Dear Shalom,
It is indeed inequitable for women to be given any less honor, respect, compensation, or parsonage tax benefits than their male counterparts regardless of their respective titles. However, while my bias being male may color my opinion, I believe that focusing on titles for men or women is an example of a possibly superficial marker that may actually somewhat devalue truly great scholarship whether male or female.
The Talmudic dictum Al tistakel bkankan elah bmah shbetocho - Don't look at the vessel but rather what is inside it, has become a lost art in many ways. Modern culture, both Jewish and General, has become more and more focused on superficial appearances and less on the content of a person's character and wisdom. I am afraid we are in danger of valuing sounding or looking good over doing good as a society. Maybe the Hellenistic world view has actually supplanted the Chashmonaim world view more than we realize.
External markers such as job, school attended, designer names, grades, labels, titles, age, gender, or race and their Jewish counterparts such as denomination, sub-denomination,sect, color of hats or clothing, kippah material choice, shokeling in prayer, tzitzit length, beard length, skirt length, peyos length, jacket length,or shidduch resume length are not supposed to be barometers of value, importance,yiras shamaim or intellectual prowess.
Internally focused markers such as awareness level of Hashem's presence, dedication to serving others in need, individual effort and diligence in learning, perseverance in developing refined character traits, living in integrity, moderation in word and deed, tzedakah given privately, kindness done anonymously, and heartfelt prayers whispered in silence are supposed to be the real barometers of spiritual stock.
I am always struck by the fact that it wasn't a standard visual greeting or lecture, but rather an early morning moving prayer said privately by Rav Kook overheard through a wall that transformed the philosopher David Cohen into the mystic Nazir.
It is also a well known or maybe not so well known fact that in any classical Volozhin type Yeshiva of substance that often only average students or those in need of a shingle for shidduchim or parnasah purposes willingly left their pursuit of in depth analytical Talmud studies in Yeshiva and joined a formal smicha program to gain the title Rabbi. (Nowadays pursuing smicha has at times become a good way to increase the years one is able to be devoted to Torah study by working towards some type of certification or degree and is certainly praiseworthy.)
The dedication of effort in study, the strength of one's question, the cogency of one's argument, the creativity of one's chiddush, and the penetrating depth of one's analysis is what typically gave someone the highest level of prestige and stature in Yeshiva much more than how many tests one passed towards ordination.
In pre-war Europe and even today in many Lithuanian style Yeshivas, most elite Yeshiva students worth their salt in learning would not dream of giving up immersion in Talmud study to pursue smicha. It would be comparable to an elite research scientist going from a think tank to teach community college.
There is a concept in the Talmud (the citation escapes me right now) known as "Gadol M"Rabban Shmo-Their name is greater than the title Rabban". Lay people are called Reb so and so, some teachers were given the title Rav, some Rabi, and even fewer Rabban, yet the elite scholars were even greater than any possible Rabbinic title, for instance Hillel or Shamai. No title would suffice and no title was needed. Their scholarly wisdom was self evident. Their substance of character spoke for itself.
Nechama Leibowitz was not known as Doctor Leibowitz, she was simply known as "Nechama" because she was the undisputed greatest Tanach scholar of her generation. Shraga Feivel Mendelowitz, the head of Yeshiva Torah VaDaas and the architect of Jewish day school education in America insisted on being called simply "Mister" Mendelowitz and not Rabbi Mendelowitz.
Today Rabbinic titles are also cheapened at times by the ease at which they are bandied about. Just about anyone nowadays who teaches a Gemara shiur is called a Ram (Rosh Mesivta) in Israel or Rosh Yeshivah in America. The only way to tell who is actually the real head of an institution is adding a Heh and calling them Rosh HaYeshiva.
To paraphrase Henny Youngman, life is funny, take my title...no seriously please take my title. I actually have stopped introducing myself as Rabbi because really this title has not been that great of an honorific to be proud of at times during the past decade. I utilize it purely as a way of giving students an alternative to Mister or my first name but I would be just as happy being called Melamed or Moreh by students and my first name by adults I don't teach.
Shalom,
Elisha Paul
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/03/2015 08:30AM by mlb.
