Trapped Between Tradition and Progress: Examining Sexism in Reform Judaism

Many people assume that anti-woman rhetoric is nonexistent in Reform Jewish spaces, and growing up in a congregation with a female rabbi, I often sank into that assumption as well. Unfortunately, sexism, while not as explicitly outlined, seeps into almost every Jewish interaction I have, whether within the walls of the synagogue or not. I noticed this most explicitly during my time serving on my synagogue’s senior rabbi search committee as the youth representative.

In summer 2025, I was offered the immense honor of joining my synagogue’s rabbinical search committee. Committee members had to complete a mandatory bias training, which I admit I attended begrudgingly. The goal of the training was for everyone on the committee to enter the search process with an understanding of the implicit biases that we each held. 

As a very progressive female Jewish teenager, I firmly believed that this bias training wasn’t designed for me. It was for the 65-year-old white guys on the committee, or the adults who hadn’t grown up surrounded by female clergy, but it wasn’t for me. I felt confident that my identity and input were necessary, and it was the people around me who should tone down their biases. After weeks of Zoom meetings and interviews, the bias training was barely a thought in my mind. It popped back up occasionally, though, like when I noticed that we conducted an international rabbi search, and out of 17 candidates from across the United States and Israel, only six were women. Now, the number of women was disappointing, but even more disappointing than the lack of female representation was the gendered differences, on paper, in professional experience. Of the female rabbis we interviewed, not one had ever assumed a Head Rabbi position. Conversely, six of the male rabbis had several years of Head Rabbi experience. While it is hard to judge someone solely based on a title alone, we were looking for someone to fill the position of Senior Rabbi, which automatically gave over half of the men an upper hand.

Additionally, I found myself judging the female candidates much more harshly than the men. While I found some male candidates overconfident, self-important, or arrogant, my critiques of the women were much more rooted in patriarchal stereotypes. I found myself writing “JAPPY” (Jewish American Princess) in my notes and worrying about whether the women we interviewed would be “too much” on the bima with our cantor, which never even crossed my mind when interviewing a man, no matter how obnoxious or pretentious I found them to be. 

It was incredibly disappointing, honestly, to watch myself react to other women in this way, and it made me think more deeply about the stereotypes that are constantly forced upon women in Jewish spaces. Jewish women are thought to be loud, overbearing, and high-maintenance, like their mothers. These characteristics in and of themselves are not negative. But when associated with Jewish women, these stereotypes take on a negative connotation that is hard to unlearn. 

I noticed my doubts about my own intellect in religious spaces were also projected on the female candidates we were interviewing. There is automatically a higher bar for nontraditional candidates in highly selective search processes like these, and every time I compared a candidate to the others or to the clergy in my life, I found the women falling further and further behind.

We ultimately chose a male rabbi, and while he is wonderful and I have no doubt he will do a good job, I found myself disappointed with the search as a whole. I’ve seen the stats, seen that rabbinical schools are graduating more female and LGBTQ+ rabbis than ever before, and I was hopeful that our search would reflect that. While the diversity of graduates may be increasing, it seems that gender stereotypes prevail in the majority of Jewish spaces, regardless of how liberal they fancy themselves to be. 

As I look back at my notes, I’m disappointed with my own inability to shake the stereotypes I have grown up around. I find myself wondering, how would the search have been different if we had found the diverse candidates I was so prepared for? Would the result have changed at all? I can honestly say I don’t know. 

When Jewish spaces are built around cis straight white men, I’ve found that merely allowing women in proximity isn’t enough. Even in spaces that practice active inclusion, there can still be a sense that something is missing or going unspoken. I’ve stood on the outskirts of conversations about halakha, watched my male friends choose not to wrap tefillin, or interviewed a female rabbi after a myriad of white male rabbis judged her with much harsher standards. These interactions conformed to the narrative that Judaism should center men, even if that isn’t how I was raised or what I believe. It’s the kind of narrative that a single bias training can’t unteach, and a whole generation can’t easily unlearn. It’s subconscious, in our minds and books and classrooms. Religion is traditionally male-centered, and it’s never going to go away, but by being conscious of the biases that we have and the judgments we’re making, we can take steps toward a more intersectional and actively inclusive Jewish world.