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To be officially ordained as an Orthodox rabbi in Israel, you have to be a man and pass a series of exams. Now, for the first time, Israel is allowing women to take the rabbinic exams. It's a step toward expanding women's leadership roles in Orthodox Judaism. NPR's Daniel Estrin reports from Jerusalem.
UNIDENTIFIED TEACHERS: (Singing in non-English language).
DANIEL ESTRIN, BYLINE: Three Orthodox Jewish women completed a nearly six-hour rabbinic exam, and their religious teachers greeted them singing.
AVITAL ENGELBERG: They're doing a milestone in history.
BATYA KRAUSS: As far as glass ceilings go, in Israel, we broke the glass ceiling of learning.
ESTRIN: Avital Engelberg and Batya Krauss teach Jewish religious texts to women.
KRAUSS: When a woman wanted to learn in the olden days, she had to hide.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "PAPA, CAN YOU HEAR ME?")
BARBRA STREISAND: (As Yentl, singing) Papa, are you near me? Papa, can you hear me?
ESTRIN: Like "Yentl," she says, the 1983 movie with Barbra Streisand playing a young woman who disguises herself as a man to study the Talmud. Advanced Jewish studies weren't available to Orthodox women in Israel a generation ago. Only in the last couple decades they are.
KRAUSS: Orthodoxy changes slowly, and the world is changing very, very, very fast.
ESTRIN: To officially become ordained as a rabbi in Israel, men must take this same course of study and pass a series of official exams. Israel's rabbinate refuses to ordain women as rabbis. But what about letting them just take the exams? Passing the exams can qualify women for some public servant jobs in Israel, running religious services like ritual baths. American-born Rabbi Seth Farber of the Jewish advocacy group ITIM tried to negotiate with Israel's religious officials.
SETH FARBER: We're sitting right now outside the Ministry of Religious Affairs, and I had a meeting here some six years ago with the director general of the ministry. And he said, more or less, over my dead body will women ever study texts like this. These texts were not meant for women.
ESTRIN: So Rabbi Farber's group filed a lawsuit. After an eight-year legal battle, the Israeli Supreme Court ordered the exams opened up to women. Israel's official rabbinate responded by refusing to administer the exams to anybody for more than half a year.
FARBER: Because the rabbinate said we'd rather not give exams to men than give exams to anybody.
ESTRIN: The court intervened, and women were finally allowed to take the exam a couple weeks ago. Rabbi Farber, who helped lead this battle for women, is Orthodox himself and actually a descendant of a prominent 19th century rabbi, the Chatam Sofer, who famously opposed any modernization of Judaism.
FARBER: My great-great-great-great-grandfather was the founder of ultra-Orthodoxy. I'm sure he's not looking down from his seat in the Heavenly Kingdom and feeling comfortable about what his great-great-great-grandson has done in one sense, but maybe he is because times have changed.
ESTRIN: In the U.S. and Israel, more liberal streams of Judaism have ordained women rabbis for several decades now. In recent years, there's been a very small number of Orthodox women rabbis, too. Israel's rabbinic authorities refuse to ordain women, and most Orthodox Jewish communities are not open to it for now.
FARBER: I think women will be ordained rabbis. I don't know if it will happen in my lifetime, but I think it will happen.
ESTRIN: One of the women who took the first rabbinic exam in Israel is Dr. Ruth Agiv, a 44-year-old dentist.
RUTH AGIV: (Speaking Hebrew).
ESTRIN: "Women need to be part of the world of Torah," she said. "We should not need to be outside. It belongs to us." She's not looking for the title of rabbi, but she does want to be recognized as a learned authority in the laws of Judaism to be able to give women the same kind of religious advice that they might otherwise seek from a man. Daniel Estrin, NPR News, Jerusalem.
(SOUNDBITE OF DRAKE SONG, "STORIES ABOUT MY BROTHER") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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