[Avodah] partnership minyanim

[David Riceman]

RBF:

<<Yet there has, to the best of my knowledge and research, not been any 
formal attempt to discuss in writing whether these practices are or are 
not Halakhic. In effect, Halakhah has been the silent partner in the 
development of Partnership Minyanim.>>

I don't subscribe to Areivim, and maybe this has been said there, but to 
my mind halachic responses to partnership minyanim miss the point.  
Partnership minyanim are a watered down version of the critique of 
orthodoxy that goes back to the egalitarian movement: in a world in 
which men and women are treated the same in so many other domains, why 
does Judaism not assign equal status to women? And that is a moral 
critique, not a legal critique.

I think moral critiques deserve moral responses.  And I think this 
particular moral response has to start with a fundamental theological 
question: why do we have two sexes? Why didn't God avoid the issue by 
creating (treating and creating are only one letter apart) men and women 
the same?

David Riceman