Monday, July 20, 2009

A title of their own

Kolech, the influential (if left-leaning) religious women's forum in Israel, took a vote last week and decided that women who were ordained as a rabbi by an Orthodox institution would, henceforth, carry the title of "Rabba".

For such an active forum to even discuss this is another stop towards the acceptance of Orthodox women rabbis in Orthodox society.

But as for the title itself... "Rabba" is certainly an improvement on "maharat" - the cumbersome title given to Sara Horwitz a couple of months back - but the Israeli women clearly gave little thought to how it would sound in English or other languages.

With most British accents, "Rabba" would be "Rubba" or "Rubber" - just awful.

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