to whatever winds blow on the seven seas of thought. Remember that while it was due to the merit of women that the children of Israel were redeemed from Egypt , it was only merit, not the fierce rebellion of a Moses , saying,“Let my people go free!” that wrought the miracle.
Were the woman as rabbi merely confined to pulpit discourses and the formal aspects of ceremonials, her admission to the profession would be inept and otiose. The synagogue, however, has enlarged its tent cords of service. It is an institution of which the pulpit is part, not the totality. Being only a feature of the institutional labor, there are spheres of activity in the synagogue that not only can be filled by woman, but are primarily
her province.
Rabbi Neumark: I.“This fact that she was exempt from certain obligations, she could not represent the congregation in the performance of such duties”:(R. H. 111.8; Berakhot 20b). Against this argument the following can be said:
First, the traditional functions of the rabbi have nothing to do with representation of the congregation in the performance of certain religious duties from which women are freed. There are certain categories of men, such as are deformed and afflicted with certain bodily defects, who could not act as readers, but could be rabbis for decisions in ritual matters and questions of law. The same holds true of people with a“foreign accent” in Hebrew .
Second, women are not free from the duties of prayer, grace after meal, and kiddush, and they can read for others(cf. Mishnah and B.Berakhot, 20a,b). Thus, even in our modern conception of the function of the rabbi, which includes reading, woman can act
as representative according to traditional law. Of course tefilah
here is used in its technical meaning—"Eighteen Prayers”—while prayer in is general meaning of divine service had the shema in its center, and woman was freed from its obligatory reading. But no Orthodox Jew ever waited with the obligatory reading of the shema for the public service; it has, at least in post-talmudic times, always been done right in the morning, privately.
Third, the practice within Reform Judaism has decided in favor of admitting women as readers of the divine service. And since we are interested in the traditional law on the subject only