Ordination of Women ln: ­

PAN

and to doubt whether we are rabbis in the sense in which his honored title was always understood.

Nor is there, to my mind, any actual need for making such a radical departure from this established Jewish law and time-hon­ored practice. The supposed lack of a sufficient number of rabbis will not be made up by this radical innovation. There are other and better means of meeting this emergency. This could be accomplished if our rabbis would follow the advice of the men of the Great Synagogue to raise many disciples and thus encourage more men to enter the ministry. And the standard of the rab­binate in America, although no doubt it could be improved in many directions, is certainly not so low as to need a new and refining influence such as the influence brought by women to any profession they enter. Neither could women, with all due respect to their talents and abilities, raise the standard of the rab­binate. Nay, all things being equal, women could not even raise it to the high standard reached by men, in this particular calling. If there is any calling which requires a wholehearted devotion to the exclusion of all other things and the determination to make it one’s whole life work, it is the rabbinate. It is not to be consid­ered merely as a profession by which one earns a livelihood. Nor is it to be entered upon as a temporary occupation. One must choose it for his life work and be prepared to give to it all his energies and to devote to it all the years of his life, constantly learning and improving and thus growing in it. It has been rightly said that he woman who enters a profession must make her choice between following her chosen profession or the call­ing of mother and homemaker., She cannot do both well at the same time. Thus certainly would hold true in the case of the rab­binical profession. The woman who naturally and rightly looks forward to the opportunity of meeting the right kind of man, of marrying him, and of having children and a home of her own, cannot give to the rabbinate that wholehearted devotion which comes from the determination to make it one’s life work. In all

likelihood she could not continue it as a married woman. For,

one holding the rabbinical office must teach by precept and example and must give an example of Jewish family and home life where all the traditional Jewish virtues are cultivated. The rabbi can do so all the better when he is married and has a home