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as a woman Dror is barred
from the Assembly's commit-
tees on Jewish law and on
conversion.
Asked if she considered this
a kind of second-class citizen-
ship, Ms. Dror replied, in her
gentle but direct way,
"There's no 'kind of,' or
`almost' about it. That's exact-
ly what it is — second-class
citizenship."
The issue was settled in the
U.S. in 1985, when Manhat-
tan's Jewish Theological
Seminary ordained Amy
Eilberg as the first Conser-
vative women rabbi in Amer-
ica.
About a year later, two
Israeli woman asked to be or-
dained at the Conservative
seminary in Jerusalem. The
seminary appointed a com-
mittee, which wrestled over
whether woman rabbis were
halachically allowed, wheth-
er they would tear the move-
ment apart, and whether
Israel was ready for women in
the pulpit. In the end, the
committee voted to table the
issue.
The controversy resurfaced
at the beginning of this year,
when two women studying at
the seminary asked to switch
from the education to the rab-
binical track. Another com-
mittee was appointed — not to
decide the issue, but to deter-
mine the procedure for
deciding the issue. This panel
has yet to hold its first
meeting.
Prof. Lee Levine, dean of
the seminary, has fought
against ordination of women
rabbis on temporal grounds
because he felt Israel and the
Conservative movement were
not ripe for it. He says he is
"rethinking" this position
now
But he still sees an obstacle
in Jewish law. According to
strict Halachah, women can
neither be witnesses, as in
marriages and divorces, nor
members of a minyan. "A rab-
bi is often called upon to be a
witness," Prof. Levine notes,
"and it would be strange,
halachically, to say a woman
can be a rabbi but she can't be
in the minyan."
Rabbi Philip Spectre, ex-
ecutive director of the Conser-
vative movement in Israel,
opposes Prof. Levine's think-
ing. He points out that
American Conservative Jews
have found "all the halachic
answers" necessary to ordain
women rabbis.
Most Israeli Conservative
congregations, he adds, are
looking for ways to upgrade
the role of women in religious
life. If the question of ordain-
ing women rabbis were put to
a vote of the nationwide
membership, Rabbi Spectre
ARNIE WEISS
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