Let Women Dance With Torah Scrolls On Simchat Torah, Liberal Zionist Orthodox Rabbis Say

The liberal Zionist Orthodox Beit Hillel rabbinical association issued a ruling today that not only permits, but also encourages, synagogues to allow women to dance with Torah scrolls on Simchat Torah, the Jewish holiday that in rabbinic tradition celebrates the completion of the one-year Torah reading cycle.

Originally published at 11:31 pm CDT 10-12-2014

Let Women Dance With Torah Scrolls On Simchat Torah, Liberal Zionist Orthodox Rabbis Say
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com

The liberal Israeli Zionist Orthodox Beit Hillel rabbinical association issued a ruling today that not only permits, but also encourages, synagogues to allow women to dance with Torah scrolls on Simchat Torah, the Jewish holiday that in rabbinic tradition celebrates the completion of the one-year Torah reading cycle, the Jerusalem Post reported.

Haredi synagogues and the vast majority of Zionist Orthodox and so-called Centrist synagogues do not allow women to dance with Torah scrolls or participate in any way in the rejoicing of Simchat Torah. A handful of Modern Orthodox synagogues, however, have begun to find ways to include women in the Simchat Torah celebrations.

“Simchat Torah, which is one of the high-points of every community, has become a day of happiness for men and a nightmare of a day for many women, who watch the men dancing for hours from the women’s section without being able to take part. Communities must allow and encourage women to take an active part in Simchat Torah. This must grow organically and cannot be done by coercion from above, and it is the mission of communal leadership of a community to allow the participation of women if they are interested in doing so,” Beit Hillel’s director, Rabbi Ronen Neuwirth, reportedly said.

On its website, Beit Hillel issued a ruling that reads in part, “In our generation, many women are active partners in prayers and [Torah] classes as they are in other parts of community life. If women’s participation on Simchat Torah amounts to watching from the women’s section or arranging the tables for kiddush then this is regrettable. In a place where it is important to be partners in Simchat Torah [celebrations], communities should examine the possibility to include them in a variety of ways. Women who see this as important are permitted to dance with a Torah scroll or around a Torah which is on a table in the middle of the dancing.”

Beit Hillel also ruled that synagogues would be advised to prepare a place for women to dance, and suggested they each designate two women, called Kalot Torah, to lead women’s celebrations. That would mimic the two men, called Hatan Torah, who do so the same in men’s sections of many Orthodox synagogues.

Simchat Torah is essentially the second day of Shemini Atzeret, the older biblical holiday that begins this year on Wednesday night October 15. The original meaning and purpose of Shemini Atzeret is shrouded in mystery and it has essentially become subsumed in Simchat Torah – which is of rabbinic origin only and was only added to to the Jewish calendar many years after the destruction of the Second Temple.

The custom in the Land of Israel hundreds fo years into the Common Era was still to read the Torah in the older three-year cycle rather than the now-commonly practiced one-year cycle that Simchat Torah celebrates, which means Simchat Torah originated outside the Land of Israel.

[Hat Tip: Joel Katz.]

Comments

[put a square into a hole]

Shmarya Rosenberg.
Will this bring you back to shul???!!
I will make sure they let you and all women dance with the Torah.
However it must be no mixed dancing.

[John]

put a sock into your mouth instead.

[PulpitRappi]

This has been done for ages by people way to the right of Beit Hillel. Beit Hillel, however, won't change the minds of those on the right who don't allow it, so it's just headline grabbing. (But those on the right who allow it can make it be more widely known).

[n ' Aron d']

Did King David dance on Simcha torah. If he did it was with Bat Sheva. Anyway this is only a very recent festival started about 200 years ago to commemorate the Christian festival of thanksgiving.
As everything else jewish on FM.
Anyway shmarya enjoy dancing with them women. It's the closest you'll ever get to them vertically or horizontally.

[Jeff]

Oy, nebach nebach! Scott is destroying my fantasies! He's an evil apikorus who must be stopped!

"Anyway shmarya enjoy dancing with them women. It's the closest you'll ever get to them vertically or horizontally."

Yes, I'm sure your wife enjoys the sixty seconds she spends underneath you every Friday night.

[Sarek]

Wanna bet they will check the women for menstruation and/or force them to enter mikvah before they're allowed to touch the Torah?

[put a square into a hole]

Jhon

What happened??
The truth hurts?
Or did I touch a sensitive nerve by you?

[Nick Litwin]

Ironic, Rav Ronen Neuwirth's own shul in Ra'anana doesn't allow this.

[Jeff]

>>What happened??
>>The truth hurts?
>>Or did I touch a sensitive nerve by you?

You imbeciles are always saying this. Your addled brains wouldn't recognize the truth if it walked up to you and introduced itself.

Go off and inbreed yourselves into oblivion already.

[Barry 1]

Sarek: Not true at all, the Torah can't become Tomei and their is nothing in Halacha against women dancing with the Torah as long as men don't see.