What if the Gedolim were women?

R Yitzchok Adlerstein, who has been sounding increasingly chareidi as of late (though friends of his insist that in reality he is more modern), writes about the women rabbi issue/phenomena/flash in the pan/new wave of orthodoxy/[insert your POV here].

He claims that arguing halacha is pointless because

"Without a Sanhedrin ready to rule authoritatively, too many halachic arguments can be opposed by opposing halachic arguments".

Well, so much for halachah then.

Instead, RYA insists that our only reliable guide to ratzon HKBH are those "individuals of greatest Torah achievement". Or as Steve Brizel puts it: "Mesorah [i.e. Daas Torah] is the white space between the black lines of halachah, and anyone who doesn't get that is missing one of the major ikkarim" (no. 14 I presume?)

Sounds nice, except that those "individuals" often tend to be the most cloistered people living in very male dominated societies. So they might be a bit biased, dontcha think?

But then again, maybe RAL and RHS (the Gedolim of the RWMO world) have modern dominant wives, and perhaps their motivation is just the opposite - Modern Orthodox women have TOO much power already, let's at least save the shuls for us men. I could hear that (I can also hear Michael Douglas yelling at Demi Moore in the movie Disclosure - "When did I ever have the power, when???")

Recently, there were a number of articles concerning the meltdown on Wall street, and whether it would have happened had women run the street. The theory goes that male traders have high levels of testosterone and then make overly ambitious or crazy trades (apparently this is a well known phenomena), but that women, who have much lower levels of testosterone would remain calm and cautious, even after making a huge trade and winning. The rampant greed and lack of risk management just wouldn't have happened had women been in charge.

Likewise, maybe you could make the argument that if Orthodoxy was run by women, it would be more compassionate and inclusive. Or maybe more bitchy and exclusive? It depends I guess.

Judaism however, has always been a male dominated religion. We take this for granted, since Christianity and Islam are too, but there were a great many pagan religions were female goddess figures were key, and of course there's always Mrs. God, a.k.a Asherah.

My personal feeling on the matter is that there just aren't enough people supporting this phenomenon to make it happen on a wide scale. so I don't know why everyone is getting so bent out of shape about it. Are we talking about anything more than just a handful of large shuls in trendy neighborhoods with multiple rabbis anyway?

Perhaps the fear is that small, out of town shuls may end up with women rabbis. Perhaps the fear is that we'll become too feminized, like those Reform Jews. Perhaps it's just fear of change.

Or maybe it's fear of women? I mean, Men may have testosterone, but women have estrogen and all sorts of other crazy-ass hormones. I'll take testosterone over estrogen anyday (figuratively speaking).

Someone else made the point that if JOFA et al really cared about women, then rather than agitating for women LWMO Rabbis, they should concern themselves with helping poor chareidi women who have few rights, or victims of the shidduch crisis, or I guess anyone in dire straits as long as they have female genitalia and cover their hair. This is a good point too.

Since this post is somewhat rambling, I'll close with a fisk of a rather stupid comment from Rabbi Adlerstein, who should know better (is there a correlation between sliding to the right and making stupid comments - I think so):

"Those who reject [Orthodoxy] do so for a variety of reasons. Some, perhaps the largest group, don’t want to accept the yoke of mitzvos, which gets in the way of what they want to do, and of their sense of autonomy.

[XGH: Eh, this is bs. The largest group reject OrthoDOXY because there's no hava aminah that it should be true in the first place. Kinda like why we all reject Christianity or Islam]

" They don’t want to believe in a G-d Who micromanages their lives."

[XGH: More bs. Who ever said God micromanages people's lives? What is he talking about? We have bechirah, no?]

"Some just don’t believe in Him, plain and simple."

[XGH: True, though I question how many Reform laity are atheists]

Some can’t believe in a halachic system that takes seriously the notion that G-d spoke to Man in a manner that has normative significance.

[XGH: I'm not mekabel. How could anyone not accept this obvious fact? Could God have created the world without an instruction manual? Heck, even a carton of milk comes with instructions, kal vechomer the whole universe! And could God have given the instruction manual to everyone? Of course not! It could only have been given to a select group of people, for them to interpret the instructions. Had the manual been given to everybody, then everybody would know the instructions, and what fun would that be?]

Or they believe that the text that supposedly records that conversation was a forgery by multiple R’s who put together J and E and burnt the revered originals. Multiple, because the first R was followed by R2 who merged JE with P, and then a third, who got away with it once again and added D. Maybe we could call him R2D2.

[XGH: Yes, that silly Documentary Hypothesis! All those silly academics laboring away in their so called "Bible studies department" with their so called "theories" about "textual authorship". I say FEH to all that! Well, FEH and a Star Wars pun. That'll show them!]

RYA, you disappoint me. I don't see RMB talking like that.