When I started the ordination course three years ago, I knew there’d be problems. So I told the heads of London School of Jewish Studies [LSJS, where Dr Taylor-Guthartz has taught since 2004] and proposed a compromise: I’d agree not to use my rabbinic title at LSJS. The Chief Rabbi didn’t agree, and banned me from teaching there.
The LSJS heads managed to get me unbanned, though I was warned that there were no guarantees for the future. Sure enough, a week or so before my graduation, I was banned by the Chief Rabbi from teaching at LSJS, and my title of “Research Fellow” was removed. LSJS continued to negotiate, but the Chief Rabbi was adamant.
Finally, after a storm of protest — lots of letters to The Jewish Chronicle, plus the resignation of a trustee of LSJS, a senior Research Fellow, and some teachers — the Chief Rabbi backed down. I kept my promise not to use my rabbinic title at LSJS. Of course, now that there’s been so much entirely avoidable publicity, it’s a bit farcical.
Opportunities for female Orthodox rabbis are limited, to put it mildly, but many rabbis don't work as congregational leaders, and I’m fine with that at the moment. The traditional chain of actual rabbinic ordination, semikhah, died out in the fourth century. Now, the courtesy title of rabbi is a certification that you’re qualified to make rulings in aspects of Jewish law, Halacha. It’s more like a BA in Halacha that authorises you to answer questions about Jewish practice and procedure, like if you are divorced or not, or whether you can have a Covid vaccine on shabbat. There’s no sacramental function, but, in the power politics around allowing women to share in the men’s game, it’s very like Christianity.
I have a research grant at Manchester University to study the history of Limmud, the huge Jewish conference that happens over Christmas, and has spread to another 40 countries. Then I was teaching at King’s College, London, for the last two terms; and I teach elsewhere, too. The pandemic brought me more teaching abroad via Zoom, which is likely to become a new normal, like an occasional online learning programme, “the Pop-Up Beit Midrash”.
I’ve recently co-founded an initiative to build high-level cross-denominational study programmes for the Orthodox communities in the UK. Otherwise, they must go to Israel or the US for advanced study. Only ten per cent of Jews in the US are Orthodox, but there’s much more observance and study. In Britain, 65 per cent of Jews are affiliated to Orthodox synagogues, but most, especially women, have no Hebrew adequate to study Halachic literature, which is largely untranslated.
I didn’t so much have a call to be a rabbi as a desire to advance the cause of Jewish women’s learning and participation. In the Orthodox world, things change slowly. You need facts on the ground, and radical action, and longer-term policy change in institutions.
I’m not much of an Establishment person. Facts on the ground interest me more. I think of it as guerrilla Judaism: take the Torah and head for the hills. . . But I adhere to the Orthodox understanding of the divine origin of Halacha, whereas Masorti, Reform, and Liberal communities have a more human-based understanding of Halacha.
And there’s that old adage: “Be the change you want to see.”
I started off doing archaeological translation from Hebrew to English, in Israel. After an MA in pre-history, I fell into teaching Jewish studies, and discovered I loved it. I did a Ph.D., which became a book on what Orthodox women really believe.
When I moved back to the UK, I found Orthodox women here often dissatisfied with their spectator status in synagogue, but simultaneously reluctant to change things. I’d been involved in a cutting-edge Jerusalem synagogue, where women took a much greater role, including all-women Torah readings; so I wanted to find out why the UK community was so conservative.
I went to a lecture on Jewish superstitions, which amazed me. All the women there knew about and often practised the customs that were discussed, and I’d never even heard of them. I wanted to find out why women did these things, and what role they played in their religious lives. Most rabbis have no idea what their female congregants are thinking — and, often, doing.
The way that the gender gap works out in the Orthodox world — it doesn’t exist officially in the progressive denominations — leads to quite a lot of injustice. The worst is that women can’t get divorced unless their husbands agree, and that’s led to a lot of suffering, in which the rabbinic Establishment has often been complicit. Denying women the right to study some types of traditional texts has denied many the use of their God-given talents.
Strong support for families, recognition of the home as a sacred sphere, honouring domestic duties as a way of serving God don’t have to be based on mandatory gender essentialism.
My mother didn’t find out that she was Jewish till she was 12. I beat her, at seven. My father wasn’t Jewish, and my stepfather was a lapsed Irish Catholic, who married my mother when I was seven. We went to live in Cornwall, where, at the time, there was no Jewish community. My mother took me to Sunday school and church occasionally, and I went to a C of E school in Truro, where there was compulsory church for all every Sunday.
About the age of 12, I became interested in Jewish things, and read everything I could. The more I read, the more I thought “This is for me!” I taught myself to read Hebrew script at the local library when I was 14. They had a lovely illustrated copy of the Haggadah, the first Jewish book I ever read.
I used to have a secret Passover Seder every year in my bedroom, with four cups of water instead of wine. One year, I found a box of matzo in a health food shop in Plymouth.
At Cambridge, I went to a synagogue for the first time ever on Simhat Torah, a rather noisy festival with lots of singing and dancing. I was quite scared, and seriously thought of leaving, but I didn’t.
I met my wonderful American husband in Jerusalem. We were married there, and have two daughters. We have a fairly laid-back Orthodox lifestyle: he prays all three times a day, I do all the mornings and sometimes the other two services. We have a kosher kitchen, and observe the sabbath and all the festivals. We share home rituals such as kiddush and candle-lighting, and I do most of the Torah study, which is unusual for Orthodox couples.
One daughter is feminist and Orthodox; the other describes herself as “Halachic egalitarian”: she observes Jewish law, but in a completely egalitarian way. We often do Friday-night services together at home, with lots of singing.
I’m not absolutely sure I’ve had an experience of God. I live in hope. I feel most likely to have one when walking on high hills and mountains.
I talk to God a lot. “Can you do something about Afghanistan?” “Where did I put my glasses?” Sometimes. I look at patterns in my life, and, with hindsight, they do seem to have some meaning. For me, the religious life is much more about the journey than the arriving.
I’d like to travel, and learn Arabic properly; find a singing group: I like early music; get back to playing the flute, learn to weave, knit more, read all the books I have waiting, do some genealogical research, go to lots of museums, have time to talk to friends, sort the house out, meet new people.
My belief that God is the ultimate good gives me hope.
I pray for the protection and welfare of people, especially those who are ill or who are in conflict zones or refugees.
If I could be locked in a synagogue for a few hours with anyone, I’d choose my mother. She died seven years ago, and I would so like to (a) make sure that she’s OK; (b) tell her all the family news — she’d be proud and horrified that I’m now a rabbi; (c) ask her all the questions I never asked. Or Miriam. She could tell me all about the Exodus: lots of archaeological interest there, the revelation at Sinai, settling all sorts of theological questions, and what it was like to be an ancient Israelite woman.
Dr Taylor-Guthartz was talking to Terence Handley MacMath.
Challenge and Conformity: The religious lives of Orthodox Jewish women is published by Littman Library of Jewish Civilization at £29.95; 978-1-7869-4171-8.
