Orthodox Judaism Caves to Culture on Ordination of Women

Orthodox Judaism is going egalitarian.

The Jerusalem Post last week announced that the Shalom Hartman Institute, founded by noted Rabbi David Hartman, himself a modern Orthodox rabbi, will open a four-year program next year to prepare women and men of all denominations within Judaism—Reform Conservative, Reconstructionist and also Orthodox—for rabbinic ordination.

Ordination will be provided within the framework of a teacher-training program that prepares graduates to serve in Jewish high schools in North America.

"For too long now we have been robbing ourselves of 50 percent of our potential leaders, people who can shape and inspire others," said Rabbi Donniel Hartman, co-director of the institute and son of David Hartman.

Donniel Hartman said contemporary culture demands that the understanding of gender roles within Judaism—with leadership traditionally limited to men within Orthodox Judaism—must change with the times.

"The classic distinctions between men and women are no longer relevant," he said. "Our latest decision is a natural evolution of our existing policy."

Hartman will be the first institute to offer Orthodox rabbinic ordination to women and the Post story points out that this development will most certainly spark controversy within the Orthodox denomination. Reform Judaism, the most liberal movement within Judaism, began ordaining women in 1972, Reconstructionists began in 1977 and Conservative Judaism began in 1983, making Orthodox the last to capitulate to cultural pressures.

While it is true that Judaism is not evangelical Christianity, the Orthodox movement's decision mirrors the same trend on the issue of women's ordination seen within Protestant Christianity.

It appears that complementarian evangelicals will soon stand alone in their insistence on upholding God's good plan for men and women.  We must stand on the truth of scripture alone, since neither culture nor tradition are sufficient.

Orthodox Judaism is the final domino within that faith tradition to fall on the gender issue; let us learn from this and, with humility, let us also "Stand firm...and be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might" (Eph. 6), and not shrink back from insisting on the truth of God's Word.