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It’s hard to overstate the significance of OTS’s Women’s Leadership Program (“Chachamot”), which has taken the pioneering step of preparing outstanding female Torah scholars to actively contribute to halachic [Jewish legal] dialogue in Orthodox society. The highly accomplished participants are following a course of study parallel to that of male rabbinical students; the combination of high-level learning and practical training will qualify them to assume key leadership roles within the Jewish community.

Rabbi Shuki Reich teaching halacha: "Women have the capacities and abilities to become true authorities."

For the first time in the history of the Jewish people, a group of women is engaged in the intense study of a wide body of halacha, at the highest of levels. “For the Orthodox population, halacha [the Jewish code of law] is nothing less than a way of life,” says Malka Petrokovsky, director of the Women’s Leadership Program (“Chachamot”), now in its third year. “From the time we wake up in the morning and say ‘Modeh Ani,’ until we fall asleep at night with ‘Shma Yisrael’ on our lips, halacha informs and guides all daily activity. But although this is true for both men and women,” she adds, “until now, our halachic authorities and deciders have always been men.”

The goal of the Chachamot Program is to teach women to become adept in “thinking halachically, so that they too can contribute to the legal dialogue,” explains Petrokovsky. “Women are just as capable of becoming proficient in Jewish legal thought and discourse as men are, they simply must be provided with the proper background and training.”

The practical application of this theory is being carried out in the program, which represents the newest Midreshet Lindenbaum initiative in paving new highways in the education and rights of Jewish women. In the first year, students covered Kashrut and the Laws of Mourning; last year was spent studying the laws of Shabbat, and this year is being devoted to Family Purity [niddah].

Intense study at the highest of levels: Chachamot-in-training Sara Bar Yosef (l) and Aviva Engelberg.

 “I want our students to not only know the law,” stresses Petrokovsky, “but to also have an excellent grasp of how it developed, which factors influenced the law’s stricter interpretations and which factors influenced its more lenient interpretations, for instance. Then, when they are asked a legal question, they will be in an excellent position to provide a fully learned and nuanced response.”

To better equip the women for answering legal queries, a new course has been introduced to the program this year: an in-depth look at Responsa. Legal issues are traced, from their first mention in the Torah to the relevant discussions in the Mishna and Gemara, and then on through centuries of legal discussion.

A DYNAMIC, CREATIVE PROCESS

Even though Chachamot Program participant Sara Bar Yosef had a traditional national-religious education, it was only at the age of 20 – at Midreshet Lindenbaum’s TaBaM Program for post-army and post-national service women – that she studied Gemara for the first time, and it was only last year, at the age of 25, that she was able to study Jewish law in such a significant manner. “There is no other place where women can study such a far-ranging corpus of halacha so intensively," says Bar Yosef, who agrees that there is a big difference between learning halacha – being taught the bottom-line legal rulings concerning various aspects of life – and actually studying halacha – that is, tracing the evolution of particular laws over time. 

Bar Yosef discovered that Jewish law is a dynamic, creative process. “Halacha is not an impermeable thing,” she says. “Although it never renounces its ideals, it has flexible aspects and is open to deliberation.”

It is precisely in the development of halacha that the Chachamot Program is breaking new ground. While stressing that Jewish law cannot be molded as one sees fit, Bar Yosef nonetheless points out that it is far more complex than a sine qua non ruling written down in a book. “Within the halachic process there is an entire web of considerations and principles that may be taken into account. If I know the history of a particular halacha and I know the principles that influenced its development, then I have all that background at my disposal when I am asked to relate to the matter,” she says.

According to Bar Yosef, it is critical that women be involved in the halachic system. “It’s important to acknowledge the human element in Jewish law and what this implies for the participation of women in the legal process. It’s clear to me that halacha, while derived from God, is influenced by human events – political, economic, and social. The need for women to be part of the legal process is a part of our contemporary world, and it is only right that halacha should take this into account,” she asserts.

The Chachamot program represents the first step in this development. “Right now, we are still limited to using language and concepts that were written exclusively by men,” says Bar Yosef. “But with time, women will be able to express their unique perspectives and requirements within the halachic process.”

In a small way, this is already happening: the women’s halacha teacher, Rabbi Shuki Reich, speaks with pride of the advanced academic works produced by his students on the various halachic aspects of Shabbat, which they covered last year. “I know of no other such compilation of texts written by women at such a high scholarly level,” declares Reich, who is also the head of the Joseph and Gwendolyn Straus Rabbinical Seminary. “The collection testifies to the fact that women absolutely have the capacities and abilities to become true halachic authorities.”

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