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Friday November 5, 2004

Falling behind

Conservative study shows gaps between female and male rabbis

by dan pine
staff writer

It’s hard to be a Jew. And a woman. And a Conservative rabbi.

At least that’s one possible conclusion to draw from a newly released study of gender disparities in the Conservative rabbinate.

Titled “Gender Variation in the Career of Conservative Rabbis: A Survey of Rabbis Ordained Since 1985,” the study was sponsored by the Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly. The survey included more than 200 rabbis across the country.

Among the more compelling findings, Conservative female rabbis earn less, lead smaller congregations, leave their first jobs earlier, and apparently have much more trouble finding a mate than their male counterparts.

Ouch.

The numbers don’t lie. The study shows 83 percent of women pulpit rabbis preside over congregations of fewer than 250 families (the smallest category), and no Conservative woman rabbi leads a congregation larger than 500 families. On the other hand, 48 percent of male rabbis lead mid-size congregations or larger, with 25 percent leading congregations of more than 500 families.

The paycheck gap is just as striking.

The mean total compensation package for men averaged $40,000 more than that for women. Men reported being more satisfied with their careers than women. Men held onto their first jobs longer than women did. Eighty-five percent of the men said they left their last job willingly compared with 67 percent of the women. And 26 percent of the men reported being denied a contract renewal by their congregations or agencies compared with 41 percent of women.

So what’s going on here? Some think it’s a matter of juggling work and family.

“A lot of the statistics are not surprising,” says Rabbi Sarah Graff of Congregation Kol Emeth in Palo Alto. “Life in a pulpit takes a toll on any family, and the bigger the pulpit the more intense the time demands. There are far more women in part-time and non-pulpit positions. They’re trying to find balance.”

Three years into her tenure at Kol Emeth, Graff is very happy as full-time assistant rabbi, serving with senior Rabbi Sheldon Lewis. But she understands how the disparities revealed by the study could exist.

“In general, women make their decisions about jobs differently from men,” she adds. “I can imagine a woman choosing a job based more on how comfortable she felt with the people, and whether it was a place she wanted to be a part of. That might supercede money, unlike a man, who may see himself as the main breadwinner.”

Personal choice may not explain all the inequities mentioned in the study. The Conservative movement permits wide berth when it comes to hiring practices. Egalitarian congregations wholeheartedly embrace the notion of women rabbis, and they hire them (today there are 177 ordained Conservative women rabbis nationwide). Other congregations wouldn’t go near the idea, and that’s OK with the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, the movement’s official association of 760 affiliated congregations in North America.

That means for some congregations adhering to a particular interpretation of halachah (Jewish law), women interested in a clergy position need not apply. To some, that may seem anachronistic and sexist in the modern world, but other voices urge understanding.

“Synagogue life is not corporate life,” says Rabbi Leslie Alexander of San Jose. “I don’t think you can do politically correct with religion. People’s religious lives are so intimate and personal, and they choose a synagogue based on values similar to theirs. Should they phase out gender consideration? Absolutely, but I don’t think that’ll happen anytime soon.”

That doesn’t mean the Rabbinical Assembly is sitting on its collective hands. Along with the survey, the organization issued a policy memorandum detailing a few “action items” for addressing the situation. Among the proposals: Give women rabbis higher visibility to increase acceptance by Conservative congregations, offer women career coaching, and monitor job placement and searches to guarantee equal opportunities.

“The primary explanation for this is historic lag,” says Rabbi Leah Sudran, spiritual leader of the 150-family Congregation B’nai Israel in Petaluma. “We have a rabbinic tradition of 2,000 years, and until recently in the Conservative movement, women were not able to serve as rabbis. We cannot expect changes to happen as fast as we would like. There are still psychological barriers in the movement to full acceptance of women.”

Alexander concurs, but she sees other forces at work that might slow the pace of change.

“It’s not just a glass-ceiling thing,” she says, “and not purely a rabbinate thing, but a shift among women who are professionals. We bought into this idea that we should make it to the top of our field and let nothing divert us. But now there’s a re-evaluation women have done about their work lives. What was so wrong with sending the kids off to school, sitting at home with your girlfriends and having coffee, or puttering around the house and volunteering in the community?”

That is a fair description of Alexander’s life today. For many years she served as assistant rabbi at a large congregation in Los Angeles, the first ordained female Conservative rabbi to hold such a prominent post. She took on tremendous responsibilities at the synagogue, somehow managing to balance motherhood with rabbihood.

It took a toll, and now she’s back in her native Bay Area working part time as community chaplain for the Jewish Federation of Silicon Valley. She visits area hospitals, visits hospice patients, and she serves as chaplain for the San Jose Fire Department and Police Department.

“I’m really happy working 20 hours a week,” she says. “I’m picking up my kids from school every day. The driven lifestyle I had opted into before [wasn’t] the best one.”

Since the dawn of the feminist movement, that “driven” lifestyle appealed to women in all fields. Regarding the imbalances cited in the study, the question remains: Are the findings unique to the Conservative movement?

Given that Orthodox Judaism bars women rabbis, the question is moot regarding those congregations. But how about for the largest stream in Judaism, the Reform movement?

Its Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion has ordained 417 women as rabbis since 1972. Though Reform Judaism has never done an across-the-board study, some Reform leaders think their movement has faced problems similar to the Conservative rabbinate.

“We do have female rabbis in some very large congregations,” says Rabbi Paul Menitoff, executive vice president of the Reform movement’s Central Conference of American Rabbis. “But there is a disparity. The first Reform woman rabbi was ordained in the early ’70s. For a while, we could say it was due to the fact that women were not in the field long enough to be in a large pulpit, but now that simply isn’t true anymore.”

Menitoff has his own theories to explain any gap between the sexes. “On one level there’s still a glass ceiling,” he says. “However, many female rabbis really don’t want larger congregations. They want to spend more time with their families and many want part-time positions, which in some ways is also true of many male rabbis. It used to be that when a large congregation opened up, there would be a long list of candidates. Now that’s just not the case.”

With the release of the study, Conservative Jews may take the opportunity to make some institutional changes, which could take a long time. But even so, the new survey has already done some good.

Says B’nai Israel’s Sudran. “Part of my reaction to the study was, ‘Oh, it’s not just me and colleagues that I’m close to. This is true for many female rabbis.’ It made me feel not so alone.”

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