Yeshivat Chovevei Torah - Role of Women in Judaism

Role of Women in Judaism

Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, like all Orthodox rabbinical schools, accepts only male candidates for ordination. However, YCT, unlike a number of rabbis and institutions within Orthodox Judaism, has expressed an openness to the possibility of expanded roles for women in ritual life. Founder Avi Weiss explained: "Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School, as an Orthodox institution, requires that its students daven only in synagogues with mechitzot ," wrote Weiss in an e-mail to the Forward. "The phenomenon of women receiving aliyot in a mechitza minyan is currently being debated on both a halachic and communal level within the Modern Orthodox community. YCT Rabbinical School does not currently take a position on this issue."

As a result of this lack of prohibition, some YCT student and graduates have been involved in these types of services. In addition, many YCT students are instrumental in partnership minyanim like Washington Heights' MigdalOr.

In June 2009, Weiss created the title MaHaRaT for Sara Hurwitz. He wished he could have called her a rabbi, stating "She can do 95 percent of what other rabbis do".

Read more about this topic:  Yeshivat Chovevei Torah

Famous quotes containing the words role of, role, women and/or judaism:

    What is charm then? The free giving of a grace, the spending of something given by nature in her role of spendthrift ... something extra, superfluous, unnecessary, essentially a power thrown away.
    Doris Lessing (b. 1919)

    The role of the stepmother is the most difficult of all, because you can’t ever just be. You’re constantly being tested—by the children, the neighbors, your husband, the relatives, old friends who knew the children’s parents in their first marriage, and by yourself.
    —Anonymous Stepparent. Making It as a Stepparent, by Claire Berman, introduction (1980, repr. 1986)

    Men seem more bound to the wheel of success than women do. That women are trained to get satisfaction from affiliation rather than achievement has tended to keep them from great achievement. But it has also freed them from unreasonable expectations about the satisfactions that professional achievement brings.
    Phyllis Rose (b. 1942)

    Christianity is the religion of melancholy and hypochondria. Islam, on the other hand, promotes apathy, and Judaism instills its adherents with a certain choleric vehemence, the heathen Greeks may well be called happy optimists.
    Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)