Are you actually collecting instances? Here are some: Congregation Beth Shalom of Seattle going egalitarian --> my mother threatened to boycott, including having my father boycott, when the rabbi -- a respected friend -- tried to institute some sort of policy where women would count in the minyan unless they had children under the age of 13. Beth Shalom quickly became fully egalitarian (at my Bat Mitzvah there I led Shacharit, Mussaf, leyned the parsha, and read the Haftarah) and is now under the leadership of Rabbi Jill Borodin. Another: I demanded to read my Maftir portion at the synagogue we both went to in French Hill, Jerusalem in the mid-1980s. After initial pushback I got my way, but I understand there was later a backlash against egalitarianism at that shul and I'm not sure what the current status is. Another: my parents were part of an egalitarian minyan at KI, a large conservative synagogue in Brookline, in the late '70s. It met in the basement and in someone's living room. When I returned to KI in college, I asked where the egalitarian minyan that met downstairs was. The person looked confused and said, "You mean the non-egalitarian minyan? That doesn't exist anymore." KI had become egalitarian. I'm sure there are a million other examples. Social change doesn't generally come from those in power volunteering to share it.
What has been annoying me about the coverage of the Kagan / Riskind story is that it's portrayed as a win-win for her and him, but I see it more as a lose-lose. The truth is that even if she becomes a Supreme Court justice, Kagan STILL would not be allowed to read her Haftarah in front of the entire congregation on Saturday morning, either at Lincoln Square Synagogue or at Rabbi Riskin's current synagogue. This is a loss both for her and for those communities, which have lost countless talented (and now powerful) women who simply got sick of being treated as second-class citizens in this one realm of life (the Orthodox synagogue).
Are you actually collecting instances? Here are some: Congregation Beth Shalom of Seattle going egalitarian --> my mother threatened to boycott, including having my father boycott, when the rabbi -- a respected friend -- tried to institute some sort of policy where women would count in the minyan unless they had children under the age of 13. Beth Shalom quickly became fully egalitarian (at my Bat Mitzvah there I led Shacharit, Mussaf, leyned the parsha, and read the Haftarah) and is now under the leadership of Rabbi Jill Borodin. Another: I demanded to read my Maftir portion at the synagogue we both went to in French Hill, Jerusalem in the mid-1980s. After initial pushback I got my way, but I understand there was later a backlash against egalitarianism at that shul and I'm not sure what the current status is. Another: my parents were part of an egalitarian minyan at KI, a large conservative synagogue in Brookline, in the late '70s. It met in the basement and in someone's living room. When I returned to KI in college, I asked where the egalitarian minyan that met downstairs was. The person looked confused and said, "You mean the non-egalitarian minyan? That doesn't exist anymore." KI had become egalitarian. I'm sure there are a million other examples. Social change doesn't generally come from those in power volunteering to share it.
What has been annoying me about the coverage of the Kagan / Riskind story is that it's portrayed as a win-win for her and him, but I see it more as a lose-lose. The truth is that even if she becomes a Supreme Court justice, Kagan STILL would not be allowed to read her Haftarah in front of the entire congregation on Saturday morning, either at Lincoln Square Synagogue or at Rabbi Riskin's current synagogue. This is a loss both for her and for those communities, which have lost countless talented (and now powerful) women who simply got sick of being treated as second-class citizens in this one realm of life (the Orthodox synagogue).