On the subject of the ordained Rabbah Sara Hurwitz challenging the rabbinic patriarchy, here are the five pressing problems facing the orthodoxy. If Sara Hurwitz can tackle any of these, for sure the Jewish people would be eternally grateful. Although my personal view is that we must respect the seniority and let all the homosexuals and bisexuals already in the prominent rabbinic positions proudly come out of the closet first, before we let women run the asylum. But anyhow, here are the five challenges:
- Today the Rabbinic class and virtually all communal organizations function at the mercy and in the service of the oligarchy (ironically even Avi Weiss’ institutions are not an exception). The Middle class and the Jewish poor have no voice or representation in the pact. Hopefully Sara Hurwitz can change that.
- The vast majority of the Jewish Schools favor indoctrination over education as the traditional method of the religious instruction. Paradoxically men suffer the most in this arrangement as they graduate favoring the permanent societal handicap. The traditional Judaism still prefers conformity and the unusual talents find themselves in a perpetual conflict with the sharply delineated barbed wired intellectual boundaries. Hopefully Sara Hurwitz can let men at least be equal to women in education.
- The discrimination against women pales in comparison to the discrimination against baaley tshuvah, gerim, sephardim, etc. While women are restricted in the vertical advancement, the other contenders are left completely outside of the camp. Would like to know what Sara Hurwitz thinks about that.
- Judaism is still set up as a family religion. Given the massive “shuduch crisis”, the integration of the single Jews into the traditional culture is far more complicated than the integration of a married or single woman as a Rabbi. Hopefully Sara Hurwitz got some ideas in this regard.
- This is my personal pet peeve, the plague. Rabbis who read their sermons from a prepared paper. During a lecture or a sermon a Rabbi needs to have an oratorical relationship with the congregation not a piece of paper. If a Rabbi or a Rabba is not able to internalize a 15 minutes sermon he or she is not qualified for the job, not matter how much basar v’halav she remembers. So given the fact that Sara Hurwitz is reading in each of her YouTube speeches, I don’t think she would be able to overcome this internal resistance. We can only let Moshe Rabeynu get away with it. This would be a deal breaker for me.
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Rabbis who read their sermons from a prepared paper.
This one shouldn’t have been offered up with the rest. You should have done that as a separate post some other time.
David, I disagree, I think it is one of the problems. Besides it gave me the initial motivation to write the post, I really don’t like people reading sermons or lectures.