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Gidon Rothstein |
Rabbi Rothstein serves as Rosh Kollel at the HAFTR Community Kollel, a charter member of the YU Global Kollel Initiative.
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For many women, exclusion from meaningful participation in the public service, including aliyyot to the Torah, is the starkest and most grating example of what they perceive as Orthodoxy’s insufficient sensitivity to their needs as spiritual beings. Rabbi Mendel Shapiro, arguing that innovation helps insure a system’s adaptability to new challenges while still balancing stability and flexibility, suggested that contemporary realities create many halakhic opportunities for women to be called up to the Torah and receive aliyyot.1 R. Shapiro is not the only one to have made this argument,2 but his article in an Orthodox journal sponsored by Edah has been identified most frequently and prominently as the supporting evidence for a small number of Orthodox congregations having adopted this practice, most notably Congregation Shira Hadasha in Jerusalem. Both for its inherent interest as an attempt to mine sources creatively and for its impact on the current Orthodox world, R. Shapiro’s analysis deserves serious consideration.
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