vice President Rabbinical Council of America
VMay I congratulate Chief Rabbi Mirvis on taking a principled stand against the current campaign to introduce to LSJS staff who adhere to nonOrthodox distortions of Judaism. In this he is following in the footsteps of his predecessor, Chief Rabbi Brodie, who vetoed the appointment of the late Louis Jacobs despite the vitriolic attacks on him from “progressive” members of the community.
Though Yeshivat Maharat likes to describe itself as Orthodox, it is the flagship seminary of the Open Orthodox movement. Whether the latter is really a form of Orthodoxy is open to doubt, since it seems to adopt fashionable causes such as feminism even where they contradict traditional Orthodox belief and practice.
In reality Open Orthodoxy appears more akin to the Conservative movement, as it was some 100 years ago, when its difference from Orthodoxy was not so clear.
Pushing a feminist agenda has been part of the propaganda of the Masorti, its UK branch, from its inception.
The current agitation regarding Dr Taylor-Guthartz has many similarities to the “Jacobs affair”. Even that the current minister of the Hampstead United synagogue, Dr Michael Harris, has come out in support of her, echoes the “tradition” of his predecessor, Dr Isaac Levy, some 55 years ago.
Martin D. Stern