[Avodah] partnership minyanim

[Lisa Liel]

On 2/18/2013 8:18 AM, Chana Luntz wrote:
> But the real problem with Rabbi Freudel's analysis is, as I have mentioned,
> that in his zeal to write partnership minyanim out of Orthodoxy, appears to
> be doing a good job to write the Sephardi Community wholesale out of
> Orthodoxy.

With all due respect to RnCL, the context of today differs from the
context of the Bach and the Mechaber. I don't think that either of them
would agree with allowing practices such as partnership minyanim at a time
when there are large movements such as the Conservative and Reform which
present a "Judaism" so wholly at odds with what we consider to be Judaism.

I'd go further than that, and say that if the Conservative and Reform
movements made it a regular practice to allow ketanim to be shaliach
tzibbur for chazarat hashatz, and if there were what amounts to a
kulturkampf regarding the question of whether discrimination on the basis
of adulthood or lack thereof is legitimate in Judaism, Rav Ovadiah would
almost certainly be much more machmir about it.

I don't think it's possible to compare a context where Judaism is under
attack on a given front to one in which it is not.

It's related that the late Yeshayahu Leibowitz used to spend Purim in
Jerusalem and then spend Shushan Purim in Tel Aviv or elsewhere, for the
explicit purpose of eliminating his chiyuv of observing Purim -- within
the dalet amot of halakha. I suggest that there is more than the dalet
amot of halakha to be considered in the case of partnership minyanim.

Lisa