Israel's first woman spiritual leader of Orthodox synagogue breaks ground

Mirvis realized that their request for her to speak on Rosh Hashanah was an acknowledgment of her position as the community’s religious authority.

“It wasn’t yet official,” recalls Mirvis, “but I understood that in the eyes of the community, they had started looking at me as someone that could speak before the shofar sounding, or someone that could give the drasha for Shabbat Shuva [the inspirational Shabbat address given on the Shabbat before Yom Kippur], or someone that would give the Halacha lesson before Passover.”

Today, Mirvis is the first-ever woman spiritual leader of an Orthodox synagogue in Israel.

Shira Marili was born to Moroccan immigrant parents in 1980 and grew up in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Kiryat Moshe, along with her three sisters and brother. Her father, who died four years ago, was a carpenter, and Mirvis speaks of him with great reverence. 

“He was very learned and had a great love for Torah. But even more than his love for Torah was his love for God. He had a very simple love of God; he was always speaking to God very openly.”

Mirvis says that her father’s way of speaking plainly to God came from his own mother and was part of a longstanding Moroccan tradition.

“I grew up in a house where my grandmother woke up in the morning and just spoke. I remember asking her, ‘Savta, who are you talking to?’ And she kept on saying, ‘To Abba. To our Father in Heaven.’ I thought she was talking to the mezuzah or the candles.”

Mirvis has always loved learning. 

“I remember writing divrei Torah as a child – long divrei Torah that no one wanted to listen to,” she laughs.

She confesses that she never dreamed of becoming a community rabbanit. 

“I wanted to learn and teach Torah. I love learning, and I love teaching. That is what I’ve been doing for the past 20 years of my life.”

IN 2016, she joined the Susi Bradfield Women’s Institute of Halachic Leadership (WIHL) of Ohr Torah Stone at Midreshet Lindenbaum in Jerusalem.

Mirvis explains that she joined the program to increase her practical knowledge of Jewish law. 

“I had studied Talmud, and I wanted to study Jewish law in an organized and orderly way, and follow its development from the discussion in the Talmud until the actual halachic rulings.”

At that time, Mirvis and her husband Shlomo, an executive in a hi-tech start-up, and their five children had moved to the Efrat neighborhood of Givat Hatamar.

“The people in the community started a new synagogue,” says Mirvis, “and they knew I was studying Halacha, so they started asking me questions.”

At first, most of the questions came from women, and many were about family purity. Gradually, more people from the community started asking questions on a broader variety of topics.

Mirvis began delivering divrei Torah in the synagogue. 

“Every time there was an opportunity, I gave a class or drasha. Whenever anyone wanted or was willing to listen, I was willing to teach, because I love teaching.”

Mirvis had been the unofficial spiritual leader of Congregation Shirat Hatamar for the past two years and was officially installed by Rabbi Dr. Shlomo Riskin, Ohr Torah Stone chancellor emeritus and rosh yeshiva, in May. The congregation currently has 42 dues-paying families and meets in a large classroom in the local community center.

Since her appointment, Mirvis has been interviewed by many news outlets, and patiently answers the more obvious questions, such as where she stands when she speaks.

“There is a mechitza in the middle, and the bimah and the aron are in the middle, so I am standing in the middle.”

In this way, she can see both men and women.

The congregation is beginning the construction of a permanent building, and Mirvis reports that the sanctuary’s design will be similar.

Mirvis speaks once a month in her synagogue and on special occasions, such as bar/bat mitzvahs. She also teaches a class on the weekly Torah reading every Thursday night, which is accompanied by generous servings of pre-Shabbat cholent, and conducts a weekly course on Song of Songs.

She prefers to be called rabbanit rather than rabbah, which graduates of New York’s Yeshivat Maharat for women have used. The term “rabbanit” or “rebbetzin” traditionally referred to the rabbi’s wife, and Mirvis thinks that it is appropriate that “we are giving new meaning to a term that has existed for thousands of years.”

A TYPICAL day for Mirvis begins at 6:45 a.m. After prayers, she organizes her children, who range in age from 16 to seven, and sends them on their way to school. She then travels to Midreshet Lindenbaum in Jerusalem, where she studies in the kollel each day from 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Mirvis returns to Efrat and makes food for her children – “Moroccan food – I have to” – and spends time with them until evening.

She receives questions via phone and WhatsApp throughout the day from congregants and others in Efrat and throughout the country. Mirvis says she receives many inquiries from women about family purity. Questions posted by men are usually on topics regarding Shabbat and Jewish holidays, she reports. Before Passover, she gets questions about preparing the kitchen, and before Sukkot, she fields many inquiries about sukkah construction requirements.

Is it difficult for congregants to ask questions of a female halachic authority? That’s one question for which Mirvis does not have a ready answer.

“I don’t know,” she confesses. “Do they miss the beard? Time will tell. I think that men always had their rabbi figure from the yeshiva, and they always had someone to ask, and I am just an additional figure. Women didn’t always have that figure to ask.”

When Mirvis is confronted by a difficult question, she turns to Rabbi Shuki Reich, head of the beit midrash at the Women’s Institute at Midreshet Lindenbaum.

“Feminists won’t like what I am going to say,” she states,“but I couldn’t have done it without male rabbis supporting me. For me, in addition to all of the women rabbis, I needed a male who is the rabbi of a community that I could call every hour of the day or night to ask questions.”

 

APART FROM the development of expertise in deciding matters of religious law, Mirvis says, developing pastoral skills is vital for today’s rabbinic leaders.

“We have a lot to learn from our brothers in the Diaspora in the US, that the role of a rabbi is more of a full-time job. They understand that he needs to be there and needs to have more time and more qualifications.”

Mirvis underwent training in spiritual guidance at Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, learning how to help those going through crises. She took the class with other rabbis, then used her new skills to work with oncology patients in the hospital.

She reports that the tool that she found most effective in her work with patients was prayer.

“In prayer,” she says, “the soul wishes for something higher. My most powerful prayer in the internship was with a Muslim woman patient. We held hands and prayed together, and it was very powerful for me.”

Other tools that Mirvis learned in her internship were the art of listening, how to open conversations and how to read subtexts in a conversation.

“I find myself referring back to that training a lot,” she says.

MIRVIS IS Orthodox and committed to Jewish law. She recognizes that, as a woman, she cannot be counted to constitute a minyan.

“I accept the boundaries,” she says. “It is a halachic boundary. Do I wish I could be counted? Yes. Do I find it sometimes amusing that we are standing with nine men and me, and they keep on screaming, ‘We’re looking for the 10th?’”

Mirvis says that her community is very sensitive, and the last time it happened, the gabbai moved the curtain of the mechitza and said apologetically, “‘We see you. We’re sorry that we can’t count you, but we see you.’ I loved it. It was very sensitive.”

Mirvis points out that women need to have a greater voice in their communities, particularly in the sphere of prayer and the synagogue.

“Women make up 50% of the population,” she points out, “and hopefully, we are 50% of the population that is at the synagogue.

“On Friday nights,” Mirvis shares, “I light Shabbat candles, and we walk to shul – the entire family. On Shabbat morning, we get organized, and we also walk to shul together.”

One Shabbat, she recalls, she was walking to synagogue together with her husband and their children when someone approached her husband and commented, “How lucky you are! How come my wife and children don’t want to come to shul?”

“I didn’t answer him,” Mirvis says, “but I hope that he is reading this because I do have an answer. If you go to a synagogue that doesn’t see your kids and your wife or doesn’t give them a place and they can’t talk, they can’t speak and they don’t exist in the arena, why would you expect them to go?”

In her view, perhaps one of the few blessings of corona was the outdoor prayer services that moved women – who had previously sat in upper or side synagogue balconies, removed from the action – down to the streets, at the same level as the men.

“All of a sudden, they could see and hear, and other people could see and hear them. That was a huge difference.”

Mirvis warns that synagogues may pay a high price if they ignore women and children.

“The price that we are paying, if we are not doing it, is that we are losing. It’s not just my generation, but I am worried about my kids – and it’s not just about my daughter. I have four boys who will work with women. Suddenly, when they go to shul, their wife and daughter will sit on the second floor?”

Mirvis stresses that Shirat Hatamar has always welcomed women and children in its minyan. “They could see and hear, and we are doing things so that women will feel involved.”

AT THE synagogue, women can deliver the dvar Torah, the Torah is carried through the women’s section and a woman reads the prayer for the welfare of the State of Israel. Girls under bat-mitzvah age may lead “An’im Zemirot” at the end of the services, and women are permitted to read the Haftarah in accordance with the ruling of Riskin. Women who would like to deliver a dvar Torah or chant the Haftarah sign up on the shul’s Google Doc, and Mirvis says the very fact that such an option exists is a positive development.

“It’s enough for the people in the community to feel they [women and children] are welcome and seen, and that they are heard.”

“We have a halachic responsibility to do everything we can to make shul relevant to our lives,” she urges, “and make prayer part of our day. Prayer is a very meaningful part of the service of God, and I think that community is such a strong part of it. I want my kids to grow up in a community. It’s so powerful.”

Mirvis says that while woman Torah scholars of her generation have benefited from the opening of the study halls to women, the next generation of women needs to make the synagogue a major part of their lives. 

“It is the challenge of our generation to make the shul a huge part, and to make prayer part, of our daily lives.”

Initially, reveals Mirvis, she did not expect that her appointment would draw so much attention. Her becoming the rabbi of Shirat Hatamar, she says modestly, had less to do with her and more with the members of the community.

“What is unique about me is not me,” she says. “It is my community. I know many women who are God-fearing scholars and could be great leaders and rabbis, but my community was kind enough and sensitive enough to give me the place and the voice. That is what is unique about my situation. My shul was able to see me through my gender and say it doesn’t matter if she is a man or a woman. She knows Halacha, and we can ask her.”

Mirvis also greatly appreciates her husband’s assistance in helping her achieve her goals.

“It is his,” she says simply. “If it wasn’t for Shlomo, I couldn’t do it. You need a support system. You need kids and a community and a husband and parents and in-laws – otherwise, it is not possible.” 

“He calls himself the ‘rebbetzman,’” she jokes, “and he loves his role.”

Mirvis foresees that women will take on many more roles in Torah leadership in the future.

“If we can have a woman minister or president,” she says, “we can also have women in the Torah world, writing halachic books, talking Halacha, listening, helping people halachicly  and taking roles.”

Rabbi Dr. Kenneth Brander, president and rosh yeshiva of Ohr Torah Stone, says more women will be needed in leadership roles, both in formal and experiential education. He notes that the increase in advanced study programs for women in Israel speaks to the increased interest and need for women in leadership roles.

“Migdal Oz [an Orthodox Jewish institution of higher Torah study for women in Gush Etzion] has opened up a program for advanced learning and Halacha for women. The Matan Women’s Institute for Torah Studies has opened two programs. They may not be as many days and as many hours as the Midreshet Lindenbaum Manhigot program, but what is relevant is that two additional institutions have opened three different programs in a period of two or three years.

“If there are women willing to participate, that is saying there is an interest. I think we have a responsibility to make sure that women who want to do this have the opportunity to do so. There’s more Torah learning for women in Israel than anywhere else in the world.”

 

FOR MIRVIS, the personal connection to people that comes with teaching Torah to others is what makes her job enjoyable. 

“People are coming with questions that seem simple and upfront and can have a whole story around it. I am very privileged that people are willing to share with me. It opens me up to their life and struggle and how Halacha comes into their life and what I can do to help.”

Mirvis adds that in answering halachic inquiries, she attempts to follow Sephardi tradition by considering the person who is asking the question and the story behind the halachic question being asked, as well as the rational reasoning of the Halacha. 

“I am trying to stay attuned to my Sephardic roots and also be part of the tradition of looking at the person in addition to considering the Halacha.”

Mirvis consented to speak before her congregation on that first Rosh Hashanah, but it wasn’t easy.

“I stood there and tried to give a dvar Torah, but I was crying,” she recounts. “I was very emotional. It was everything together, davening with my community on Rosh Hashanah, and it was very powerful for me to stand up before the tekiot [shofar sounding]. I understood the moment. It was a moment in my life and a moment in the community.”

As the first-ever woman spiritual leader of an Orthodox synagogue in Israel, Shira Marili Mirvis is making the most of her moment.