Women have won the right to sit for Israel’s rabbinical exams. It’s a victory — but to what end?

For more than a decade, I have watched and lived the unfolding story of women’s religious leadership in Orthodoxy. As the first woman ordained to serve in Orthodox clergy, and as someone who has spent years teaching and building an institution, Yeshivat Maharat, I have learned that change rarely arrives in dramatic moments. More often, it comes quietly through persistence, through courage, and through the refusal to accept that the boundaries of the past must define the future.

That is why the recent ruling by Israel’s Supreme Court allowing women to sit for the national rabbinical examinations feels so significant, and so deeply personal. For years, women in Israel committed themselves to rigorous Torah scholarship, mastering complex halachic material and serving their communities as teachers and spiritual leaders, yet were barred from even attempting the state rabbinate exams.

This is deeply significant as the credential provides greater professional access and economic equity in the workforce.  Yet women have banned, not because they lacked knowledge, and not because they lacked dedication, but simply because they were women.

The court’s ruling that it is unlawful to exclude a group from access to national examinations on the basis of gender represents more than a legal milestone. It is a recognition of women’s Torah, women’s leadership and the evolving reality of religious life in our time. It affirms what many of us have known for years: women are not waiting to lead, they already are.

And yet, even as I welcome this moment, I find myself holding both hope and caution.

My first hesitation is procedural. Since July, the Chief Rabbinate has stalled and has not administered any exams. Rather than allow women to take the test, apparently, the organization chose to admit no one. And even now, after formally opening registration, it continues to signal that obstacles remain. Access, it seems, is being granted reluctantly, hedged with caveats.

In their public statement, the chief rabbis wrote: “The examinations administered by the Chief Rabbinate constitute a tremendous spiritual enterprise. With God’s help, we will stand firmly on guard to ensure that only those who, according to halacha, are worthy to bear a certificate signed by the Chief Rabbinate will merit to receive one, and that those who are not worthy will not.”

The subtext is hard to miss. The question of women’s participation is framed not as administrative policy, but as a threat to the sanctity of Torah itself, as though women seeking to be tested on halacha must first overcome a presumption of unworthiness.

Which leads to my second hesitation: Women are clamoring to play by the rules set by the Rabbanut to gain legitimacy. But do women need the Rabbanut’s tests to prove that they are worthy of serving Klal Yisrael?

There is no question that the exams carry financial and political ramifications. In Israel, Rabbanut certification affects salary scales, state funding and eligibility for certain rabbinic posts. Access to the exams is therefore not merely symbolic; it is tied to economic equity and professional legitimacy.

And yet, when I speak with colleagues in Israel who have long served as halachic authorities, teachers and spiritual leaders, I hear a more complex and layered reality. Some question whether entering the Rabbanut will meaningfully improve their professional or financial standing. More deeply, they worry about what it means to operate within the Rabbanut’s institutional boundaries, and become part of a centralized ruling authority that an increasing number of Israelis have chosen not to engage with. They fear that formal recognition may come at the cost of the very leadership they have spent years cultivating, a leadership grounded in community trust, pastoral presence and lived Torah rather than state certification.

The Rabbanut exams test halachic knowledge, but so do semikha (ordination) exams administered outside the rabbinate’s system, including those of Yeshivat Maharat, Yeshiva University and Ohr Torah Stone. Mastery of halacha matters deeply. It is the backbone of rabbinic authority.

Yet, these halachic exams test only one dimension of rabbinic leadership. They do not test one’s ability to sit at a hospital bedside. They do not test how a rabbi guides a grieving family. They do not measure whether a teacher can open the doors of Torah to a searching soul. They do not assess leadership, pedagogy or pastoral wisdom.

Of course, the authority that comes with deep halachic knowledge can create credibility to do those things. But knowledge alone does not produce spiritual leadership. If anything, the contemporary rabbinate — male and female — would be strengthened by more intentional training in leadership development, pastoral care and pedagogy.

So I find myself holding two truths at once.

I am proud that women fought for access, proud that the legal barriers are cracking, proud that Maharat graduates are stepping forward to be counted, tested and recognized.

And I remain cautious.

Because systems that were never designed with women in mind cannot now be the final decider of their legitimacy within it. If women choose to sit for the Rabbanut exams, it must be because the certification serves their leadership and strengthens the communities they already guide, not because an institution presumes the power to retroactively validate decades of Torah, service and devotion.

If worthiness is defined only by mastery of texts, then the exams are sufficient. But if worthiness is measured by the courage to lead, the humility to listen, the wisdom to hold complexity and the sacred responsibility of walking with people through joy, loss and transformation, then women’s rabbinic leadership has already outgrown the narrow metrics of any centralized system.

The question is no longer whether women belong. The question is whether our institutions are ready to recognize what is already here.

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is the co-founder and president of Yeshivat Maharat, and serves on the rabbinic staff at The Bayit – The Hebrew Institute of Riverdale. 

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of JTA or its parent company, 70 Faces Media.