Sara Hurwitz and Jewish feminism bugs me a bit: If she is all about keeping the tradition why go and screw with it? Any shmo can be a rabbi, does it really effect how you can give advice if you are considered a rabbi or adviser? You don’t see Rebetzin Yungreis complaining about not being able to give advice and direction to thousands of people because she isn’t a rabbi and just a lowly rebetzin, a very knowledgeable and super cool rebetzin at that.
As I stated in my previous post about the subject and Sara Hurwitz stated in her speech, there isn’t much halachic precedence to go against ordaining women rabbis, I do dislike the Rashi’s Daughters analogy that is the classic feminist response to upholding out Judaic tradition that has been passed down for thousands of years, if you’re going to change tradition, it should be slowly and not so drastically as Sara Hurwitz and Avi Weiss intend to do – think about it – yoetzet halacha hasn’t been around all that long and suddenly they want to be full fledged rabbis.
While I am on the topic, I was always curious about Jewish feminists, it kind of bothers me that many of them want to keep all of these mitzvos commanded to men, while they aren’t even keeping the mitzvos commanded of them. One would think that if a woman who kept the entire torah would want to go the extra mile and keep more than she were commanded to do – but something smells fishy when a woman who doesn’t keep kosher or taharas mishpacha wants to put on tefillin. Is it about equality or God?
You see I am for orthodox women rabbis from a kiruv perspective because I think it bodes well for orthodoxy in the minds of non-orthodox Jews. I think there are plenty of people now consdiring switching over to orthodoxy, all because of Sara Hurwitz, but at the same time if Sara Huwritz becomes a rabbi there is no telling what’s next. From here it’s a slippery slope, how can you have a full fledged rabbi that can’t be counted in the minyan, called to the torah or asked to be mesader kedushin – it’s only time until actual halacha is broken and that is why this situation is a big threat to orthodoxy as we know it.