Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant documents that answer the question.
Query: Can a rabbi be a woman?
On March 22, 2009, the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, an Orthodox Synagogue, held a formal ceremony officially giving Sara Hurwitz the title "Maharat" – "Manhigah Halakhtit Ruchanit Toranit". However, some Orthodox leaders, such as the Rabbinical Council of America and the Agudath Israel of America, opposed this move and said it was not in keeping with Orthodoxy; in any case, Hurwitz was not given the title "rabbi". However, she is considered by some the first Orthodox woman rabbi. In February 2010, Avi Weiss announced that he was changing her title of Maharat to a more familiar-sounding title "Rabba". The goal of this shift was to clarify Hurwitz's position as a full member of the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale rabbinic staff. The change was criticised by both Agudath Yisrael and the Rabbinical Council of America, who called the move "beyond the pale of Orthodox Judaism". Indeed, women's ordination has come to be a focal point of division between YCT and the rest of the spectrum of Orthodoxy, as most of Orthodoxy does not view YCT as normative Orthodoxy. Weiss announced amidst criticism that the term "Rabba" would not be used anymore for his future students. However, in June 2015, Lila Kagedan was ordained by Yeshivat Maharat and in keeping with newer policies, was given the freedom to choose her own title, and she chose to be addressed as "Rabbi". In 2018, Dina Brawer, born in Italy but living in Britain, was ordained by Yeshivat Maharat; she chose the title Rabba.
Most Jews do not believe in the existence of a supernatural omnimalevolent figure. Traditionalists and philosophers in medieval Judaism adhered to rational theology, rejecting any belief in rebel or fallen angels, and viewing evil as abstract. The Rabbis usually interpreted the word "satan" as it is used in the Tanakh as referring strictly to "human" adversaries and rejected all of the Enochian writings mentioning Satan as a literal, heavenly figure from the Biblical canon, making every attempt to root them out. Nonetheless, the word "satan" has occasionally been metaphorically applied to evil influences, such as the Jewish exegesis of the "yetzer hara" ("evil inclination") mentioned in . Rabbinical scholarship on the Book of Job generally follows the Talmud and Maimonides in identifying "the satan" from the prologue as a metaphor for the "yetzer hara" and not an actual entity. Satan is rarely mentioned in Tannaitic literature, but is found in Babylonian aggadah. According to a narration, the sound of the shofar, which is primarily intended to remind Jews of the importance of "teshuva", is also intended symbolically to "confuse the accuser" (Satan) and prevent him from rendering any litigation to God against the Jews. In Hasidic Judaism, the Kabbalah presents Satan as an agent of God whose function is to tempt humans into sinning so that he may accuse them in the heavenly court. The Hasidic Jews of the 18th century associated ha-Satan with "Baal Davar".
There is no unilateral agreement among the different denominations of Judaism concerning truth. In Orthodox Judaism, truth is the revealed word of God, as found in the Hebrew Bible, and to a lesser extent, in the words of the sages of the Talmud. For Hasidic Jews truth is also found in the pronouncements of their rebbe, or spiritual leader, who is believed to possess divine inspiration. Kotzk, a Polish Hasidic sect, was known for their obsession with truth.
Jewish medical ethics is one of the major spheres of contemporary Jewish ethics. Beginning primarily as an applied ethics based on halakhah, more recently it has broadened to bioethics, weaving together issues in biology, science, medicine and ethics, philosophy and theology. Jewish bioethicists are usually rabbis who have been trained in medical science and philosophy, but may also be experts in medicine and ethics who have received training in Jewish texts. The goal of Jewish medical ethics and bioethics is to use Jewish law and tradition and Jewish ethical thought to determine which medical treatments or technological innovations are moral, when treatments may or may not be used, etc.
Each sect of Judaism has its own interpretation of Satan's identity. Conservative Judaism generally rejects the Talmudic interpretation of Satan as a metaphor for the "yetzer hara", and regard him as a literal agent of God. Orthodox Judaism, on the other hand, outwardly embraces Talmudic teachings on Satan, and involves Satan in religious life far more inclusively than other sects. Satan is mentioned explicitly in some daily prayers, including during Shacharit and certain post-meal benedictions, as described in Talmud and the Jewish Code of Law. In Reform Judaism, Satan is generally seen in his Talmudic role as a metaphor for the "yetzer hara" and the symbolic representation of innate human qualities such as selfishness.
Circumcision is very important to most branches of Judaism, with over 90% of male adherents having the procedure performed as a religious obligation. The basis for its observance is found in the Torah of the Hebrew Bible, in Genesis chapter 17, in which a covenant of circumcision is made with Abraham and his descendants. Jewish circumcision is part of the "brit milah" ritual, to be performed by a specialist ritual circumciser, a "mohel", on the eighth day of a newborn son's life, with certain exceptions for poor health. Jewish law requires that the circumcision leaves the glans bare when the penis is flaccid. Converts to Conservative and Orthodox Judaism must also be circumcised; those who are already circumcised undergo a symbolic circumcision ritual. Circumcision is not required by Judaism for one to be considered Jewish, but some adherents foresee serious negative spiritual consequences if it is neglected.
Reading “If a woman conceives,” Rabbi Levi said three things: It is only natural that if a person has given into another’s keeping an ounce of silver in private, and the latter returns a pound of gold in public, the former will surely be grateful to the latter; and so is it with God. Human beings entrust to God a drop of fluid in privacy, and God openly returns to them completed and perfected human beings. Rabbi Levi said a second thing: It is natural that, if a person is confined without attention to a chamber, and someone comes and kindles a light for the person there, the former should feel gratitude towards the latter. So too is it with God. When the embryo is in its mother’s womb, God causes a light to shine for it there with which it can see from one end of the world to the other. Rabbi Levi said a third thing: It is natural that, if a person is confined without attention to a chamber, and someone comes and releases the person and takes the person out from there, the former should feel gratitude to the latter. Even so when the embryo is in its mother’s womb, God comes and releases it and brings it forth into the world.
"In late March," reported James Barron of The New York Times on July 26, 2010, Rosensaft wrote to the Maryland attorney general, Douglas F. Gansler, alleging "possible fraud and/or misrepresentation" by Save a Torah. He asked for an investigation into whether Save a Torah had been 'soliciting funds under false pretenses.' Mr. Rosensaft, who is also an adjunct professor at Cornell Law School and teaches a course on World War II war crimes trials, took issue with Rabbi Youlus's description of [a Torah scroll that had allegedly been saved by a priest at Auschwitz who in turn supposedly had given it to Youlus]. 'There is no record of anyone even remotely fitting the description of the priest' Rabbi Youlus said had saved it, Mr. Rosensaft said in the letter. He also took issue with a Torah that Rabbi Youlus said had been at Bergen-Belsen, the concentration camp where Anne Frank died in 1945. Mr. Rosensaft's parents met at Bergen-Belsen. Mr. Rosensaft said that Rabbi Youlus's description of finding a Torah beneath a wooden floor in a barracks was not possible. The original buildings at Bergen-Belsen, he said, were burned to stop a typhus epidemic and the survivors were moved to a former German military installation nearby in May 1945. Mr. Rosensaft said that he was born in that installation in 1948 and returned many times to visit.
In March 2009, Menachem Rosensaft was appointed as general counsel of the World Jewish Congress, the umbrella organization of Jewish communities around the world based in New York. Since 2008, Menachem Rosensaft has been Adjunct Professor of Law at Cornell Law School, and he was also Distinguished Visiting Lecturer at Syracuse University College of Law. In 2011 he was appointed lecturer in law at Columbia University Law School where he teaches a course in the law of genocide. He is the editor of "God, Faith & Identity from the Ashes: Reflections of Children and Grandchildren of Holocaust Survivors", published by Jewish Lights Publishing.
The Rabbis told that when Moses ascended to heaven, he heard the ministering angels saying to God, "Blessed be the name of His glorious kingdom for ever and ever." Moses brought this declaration down to Israel. Rav Assi explained why Jews do not make this declaration aloud, comparing this to a man who took jewelry from the royal palace and gave it to his wife, telling her not to wear it in public, but only in the house. But on the Day of Atonement, when Jews are as pure as the ministering angels, they do recite the declaration aloud.
Although certain ancient groups of Jews appear to have believed in the existence of supernatural evil, in particular fallen angels (as in the Dead Sea scrolls), the "yetzer hara" in non-apocryphal sources is presented as a personification of evil distinct from the supernatural Devil of traditional Christianity and Islam. This tendency to demythologize Satan is found in the Babylonian Talmud and other rabbinical works, e.g.: "Resh Laqish said: Satan, the evil inclination, and the Angel of Death are all one." Notably, however, this and other passages of the Talmud do not deny the external existence of Satan, but create a synthesis between external and internal forces of evil. Similar tendencies can also be found in some Enlightenment Christian writers, such as in the religious writings of Isaac Newton.
The early Spanish poets of the Golden Age, Moses ibn Ezra (b. "circa" 1060), Alḥarizi (1170–1235), Rabbi Abraham ibn Ezra (c. 1089–1167), Solomon ibn Gabirol (c. 1020–1058), Judah Halevi (died 1150), among others, had all left an indelible mark on Zechariah al-Ḍāhirī. Some of the greatest exponents of Jewish law had also come from Spain, namely, Maimonides and Alfasi. Other proponents of Jewish law from the Spanish Jewish exiles who were expelled from Spain began to make a name for themselves in the Land of Israel where they had come. Neither al-Ḍāhirī, nor the people of Yemen, were oblivious to this. Al-Ḍāhirī patterns his "Sefer Ha`anaḳ" (A treatise on Hebrew homonyms) after a work by a similar name written by Moses ibn Ezra. Al-Ḍāhirī's frequent mention of Sephardic prayer rites and customs in his "Ṣeidah la’derekh" leads one to conclude that al-Ḍāhirī was strongly influenced by the Spanish-rite "Siddur" (Sephardic Prayer Book), as he brings down portions of its layout in the biblical sections known as Parashat "Ṣav" and "Breishit". So, too, the author shows the influence of "kabbalistic" practices on his writings, such as where he devotes several chapters to theosophical Kabbalah in his "Sefer Ha-Mūsar", and where he brings down in his "Ṣeidah la’derekh" an esoteric teaching relating to the blowing of the ram's horn on New Year's Day and which practice is cited in the name of the illustrious Rabbi, Moses Cordovero. In another place, al-Ḍāhirī makes mention of the Sephardic practice where some will refrain from shaving their heads during the Counting of the Omer, while others prohibit the shaving of the head from the beginning of the counting until the thirty-third day of the Counting of the Omer. Here, incidentally, it is alluded that the Yemenite Jewish custom in this regard was different. Even so, al-Ḍāhirī levels harsh words of criticism against Spanish Jewry's lack of poetic style in their daily communications and "belles lettres", which, by that time, had mostly been lost by them.
No member of the two highest governing bodies, the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, has ever been black. There have been several black members of the Quorums of the Seventy; and, as of 2013, Brazilian Helvécio Martins (a member of the Second Quorum of the Seventy from 1990 to 1995), Joseph W. Sitati (from Kenya) and Edward Dube (from Zimbabwe), both members of the First Quorum of the Seventy, have served as general authorities. Other black members have served as area seventies, particularly in the Third Quorum of the Seventy, which includes the church's Africa Southeast, Africa West, Europe, and Europe East areas. There has never been a black member of the general presidencies of the Relief Society, Young Women, Primary, Young Men, or Sunday School. The first African member of the Relief Society general board was chosen in 2003, and she shared her testimony at the general meeting of the Relief Society in September 2003. In February 2014, Dorah Mkhabela, a black South African, was made a member of the Young Women General Board. She became the first black woman to give a prayer at the Women's Meetings of General Conference in September 2014.
Haredi Judaism is not an institutionally cohesive or homogeneous group, but comprises a diversity of spiritual and cultural orientations, generally divided into a broad range of Hasidic sects, Litvishe-Yeshivish streams from Eastern Europe, and Oriental Sephardic Haredim. These groups often differ significantly from one another in their specific ideologies and lifestyles, as well as the degree of stringency in religious practice, rigidity of religious philosophy, and isolation from the general culture that they maintain.
Abraham Geiger, the founder of Reform Judaism, remarked the following concerning the claim that Jews believed Ezra to be the son of God: “According to the assertion of Muhammad the Jews held Ezra to be the Son of God. This is certainly a mere misunderstanding which arose from the great esteem in which Ezra was undoubtedly held. This esteem is expressed in the following passage ‘Ezra would have been worthy to have made known the law if Moses had not come before him.’ Truly Muhammad sought to cast suspicion on the Jews’ faith in the unity of God, and thought he had here found a good opportunity of so doing.”
Al-Ḍāhirī mentions that the community was visited in 1595 – some twenty-seven years after their imprisonment had begun – by an emissary of the rabbis in the Land of Israel, Rabbi Avraham b. Yiṣḥaq Ashkenazi, who had been sent there with many books and with letters of recommendation to raise money for the poor in the Land of Israel. Al-Ḍāhirī, however, deemed it necessary to explain in a letter addressed to the said emissary that the Jewish people in Yemen were too poor themselves to render any assistance to their brothers in the Land of Israel. Scholars of comparative Arabic-Hebrew literature are quick to point out that these hardships facing the Jewish community in Yemen often gave rise to messianic aspirations in al-Ḍāhirī's rhymed prose.
The Birds' Head Haggadah (c. 1300) is the oldest surviving illuminated Ashkenazi Passover Haggadah. The manuscript, produced in the Upper Rhine region of Southern Germany in the early 14th century, contains the full Hebrew text of the Haggadah, a ritual text recounting the story of Passover – the liberation of the Israelites from slavery in ancient Egypt – which is recited by participants at a Passover Seder. The text is executed in block calligraphy and accompanied by colorful illustrations of Jews performing the Seder practices and reenacting Jewish historical events. The Birds' Head Haggadah is so called because all Jewish men, women, and children depicted in the manuscript have human bodies with the faces and beaks of birds. Non-Jewish and non-human faces (such as those of angels, the sun, and the moon) are blank or blurred. Numerous theories have been advanced to explain the unusual iconography, usually tied to Jewish aniconism. The Haggadah is in the possession of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, where it is on permanent exhibition.
In 1911, Abraham Isaac Kook, the chief rabbi of Ottoman Palestine, addressed a question to the rabbinic Court at Sana'a concerning their custom of eating grasshoppers, and whether this custom was observed by observing their outward features, or by simply relying upon an oral tradition. The reply given to him by the court was as follows: "The grasshoppers which are eaten by way of a tradition from our forefathers, which happen to be clean, are well-known unto us. But there are yet other species which have all the recognizable features of being clean, yet do we practice abstaining from them. [Appendage]: The clean grasshoppers () about which we have a tradition are actually three species having each one different coloration [from the other], and each of them are called by us in the Arabian tongue, "ğarād" (locusts). But there are yet other species, about which we have no tradition, and we will not eat them. One of which is a little larger in size than the grasshoppers, having the name of "`awsham". There is yet another variety, smaller in size than the grasshopper, and it is called "ḥanājir" (katydids)."
In Judaism, Heaven is sometimes described as a place where God debates Talmudic law with the angels, and where Jews spend eternity studying the Written and Oral Torah. Jews do not believe in "Hell" as a place of eternal torment. Gehenna is a place or condition of purgatory where Jews spend up to twelve months purifying to get into heaven, depending on how sinful they have been, although some suggest that certain types of sinners can never be purified enough to go to heaven and rather than facing eternal torment, simply cease to exist. Therefore, some violations like suicide would be punished by separation from the community, such as not being buried in a Jewish cemetery (in practice, rabbis often rule suicides to be mentally incompetent and thus not responsible for their actions). Judaism also does not have a notion of hell as a place ruled by Satan since God's dominion is total and Satan is only one of God's angels.
Concerned Jewish people sometimes refer to assimilation (along with abortion within the Jewish community) as a type of Holocaust. This is because assimilation is the leading cause for the shrinkage of almost all Jewish populations in Western countries since World War II. This shrinkage has been called the "Silent Holocaust"  (in comparison to the genocide against Jews during World War II) by communal leaders such as Rabbi Ephraim Buchwald of the National Jewish Outreach Program, perhaps the best-known popularizer of the phrase. The Jewish community will not be recognizable in 25 to 30 years. 50% of American Jews marry a non-Jew. Better education is associated with lower levels of intermarriage because Jews with a higher education level encounter a marriage market with more Jews.
Legalization of abortion was first widely discussed in Germany during the early 20th century. When Germany became a country in 1871, section 218 of the Constitution outlawed abortion, requiring a penal term for both the woman and the doctor involved. During the Weimar Republic, such discussion led to a reduction in the maximum penalty for abortion, and in 1926 a court's decision legalized abortion in cases of grave danger to the life of the mother. Nazi Germany's eugenics laws liberalized abortion for both Aryan and non-Aryan women. Aryan women could obtain an abortion simply by demonstrating that either parent had an hereditary defect, or that the child would be born with a congenital defect. Non-Aryan women were "encouraged" to utilize contraception and abortion in order to reduce their populations.
The rabbi's wife plays an important community role, especially in small communities. In many ways, she is called on to be as knowledgeable as the rabbi in the realm of woman's observances: In this manner, for something that does not require a "psak" (ruling), she can be approached when a woman does not feel comfortable approaching the rabbi, or where the rabbi maybe should not be approached. For instance, the rebbetzin may be consulted in personal questions regarding female sexuality.
Rabbi Sperber agreed with Rabbi Shapiro's argument that the baraita in Megillah 23a indicated that the Sages instituted "we do not call a woman" as a later prohibition, and that calling a woman was originally permitted. He focused on the concept of Kevod HaBriyot ("human dignity"), a Talmudic concept by which rabbinical prohibitions are sometimes waived in order to preserve honor or dignity. Noting that the concept had received modern applications by Orthodox decisors including an opinion by Rabbi Eliezer Waldenberg permitting wearing a hearing aid on Shabbat (based on a Talmudic opinion overriding the rabbinic prohibition against carrying on Shabbat to permit a person needing to defecate to carry wiping material), Rabbi Shapiro argued that the "Kevod HaBriyot" concept could be applied to override the rabbinic prohibition against calling women to the Torah on grounds of human dignity or respect.
Rabbi Ammi taught in the name of Rabbi Johanan that even though Rabbi Simeon ruled that a dissolved fetus expelled by a woman was not unclean, Rabbi Simeon nonetheless agreed that the woman was ritually unclean as a woman who bore a child. An old man explained to Rabbi Ammi that Rabbi Johanan reasoned from the words of "If a woman conceived seed and bore." Those words imply that even if a woman bore something like "conceived seed" (in a fluid state), she was nonetheless unclean by reason of childbirth.
With the goal of becoming a rabbi, Jonas wrote a thesis that would have been an ordination requirement. Her topic was "Can a Woman Be a Rabbi According to Halachic Sources?" Her conclusion, based on Biblical, Talmudic, and rabbinical sources, was that she should be ordained. However, the Talmud professor responsible for ordinations refused her because she was a woman. Jonas applied to Rabbi Leo Baeck, spiritual leader of German Jewry, who had taught her at the seminary. He also refused because the ordination of a female rabbi would have caused massive intra-Jewish communal problems with the Orthodox rabbinate in Germany.