Rabbi Joseph Leiser: The objections of Professor Lauterbach concerning the admission of Jewish women to the rabbinate are inadequate. His thesis, that the rabbinical profession is a career and involves the totality of life to the preclusion of even the function and offices of motherhood, is not valid and is no more applicable to the Jewish woman as rabbi than it is to the Jewish woman as lawver, doctor, dentist, newspaper writer, musician, businesswoman or teacher. In all these trades and professions, Jewish women are actively engaged beyond the consideration or limitations of sex, and in spite of previous sex taboos. As a profession, the rabbinate ought to be open to women on a parity with that of men, provided women receive a degree for academic training carried on according to approved standards.
But my objection to the position maintained by Professor Lauterbach rests on more fundamental contentions than of sex discrimination in the rabbinate., The professor fails to analyze the rabbinate in the light of its function and activity in the world today. He carries over into America , a modern America the methodology and outlook of an Orthodox rabbi whose function is that of a lawyer, one who renders decisions in an ecclesiastical court from codes drawn up by established standards of behavior. Orthodox Judaism rests upon laws of conformity: one discharges his duties: one learns them and fulfills them, whereas Reform Judaism releases the individual, and enables him to realize his own nature, and therefore allows him to contribute whatever there is implanted within his soul, and mind in humanity.
This difference in motivation is translated to the profession of the rabbi, as it is interpreted in Reform Judaism.
The mere repudiation of the authority of the Talmud and Shulhan Arukh is not sufficient to constitute one as a Reform rabbi; nor does the acceptance of these make one an Orthodox rabbi. To be sure, the Orthodox rabbi is learned in the law, since the very nature and constitution require it. But the Reform rabbi is not primarily a legal expert. The modern rabbinate has become an institution, just as the synagogue has developed functions other than those pertaining to worship and the discharging of ceremonial observances. In these days, it serves more than one
purpose, and therefore requires more than one type of profes
sional labor.