Israel allows Orthodox Jewish women to take rabbinic exam : NPR
NPR • • general
Key Points:
- After a lengthy legal battle, Israel has allowed Orthodox women to take official rabbinic ordination exams for the first time, although Orthodox religious authorities still refuse to formally ordain women as rabbis.
- Opening the exams to women could qualify them for leadership roles in state-funded religious services, marking a significant step in expanding women's roles as scholarly experts in Orthodox Judaism.
- The change follows years of advocacy by the group ITIM and a Supreme Court ruling that ordered the state to permit women to take the exams, despite resistance and delays from Israel's Chief Rabbinate.
- Orthodox women's advanced religious studies have grown in recent decades, challenging traditional norms and slowly evolving within a community historically resistant to female religious leadership.
- Advocates emphasize that the milestone is about recognizing women's Torah scholarship and religious authority, even if formal rabbinic ordination remains elusive for now.