Israel to hire women as counsellors on sensitive subjects for Orthodox community

Women are to become advisers to the Israeli government on Jewish law in the Orthodox community, for the first time.

Matan Kahana, the deputy religious services minister, said in a release he will hire the women for “communities across Israel” this year.

The country’s orthodox estabishment has resisted the move but the change has spread in the USA.

Women advisers on halacha, or Jewish law, have flourished across the Atlantic, where there has been a demand among women for counseling on issues considered too sensitive to bring to a male rabbi.

The rabbinic establishment in Israel has resisted the concept, as certification might be seen as a form of ordination, which is prohibited for women across almost all of Orthodoxy.

Polling in Israel has nonetheless shown that there is a demand for the service among Orthodox women – an institute has been founded in Jerusalem by Rabbi Yehuda Herzl Henkin, who died last year, and his wife Chana to train and certify “Yoatzot Halacha”.

Kahana has come under fire from extremists for his efforts to accommodate non-Orthodox and more liberal Orthodox Jewish practices.