Cooking for Shabbat dinner, Michael and his daughter Ruth sound like any other father and daughter fortunate enough to spend time in the kitchen together. The conversation was punctuated with the gentle clinking of pots and pans, and Ruth’s occasional kind reminders not to let the salmon burn. But their casual and frank demeanor masks…
The first graduate of Yeshivat Maharat to take the title “rabbi” said she has been hired by an unnamed American Orthodox synagogue. Lila Kagedan, who was ordained this summer by the seminary created by Open Orthodox Rabbi Avi Weiss to train Orthodox female clergy, told the London-based Jewish Chronicle this week that she was recruited…
Ironically, Friday’s announcement by the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA) is an acknowledgement of the reality and impact of Orthodox women clergy. We are facts on the ground. I am the Rabba the RCA is decrying. I received ordination from Yeshivat Maharat in June this year and fully consider myself a member of the clergy….
The past two weeks have been historic for Jewish women. Orthodox women in both and New York were ordained as clergy – although with a variety of titles from Maharat to Rabba to Rabbi, but effectively all as rabbis. While Yeshivat Maharat is now the veteran institution with five years of experience at this, Yeshivat…
(JTA) — There was the convert who was barred from a synagogue on Yom Kippur, the Jamaican convert whose boyfriend’s rabbi offered him a coveted synagogue honor if only he’d dump her, the grandmother who told her granddaughter she’d be going to hell because she became a Jew. The road to conversion can be long…
The Rabbinical Council of America has formed a committee to review its conversion process in the wake of the arrest on voyeurism charges of one of its leading conversion rabbis. The RCA announced Wednesday the men and women appointed to a committee to review its current Geirus Protocol and Standards conversion process and suggest safeguards…
In the wake of voyeurism allegations against a prominent Orthodox rabbi, the head of an Orthodox yeshiva for women is arguing that male rabbis needn’t be present for a female convert’s ritual immersion. Rabbi Jeffrey Fox, the Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivat Maharat in New York, is preparing a teshuva, or Jewish legal opinion, arguing that…
Illustration by Lily Padula A respected rabbi installing cameras in the preparation room of the mikveh in the building next door to his synagogue? The sensationalistic story of alleged voyeur Rabbi Barry Freundel seems tailor-made to go viral in our internet age. So what can be done to counteract the negative publicity this gives to…
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