Partnership minyan
Partnership minyan is a religious Jewish prayer group that seeks to maximize women's participation in services within the confines of Jewish law as understood by Orthodox Judaism. This includes enabling women to lead parts of service, read from the Torah, serve in lay leadership positions, sit in a more gender-balanced format, and in some cases count as part of a minyan of ten men and ten women. Partnership minyanim began in 2002 simultaneously in New York and Jerusalem, and have now spread to over 30 communities in at least five countries around the world.
Definition
The Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance defines a partnership minyan as:Professor Tamar Ross explains:
Some partnership minyanim also wait to begin parts of the service requiring a minyan until 10 women as well as 10 men are present. Such a service is also known as a Shira Hadasha-style minyan, after Kehillat Shira Hadasha in Jerusalem, among the first such prayer groups to be established, in 2001.
Various structural innovations have been devised to permit women to lead prayers while maintaining distinct men's and women's sections, such as separate shtenders and a mechitza going down the middle of the room. Men can also be limited in which service parts they can lead.
In response to arguments that the halakhic underpinnings of the approach are stronger if done on a temporary and situational basis, some partnership minyanim, including Shira Hadasha, have deliberately chosen to meet in spaces that are not regularly or permanently used for synagogue worship, and some meet on a situational schedule rather than every Shabbat. In keeping with arguments that women are permitted to read only some but not all the aliyot on shabbat, partnership minyanim generally do not permit women to be called for the two aliyot reserved to a Kohen and Levi if they are present, but only the last five of the seven aliyot on Shabbat, plus the maftir for the reading from the Prophets. In keeping with arguments that the Talmudic sources involved apply only to the seven aliyot on Shabbat, some partnership minyanim meet only on Shabbat or on other occasions, such as Purim, where other special halakhic arguments supporting greater women's participation have been made.
Some minyanim, especially in Israel, meet regularly on every shabbat and on every holiday.
A small number of partnership minyanim have been established in Israel, the United States, Canada, and Australia.
History
The first two partnership minyanim were established almost simultaneously without connection to one another in 2002: Shira Hadasha in Jerusalem and Darkhei Noam in New York City. Both described in their founding materials the goal of maximizing women's participation in prayer services within the boundaries of Orthodox understandings of Jewish law. According to scholar William Kaplowitz, within six years there were over twenty other similar synagogues around the world, including: Minyan Tehillah, founded in 2003 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Shira Hadasha in Melbourne, Australia, Darchei Noam in Modi’in, and others in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Toronto, New Haven, Washington, D.C., and several more. By 2014, an additional dozen or so were created in communities such as Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Mazkeret Batya and Beersheba in Israel, two in the United Kingdom, several on college campuses, high-schools, and more.Some partnership minyanim differ over details—such as whether to wait for ten women or whether women can lead the hallel service—but they all retain certain basic practices. Within a partitioned service, women read from the Torah, make the blessing on the Torah, chant the weekly prophetical portion of the Bible known as haftarah, lead some parts of the service, teach Torah, make speeches, sit on boards, and take part in decision-making. But women do not generally lead parts of the service that are thought to require a traditional quorum, or minyan—such as leading prayers known as kaddish and kedusha, which traditionally require the response of "amen" from ten men.
The spread of partnership minyanim, according to Kaplowitz, does not follow a pattern based on proportionality to size of Orthodox populations. Rather, there are certain regions with clusters and other places with none at all. In his 2008 thesis, he noted: "The Los Angeles area, with around two times as many Jews as the Chicago area, has one partnership minyan to Chicago's three; Southeast Florida, with about twice as many Jews as Chicago, has none. New Haven has a partnership minyan, but Philadelphia, with around twelve times as many Jews, does not. Ann Arbor has a partnership minyan but neither Detroit, Cleveland, nor Baltimore, each with over twelve times as many Jews, does. In fact, it is worth noting that there are no partnership minyanim in the Sunbelt except for that in Los Angeles; none west of the Atlantic seaboard and east of Michigan; and only one west of Chicago." In his research of this sprawl, Kaplowitz concluded that this is because the partnership minyan is a culture that is transferred one person at a time. The culture does not spread evenly; it spreads when one activist moves and decides to lead the new community towards change. The culture is carried by individuals who have developed an unwavering commitment to the model. In other words, the culture of partnership minyan is spreading because Orthodox people who participate in these kinds of prayer services often find that they can no longer be part of Orthodox services where women are relegated to "traditional" roles.
Orthodox discourse on "permissibility" according to Jewish law
Public women's prayer services, as well as women's participation in standard public services, are both innovations over the past generation. Many rabbis have weighed in on their permissibility. The permitting rabbis have interpreted various earlier talmudic and halachic sources to either provide conceptual or indirect support for public women's prayer. Other rabbis have analyzed these arguments, and raised various forms of refutation.Support for partnership minyanim
The existence of partnership minyanim was preceded by an opinion by Modern Orthodox Rabbi Mendel Shapiro in 2001, subsequently joined by Bar-Ilan University Talmud Professor Rabbi Daniel Sperber, positing that halakha permits Orthodox women to be called to, and to read from, the Torah on Shabbat under certain conditions. These opinions rely on earlier authorities including the Magen Avraham. Dr. Joel B. Wolowelsky also expressed an opinion which, while not offering a formal opinion on the halachic issues, suggested that the partnership minyan enterprise was not necessarily inconsistent with an Orthodox hashkafah.Rabbi Mendel Shapiro
Rabbi Shapiro's analysis focused on a Baraita in the Babylonian Talmud stating that:Rabbi Shapiro's primary argument, based on the language of this baraita as well as traditional commentaries to it, was that women were only discouraged from performing public Torah reading based on a social concern for the dignity of the congregation. While Jewish law usually demands that public rituals be led by those who are obligated in that particular ritual- and women are generally considered to be not obligated in public Torah reading- R. Shapiro demonstrated that public Torah reading is an exception, based on the baraita's explicitly allowing a minor, who is also not obligated, to lead. therefore, he argued, only "the dignity of the congregation" was invoked to discourage women from reading. He then analyzed the weight of the "dignity of the congregation" prohibition. Analyzing authorities on the law of Kevod HaTzibur, he noted a number of other situations which were rabbinically prohibited due to the "dignity of the congregation", such as rolling a Torah scroll in front of the congregation or having a person too young to have a beard serve as Hazzan. Citing authorities who held that congregational dignity could be waived in some of these matters, including the common practice of having teenagers lead the congregation in contemporary synagogues, he concluded that a congregation could waive its dignity on this issue as well, and an Orthodox congregation choosing to do so could call a woman to the Torah in much the same way that it could choose to have a teenager lead prayers at a Bar Mitzvah. Rabbi Shapiro also briefly addressed certain other objections, arguing for example that because some authorities have held that women can read the Megilla on Purim to men, chanting the Megilla, and hence the Torah, is not a kind of singing subject to restrictions on the issue of kol isha, the female singing voice.