Talk:Women rabbis and Torah scholars

Women rabbis and Torah scholars is currently a Philosophy and religion good article nominee. Nominated by I.am.a.qwerty (talk) at 13:21, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

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Short description: Jewish women in religious leadership

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Text and/or other creative content from this version of Rabbi was copied or moved into Women rabbis with this edit. The former page's history now serves to provide attribution for that content in the latter page, and it must not be deleted as long as the latter page exists.

Recent cleanup[edit]

Some notes regarding my recent cleanup on this page:

I have edited POV language that was heavily aimed at framing the entire article through the view of Orthodox and Haredi Judaism.
Presently, the historical antecedents for women in the rabbinate have been included, highlighting historical examples of women as rabbis.
I have added the available stats of the number of women rabbis, split by Reform, Conservative, Orthodox Judaism
I have also adjusted the order of the paragraphs to align with the 1970s to present history of women in contemporary Judaism. This means the order of listing denominational developments follows the order in which the denomination first ordained a woman rabbi (Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox).
The Orthodox section reflects 3 key points:
- There are Orthodox women rabbis associated with a few new institutions
- The major Orthodox rabbinic organisations do not accept their ordination
- Other Orthodox institutions have opted for alternate clerical roles (e.g. Yoetzet)
Finally, the name of the page has been renamed from "Women Rabbis" to "Women rabbis and torah scholars" to circumvent the narrow issue of "ordination" and incorporate the Orthodox approach of allowing alternate roles for women that do not specifically require ordination.

I.am.a.qwerty (talk) 12:57, 27 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

GA Review -- intent and initial comments[edit]

Hi. I plan to review this article, which generally looks outstanding. Kudos to I.am.a.qwerty (talk). But I probably will not start the "official" review until July 3rd, in 11 days from now. Here are some initial comments:

#1 criterion. Overall, the article looks great. I would have to read more closely for the MOS. Prose is approx 4,800 words which is manageable, though it'd be wise to plan for some separate articles. Organization, formatting, wikilinks -- looks strong. Some writing might need to shift out of the present tense. But need to use a consistent citation method, per the MOS:FNNR.

Isn't most of the history about non-Orthodox (or Progressive) movements? If so, maybe the Modern history and Development sections need to be merged? I realize this could require a fair amount of reorganizing, but wouldn't it avoid redundancies and confusion -- like 1920s para that is Reform?) Another initial concern is the lead -- while written with balanced NPOV prose, the first para has a disproportionate emphasis on Orthodoxy.

#2 Factual. Glancing thru 200+ footnotes, amazing array of RS. I would need to spot check to verify. Caught my eye -- I do wonder if the "around 87*" for Orthodoxy is properly encyclopedic or might be seen as original research (an NPOV issue).

#3 Broad coverage, certainly impressive. The article need not be comprehensive. (Sample gap -- Hebrew College and AJR rabbis.) However, one serious concern is that the title probably should not include "Torah scholars." This term will not help clarify the scope of the article -- there are so many women who are Judaism or Torah scholars, yet outside the scope here. Plus, ther term is not used regularly (or consistently) by reliable sources, either for men or women, so it will undermine the article. Still, I certainly understand why the article was renamed. How about using a term like "clergy" instead?

#4 NPOV. Overall, NPOV is strong at the sentence/paragraph level. Still, there are points where the article comes across as implying that it's good for there to be women rabbis. (E.g., "the complex problem of women in the rabbinate may be dealt with...") However, there's a serious imbalance without enough (or any?) explanation of why women were not ordained and why their ordination has been opposed -- it's even missing from the Orthodoxy section. Seems like the detailed history is all about ordaining and almost always silent about the opposition.

#5 Amazing.

#6 Amazing images. I'd have to spot check.

Overall, there's an incredible amount work put into this article. I realize I am pointing to a few serious concerns, above. Nonetheless, I would love to see this article get to GA and then perhaps there's a clear path to FA. ProfGray (talk) 04:42, 23 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Update: Consistent with the comments above, I'd suggest that the Biblical paragraphs be deleted (or merged into another article), since Biblical characters are not part of rabbinical Judaism, from a neutral perspective. Also, if "Torah scholars" is removed from the scope, then paragraphs on Talmudic and medieval women can be deleted, or moved into an article on Women Torah scholars), unless specifically about women rabbis or clergy. ProfGray (talk) 05:14, 23 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]