hel Adler
blessing at that time omitting barehu; and in still others a creative prayer that does not technically constitute a blessing is substituted for the Torah blessing.
In short, through the institution of the prayer group, Ortho dox women succeeded impressively in filling the halakhic vacuum. Without departing definitively from halakhic norms, they created a formidable liturgical statement that Orthodox authorities would be reluctant to endorse and a vigorous new institution that Orthodox authority had no precedents for controlling. Yet, ironically, although they expressly designed the prayer group to avoid confrontations with halakhah, it has been a principal focus of halakhic attack, both as an impermissible incursion into men’s
praxis and as an unprecedented innovation.”
Prayer Groups Under Attack: The Context of the Schachter Responsum
In 1984, Rabbi Gilbert Klapperman concluded his term as president of the centrist Orthodox Rabbinical Association of America by recommending that the organization“confront the needs of women to find some form of rewarding participation in the synagogue.” He urged his successor to create a commission(of male rabbis) to establish for congregations desiring them halakhic guidelines for “membership for women on synagogue boards, women's hakafot [Simhat Torah processions with the Torah ], women’s davening [prayer] groups, Torah study, bat mitzvahs, etc.”® His successor, Rabbi Louis Bernstein, not only rejected this strategy of accommodation to feminist rumblings, but formed his own strategy of aggressive opposition. Citing the evidence of newspaper interviews, prominent Modern Orthodox Jews accused Bernstein of soliciting a responsum from five faculty members of Rabbi Yitzhak Elhanan Seminary(RIETS ) of Yeshiva University . David Singer, editor of the American Jewish Yearbook, charged;
The teshuvah[responsum] of the“RIETS five” was hatched as part of a plot. It was the brainchild of Rabbi Louis Bernstein, current president of the Rabbinical Association of America and staunch opponent of women’s minyani. Rabbi Bernstein went“shopping” for some posekim[decisors] who would back his position, and hit