By Joel Magalnick, Editor, JTNews
When Emanuel Congregation began a trial run nearly two years ago of allowing women to come to the bima, its members and leaders didn’t know how things would turn out. But the test results — increased participation, a handful of new members, more visitors — were positive enough that this small Orthodox shul in Seattle’s Wedgwood neighborhood decided to make the change permanent.
“Our thinking was, it seemed to be a successful experiment — a lot people felt this was the right thing to do,” said Jay Wang, Emanuel’s president.
In most Orthodox synagogues, the leading of prayers and reading of Torah is restricted to men. With the new arrangement, women can lead services and read from the Torah. It’s called a partnership minyan, or quorum of 10 to conduct a prayer service, based upon a nine-year-old egalitarian movement from Israel called Shira Chadasha. Emanuel doesn’t follow the movement exactly because its small size makes creating a minyan of 10 men and 10 women difficult, if not impossible.
Also, Wang pointed out, “we’re not exactly completely egalitarian.” That’s because there is a stricture that says men must lead the Amidah prayer, so women are allowed only to participate.
The decision to allow women to lead services, even as a trial, was carefully deliberated by Emanuel’s board, and they moved to make it permanent only after they saw the effects were overwhelmingly positive. The permanent arrangement went into effect earlier this year.
When JTNews spoke with Wang in early 2010, one of the reasons they congregation had moved forward with this plan was to attempt to bring in new people to a synagogue with a decidedly older member base. Emanuel had been in danger of closing its doors entirely.
“We’re not in the same situation,” Wang said. “We’re moving in a positive direction.”
The growth has been small, but it has included a few families with children as well as some who liked the idea of the more egalitarian model.
“We’ve got a number of people who are interested in the whole concept of being able to participate who have joined,” he said.
There has been one other, unintended benefit as well.
“Not only are we holding our older members,” Wang said, “they are actually coming to services more often.”
Wang said that because the synagogue is small, and because the recitations are done as a congregation, it is more accessible to people who are less familiar with or have not been to Orthodox services for some time. Also, because there is no rabbi — the cantor, Boaz Pnini, is Emanuel’s only paid staff member — Emanuel offers ample opportunity to lead services.
“Anybody who wants to, who knows how, you can lead services if you show us you can,” Wang said.
And if they can’t, he added, there are plenty of people willing to help them learn.
“You do not need to feel that you’re an outsider and you’ll never learn how to do this,” he said.