[Avodah] Re RYBS - definition of Serarah

[Chana Luntz]

RAF wrote:

> The Rav did not consider being a school principal a minui Kahal,
> because it did not demand certification and only affected a limited
> population.

How do these two limitations differ from a shul president?  Being a shul
president too does not demand certification and only affects a limited
population (namely members of that shul).

In fact, I don't know the law in the United States, but in this country (ie
England) being a school principal, and indeed a teacher, in a *government*
school does require certification (but in a private school it does not).
Does that mean, according to your understanding of RYBS, that a woman cannot
be a teacher in a government school in this country, but can in a private
school (remembering that the Jewish schooling system spans both - Hasmonean
Primary and High School and indeed certain of the Beis Ya'akovs and charedi
schools, are for example, government schools, my own children's primary
school is private, although it may at some stage in the future when it is
better established seek to be government funded.)  Indeed one of the issues
for Jewish private schools in this country looking to go government funded
is to ensure that all of their teachers, particularly the kodesh teachers,
have the necessary certifications.  While that may be a bureaucratic
nightmare, nobody has suggested it had serarah implications vis a vis the
women staff.  

>  Likewise, a position does not
> qualify as serara if its holder's decisions require the consent of a
> higher authoritative body.  For example, the decisions of a school
> principal (such as employing or dismissing teachers) must be approved
> by the board of education (Rabbi Aryeh Leib Grosenes, Shu"t Lev Aryeh,
> 2:21).

Again it varies from school to school and from country to country.  If it is
a requirement that the decisions of a school principal such as employing or
dismissing teachers must be approved by a board of education for it not to
be serarah, then whilst certain American schools may perhaps be said not to
have this problem, many many Jewish schools with female principals in other
parts of the world will.  As mentioned, my own children's school is a
private school, and the headmistress unquestionably has the power to hire
and fire without any recourse to any board of education (although there may
be unfair dismissal issues if, like any other employer, staff were dismissed
in an illegal way).   There is a board of governors, but I do not believe
they make hire and fire decisions.  And certainly there are many many
decisions made by every school principal below the level of hire and fire,
where any board of education, should it exist, will not interfere, so the
bar is set rather high if the Rambam's "all the appointments in Israel" are
read to mean only those with power of hire and fire.

The case of a school principal is certainly a fascinating one, for the
simple reason that never in my adult years has anybody ever had the power
over me that my teachers and all the more so my principals had during my
schooling, and, barring ever being sent to prison, I never expect anybody to
have such power again.

Teachers and all the more so a principal had the power, during my schooling
years, to enforce detentions, to require the writing of lines, to demand the
memorising of poems/tehillim what have you, to require pupils to stand in a
corner or to stand with their hands on their heads, to make them do sit ups
or press ups or run around the school playground;  to be on playground duty
and pick up all the mess and rubbish - and on and on the list can go.  I am
sure that other members of this list, remembering back to their schooling,
can give many many other examples of powers that are just not available in
any other context (barring, perhaps, prison or the army).  And indeed, at
the time I was growing up, and even more so at the time that RYBS was
considering the matter, most school principals around the world had, at
least in theory, the power to administer corporal punishment (even if today
many countries have now banned that practice), a power not in fact found in
either prisons or the army.  

And of course, if we are talking about a high school, the majority of pupils
are, in fact, halachic adults.

Now, the more usual justification I have heard for female high school
principals is that that just as for gerim there is no problem if they have
serarah over other gerim, there is no problem for female high school
principals having serarah over other women.  But while this works for all
girls schools, that kind of logic would not work for a school like
Maimonides, where a goodly portion of the student body was and is male.

And all I can say is, while many shul presidents might dream of having the
power to order detentions, appearances at their offices, lines and homework
to their constituent members (failure to attend minyan without good reason,
Cohen, that'll be a perek of tehillim to be recited in my office next week)
that is clearly pure fantasy (and as for the power to give malkos, well
...).  The only environment that matches the power of a school principal
over her pupils is that of the army.  And in the army certainly, important
decisions of the equivalence of hire and fire to a school can only be made
much higher up than the petty officer with the power to throw you in the
brig.  Thus, on the logic being presented above, there should be no serarah
problem within the army unless you are talking about generals and the like
being women, not merely petty officers   And having set the bar so high,
there should be no serarah problem for shul presidents who are usually
answerable to their board far more directly than the average school
principal is to theirs, and there certainly should be no serarah problem for
a shul rabbi, whose powers, in many many cases, only extends as far as his
power to persuade, and who tends to have no serious decision making powers
above the level of whether we say this or that in the tephila then.

Something about this definition therefore does seem to come across as rather
odd.


> Dr. Aryeh A. Frimer

Shavuah tov

Chana