Rabbi Olinsky, a Conservative rabbi, had an excellent Article in Haaretz on egalitarianism.
Teen girls laying tefillin: Brave enough to be different
He begins by describing how he prepared a girl for her bat mitzvah, the Torah reading, the dvar Torah and including showing her how to wear tallit and tfilin. She was excited to use them. Then she got to the “egalitarian” Conservative service:
No other adolescent girl was wearing tefillin that morning, and very few chose to wear tallitot. Although the community was egalitarian and women had the same opportunities for participation in Jewish ritual as men, most of the teenage girls declined to engage in the rituals of laying tefillin and wearing tallitot. So too, this bat mitzvah girl folded up her tallit, zipped up her tefillin bag, and has yet to put them on again. Why? Because she does not want to stand alone. She wants to be “normal.”
After exploring the issue, he concludes “Making egalitarianism a priority is about more than giving women a choice; it must encourage and expect participation. True egalitarianism is men and women being viewed as – and feeling – equally obligated. “
I was struck by two other passages in his article that I thought were in fact describing obstacles to his goal.
1)”Under the movement’s understanding of halakha (Jewish law) women have the opportunity to participate in all aspects of Jewish rituals if they wish.”
Both men and women have to believe women are obliged to with as much force of halacha as men are. So Conservative halacha has got to change to an unequivocal “Women are obliged. period” or the minds and culture of its members won’t. (Did I just use the words Conservative Halacha and unequivocal in the same sentence? hmmm).
and 2) “I am a part of a movement in which the overwhelming majority of affiliated congregations are egalitarian.” Really if the movement is to stand behind the issue than that number should be 100%. If women are obliged to perform mitzvot and your congregation does’t let them, than that should be seen as outside the pale– and those congregations should be treated like those who perform intermarriages- unaccepted. If egalitarianism is right morally and halchickly then non-egalitarianism is wrong morally and halchickly. It is not a quaint custom, it is just wrong.
I wrote to Rabbi Olinsky to ask him about these issues:
“Do you think the movement is brave enough to do that? I ask on behalf of my 13 year old daughter who is one of the few in her class to wear tfillin (or the only).”
And to my surprise he answered me! And even more to my surprise he basically agreed with me on un-egalitarian congregations and on halckic obligation. He told me that Rabbi Pamela Barmash, who sits on the Conservative Movement’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, is currently writing a teshuvah, that focuses exactly on this idea of equal and expected obligation.
If only the Conservative movement would listen to people like Rabbi Olinsly and Rabbi Barmash it might save itself. But given past movement on issues like these I wouldn’t hold my breath.
Rainbow Tallit Baby 
I just got to this now. Very interesting. Remember that Conservatives are proud of their big tent. They even let Mordecai Kaplan stick around. Also, what would it mean for the movement to obligate women to wear tephilin? What impact would that have? This is already a movement with ZERO commitment to absolute hallachic life among its non-clergy membership. Can you see families beginning to buy tephilin for girls?
Mark,
What is going to keep people in the movement? I see conservative losing to OpenOrthodoxy in terms of commitment, excitement and involvement. What might keep people in a Conservative shul over a partnership minyan? real equality,
Lay Conservative Jews will not be rushing out to get tfilin for their daughters any more than they get them for the sons ( which is not so much). Most Conservative Jews do not enter shul if it is not shabbat or chag ( except for funerals and shivas). So they don’t even see men wearing tfilin much.
It would be nice if women had to wear tallit and kippa for example, though. (Unlike say our shul ahem).
It would be nice if they seemed to take the issue seriously.
Thanks for sharing my article and my perspective. Change isn’t easy and doesn’t always come quickly, but in order to teach the Judaism that we truly believe in (and that I truly believe in,) it is necessary.
Thanks Rabbi Olinsky!
If I have time I’d like to write about the Stein minyan (non-egalitarian) at JTS and what its educational consequences might be.
There are certainly dwoesidns to male dominance as a default social setting. Or female dominance, or white dominance, or right-handed dominance, or what have you.However, most posters are missing the one astute point made by Kim’s young acquaintance: how come all these historical societies ended up organizing themselves this way?Dominance ends up solving a large number of social problems. It causes its own problems in turn in the same way that egalitarianism solves a large number of social problems, while creating new ones.Unfortunately, the problems that dominance solves are problems where, if they aren’t solved, everybody dies. The problems that egalitarianism solves are tend to be less urgent.I suspect that historically we find male dominance nearly universally because female empowerment leads directly to lower birth rates which makes a society, tribe or culture less able to compete for resources with its neighbors. Male empowerment leads to higher birth rates, which makes a society, tribe or culture more able to compete.To unpack that a little bit: There is always and everywhere economic scarcity; all that varies under different economic system is the nature of the scarcity. Even in Star Trek , not everyone who wants a starship, has a starship. In a precapitalist economy, the scarcity is generally of things like food and shelter. As capitalism and technological advance make societies richer, the scarcities start to move up the hierarchy of need. In 100 AD, not everyone can eat; in 1000 AD not everyone can have their own house; in 2000 AD not everyone has their own computer; in 3000 AD not everyone has their own spaceship. And so on.So there’s a school of thought that holds that we can now afford to mellow out a little bit so, we go egalitarian and we aren’t as competitive for resources as those patriarchal Canadians, big deal they’ll have more Playstations than we do but we’ll be OK. And there is an element of truth to this viewpoint; it’s why feminism stalled out completely in Republican Rome (which couldn’t possibly afford its ideals) but made a lot of progress in Republican America (which could). (Roman feminism is a very interesting topic but the data is very limited glimpses, palimpsests of what was going on. About all we know is that the feminists burrowed into the Christian church, where the ideal could be kept alive, if not usually implemented.)If you want more egalitarianism in a culture, it is first necessary to enrich that culture to the point that it can afford replacements for the social goods that a male-dominance model created (offhand, lower transaction costs for leadership decisions, natalism, lower transaction costs for family formation). Being anti-capitalist and being feminist are mutually contradictory, in practical terms.