Narration is in bold. 

Nahanni: Hi, it’s Nahanni Rous here with Can We Talk? Before we start our show, we have a podcast to recommend. The Five Books podcast, created with collaborative support from the Jewish Book Council, celebrates the role of books in our lives. Each episode features a conversation between host Tali Rosenblatt-Cohen and a Jewish author about five books that have impacted their life. Recent guests include Jennifer Weiner, who pushes back against assimilationist last names, past Can We Talk? guest Dara Horn, who gives a masterclass on the Tevye stories, and many more. Find The Five Books podcast wherever you listen!

Now on to the show.

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Nahanni: Welcome back to Can We Talk?, the podcast of the Jewish Women’s Archive, where gender, history, and Jewish culture meet.

This month, 25 women will graduate from Yeshivat Maharat in New York. It's the first Orthodox yeshiva in North America to ordain women. Maharat is a Hebrew acronym for leader of Jewish law, spirituality, and Torah. Yeshivat Maharat opened 16 years ago, and this year’s class of newly minted rabbis will join prior cohorts to put the number of Maharat graduates over 100. 

But what happens next for them? Female Orthodox rabbis have made inroads in some Orthodox communities, but mainstream Orthodoxy still doesn’t recognize their validity, and senior pulpit positions are extremely hard to find. 

To some extent, this echoes the history of female rabbis in other denominations. In 1972, when Sally Priesand was ordained by the Reform movement as the first female rabbi in America, she got a job as an assistant rabbi but was passed over for promotion when the senior rabbi left seven years later. When she applied for other jobs, she was turned down because of her gender. It took her another decade to get a senior pulpit position.

Women are still underrepresented in senior positions in the Reform and Conservative movements, and to this day, there are pay disparities in every Jewish denomination. Change is incremental and progress always happens in stages. 

But in the Orthodox movement there are some unique challenges. In Orthodox Jewish practice there are some rituals women cannot perform, and women don't count in an Orthodox minyan, the quorum of ten men necessary for most public prayer.

Leah Sarna: In other denominations, when women were taking on senior rabbinic roles, they could do, ritual by ritual, the exact same things that their male counterparts were doing because they were egalitarian. And so when we're talking about an Orthodox shul hiring a woman, you're saying, our rabbi used to count towards our minyan, and now we're going to hire a spiritual leader who can't. Are we willing to absorb that loss? Our rabbi used to daven neila, and it was so moving and beautiful. Now we're gonna hire someone who can't. Are we willing to make that change? 

Nahanni: Rabbanit Leah Sarna is the spiritual leader of Shaarei Orah in the Philadelphia area.

Leah: It's hard to sell on people. Like, well, you're exchanging that, but what you're getting in turn is da da da da. And coming up with what that value proposition is softer, it’s harder. It's—women are going to talk to me more readily about their health experiences, they're going to feel more comfortable asking me questions about niddah. They're going to feel more empowered in their own Torah learning and observance. Because they are going to be able to see themselves in me in a way that they've never before been able to see themselves in a religious leader.

That your daughters, when they play dress up, are going to dress up as a woman Torah person. And that's going to totally transform their entire relationship to Torah. Like, that's what we have to offer, right? 

But if we're saying that that's at the expense of, well, if you're only getting ten men for your minyan now, and you're replacing your rabbi with someone who doesn't count, then what's going to happen tomorrow? You're going to have nine men for your minyan. Can you handle that?

Nahanni: It’s not just about the tenth man, or even about having a rabbi who can’t perform certain ritual functions. The bigger question is whether Orthodox communities are willing to be led by women, when mainstream Orthodoxy doesn't recognize the legitimacy of women rabbis.

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Nahanni: This time on Can We Talk?, we’re looking at the status of the so-called stained-glass ceiling for Orthodox women rabbis. How are graduates of Yeshivat Maharat faring as they search for top positions in the Orthodox community?   We’ll speak with Rabbanit Leah Sarna and Maharat Ruth Balinsky-Friedman about their pulpit experiences, and with Yeshivat Maharat’s founder and president, Rabba Sara Hurwitz. You may have noticed that the three rabbis just named use three different titles. We’ll address that later in the episode.

Maharat Ruth Balinsky Friedman was in the inaugural class of Yeshivat Maharat. She started in 2009 and got her smicha, or ordination, in 2013. She’s now teaching Talmud at Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School in Rockville, Maryland.

Ruth: Teaching high school is part frustration, part total joy. Part parenting, you know, part pastoral, part life coach, all of the things. And I actually didn't realize how many of my synagogue skills I was going to be bringing into the job. And that—but it's actually been really fun.

Nahanni: Ruth didn’t start her career as a teacher. As soon as she graduated from Maharat, she was hired for a junior clergy position at Ohev Sholom in Washington DC. She was one of the first female clergy members ever to be hired in an Orthodox synagogue in North America. For full disclosure, Ohev Sholom is my community. 

Nahanni: And what was it like to settle into your role at Ohev? I mean, specifically from, like, the perspective of how you were received as one of the first Orthodox female clergy ever?

Ruth: Yes. Well, I was lucky that Ohev did—I don't wanna speak for them now, but certainly at the time, prided themselves on being different and going against the grain. And in that sense, I felt super welcomed and supported. I know—honestly, even, I only learn these things even still now—someone will say, "You know, when you first came, I really wasn't supportive of the idea, but.." And so I don't, I didn't, I did not feel that at the time at all. I felt very much at home.

Nahanni: And then just a few years later, in 2017, the Orthodox Union, which is the standard-bearer for the mainstream Orthodox community, issued a statement  basically really flat out prohibiting affiliated synagogues from having female clergy members. 

Ruth: Yeah. Man. 

Nahanni: So how did you weather that? 

Ruth: I think [laughs] I grew up with a dad who, you know, my dad is a graduate of Yeshiva University, a musmach, like a rabbi and he's never had a problem calling people out when he disagreed with them, and I definitely—so I think it was important that that was modeled for me as a kid because it made me feel less intimidated. 

Also, you know, Rabbi Herzfeld and the community more broadly were so supportive. I remember, I gave the drasha that week that we had that meeting with them in person. And when I got up to speak, everyone, like, gave a standing ovation or something. I found that—I know. I was like, ah!

But with that level of support at home, you can do, you know, you can do anything. I never really cared much what they, what they thought, to be perfectly honest. I was proud of the institutions that I was most affiliated with. I was really disappointed in a lot of modern Orthodox institutions. 

Nahanni: Which seemed to be supporting the OU’s position.

Ruth: It definitely at the time was, "We cannot pinpoint any one thing that you do that we can say is wrong, but we are deeply uncomfortable with the idea that you are doing all of them and have a title."

Nahanni: It was the title that was the sticking point?

Ruth: People went through gymnastics to try to come up with a halakhic issue with it. But the truth is, people came up with different halakhic issues, first of all, which tells you there isn't one. Because if there was one, then they would all come up with the same one. But also, some even really conceded that there wasn't one halakhic issue. They weren't comfortable with the title, right? Title implies equality, and they weren't ready for that. 

Nahanni: In the end, the OU did not penalize the few synagogues that had already hired a Maharat graduate. Ruth speculates that once the Me Too movement started a few months later, appetites for cracking down on women’s leadership decreased.

Then, the Covid pandemic stuck. During that time, Ohev Sholom’s senior rabbi left. Maharat Ruth became the community’s sole spiritual leader, but it wasn’t clear who would ultimately replace the senior rabbi.

Nahanni: What was that like for you? I mean, did you want that position? Did you want to be considered for that position?

Ruth: It's such a good question. You know, I don't think it's saying anything radical to say that this was, like, a tough time in the shul in general. The shul ended up becoming a place that represented a way for a lot of people to take out our own fears and—you know, whatever we all know what going through Covid was like. It was a hard time.

And so then, you know, as soon as Rabbi Herzfeld announced, some people reached out to me and said, "Ooh, I hope that they choose you," you know, to be the senior.

A lot of people sort of, I think, had the reaction of, well, where's our next male rabbi? You know? [laughs] And I was like, “Hiiiii! You know, like, I've worked here for a long time. This is kind of the natural transition." In any other setting would be, you know, if I was a man, the natural transition, of course, is that the assistant and associate would transition into that role.

I thought about trying to fight for it. At the same time, I think I felt, like, so overwhelmed and exhausted by it all.

I am not a pioneer in the sense of, like, I'm not going to fight for my right to, like, be there. If someone wants me there, great—I'd love to work together. But I'm not the type of person who gets up and says, "Here's why you need me." [laughs] Like, I don't have the internal, um, constitution for that like many people do. 

And so, ultimately, at the end of the day, I decided [that] I think maybe what's best for everyone is to part ways and, you know, for everyone to get a fresh start. 

Nahanni: Before the search for a new senior rabbi began, the community was surveyed. The results showed that a majority of synagogue members wanted both male and female clergy on staff. But the shul could only afford to hire one person, and the survey also showed that when it came to senior clergy, more people were comfortable with a man in that role, so only male candidates were interviewed. Maharat Ruth stayed on until 2023, a decade after she began.

I asked her if she’d ever try for another pulpit position. She said for now, she’s happy teaching high school.

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Nahanni: Rabbanit Leah Sarna was just about to finish high school in 2009 when Rabba Sara Hurwitz became the first Orthodox woman ordained in America and founded Yeshivat Maharat. 

Leah was aware of both the excitement and fierce opposition surrounding those milestones. She begins her interview with Jen Richler by talking about how as a teenager, she was very active in her Orthodox synagogue in the Boston area, and sometimes wished she could be in charge.

Leah: There was a moment [when] I was leading youth groups and a kid said something to me that was really concerning about their home life. So I brought it to the rabbi and he said, “Thank you so much for telling me, you're never going to hear about this again.” And that was the right thing for him to have done. And I was, like, I want the tools to help this kid. I want to be the person who knows what to do in this situation.

And so there was like that side of things that was specifically, sort of, synagogue rabbinate—loving public speaking, loving sharing Torah, and loving that type of intimate involvement in people's lives and families.

And then there was the other piece, which is, I was at a modern Orthodox school, and I was learning Talmud, and I loved it. But all my Talmud teachers were men, and all the people in my community who were sort of Talmud experts were men. And so, even though, you know, I loved learning and I was acing all my classes, and for my sixteenth birthday my parents got me a full set of Talmud, and they were so encouraging and amazing—there wasn't any path.

I wrote my senior thesis in high school about whether Orthodox women would ever become rabbis. And I concluded that maybe it would happen, but that it would be really, really hard. This is 2008, 2009. In New York, Sara Hurwitz gets ordained in the spring of 2009. And that was this crazy moment where I was like, Oh, this just happened and everyone hates it.

And my community that I want to serve, that I love so very much, and my love for this community is what motivates my desire to serve, is not interested in the type of service that women would provide.

Nahanni: Despite her awareness that many in her community were not yet ready for women’s leadership, Leah enrolled in Yeshivat Maharat after college. By the time she was ordained in 2018, she had a junior clergy position lined up at Anshe Shalom Bnei Israel in Chicago. That was right around the time the Orthodox Union issued their statement against women rabbis.

Leah: And so that was, like, a whole song-and-dance politics. Do we care? It seemed like people did care in the shul. We want—we believe in the Orthodox Union. We want to be members of the Orthodox Union. So what does it mean to hire a woman who's a Maharat graduate and still be compliant with this statement? And so we created a job title called the Director of Religious Engagement. And if you said, “What does that mean?” The answer is, like, it means whatever we make it mean.

Nahanni: The OU’s statement had laid out a list of things women were not allowed to do, such as officiating at life-cycle events, regularly giving sermons and halakhic guidance, leading services, and serving as a synagogue’s primary spiritual mentor.

Leah: And so we sort of tried to figure out how to create a role that minimized violations of that list. And as we kind of gelled into it, we sort of, you know, it kind of became less of a thing. Like we started to—once I started in the position and everyone got comfortable—we started making decisions based on what made the most sense for the shul, which is the right way to make these kinds of decisions.

Nahanni: Leah served in her role in Chicago for two years. Then her husband got a job offer in Philadelphia. They moved and became active in a small, lay-led synagogue called Shaarei Orah in the suburb of Bala Cynwd. Leah was on the ritual committee and the education committee, and planted seeds about the community hiring her some day.

Elsewhere in Philadelphia, another Maharat graduate, Rabbanit Dasi Fruchter, had started her own synagogue. But Leah’s lay-led congregation had never had a rabbi before. They were not affiliated with the Orthodox Union. One major barrier was financial—they met in people’s homes and had almost no annual budget. But there were other considerations, too.

Leah: There was a lot of, like, institutional anxiety about how do we fit into the ecosystem of our neighborhood. What will it mean—our kids are in the Orthodox day school. Will the Orthodox day school still think of our kids as Orthodox? When there are celebrations at our synagogue, if there's a bar mitzvah, will the school leadership feel comfortable coming to celebrate? Things like that.

I would say a lot of credit on that front though goes to Rabbanit Dasi Fruchter, who had already opened up shop downtown and sort of normalized the idea that there's such a thing as a woman-led Orthodox synagogue in Philadelphia. And people had even been at her synagogue and said, "Oh yeah, this feels normal."

Because a big hurdle is just this aesthetic feeling of, like, I belong to an Orthodox synagogue. Is it going to feel like an Orthodox synagogue? And so when you've seen it, you're like, Oh yeah, this is the same aesthetic that I'm used to.

Nahanni:  Shaarei Orah did eventually hire Leah to serve as their part-time senior spiritual leader. She was formally installed this winter. In her conversation with Jen, Leah said there has been hardly any fallout.

Leah: We didn't lose a single member family. We've grown, our membership has grown since. We moved into a beautiful new space and the other local rabbis have been willing to work with me when that is what is needed. So, yeah, there have been no, like, nasty letters, no—yeah, nothing like that.

Jen: So, can you talk a little bit about what functions you do and do not perform in your shul, in your community, in your congregation?

Leah: Yeah. So the main things that I don't do—I sit in the women's section. I don't count for the minyan and I don't lead services and I don't read Torah. 

But I think something that's really important to point out is that in most Orthodox shuls, male rabbis, they're counting for the minyan, but otherwise they're not doing that stuff either. In normal Orthodox shuls, rabbis are not the ones reading Torah and they're not the ones leading services. 

Jen: So, are you ever in a situation where you have to wrangle a daily minyan that you yourself don't count in?

Leah: Oh, that has happened a lot. I really don't like it. And it—when I was hired in my current shul, I sort of said, like, "Just FYI, this is something I really hate doing, and let's make sure that this stays the gabbai's job and not mine."

It's a pain to put together a minyan and, like, the added element of like, I need you guys to do this for me and I can't count towards it, is not pleasant.

Jen: Can you talk a little bit about the roles that you do play?

Leah: Yeah, for sure. So, in a way, I still lead the service, right? So, if we're calling page numbers, I'm the one calling page numbers. If we're introducing the Torah reading, I'll introduce the Torah reading. I give a sermon about every other week. I do a lot of answering Jewish legal questions. My congregants are very observant. They—things happen in their kitchens, things happen in their lives. You know, all kinds of, the whole gamut from, "I'm buying a new oven, I see there's all these new kind of Shabbat mode things,like, what do I need to be thinking about?" to, like, "I'm at the dentist and they want to put pig grafts into my mouth, like, what's the story with that?"

And then also my absolute favorite questions are when parents are learning Torah with their kids. And then the kids ask them a question, they don't know the answer, and then they pass it along to me. So—because I love creating environments where parents feel empowered to study Torah with their kids. I give a Gemara class every week. And I do a good amount of pastoral care also.

Jen: From where you sit right now, what's your sense of how easy or not it is for a woman to get a job in a senior rabbinic role in an Orthodox shul?

Leah: It is virtually impossible. You can count on two hands the number of women in senior synagogue positions. Each one of those either created their own institution or had to really take a hit in order to get there as a co-senior. Or they just got insanely lucky, and that's basically me.

The real story is lay leaders. Like, I just showed up here and made myself the most talented rabbi I could possibly become. But, like, that doesn't get you hired. What gets you hired is lay leaders who convince a whole community of people that they should put their gold together and hire you.

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Nahanni: Today, ten graduates of Yeshivat Maharat are working as Orthodox rabbis in synagogues in America. Half of them are in senior positions. A few women lead Orthodox synagogues elsewhere in the world.

Rabba Sara Hurwitz is the founder and president of Yeshivat Maharat. We’ve interviewed her before—check out Can We Talk?’s 2022 episode "A Half- Century of Women Rabbis." Rabba Sara and I spoke again recently about Maharat’s upcoming graduation, and the successes and challenges her graduates are facing.

Sara: We are in our sixteenth year, and I don't think I would've imagined that in that short time we would be hitting our hundredth graduate this June. And so that feels momentous and celebratory. It feels like a tipping point. We're here to stay, and I think that we're already preparing for the next hundred graduates that will be put out into pulpits and in chaplaincy and in schools and on Hillel college campuses. It feels exciting.

Nahanni: When we talked to Rabbanit Leah Sarna, she talked about how very difficult it has been for women to achieve senior clergy positions. Has this been more difficult than you anticipated for women to get to that level of success?

Sara: I think Rabbanit Leah Sarna is correct in that it is hard to come by. But I am a little bit optimistic because I'm playing the long game here, and I see how much has changed in sixteen years, which is actually a very short amount of time. And I think that if you look at other communities, like in the Reform movement or in the Conservative movement, it just took a long time for women to emerge as senior level professionals. 

But I think now that we're working on it, I see the needle moving little by little. We have two students this year who have opened up their own synagogue in Paris. I have another student who's building her own synagogue in New Jersey. I see it happening. It's slow, but it is moving in the right direction. 

Nahanni: Is there something particularly challenging for the Orthodox community that may not exist for other communities? 

Sara: I think it's just not normative for Orthodox community leaders to look at the, uh, you know, at  the front of the room on the bima and imagine their female leaders as the senior pulpit authority. And I think that takes getting used to just like everything else takes getting used to. The other limitation is that we exist in synagogues with the mechitza and the mechitza does impose challenges.

Nahanni: The mechitza, the physical barrier between men and women, varies in Orthodox sanctuaries. Sometimes it divides a space right down the middle. Sometimes it creates a women’s section on the side. Sometimes there is a separate women’s balcony.

Sara: Some synagogues’ structure does have implications for female leadership. Like if it's a balcony synagogue, upstairs-downstairs, it's challenging for a woman to feel like the authority of the space if the mechitza is not down the center like it is at my shul or in some other synagogues, that is challenging. And so there are. like structural ways in which we need to sort of move to allow space—like literally the space to accommodate more senior female leaders.

Nahanni: Why would somebody want to be the leader of a shul where they have to sit in the balcony?

Sara: It's the million-dollar question, right? Why don't we just get ordained by the other movements who have already accepted women as its full leaders? And I can just think about, not only my experience, but I think what I've heard from my colleagues on the ground is that we chose or grew up in the Orthodox community, it's our community. And there's something really special about pushing the boundaries of the beit midrash, of the synagogue, of the study halls, to allow women to lead from within. I don't like the idea that I have to leave just because there's no obvious space. I'd rather stay and figure out how to include and incorporate women's voices at every level.

Nahanni: So, I’m thinking about Maharat Ruth Balinsky-Friedman, who we interviewed for this episode, who was in Maharat’s first graduating class, and who is now teaching Talmud at a DC area high school and is not in a pulpit position. So in thinking about her story, I’m wondering, have Maharat’s goals changed or broadened?

Sara: I've given a lot of thought to this question, and I do think that at the beginning, the first classes of graduates at Maharat were excited by the opportunity to enter into pulpit positions in synagogues because that was an unexplored, uncharted area. And so many of our first graduates did go into pulpit positions.

But I believe that the rabbinate is broad and you can have a pulpit from multiple platforms. Just piggybacking on what Ruth has shared, you know, her pulpit is her classroom. And think about the impact that she's having, not only on the kids and the students that she's teaching, but how that filters back into their families. And I think that people see her as clergy.

I think it's a mistake to limit the notion of rabbinic impact to a synagogue pulpit. I really, truly believe that you can have true rabbinic impact from a hospital bed, as a chaplain, as a teacher in a school, as an educator of adults, as somebody who is involved in, you know, organizational development. And as well as, as the women who are in pulpit positions. 

Nahanni: So returning to the issue of senior clergy positions, what do you think right now is the biggest barrier to more women achieving those positions?

Sara: I think that there's fear. Fear on behalf of some of the rabbinic male figures, stepping back and relinquishing some control and authority. I think fear amongst some community members and lay members that their vision of what a rabbi is supposed to look like and do may not be fulfilled.

You can't be what you can't see. You can't, like, embrace the role of women in senior positions unless you are able to engage with it, see it, and understand it. And so I think the more women we can get out as leaders of communities and see the benefits and the flourishing of those communities, the easier it'll be to eventually place more women into senior positions. 

Nahanni: So in 2017, the Orthodox Union, the OU ,came out with a statement saying, We believe that a woman should not be appointed to serve in a clergy position. That was 2017. What is Maharat's relationship with the OU now?

Sara: I have not had a direct conversation with anybody at the OU. I think what I know to be true is that the rabbis on the ground—you know, male rabbis in OU synagogues—continue to see the importance of having Orthodox colleagues and Orthodox women in rabbinic clergy positions. And so, I don't know…it could just be that they were wrong.

Nahanni: So, right now Maharat graduates are picking their own title, essentially. Is that correct?

Sara: Maharat does not have one title that we give. We want the hiring institution as well as the graduates to determine the best title for them. 

And the reason we do that is because there might be a woman, a graduate, who is a great match with a particular synagogue, but that synagogue is not yet comfortable with, you know, a RB-sounding title. And so it gives them an opportunity to negotiate a different title. And then there might be another job that the word "rabbi" is the only option that makes sense to be hired in, like that chaplain position or a Hillel setting.

And so we really—although on one hand it's not ideal—we didn't want to be the excuse or the reason why people weren’t looking at our graduates as the full human beings and the full rabbis that they are. And so we're just trying to remove as many barriers as possible.

Nahanni: Mm-hmm. And what makes it not ideal?

Sara: Well, I think that there's strength in having the same title, right? Like I have to do a lot of work to help people understand that all these titles mean "rabbi," and that when I am filling out my medical form for my profession, I write "rabbi" because that's my job, that's who I am, that's my identity. That's what I do on a day-to-day basis. 

And so it would be easier if the title matched what I know the job is and what the identity is. But it is what it is. I think that the array of titles has actually allowed more women to flourish in more positions.

Nahanni: We've been talking a lot about opportunities for women who are graduates of Yeshiva Maharat, and ways that their careers can be, can go in multiple directions and be very rich. And I would just like to end by hearing from you why you think the community needs female leaders. What does the community need from women?

Sara: Listen, every single rabbi has something unique to offer. I want to be careful about making broad gender statements, but I do think that having women who have had experiences that maybe men don't have is so beneficial for community members.

I think that there's so much work to do in the community. We're at a time where there's a lot of trauma and darkness. I think that people are seeking and searching rabbinic leaders and to not elevate and educate and give platforms to 50% of the population is—would be a loss to the whole community, from little boys and little girls up to, you know, elderly adults. I think the community is better off having more leaders who choose to serve. You know, the work is not always easy. It's, really, truly holy work, it's a privilege to do it, but it's a huge responsibility and, for those who in their kishkas can't imagine doing anything else, what a shame it would be for the community to overlook those leaders as their core rabbinic figures and role models.

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Nahanni: That was Rabba Sara Hurwitz, founder and president of Yeshivat Maharat. You also heard from Maharat Ruth Balinsky Friedman and Rabbanit Leah Sarna. Mazal Tov to the class of 2025 Maharat graduates, who are being ordained this month.

Thank you for joining us for Can We Talk?, the podcast of the Jewish Women’s Archive. Our team includes Jen Richler and Judith Rosenbaum. Our theme music is by Girls in Trouble. You also heard Tiny Putty from Blue Dot Sessions. Find us online at jwa.org/canwetalk.

I’m Nahanni Rous. Until next time.

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