{"id":10923,"date":"2026-04-30T21:26:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T15:56:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/despite-obstructions-israeli-women-sit-for-rabbinate-exams-in-a-historic-first\/"},"modified":"2026-04-30T21:26:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T15:56:11","slug":"despite-obstructions-israeli-women-sit-for-rabbinate-exams-in-a-historic-first","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/despite-obstructions-israeli-women-sit-for-rabbinate-exams-in-a-historic-first\/","title":{"rendered":"Despite obstructions, Israeli women sit for rabbinate exams in a historic first"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div itemprop=\"articleBody\">\n<p><iframe title=\"Everlit Audio Player\" src=\"https:\/\/everlit.audio\/embeds\/artl_1Po8xtnxDnQ?ui_title_intro=Listen+now%3A&amp;client=wp&amp;client_version=3.1.5\" width=\"100%\" height=\"136px\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>(RNS) \u2014 In a historic breakthrough, three women were allowed to sit for the Israeli rabbinate\u2019s competency exams earlier this week.<\/p>\n<p>The tests, which drill on a variety of topics in Halacha \u2014 traditional Jewish law \u2014 were previously only available to men seeking rabbinic ordination. But Israel\u2019s Supreme Court ruled last year that the rabbinate must open up exams to women.<\/p>\n<p>The exam didn\u2019t go off without complications. The women were brought to a separate venue far from the male test takers and waited nearly five hours on Monday (April 27) until an emergency court order forced the rabbinate to administer the exam.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe were really exhausted, angry and hurt,\u201d Yaara Vidman Samuel, one of the women who sat for the test, told RNS. \u201cThe feeling was that we were being looked down upon as human beings, mostly for the sake of politics.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Passing the tests will not grant the women the title of rabbi; Israel\u2019s strictly Orthodox-controlled rabbinate does not ordain or acknowledge women as rabbis. But it was a win that comes with benefits beyond just symbolism.<\/p>\n<p>While female rabbis have long been commonplace in the Reform and Conservative Jewish movements in North America and elsewhere, that\u2019s not the case in Orthodox Judaism, and non-Orthodox movements are still very uncommon in Israel.<\/p>\n<p>For much of Jewish history, the study of Jewish religious law was largely reserved for men. When women did have the opportunity, it was often more informal and in translation.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_4257143\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"width: 750px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-4257143\" src=\"https:\/\/religionnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/webRNS-Rabbinic-Exams-Women1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"750\" height=\"563\" srcset=\"https:\/\/religionnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/webRNS-Rabbinic-Exams-Women1.jpg 1600w, https:\/\/religionnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/webRNS-Rabbinic-Exams-Women1-427x320.jpg 427w, https:\/\/religionnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/webRNS-Rabbinic-Exams-Women1-807x605.jpg 807w, https:\/\/religionnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/webRNS-Rabbinic-Exams-Women1-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/religionnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/webRNS-Rabbinic-Exams-Women1-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/religionnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/webRNS-Rabbinic-Exams-Women1-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/religionnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/webRNS-Rabbinic-Exams-Women1-600x450.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px\"\/> <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text edd-enabled\"><span class=\"caption\">From left to right: Timna Gotel of ITIM\u2019s legal department; Ofra Sitesmar, head of ITIM\u2019s legal department; Ruth Agiv from the Matan Hasharon beit midrash (study hall); Rabbanit Yaara Vidman Samuel from Midreshet Ein Hanatziv; \u00a0ITIM director Rabbi Seth Farber; and ITIM CEO Asi Kaniel, outside the Religious Services Ministry where Agiv and Vidman Samuel took a rabbinical test administered by the Chief Rabbinate on April 27, 2026. (Photo by Netanel Hirsch)<\/span><span class=\"credit\"\/><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<hr\/>\n<p><strong>RELATED:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/religionnews.com\/2025\/07\/16\/israeli-supreme-court-says-rabbinate-must-offer-tests-to-women\/\">Israeli Supreme Court says rabbinate must offer tests to women<\/a><\/p>\n<hr\/>\n<p>Nonetheless, Orthodox Jewish tradition records a number of learned female leaders across its history, from the biblical prophet Deborah, through Talmudic era scholar Bruriah, to many more from the Middle Ages through the present.<\/p>\n<p>The Orthodox Jewish stream has been slowly adapting to women\u2019s rabbinic leadership. In 1917, Sarah Schenirer founded the first Bais Yaakov girls school in Poland, which remains the blueprint for girls schools in the Orthodox world. In 1937, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, the foremost leader of modern Orthodox Judaism in the United States, opened the Maimonides School in Boston and demanded it offer equal Talmudic education to both boys and girls.<\/p>\n<p>Still, it\u2019s been a long road for truly equal educational opportunities for women in the Orthodox Jewish world.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI grew up in a very conservative community, which educated me to love Torah and fear God,\u201d Vidman Samuel said. \u201cThey showed me that Torah can guide, help and elevate life. So when I fell in love with Torah and started studying it, I didn\u2019t see it as a rebellion but as a realization of the values \u200b\u200bI grew up with \u2014 I just missed the fact that they were only intended for boys, not girls.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Among the new institutions devoted to providing women religious educational opportunities is <a href=\"https:\/\/hadran.org.il\/\">Hadran<\/a>, an Israeli organization that encourages Talmud study among Orthodox women across the world. In New York, there is also <a href=\"https:\/\/yeshivatmaharat.org\/\">Yeshivat Maharat,<\/a>\u00a0the first Orthodox Jewish institution in the U.S. to ordain women scholars.<\/p>\n<p>ITIM, the Israeli nonprofit that petitioned the court for the right of women to sit for the exam, argued there were tangible financial benefits to doing so. In 2018, Shas, Israel\u2019s Sephardic Haredi party, successfully lobbied to have the rabbinic exams be considered the equivalent of a bachelor\u2019s degree for the public-sector jobs for which the Israeli government requires a higher education degree.<\/p>\n<p>That opened the door for ITIM to argue that if men could achieve those positions and pay scales on the basis of their religious education, women should have the same right.<\/p>\n<p>It took nearly seven years, but the Israeli Supreme Court agreed last summer.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDiscrimination between women and men regarding eligibility to take the Chief Rabbinate exams is unacceptable, just as discrimination between women and men regarding eligibility to enjoy any other service provided by a public authority in the State of Israel is unacceptable,\u201d Justice Ofer Grosskopf wrote in the court\u2019s decision.<\/p>\n<p>Rabbi Seth Farber, the director of ITIM, said now that the exams were finally given, his organization will be closely monitoring their grading and the accessibility of future tests.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe reason I say it\u2019s just a beginning, not an end, is because the real measure of success for me is if in five years or 10 years,\u201d Farber said, \u201cwhen there\u2019s 200 or 300 women taking the exams, not three, and everybody forgets that there was even a revolution at all. It just becomes part of normal life here.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>For Vidman Samuel, the real value in her ability to take the test was to show her daughter \u2014 and other girls growing up in Israel \u2014 it was possible.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen they want to enter the world of Halachic law in the state of Israel,\u201d she said, \u201cit will be obvious that they too can do it the same way everyone does it in the state of Israel \u2014 through the Chief Rabbinate.\u201d<\/p>\n<hr\/>\n<p><strong>RELATED:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/religionnews.com\/2026\/04\/28\/jeffrey-epstein-ties-to-les-wexner-spur-jewish-alums-of-his-foundation-to-launch-survivor-fund\/\">Citing Wexner\u2019s Epstein ties, Jewish leaders direct money to survivors<\/a><\/p>\n<hr\/>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><!-- CONTENT END 1 -->\n        <\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/religionnews.com\/2026\/04\/30\/despite-obstructions-israeli-women-sit-for-rabbinate-exams-in-a-historic-first\/\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(RNS) \u2014 In a historic breakthrough, three women were allowed to sit for the Israeli rabbinate\u2019s competency exams earlier this week. The tests, which drill on a variety of topics in Halacha \u2014 traditional Jewish law \u2014 were previously only available to men seeking rabbinic ordination. But Israel\u2019s Supreme Court ruled last year that the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10924,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10923"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10923\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}