Passionate Centrism by Fine David J.;

Author:Fine, David J.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780838100882
Publisher: United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism

A New Proposal

The other “school” of approach to Jewish law is divided between those who would permit women to count in the minyan, those who forbid, and those who are ambivalent. The author of this paper, wishing to permit women to count in the minyan, falls into this other school. He has expressed reservations with the positions of Rabbis Sigal and Blumenthal, Rabbi Rabinowitz and Professor Hauptman and Rabbis Schorsch and Golinkin at each stage of the discussion. The author of this paper would have supported the תקנה in 1973 as the only way to justify the change since his halakhic sensibilities would have sympathized with the arguments of Rabbi Feldman even if his desire to change the law would have agreed with Rabbis Blumenthal and Sigal. For this reason he had believed that Rabbi Roth’s responsum was the perfect solution to the dilemma, if anything because it grew directly from the perspective of Rabbi Feldman which in its turn grew from precedent and tradition. But the technicalities of Rabbi Roth’s solution proved difficult to execute in practice. How can one, in the few minutes that one has as a minyan is gathering, determine if a woman considers herself obligated to prayer equally with men if she has never thought of the issue that way and yet she is offended if we would suggest that she might not be equal to a man? Many Conservative rabbis have been moved by the arguments of the more egalitarian position, recognizing new halakhic interpretations as worthy of consideration in light of an overwhelming change in sociological reality, in this case, the role of women in public life, and, specifically, in Conservative synagogues. If we believe that such a reality is proper, that is, that egalitarian worship is a high ground, that it is God’s will, then we must be able to ground it in precedent and tradition as well. The following proposal attempts do so on the basis of Rabbi Roth’s and even Rabbi Halivni’s responsa, which flow from the “school” of Rabbi Feldman.

Through the history of its incorporation at the Seminary and the Ramah camps there have been two major misconceptions surrounding Rabbi Roth’s responsum. One was that a woman had to wear tallit and tefillin in order to count in a minyan. Another was that a woman had to pray three times a day to count in a minyan. The source for the first misconception is that Seminary policy has been that candidates for Rabbinical School accept equal obligation to all mitzvot including tallit, tefillin and tefillah. The source for the second misconception was the reasoning that if a woman did not pray three times a day then how can we say that she has accepted the equal obligation to pray? That these are misconceptions is clear from Rabbi Roth’s paper when he writes: “Women may be counted in a minyan or serve as ש"ץ only when they have accepted upon themselves the voluntary obligation to pray as required by the

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.