Pioneering New York yeshivah has ordained its 100th Orthodox woman rabbi

This week I will be celebrating a historic milestone: 25 women will receive Orthodox ordination from Yeshivat Maharat in New York, bringing the total to 100 women who have received ordination since the institution's founding in 2009.

As the first woman ordained in the UK and the first full-time recruitment director for Maharat, I'll certainly be bursting with joy and pride at this achievement for our community.

When I embarked on my rabbinic journey just one year after the first Maharat cohort graduated, the reaction was simple: "Impossible." Orthodox women's ordination was seen as a contradiction in terms, a bridge too far for a tradition defined by its resistance to change. Yet here we stand, celebrating not just the possibility, but the reality of 100 Orthodox women who have crossed this threshold.

Now that Orthodox ordination for women is a reality, the conversation has inevitably turned to measuring success and the default metric for many is by counting how many women rabbis land jobs in synagogue pulpits.

I believe this is entirely the wrong question.

Measuring success by pulpit placements compares women's achievements to a dominant male model that is itself continuously evolving.

The late Chief Rabbi Lord Jakobovits articulated this evolution beautifully in the 1960’s when he described the shift from the kiseh harabanut, the rabbinic seat from which the community’s rav ensconced among his books, once dispensed halachic rulings to the modern pulpit rabbi regularly preaching from the pulpit. Yet even Rabbi Jakobovits would be amazed to see how the very pulpit role has expanded to encompass pastoral care, community organizing, and educational leadership.

More fundamentally, the focus on synagogue-based leadership overlooks the fact that most of Jewish life actually unfolds outside the synagogue walls, in Jewish schools, summer camps or at shared Shabbat dinners.

In fact, the 2020 Pew report on Jewish identity in the USA indicated that only 35 per cent of Jews who affiliate with a particular movement are synagogue members. While the overall percentage is higher for British Jews, the numbers suggest this is a declining trend among younger people, with only 40 per cent of 30-year-olds and 28 per cent of those in their twenties belonging to synagogues.

Consider Chabad, arguably one of the most impactful and far-reaching Jewish movements of our time. Its success stems not from magnificent synagogues or charismatic pulpit oratory, but from a model centred on home-based Judaism and personal outreach which has inspired the Moishe House and Base (Hillel) movements.

These spiritual leaders work primarily in kitchens and living rooms, university campuses and hospital rooms, spaces where the majority of Jews actually encounter their tradition.

This reality compels us to reframe our fundamental question entirely. We should not ask whether these women rabbis are finding jobs in synagogue pulpits. Instead, we should ask: are they finding ways to serve Jewish people wherever they are?

By this measure, the 100 women graduating from Yeshivat Maharat represent a broad scope of rabbinic engagement. While a good number serve in senior and associate positions in synagogue pulpits and a few have founded their own synagogue communities, many more are working where Jews actually live their lives.

The new graduates of Yeshivat Maharat who this week helped it reach a milestone[Missing Credit]

They serve as hospital chaplains comforting families in crisis, as university chaplains engaging students grappling with identity, as community organisers building connections across differences. They are shaping Jewish communal organisations across the USA, Israel, UK and Europe.

Far from representing a compromise or "cop-out," these roles recognise a fundamental truth: the majority of Jews are not found in synagogue pews. Traditional synagogue-centred spiritual leadership, however excellent, misses countless opportunities for meaningful engagement with Jewish life as it is actually lived.

These rabbis are out reaching individuals and communities with their deep Torah knowledge and empathetic halachic guidance.

Perhaps precisely because women cannot always neatly slide into existing Orthodox rabbinic frameworks, they have tended to diversify what rabbinic leadership means. This comes at a crucial moment for Jewish communities facing both the rise of antisemitism and “the surge” - the American term for the notable increase in Jewish engagement post-October 7th.

Jews are seeking greater community connection and spiritual guidance, but not necessarily within traditional synagogue structures.

Looking back to 2013, when I launched JOFA UK almost every community conversation around women's leadership I facilitated ended with someone in the audience saying "but we need women as Orthodox rabbis," followed by people insisting it would never happen. So I made it happen.

Now, London is home to five Maharat graduates serving in a range of rabbinic roles and two additional students, and all around me I see Orthodox women's leadership becoming less exceptional and more integral to Jewish life.

The real measure of success will be the moment when such leadership becomes so integrated into Jewish life that we no longer think of it as revolutionary, but simply as Jewish, rabbis serving Jewish people wherever they are.

Top image: Rabba Dina Brawer, the first woman from the UK to receive Orthodox semichah, reads the ketubah at a wedding (photo: Marc Odorino)