Published: 13 January 2023
Last updated: 5 March 2024
Israel will certify the first women under its state rabbinic qualification next week, but no one is offering them jobs as rabbis.
For the first time, Israel’s Ministry of Religion is granting certificates of halachic mastery to women. Twelve Orthodox women who studied at women’s institutes for Jewish learning in Israel have passed an exam, which men take to become state rabbis.
It is the first time that any state body has formally approved women’s aspirations and abilities to become professional religious leaders.
The certification, the first of a group of six taken by men to become rabbis, may also have important practical and economic value because it may be accepted in future as an employment qualification, enabling women to apply for state jobs that require rabbinic certification.
Rabbanit Yaffa Aranoff was among the women who passed the exam. The 49-year-old mother-of-five has spent the past four-and-a-half years rigorously studying halacha at the Midreshet Lindenbaum Susie Bradford’s Institute of Halachic Leadership in Jerusalem. For Aranoff, originally from New York, this exam was more than simply a test. It was a way to ensure that there are equal opportunities for men and women.
“Women should never feel like the world of Torah is not for them … it’s for everyone,” she said.
The test functions for her as recognition for her halachic knowledge, “to say that I am halachically competent like a man”.
"This is far from equality, which is why we are continuing the Supreme Court petition.”
Attorney Ella Sakat
The process to get the Israeli government to recognise Orthodox women as rabbi-equivalents began two years ago when a group of learned women brought a class-action petition to the Supreme Court to force the rabbinate to allow them to sit rabbinic exams. They argued that as certain state funded jobs are only available to rabbis – that is, people who were tested and certified in processes that exclude women – the process discriminates against women’s right to equal employment and equal pay and violates the Basic Law on equality.
