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February 2, 2001/Shevet 8, 5761, Vol. 53, No.18
Conservative women rabbis reflect, rejoice
JULIE WIENER
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
NEW YORK - Streaming from the Jewish Theological Seminary cafeteria Sunday night came an unusual sound: some 100 female voices joyously singing the blessing after meals.
Not only did all the voices belong to women, but almost all belonged to rabbis or rabbinical students.
It was a significant moment in a Conservative movement where women comprise less than 10 percent of the rabbinical pool, and where the decision to ordain women 16 years ago came only after long and divisive debate.
Gathered from around the United States and Israel, the rabbis were celebrating their growing numbers - now more than 120 - and the influence they believe they are having on the movement.
"You have to know that your presence has transformed the Jewish world," Francine Klagsbrun said in a keynote address. Klagsbrun, a writer, was one of the members of the 1985 commission that recommended female ordination.
The two-day conference, which was for women only and was mostly closed to the press, combined study of Jewish texts, workshops on "nurturing ourselves" as individuals and spiritual leaders, and lively dancing to the music of Mikveh, a female klezmer band.
One of the highest remaining barriers they face is the Conservative movement's refusal to recognize women as witnesses in marriage, conversion or divorce.
The witness question was one of several raised informally in signs posted on a pillar in the lobby, with answers scrawled in crayon.
Most respondents wrote that they do serve as witnesses but make sure to inform their congregants of the "implications" - the fact that some people may not recognize a ceremony with female witnesses as valid.
Among the other questions on the pillar: "Does your spouse play a Rebbetzin" - using the word for a rabbi's wife - "role in your professional life?" and "what stereotypes have you encountered?"
The witness issue is one of many challenges the rabbis face. Many congregations remain apprehensive about hiring women rabbis, and balancing a perpetually on-call career with family life is difficult.
Those rabbis around long enough to remember the last conference commemorating Conservative women rabbis - in 1995 - said the mood has changed markedly in just six years.
"I can't believe how far we've come since then," said Rabbi Debra Newman Kamin, of Am Yisrael Conservative Congregation in suburban Chicago.
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