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152

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 1991

The Issues Behind
Women's Prayer Groups

RABBI SAUL BERMAN

Special to The Jewish News

I

n December 1984, five
roshei yeshiva at New
York's Yeshiva University
issued a letter — followed by
an article by one of the five,
Rabbi Herschel Schachter —
condemning the practice of
women's prayer groups within
the Orthodox community.
The condemnation, while
couched in halachic terms,
was in reality an ideological
statement that failed to shed
much light on the real,
underlying issues. By con-
trast, the ability of the Or-
thodox community to
evaluate those issues, and to
distinguish between the
halachic elements and those
elements which belong to the
realm of Jewish public policy
debate, has now been
massively enhanced by Rabbi
Avraham Weiss in his new
book, Women at Prayer.
Rabbi Weiss' book properly
bases the discussion of
women's prayer groups within
the broader context of the
relationship of women to the
obligations and opportunities
of private and public prayer.
By doing so, he establishes
the central category of
legitimacy of women's
spiritual striving within the
realm of prayer.
His early treatment of the
obligation of women in
private prayer is a particular
tour de force. The integration
of the historical, the
philosophical and the
halachic in a richly detailed
delineation of the precise
aspects of the fixed prayers in
which women's obligations
are identical with, or diverge
from, those of men, engages
the reader_ on a powerful
spiritual level.
The book is basically an ad-
dress to three separate sets of
issues: women and prayer pro-
per, women and the reading of
the Torah from a Torah scroll
and ancillary issues relating
to the acceptablility of
women's prayer groups.
In the first section, Rabbi
Weiss demonstrates the in-
tensity of women's obligation
in private prayer, while clari-
fying the nature of their in-
eligibility to be counted in a
minyan for prayer. This sec-
tion could have benefited

Saul Berman is associate
professor of Jewish Studies at
Stern College for Women.
This review first appeared, in
slightly different form, in the
New York Jewish Week.

from a clearer delineation of
the difference between "mi-
nyan" and "tzibbur." The
former is the quorum
necessary for the conduct of
public worship while the lat-
ter describes the community
engaged in such worship. The
fact that women are not eligi-
ble to be counted toward a mi-
nyan does not mean that they
are not part of the tzibbur-
gathered to engage in wor-
shipful prayer.
It is, I believe, precisely this
critical distinction which
underlies the legitimate
striving of women for recogni-
tion of their role in the com-
munal worship service, as
well as their desire to experi-
ment with a form of prayer
that allows them greater
public participation. The fact
is that Jewish law does not

One need not
agree with every
argument in the
book to recognize
the halachic
acceptability of
women's prayer
groups.

write women out of the public
sphere of prayer, it simply
does not empower them to be
part of the minyan, while
leaving them equal respon-
sive roles in tefillat ha-tzibbur,
in communal prayer.
Rabbi Weiss places great
emphasis on the newly
emerging awareness that
even minyan comes in many
forms, serving different pur-
poses, and that not all forms
of minyan preclude the coun-
ting of women. Ground-
breaking work on this issue is
being done by Rabbi Aryeh
Frimer, and his work is utiliz-
ed to its full potential by Rab-
bi Weiss. Nevertheless, Rabbi
Weiss notes properly that on-
ly critics of women's tefillah
groups persist in referring to <
them as women's minyanim,
precisely in order to
delegitimize them in the eyes
of the Orthodox community.
The second area of presen-
tation by Rabbi Weiss is that
of the relation of women to
the reading of the Torah from
a Torah scroll. The most
significant contribution in
this section is Rabbi Weiss'
clear indication of the non-
halachic character of the
custom observed by some
women not to handle a Sefer
Torah during their periods of
niddut.