By: Nomi Kaltmann as seen in Griffith Review

Published 26 October 2024

I DON’T KNOW when I learnt I was Jewish. As far as I’m concerned, I’ve always known. I went to a Jewish school from the age of three, where –alongside maths, science, English, art and French – I took a full program of Jewish studies, including Hebrew, chumash (Bible studies), navi (study of the prophets), yahadut (general Jewish knowledge) and parsha (the weekly Torah portion read in synagogue).

Most kids at school hated Jewish studies – the texts are dense and ancient, and the teachers in Australia are often underpaid and overworked. Plus, Year 12 exams don’t include chumash or navi, so why put in the effort? Yet I wasn’t like that. I loved Jewish studies so much that as a teenager I studied for the International Bible Contest, in which the best and brightest Jewish kids from each country memorise hundreds of Bible facts to win a free ticket to compete against each other in Israel. Sure, I was looking for creative ways to go overseas – growing up, money was tight and we didn’t go on family holidays – but I also genuinely loved learning about my faith.

I memorised close to 200 chapters of the Torah – and I won the Australian round of the competition. While I was in Israel, I met and competed against other Jewish kids who, like me, had spent all their free time poring over Bible chapters and the minute details within them. And these details were as obscure as you could imagine: who was Isaiah’s father? How many years did Queen Athaliah rule the Judean kingdom for? What was the ancestral land of the Judge Gideon? Who said to whom: ‘The wrong done me is your fault’?

In the end, I didn’t just win the Australian competition, I placed tenth in the world. I remember how elated I felt when I understood that being Jewish and knowing the history of my people was something to be celebrated.

I GREW UP in an Orthodox home, and Orthodox Judaism is known for its adherence to tradition. Men and women dress modestly and keep kosher and Sabbath. Life is predictable, with ritual symbolism built into everyday practices, such as which shoe you put on first.

In Orthodox synagogues, men and women sit separately, with a divider often obscuring the women from view and making us inadvertently spectators to services. Women have almost no role. We are not rabbis. We do not read from the Torah. We do not count towards prayer quorum. We rarely speak from the pulpit, no matter how much Jewish knowledge we possess.

Yet the synagogue is where so much of Jewish life happens. It’s where we read the Torah each week on Sabbath. It’s where we gather for happy times, such as the birth of a new baby or a bar mitzvah. It’s where we comfort each other in prayer after someone has died.

I’m comfortable in Orthodox spaces. There are other, more progressive denominations within Judaism, but I love the traditions that I was brought up with. Nonetheless, I’m also aware of how some of the more gendered roles in my faith can have potentially negative consequences.

If there are no women in leadership in a synagogue, many of us don’t bother to come. Or if we do come, we know there’s no real point joining a board or committee – our opinions count for less. And this means that Orthodox Judaism risks losing a new generation of Orthodox women –women like me, who would never accept equivalent lack of opportunity and education in our professional and personal lives.

WHEN I GRADUATED from high school in 2010, I had what many people considered a first-class Jewish education. I could read, write and speak Hebrew. I was familiar with Jewish rituals and could easily navigate my way through a synagogue service. After graduating, I enrolled in a Jewish seminary for women in Israel, where I spent a year further studying Torah.

This marked the end of my formal Jewish studies – as a woman, there was nothing beyond this that I’d be able to pursue. Returning home to Melbourne in 2011, I began studying arts and law at Monash University.

I was jealous of my brothers, some of whom became rabbis and spent years studying in yeshivot, institutions where men are taught Torah and immerse themselves in the texts.

I graduated from university. I got married, worked as a lawyer and had a kid. Objectively, life was good. I had nice friends and hobbies that I enjoyed. I was earning decent money. My husband and I went on overseas holidays. And yet I carried an overwhelming sense of sorrow. Was this all there was to my life? I loved Judaism and I loved learning Torah. If I were male, I know I would have been chosen to be a rabbi. Was there no room for me to be a leader within my faith just because I was female?

The more I thought about it, the more infuriated I grew at the status quo. I had thoughts and opinions that I wanted to contribute and almost no opportunities to do so. And this didn’t only apply to me but to m any of my talented friends. Why should we miss out on bringing Judaism into the twenty-first century?

THE FIRST JEWISH school for girls opened in Poland in 1917, when providing Jewish women access to Torah and education was viewed as radical. As acceptance grew and more schools for Jewish girls opened across the world,the level of knowledge to which Jewish women had access kept expanding.

By the time I was born in 1992, many in my Jewish community deemed it to be a golden era for Jewish women – what more could I want?

I didn’t begin to answer that question until 2016, when I first heard about Yeshivat Maharat, a groundbreaking institution in New York that became the first in the world to ordain Orthodox women as rabbis in 2009. The school recognised that if Jewish women weren’t allowed to serve in leadership roles,
they might feel they had no future within Judaism. While some rabbinical schools charge tuition, Yeshivat Maharat is free and provides a generous stipend to its students for the four-year duration of their studies.

Interestingly, Yeshivat Maharat does not confer a specific title on its graduates. Some women choose rabbi; others choose rabbanit, a Hebrew word that usually denotes the wife of a rabbi but that has been reclaimed to denote a female rabbi; others choose rabba, the feminine form of rabbi.
Women who graduate from Yeshivat Maharat occupy a nuanced area of Jewish law. On one hand, they are arbiters of this law and have the same knowledge as male rabbis. However, in Orthodox Judaism, even these women cannot count towards a prayer quorum (minyan) or be a witness in a Jewish court of law. In non-Orthodox Jewish traditions, female rabbis may do so. In fact, Judaism’s reform movement has been ordaining women since 1972. But obviously, ordaining women as rabbis is still highly controversial.

American rabbinical councils have been particularly vitriolic about Yeshivat Maharat, noting in 2016 that ‘These developments represent a radical and dangerous departure from Jewish tradition, and must be condemned in the strongest terms. Any congregation with a woman in a rabbinical position of any sort cannot be considered Orthodox.’

Yeshivat Maharat understands that not everyone likes what it’s doing. Some Jewish institutions won’t work with it and refuse to hire its graduates. When women enrol in Maharat’s programs, they know that some may cast them out of the tent of Orthodox Judaism for seeking ordination. However, despite the loud complaints, many synagogues and Jewish institutions have vacant positions that need filling. Plenty of Maharat graduates find employment in the rabbinate or are invited to be scholars-in-residence at synagogues.

Donors are looking to fund new clergy roles in synagogues created just for women – donors who know that graduates of Maharat are at the forefront of fighting for greater equality within Orthodox Judaism. And since its inception, Yeshivat Maharat has never had a problem attracting students. Women have been locked out of the corridors of power in Orthodox Judaism for so long that we’re clamouring for opportunities to study Torah.

Nonetheless, I agonised over whether I wanted to join a movement seen as fringe by so many. And did I want to do four years of study on top of my job and raising my child – all for a qualification I probably wouldn’t be able to use? Yet I felt a deeper sense of yearning, of wanting to connect with tradition.

I first met with staff from Yeshivat Maharat on Zoom in 2016. They were excited to talk to me because no one had enrolled yet from Australia, although they’d had a few enquiries. They were willing to be flexible and let me study remotely – with regular trips to New York. They were happy with my base Jewish knowledge and promised to help me meet the standards I would require for Talmud classes, which are not generally taught to women in Australia. For a few weeks I buzzed with excitement. But the more I thought about it, the more scared I became. The commitment was just too big.

I didn’t apply. I chickened out.

IN THE YEARS that followed, I’d see social media posts from American women studying the program I had applied to, and I’d feel a deep pang of jealousy.

That could have been me.

I started to regret my decision. Wasn’t being a rabbi one of my dreams?

Didn’t I want to be part of a trailblazing club of women? I began to realise the timing would never be perfect. I simply needed to seize the moment.

So, in 2019, three years after turning down the offer to study at Maharat,I sent them an email. Would they still consider me as a candidate for their rabbinical school?

The answer was yes. After a seamless interview process, I was accepted. The dream was back on!

In September 2019, twelve weeks after my second baby was born, I began. Over the next four years, I studied at all hours of the day and night. I kept my day job as a lawyer, but several times a week, at 5.30 am Melbourne time – 3.30 pm in New York – I’d log on to Zoom to join my classmates in America. I cut my teeth on the complex texts of ancient Jewish law and the Talmud in Hebrew and Aramaic. I completed exams and assignments, wrote papers and listened to hours of lectures that took place in the middle of the night in Australia. I became a qualified hospital and prison chaplain. I had regular catch-up tutorials with teachers.

Throughout this time, I felt a sense of belonging. I was doing what I had always wanted to do, and I was doing it alongside women from France, England, Canada, South Africa and Israel. I felt as if I’d found kindred spirits: other women who wanted to see more female leadership within Judaism.

Women who felt passionately that Orthodox Judaism could change. Years later, some of these women continue to provide me with advice and friendship. Despite living in different countries, we face the same challenges, and we all want to create change within our communities.

When I graduated in June 2023, I couldn’t stop beaming. I could hardly believe that I’d done it. After all my years of studying, I had become a rabbi.

WHILE MY STUDIES were progressing, I kept them very quiet – I hadn’t enrolled at Yeshivat Maharat to be controversial. But once I graduated,I finally posted about my achievement publicly. I was nervous about backlash, but congratulatory messages poured in.

Sure, some members of my community were unimpressed. ‘There’s no such thing as an Orthodox female rabbi,’ one told me, to which I responded, ‘Well, I’m standing and breathing right in front of you, so I guess they do in fact exist.’

As an ordained rabbi, I get invited to interfaith events. I speak to young students at schools across Victoria. I teach Torah to women and men alike. I started the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance in Australia, the first local branch of a global group of feminist organisations that actively promote the
role of women in Judaism. I write a lot about the need for Jewish women in positions of leadership within the faith. I maintain my belief that the status quo will change.

I don’t know if Orthodox women rabbis will be normalised within my lifetime, but I know that after Maharat started, other institutions that hadn’t previously wanted to ordain women began to shift their thinking. Today, there are at least half-a-dozen programs globally that offer Jewish women a high-level Torah education. A reckoning is underway: women are demanding access to texts and training that have never been offered before, and institutions are listening.

While some in my community won’t accept my title or recognise me as a rabbi, it doesn’t bother me. Change comes in small steps, especially in an ancient religion. I know now that I can serve as a role model for other women in my community and that I’m helping to create a reality that once seemed impossible.

I often think back to my bat mitzvah – when, according to Jewish law, I became an adult. Twelve-year-old Nomi had no idea that within twenty years she would be one of the world’s first ordained female Orthodox rabbis. When I think of that little girl who loved Torah so much and memorised all those chapters of the Bible, I feel immense pride. My hope is that Jewish girls today who share the same love for learning and desire to be leaders in their faith can now look ahead to a future that includes them.