Great new blog post by friend Miri. Seeking to understand what kashrut means is essential to building a mature Messianic Judaism.
Thanks for your contribution to this discussion, Mirela!
Six Things I Wish I Knew Before I Went Kosher | Biblically Kosher | Biblical Eating.
…God of Sarah, God of Rebecca, God of Rachel and Leah…
(Avot v’Imot, Amidah (Blessing 1))
The above words are added into the 1st blessing of the Amidah in the most recent versions of the prayerbooks of the Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist movements and also used in “egalitarian” liturgies of the Messianic Judaism movement. In this one line there is a powerful acknowledgment of these women who were the co-laborers of the Patriarchs. These women are so significant in the thought of those who added these words to the liturgy that the very name of the God of Israel is attached to them, they like Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are known as the ones who were connected to and followers of the Holy One of Israel. But unfortunately, unlike Abraham, Isaac and Jacob they could not serve as a rabbi in any of the mainstream Messianic Jewish congregations.
Egalitarianism is a buzz word in the Messianic Judaism circles that I am involved. This in practicality means that the daily prayer times will be men and women praying together and we will use a prayerbook that includes prayers with the line about the Imot. Sadly this is where we are with egalitarianism, we can bless God for being the God of these extraordinary women of faith, but a practical place for the extraordinary women of faith today is all but absent. There are women as shammashim, oneg committee leaders, Shabbat school teachers and singers in worship teams, but the real key to full involvement in the life of the Messianic Jewish world is via rabbinic ordination, a step that women cannot take within the mainstream Messianic Jewish organizations, the MJAA and UMJC, where it is officially prohibited by a decades old position paper of the Union.
Rabbinic ordination beyond the practical outworking, allowing gifted women leaders the opportunity to use their God given gifts to serve God, their community and the large Messianic Jewish world, it is also the gateway to other important places of leadership and influence including leadership roles in committees of the Union, prominent speaking and teaching roles within the Messianic Jewish world and even full membership in groups like the Messianic Jewish Rabbinic Council.
The lack of female voices in these important roles is a great loss for us all and especially to deal with important issues of Jewish life, like that being done by the MJRC, without women being full participants and voices in the debate is reminiscent of Constantine’s exclusion of Messianic Jewish input at the Council of Nicea that gave the world a creed of faith that made no practical mention of Israel, do we want a Messianic Judaism that establishes halakha that will be walked by men and women, yet be fashioned only by men, mostly 50+ year old men, which also leads to concerns over the missing input of 20/30somethings in the future of our movement, to be covered later.
The issue of full involvement of women gifted by God to serve as rabbis, cantors, elders, synagogue presidents, seminary professors and umbrella organization executives is something that has to move forward and move forward now. We have already lost some gifted younger women in our movement and will continue to in the future to our great loss because the “glass” ceiling for women in the Messianic Jewish world is reinforced by 18 inches of battleship quality steel, not only does it diminish the flames of service and use of gifting of individual women, it diminishes all women in our movement and the movement as a whole.
We have to take our “egalitarianism” beyond just words in our prayerbooks and truly honor the blessed memory of Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah and let their daughters step into the roles for which they are called and gifted.
And practically we need men of courage and character who are in leadership roles to finally take the steps to remove the barrier of ordination for women in the UMJC. The time has come to revisit the issue of women in leadership and take that all important for women rabbis, a vote for a bright future where all members of the Messianic Jewish community can fully serve and be who God made them to be.
One of my great hopes is to see the day, may it be soon, that this barrier to our bright future is finally removed.
Let’s all do our part to make it so!
