Rosh Pina describes it as "a dati community built around a common commitment to halakha, tefillah, and equality.[1] It was founded in 2007 as a partnership minyan in order to provide a religious environment that was more inclusive of women's participation than traditional Orthodox synagogues.
Services and liturgy
The congregation combines a traditional liturgy with certain prayer leadership opportunities for women, including Kabbalat Shabbat on Friday nights, Pesukei DeZimra, removing and replacing the Torah in the Ark, and reading from and being called up to the Torah on Saturday mornings. A mechitza separating men and women runs down the middle of the room. Its practices are similar to those of Shira Hadasha[2] in Jerusalem and Darkhei Noam[3] in New York City.
Halakhic basis
The practices of Rosh Pina and communities like it are based on an opinion by Modern Orthodox Rabbi Mendel Shapiro,[4] who holds B.A. and M.S. degrees from Yeshiva University and a J.D. from Columbia University, received his smikhah (rabbinic ordination) from Yeshiva University, and now practices law in Jerusalem. In his Halakhic analysis, entitled Qeri’at ha-Torah by Women: A Halakhic Analysis he calls upon those times throughout our history when women have received aliyot to (have been called up to) and have read from the Torah in communal services with men and women present, and carefully examines the circumstances in which this took place. His position and conclusions have subsequently been supported and expanded upon by Rabbi Dr Daniel Sperber,[5] Professor of Talmud at Bar-Ilan University in his article entitled Congregational Dignity and Human Dignity: Women and Public Torah Reading. Sperber also delves into specific cases when Jewish law permitted and sometimes even required women to be called to and read from the Torah on Shabbat in services with men present. Like Shapiro, Sperber is not known as a Posek (decider of Jewish law) and this particular position of both of them is a minority view.
Rabbi Gil Student has weighed in against the practice,[6] as have rabbis Aryeh Frimer and Dov Frimer, who wrote that "these practices are a radical break from the ritual of millennia and have not received the approval of any major posek."[7]
