Is the Rabbinate Protecting Torah... or Protecting Itself? Rabbi Seth Farber on the Women's Exam Controversy, Power, and the Future of Religious Authority in Israel (293)
June 1, 2026
AI Summary
5 min readThree women sat down to take Israel’s Rabbanut exams in July 2025 after an eight-year legal battle. The exams never arrived. The proctors went home. By noon, Rabbi Seth Farber’s lawyers were filing an emergency appeal with the Supreme Court to stop the men’s exams too. The exams finally showed up at 2:15 PM. The women chose to take them anyway, starting a five-hour test at 3 PM. The episode is not about three women. It is about what their ordeal reveals about an institution that, in Farber’s words, is “scared of the unknown” and willing to flout a Supreme Court decision to protect itself.
What the Exams Actually Mean
The women were not seeking ordination as rabbis. Israel’s Rabbanut has two separate departments: an ordination bureau and a licensing certification department. The case concerned the latter. Since 2016, passing the basic Rabbanut exams has been legally equivalent to earning a bachelor’s degree in Israel. That equivalence has real economic implications—salary scales, job eligibility, public tenders. There are roughly 30 paid positions overseeing mikvaot in Israel’s 132 religious councils, jobs that require passing the Rabbanut exam in mikvah laws. Those exams were never offered to women, meaning women were economically excluded from jobs they could legally hold.
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:00) **Episode Introduction & Context** - Scott Kahn sets up the controversy: three women taking Rabbanut exams after an eight-year legal battle, and what it reveals about the Israeli chief rabbinate.
- 2 (05:23) **The Immediate Story: The Women's Exam Controversy** - Rabbi Seth Farber explains the eight-year legal fight that led to three women taking the Rabbanut exams, and the subsequent cancellation of all future exams.
- 3 (10:02) **The Real Stakes: Economic Advancement, Not Ordination** - Farber clarifies that the exams are about certification for jobs, not becoming a rabbi, and that the rabbinate's resistance is rooted in fear of the unknown.
- 4 (16:32) **Day of the Exams: High Drama and Pettiness** - Farber recounts the chaotic day, including threats of violence, last-minute location changes, and a deliberate withholding of the exam papers.
- 5 (25:03) **The Courage of the Women and the Court's Ruling** - Farber praises the women's courage and highlights Justice Solberg's landmark 66-page decision as the best legal articulation of women studying Torah.
- 6 (29:10) **The Slippery Slope Question: From Exams to Ordination?** - Scott Kahn asks whether passing the same exams but getting a different title (Rabanit vs. Rabbi) is legally sustainable, and Farber distinguishes between certification and ordination.
- 7 (32:45) **Who Really Runs the Rabbinate?** - Farber describes the composition and power dynamics of the Chief Rabbis Council, which is dominated by Haredi and Hardali (right-wing religious Zionist) factions.
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Show Notes
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Three women recently took Israel's rabbinate exams after an eight-year legal battle. What should have been a routine academic exercise instead became a national controversy, complete with delayed tests, last-minute changes, emergency court filings, and the subsequent cancellation of the next rabbanut exams for both men and women.
But this episode is about far more than three women.
Rabbi Seth Farber joins me to discuss what this story reveals about the current state of Israel's Chief Rabbinate. Why would an institution fight so hard against women taking exams that do not even lead to ordination? Why were future exams suddenly canceled? Who actually controls the rabbinate today? And what happens when religious institutions become increasingly bureaucratic, political, and disconnected from the communities they are meant to serve?
Our conversation explores questions of authority, transparency, public trust, and institutional power. We discuss the rise of women halakhic scholars, the changing face of Orthodoxy, the composition of the Chief Rabbis Council, the influence of political patronage, and whether the rabbinate is still capable of serving as a unifying religious voice for the Jewish state.
Most importantly, we ask a deeper question: What should a religious establishment look like in a modern democratic Jewish state? Should the rabbinate remain a service provider with broad powers over religious life, or should it evolve into something very different - or even disappear altogether?
This conversation begins with a controversy over exams. It ends with a debate about the future of religion and state in Israel.
To learn more about Rabbi Farber's work with ITIM, go to Itim.org.il.
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