British Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis Slams Orthodox Shuls for Letting Women Lead Services
Image by getty images
British Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis called on Orthodox synagogues to ban partnership minyan services, where women can lead services and read from the Torah.
Mirvis said in a message sent to rabbinic leaders Wednesday that the services were “not something that can take place within our synagogues,” the Jewish Chronicle reported.
“I know that you are working with our communities to find ways, within the boundaries of halacha, to make prayer, learning, leadership and involvement more meaningful for men and women alike, and I encourage this wholeheartedly,” Mirvis wrote. “Some of you, together with members of our communities, have approached me for direction with respect to holding services which take an approach different from our traditional understanding of roles in communal prayer, particularly where women would lead a service including a minyan of men, read from the Torah or receive aliyot.
Britain’s umbrella body of Orthodox communities, The United Synagogue, has previously expressed its concern over the phenomenon of partnership minyans.
Last month, The United Synagogue condemned the Golders Green United Synagogue for allowing women to handle the Torah on Shabbat and holidays. In that synagogue, the Torah is taken out of the ark by a man and handed to a woman, who takes it around the women’s section before returning it to the men.
Mirvis recently supported the idea of women becoming trustees of the United Synagogue and lay leaders of synagogues, according to the Chronicle.
Next week, Mirvis will become the first sitting chief rabbi of Britain to attend the Limmud conference, which features lectures, workshops and debates on Jewish issues led by people from all walks of Jewish life. Haredi Orthodox rabbis in Britain in a letter in October condemned anyone who attended Limmud for blurring “the distinction between authentic Judaism and pseudo-Judaism” and said attendance would “bring about tragic consequences for Anglo Jewry. ”
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
