 | Last week, Israel's High Court of Justice ordered the Orthodox rabbinate of Israel to let women take rabbinic ordination examinations on the same terms as male applicants. For thousands of years, Jewish life has evolved. Varying by issue and era, some evolutions have been fast, some glacially slow, some halting and non-linear, some seemingly "two steps forward and one step back." This latest step by Israel's High Court of Justice reminds, as Israel's High Court often does, that Dr. King was right: "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." It's on us to do the bending, and to know that we can, even when the path seems daunting – even impossible. All concrete spirituality requires vision beyond here and now. |
By Rabbi David Evan Markus
Parashat Matot-Masei 5785 (2025)
What is spirituality? So many years into my own journey, it's a question I often think I know intuitively how to answer (at least for myself) but strain to put into words.
My best answer is that all spirituality seeks to expand how humanity's core ultimate concerns animate our lives. Call it "consciousness" raising, but to me spirituality requires more.
Spirituality expands our ability and bravery to shift gears wisely so that we see more of those ultimate concerns and thereby become more aligned with them and animated by them. If we truly see hunger, we can't help but feed. If we truly see the broken, we can't help but heal.
Judaism's core commitment to tikkun olam (repairing the world) begins with this principle.
Of course, would that it were so easy. Our world is difficult. There's much in our world that is broken. In tough times, we ourselves can feel broken, puny relative to the task, worn down, jaded, hopeless. It's one reason for the teaching (Pirkei Avot 2:16) לֹא עָלֶיךָ הַמְּלָאכָה לִגְמֹר וְלֹא אַתָּה בֶּן חוֹרִין לִבָּטֵל מִמֶּנָּה / "It's not on you to finish the work, but you're not free to neglect it."
Put another way: All concrete spirituality requires vision beyond here and now.
This week's Torah portion, which concludes the Book of Numbers, makes this point in two powerful ways. One is by narrating each of the 42 stops that our desert-wandering ancestors took from Egypt to the Land of Promise (Numbers 33:1-39). We learn that each part of a journey is essential: we can see a journey only in its totality, not in any one time or place. All concrete spirituality requires vision beyond here and now.
The second powerful teaching gives an example, which on first blush seems anything but spiritual by our modern lights. Some portions ago, the daughters of Tzelofhad bravely called out inheritance laws in which women were unseen: God agreed with them and changed Torah midstream (Numbers 27:1-7). In its day, it was a massive advance for gender equality.
But now other tribes complain: if women inheriting land marry beyond their tribes, the tribal balance of land and power would shift. The result: Torah again changes to hold that women inheriting land can only marry within their tribe, or forego their inheritance (Numbers 36:1-12).
Two steps forward, one step back? How could we accept this?
Well, we didn't. Over the centuries, Jewish life kept evolving – not always linearly, not always quickly, but it kept evolving. The ketubah (marriage contract) empowered women within marriages. The Jewish social compact evolved to bolstered women's economic rights. When in some parts of the world gender roles froze women in place or even retrogressed women's rights, the growing edge shifted elsewhere and incubated new realities to displace the old.
The kibbutz movement smashed gender hierarchy: that's how Golda Meir, Israel's first female prime minister and one of the world's first female heads of government, got her start. All concrete spirituality requires vision beyond here and now.
The Reform and Conservative Movements launched female rabbinic leadership in Jewish life. It took seemingly forever, but change came and then gushed. In 1972, the Reform Movement ordained its first female rabbi. In 1973 the Conservative Movement began counting women in minyanim. In 1983, women were admitted to Conservative rabbinical schools. In 1985, just two years later, the Conservative Movement ordained its first female rabbi. Now a majority of non-Orthodox Jewish clergy students in the U.S. are women. All concrete spirituality requires vision beyond here and now.
In 1988, Israel's High Court of Justice overruled Israel's Orthodox rabbinate and installed women to supervise synagogues and Jewish spiritual life. In 2017, it required the State of Israel to establish a mixed-prayer space at the Western Wall, now located at Robinson's Arch. This week in 2025, Israel's High Court of Justice ordered the Orthodox rabbinate to let women sit for its rabbinic ordination exams on the same terms as men.
What if our forbearers had given up back then – accepting the status quo or, while not accepting it in their hearts, believing the journey too long or the task too big? What if they credited only their current stop on the journey, and not the future perhaps yet invisible to the eye yet within spirit's vision? All concrete spirituality requires vision beyond here and now.
We still have a ways to go. As of this writing, it's unclear if women who pass Israel's Orthodox rabbinical exams will be commissioned as rabbis. In the U.S., I know plenty of cherished female rabbinic colleagues who experience unequal treatment. As a male named David, I have privilege to invite informality ("call me David" or "call me Rabbi David") that my female colleagues might not. As the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education school desegregation case taught poignantly and sometimes violently, a single court decision rarely itself changes the heart of society.
Name the issue – rule of law, antisemitism, social equity, climate change, reproductive rights, taxes, immigration, housing, transportation, health care, basic science, foreign policy or others too many to name. Whatever one's views, whatever world one may wish to see, odds are good that it's not today's world. That ideal world may feel impossibly distant. The odds may seem impossibly long. We may feel tired, worn down, afraid, angry, unsure, beleaguered, confused, silenced or worse.
Let's remember – and let others remind us – that spirituality means vision. Dr. King had no earthly basis to teach that "[t]he arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice": at first, even Dr. King didn't see it. But Dr. King came to see, and history followed "like a mighty stream." All concrete spirituality requires vision beyond here and now.
We're not there yet. Get moving. Keep moving.
Parashat Matot-Masei 5785 (2025)
What is spirituality? So many years into my own journey, it's a question I often think I know intuitively how to answer (at least for myself) but strain to put into words.
My best answer is that all spirituality seeks to expand how humanity's core ultimate concerns animate our lives. Call it "consciousness" raising, but to me spirituality requires more.
Spirituality expands our ability and bravery to shift gears wisely so that we see more of those ultimate concerns and thereby become more aligned with them and animated by them. If we truly see hunger, we can't help but feed. If we truly see the broken, we can't help but heal.
Judaism's core commitment to tikkun olam (repairing the world) begins with this principle.
Of course, would that it were so easy. Our world is difficult. There's much in our world that is broken. In tough times, we ourselves can feel broken, puny relative to the task, worn down, jaded, hopeless. It's one reason for the teaching (Pirkei Avot 2:16) לֹא עָלֶיךָ הַמְּלָאכָה לִגְמֹר וְלֹא אַתָּה בֶּן חוֹרִין לִבָּטֵל מִמֶּנָּה / "It's not on you to finish the work, but you're not free to neglect it."
Put another way: All concrete spirituality requires vision beyond here and now.
This week's Torah portion, which concludes the Book of Numbers, makes this point in two powerful ways. One is by narrating each of the 42 stops that our desert-wandering ancestors took from Egypt to the Land of Promise (Numbers 33:1-39). We learn that each part of a journey is essential: we can see a journey only in its totality, not in any one time or place. All concrete spirituality requires vision beyond here and now.
The second powerful teaching gives an example, which on first blush seems anything but spiritual by our modern lights. Some portions ago, the daughters of Tzelofhad bravely called out inheritance laws in which women were unseen: God agreed with them and changed Torah midstream (Numbers 27:1-7). In its day, it was a massive advance for gender equality.
But now other tribes complain: if women inheriting land marry beyond their tribes, the tribal balance of land and power would shift. The result: Torah again changes to hold that women inheriting land can only marry within their tribe, or forego their inheritance (Numbers 36:1-12).
Two steps forward, one step back? How could we accept this?
Well, we didn't. Over the centuries, Jewish life kept evolving – not always linearly, not always quickly, but it kept evolving. The ketubah (marriage contract) empowered women within marriages. The Jewish social compact evolved to bolstered women's economic rights. When in some parts of the world gender roles froze women in place or even retrogressed women's rights, the growing edge shifted elsewhere and incubated new realities to displace the old.
The kibbutz movement smashed gender hierarchy: that's how Golda Meir, Israel's first female prime minister and one of the world's first female heads of government, got her start. All concrete spirituality requires vision beyond here and now.
The Reform and Conservative Movements launched female rabbinic leadership in Jewish life. It took seemingly forever, but change came and then gushed. In 1972, the Reform Movement ordained its first female rabbi. In 1973 the Conservative Movement began counting women in minyanim. In 1983, women were admitted to Conservative rabbinical schools. In 1985, just two years later, the Conservative Movement ordained its first female rabbi. Now a majority of non-Orthodox Jewish clergy students in the U.S. are women. All concrete spirituality requires vision beyond here and now.
In 1988, Israel's High Court of Justice overruled Israel's Orthodox rabbinate and installed women to supervise synagogues and Jewish spiritual life. In 2017, it required the State of Israel to establish a mixed-prayer space at the Western Wall, now located at Robinson's Arch. This week in 2025, Israel's High Court of Justice ordered the Orthodox rabbinate to let women sit for its rabbinic ordination exams on the same terms as men.
What if our forbearers had given up back then – accepting the status quo or, while not accepting it in their hearts, believing the journey too long or the task too big? What if they credited only their current stop on the journey, and not the future perhaps yet invisible to the eye yet within spirit's vision? All concrete spirituality requires vision beyond here and now.
We still have a ways to go. As of this writing, it's unclear if women who pass Israel's Orthodox rabbinical exams will be commissioned as rabbis. In the U.S., I know plenty of cherished female rabbinic colleagues who experience unequal treatment. As a male named David, I have privilege to invite informality ("call me David" or "call me Rabbi David") that my female colleagues might not. As the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education school desegregation case taught poignantly and sometimes violently, a single court decision rarely itself changes the heart of society.
Name the issue – rule of law, antisemitism, social equity, climate change, reproductive rights, taxes, immigration, housing, transportation, health care, basic science, foreign policy or others too many to name. Whatever one's views, whatever world one may wish to see, odds are good that it's not today's world. That ideal world may feel impossibly distant. The odds may seem impossibly long. We may feel tired, worn down, afraid, angry, unsure, beleaguered, confused, silenced or worse.
Let's remember – and let others remind us – that spirituality means vision. Dr. King had no earthly basis to teach that "[t]he arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice": at first, even Dr. King didn't see it. But Dr. King came to see, and history followed "like a mighty stream." All concrete spirituality requires vision beyond here and now.
We're not there yet. Get moving. Keep moving.
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