Which comes first, community custom or the dignity of God’s creatures?

That is the essence of the question about women having a public voice in synagogue, including reading from the Torah. The view that women’s dignity is paramount may seem like common sense, but that argument is somehow considered radical. Such is the experience of Rabbi Professor Daniel Sperber, whose essay on the subject of Women and Torah Reading published this week on YNet and Kolech has incurred a disproportionate amount of hostility and ridiculous accusations that he is heretical, “Reform” (good heavens!) or a threat to the future of the Jewish people.

Read the rest of this post on the Kolech English blog, Jewish Women's Voice

Rabbi Sperber, professor of Talmud at Bar-Ilan University, President of the Ludwig and Erica Jesselson Institute for Advanced Torah Studies at Bar Ilan, world-renowned expert in classical philology, history of Jewish customs, Jewish art history, Jewish education and Talmudic studies, Rabbi of The Menachem Zion Synagogue in the Old City of Jerusalem and winner of the Israel Prize for his work on Jewish law, and author of countless books and articles on the character and evolution of Jewish customs, including his most recent book on the women’s participation in public prayer, - Darkah shel Halakha Kiryat Nashim b'Torah, “The Path of Halacha – Women’s Reading from the Torah,” is one of the greatest Orthodox rabbinic advocates for increasing women’s roles in synagogue. His arguments skillfully, intelligently, and compassionately unpack the arguments about halakha, historical-social processes, and the inclusion of women.

Rabbi Sperber argues that social change is an integral part of the halakhic process. He brings examples of responsa from different communities in which women were given permission and perhaps even the opportunity to read from the torah, as well as a series of citations that demonstrate many instances in which "kavod hatsibur" was set aside. “Somewhat later on,” he writes, “for some reason not adequately clear to us but perhaps understandable in a historical-sociological context, it was decreed unfit that women be called up to the Torah.” For Rabbi Sperber, then, change in religious practice that is based on social shifts is an integral part of the halakhic process.

In this week’s article, Rabbi Sperber took issue with people who claim that halakhic decisions can be made as if in a historical-social vacuum. “We must follow the river and check its flow, as its speed and course change with time and place,” he wrote poetically of the relationship between halakha and society. “In order to understand the development of the river, we have to check its history and geography at every stage.”

The 68-year old Rabbi Sperber, soft spoken father of ten, sporting a thick white beard and charming British accent, speaks passionately about the disturbing ways in which he believes halakha is used as a tool to shame women. “As situations arrive that are painful to women,” he told me in an interview earlier this year, “when they feel that they are offended by what we might call halakhic discrimination, then halakha has to take that into account. Because I think the prohibitions against offending people and the notions of dignity of the individual are so central to halakha that they override their many traditional practices.” Rabbi Sperber is deeply motivated by the principle of “kavod habriot” – the dignity of God’s creations. People should not be made to feel hurt and offended, especially in the name of halakha. Rabbi Sperber said that many “great poskim were sensitive to the possibility of offending other people in one way or another” and that the principle of not offending someone is a central tenet of Jewish practice.

Rabbi Sperber, a statuesque man in a black suit and white shirt and would appear to fit in any rabbinic panel – who also has seven daughters – considers women’s exclusion from synagogue practice to be such an offense. “Many women have a sincere desire, a yearning, to take an active and spiritual role in the life of the community and its pursuits,” he writes, “and excluding them from the synagogue or from involvement in worship ceremonies is a cause of great distress. It thus seems clear that kavod habriot, individual dignity, must overcome kavod hatsibur, particularly when the concept of kavod hatsibur does not really pertain as it might have in ancient and medieval times.” Sperber continued to advocate an activist stance, in which halakhists are “involved with… not only the ‘is’ but also the ‘ought to be’; not only the formal halakha but also the values that underlie it…for, when all is said and done, needs, feelings, and public policy change with time and place.” Therefore, Sperber said, “we need to be sensitive. Women who feel offended by being put outside of the parameters of participation in ritual, I think we have to find a way to include them…It’s not that I’m taking a particular feminist stand. I’m taking what I believe to be a halakhic stand. And I would say the same thing in all aspects of halakha that we have to be sensitive and try to adjust ourselves to the modern situation.”

Rabbi Sperber has evolved into something of an unofficial rabbi in some partnership minyanim, which allow women to lead certain parts of the service in a partitioned, traditional service. Although, until fairly recently, no leading Orthodox rabbi had banned his community from attending, excommunicated anyone, or otherwise cursed or defame partnership minyanim in Israel, elsewhere, however, there has been some voiced opposition. In Melbourne, the rabbi of a congregation around the corner from Shira Hadasha instructed his congregants to walk home on the other side of the road, so as not to pass by the ‘posnisht’ synagogue. On a typical Shabbat morning, men in black hats could be seen braving traffic on the four-lane Balaclava Road, fearless of the trams and traffic but petrified of near-contact with feminism. More ominously, a 23-year old woman from the synagogue, one of the leading torah readers and a teacher in the local modern orthodox school, was fired from her role in the Bnei Akiva youth movement because of her involvement with Shira Hadasha. In one Jewish community New Jersey, the situation was even more sinister. A group of people who tried to form a partnership minyan were pressured by rabbis and synagogue officers, who would threateningly show up unannounced to the organizers homes and invoke public admonitions – what the organizers called a public “witch hunt” to find out who had attended. The group met several times, with 70 people at each attendance, but this public harassment was too much to bear and the organizers promptly folded. According to researcher William Kaplowitz, at least four different attempts to create partnership minyanim folded due to pressure from the local community and its rabbinic leadership.

Thus far on the YNet debate, talkbacks have not excommunicated anyone, but the language is at times extremely delegitimizing. As usual, the astounding fact remains that a flexible approach to gender issues continues to color rabbis as “out”, “Reform” or heretical. As Rabbi Sperber shows, change has always been an inherent part of the halakhic process.

And if there was ever a justifiable reason for making change, the dignity of God’s creatures – read, women – is certainly a good one.