Religion: Rabbis in Judaic Denominations
3209 Total Rabbis across 4 US Rabbinical orgs
Reform Movement –1620 Rabbis total
45% female
Conservative Synagogues – 630 Rabbis total
25% female
Orthodox Synagogues – 781 rabbis total All men
0% female
Note: a handful of women have been ordained as Orthodox ‘rabbas’ or ‘rabbanits’ – none are accepted into the Rabbinical Council of America
Brandeis University’s 2019 estimate of the Jewish population in America (the American Jewish Population Project) counts 7.2 million people total, including 4.2 million adults. This represents approximately 1.8% of the US adult population who identify as being religiously Jewish when asked. An additional 1.4 million identify as Jewish “in some way other than religion.” (i.e. ethnically or culturally). 53% of Jewish adults are women. 97% of American Jews live in metropolitan areas, with 65% in just five states.
Note: The Brandeis American Jewish Population Project of 2020 updates these numbers slightly: Pew Research estimates a total of up to 7.5 million US Jewish population, for a total of 1.9% of total American population. Of these, 4.9 million adults identify their religion as Jewish (as opposed to ethnicity or no religious identification), along with 1.6 million Jewish children in the US.
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According to the Pew Research Center, 35% of American Jews are affiliated with Reformed Judaism, 18% with Conservative Judaism, 10% with Orthodox Judaism, 6% with other movements, and 30% with no particular denomination.
According to a 2017 Yale study by Eitan Hersh and Gabrielle Malina which compared and overlapped the political leanings of 130,000 American clergy by denominational affiliation and voter registration, there are approximately 2,700 Rabbis in American synagogues, and the rabbinate in the Reform movement is 45% female – the second-most female of any clergy in any denomination (across all US denominations, the average is 16%. Approximately 25% of Conservative rabbis are women. Orthodox rabbis are overwhelmingly men.
The 2000 American Rabbi Study (led by Paul Djupe of Denison University) found 3,209 rabbis listed in membership directories in four US rabbinical organizations (the Yale study only counted currently active clergy listed on a synagogue’s website).
Overall, 50.5% of rabbis were in the Reform movement (Central Conference of American Rabbis/1,620 total/45% female), which is the denomination in which the rabbinate is 45% female.
24.3% of rabbis are Orthodox (Rabbinical Council of America/781 rabbis/all men), 19.6% Conservative (Rabbinical Assembly/630 rabbis/25% women) and 5.5% Reconstructionist (Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association/178 rabbis/39.6% women). Note that these numbers are from the 2000 study and have changed in this decade.
In fact, Julie Zauzmer of The Washington Post noted that a handful of women are going where no woman has gone before and becoming rabbis in Orthodox Judaism. In Zauzmer’s 2018 article, she reported that “Rabbi Avi Weiss privately ordained Rabba Sara Hurwitz in 2009 and declared her the first female Orthodox clergywoman — then founded a school, Yeshivat Maharat, to train more — his school has ordained 21 women.” Zauzmer notes that these 21 women “rabbas” or “rabbanits” is a “tiny” number compared with the 1000 member rabbis of the Rabbinical Council of America, the recognized body of Orthodox Judaism in America, which admits only men. Zauzmer’s article also profiles a “densely footnoted 17-page argument” against women in any clerical roles in Orthodox Judaism; released in 2018 by the Orthodox Union and written by seven of its leading rabbis.
Zauzmer further identifies that as “Judaism has no hierarchical leader, such as a pope or an archbishop,” decisions about ordaining women are ultimately local. New York and Boston now have women rabbis leading Orthodox synagogues, and Zauzmer interviewed 28-year-old Rabbanit Hadas “Dasi” Fruchter, a graduate of Yeshivat Maharat, who is planning to move from D.C. to open a new Orthodox synagogue in South Philadelphia in 2019 with support from Start-Up Shul and Hillel International’s Office of Innovation and the large community in South Philly.
What will it take for women to get into the Power Percentage in Judaism in the United States?