Jewish mystical texts say God “looked into the Torah and created the world” and studying the Torah is a way of studying God’s mind. So why is it that Jewish study centers are filled almost exclusively with Orthodox men?
That is the question lately driving Shmuel Herzfeld, a trailblazing Orthodox rabbi who tools around D.C. in a menorah-decorated car trying to find ways for Jews in the nation’s capital to merge the commitment and intentionality of orthodoxy with the openness and inclusiveness of a more liberal faith.
He has stood up at a huge D.C. conference of Jews in his prayer shawl in spiritual protest of Donald Trump. After the massacre at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, he led his congregants to a local gay bar to offer prayers of mourning. He has elevated a woman to the position of spiritual leader at his synagogue, Ohev Sholom, one of a tiny number of Orthodox synagogues in the country to do so.
Source: Yeshivas are mostly places where Orthodox men study the Torah. A D.C. Rabbi wants to change that.