Barbara Kay: The 'Great Feminization' is eating Jewish institutions alive

In September, public intellectual Helen Andrews caused a stir when she delivered a , titled “Overcoming the Feminization of Culture,” to the National Conservatism Conference, later published as an article for Compact, titled “The Great Feminization.”

Andrews summarized feminization as the prioritizing of feminine over masculine interests, but additionally prioritizing “empathy over rationality, safety over risk, cohesion over competition.” All these traits combine, she believes, in institutions where females are numerically dominant, to define “wokeness” and “cancel culture.”

Andrews points to Bari Weiss’ 2020 resignation letter from the New York Times where Weiss was labeled and ostracized for her social ties and cut off by perceived friends. In 2018, the newsroom there had tipped to a female majority which Andrews argues changed the work environment’s dynamics to one where cohesion is preferred, and covert undermining would replace open debate in favour of emotional harmony.

Andrew’s argument is, as you might expect, highly controversial, but it rings true.

And I would argue that the more feminized society’s institutions become, the more readily extreme, empathic attitudes replace rational decision-making at policy-making levels, and the more society loses confidence in its ability to thrive.

Ironically, instead of directing empathy towards our own citizens, feminization also tends to direct empathy internationally. That is exactly what is happening at our national level, when our government earmarks funds for programs such as “Gender-Just, Low-Carbon, Rice Value Chains in Vietnam.”

This is also happening at a micro-level to the Jewish community in North America. Our spiritual leadership in non-orthodox synagogues is growing increasingly female, and, by no coincidence, is wokeness spreading, and, by no further coincidence, so is alignment with radical anti-Zionism.

In November, the Atra Center for Rabbinic Innovation released the first empirical study of the (non-Orthodox) American rabbinate, across the spectrum from Reconstructionist and Reform to Conservative and Modern Orthodox. It found that 58 per cent of rabbinical students “identify” as women, 30 per cent as men and 12 per cent as non-binary.

According to the report, 51 per cent identify as LGBTQ, a figure wildly incommensurate with general population figures, and even surpassing the absurdly high percentages of self-reporting students at Ivy League universities, which top out at around 40 per cent.

According to Leil Leibowitz, writing for Tablet’s September issue on the subject of the “disappearing male rabbi,” the 2023 class of Reform Judaism’s theological seminary Hebrew Union College was 75 per cent female.

Leibowitz echoes Andrews’ list of female traits with a Jewish twist as “a prioritization of emotion over doctrine, as spiritual growth (being) less about honoring the mitzvot (commandments) and more about nurturing the self, inclusion, and relationships.”

Prayer, study and religious observance are, Leibowitz observes, second-tier objectives in non-Orthodox synagogues. Wellness, relationships, “tikkun olam” (“repairing the world,” also known as social justice activism), and therapeutic spirituality rule.

One of Leibowitz’s male interviewees said he had stopped attending his Conservative synagogue because it’s “a waste of time. It’s like one part progressive political rally, one part shrink session, and zero part anything real or substantial Jewish.”

Influential Israeli-American rabbi and podcaster Daniel Gordis, a politically centrist Zionist, decided he had to leave Conservative Judaism when the growing anti-Zionism in the movement became too off-putting to tolerate. He criticizes Rabbi Jill Jacobs who heads Truah, an organization seemingly more concerned with international human rights for all, except Israelis. Rabbis, he wrote, “should care more about Israel than they care about Israel’s enemies.”

In May 2024, two students at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College (RRC), Talia Werber and Steven Goldstein, published a damning article about the experiences that drove them to abandon their studies there. Their principal grievance was the anti-Zionism that flourishes at the college. Of the 60 students at the college, only eight joined their RRC Students Supporting Israel chapter. Over what they refer to as a “grueling year of isolation,” three left the group and three — the authors and one other — left the college.

The authors describe the college as “a training ground for anti-Zionist rabbis,” providing foot soldiers for the organization, Jewish Voice for Peace, which has been criticized by some for being “neither Jewish nor for peace.”

Claims that Israel was guilty of genocide and apartheid, the authors write, were a constant feature of their education. Most shockingly, they write — and this at a rabbinical training institution headed by a female rabbi — that “the sexual violence Israelis experienced (on October 7) was never mentioned, even during Women’s History Month.”

What about the Christian clergy? A 2024 report on female Christian clergy found that in a 2018 sample, about 14 per cent of U.S. churches were headed by a senior female clergyperson. So, churches are not yet in danger of feminization. Good luck to them.

If there is a solution to the feminization-linked problem of anti-Zionism in the non-Orthodox rabbinate, I don’t know what it is. I only know this trend cannot end well for our community. What is essential in Jews’ spiritual homes now, more than ever in our history, is that they be spaces where “ahavat Yisrael” — love of Israel — is the prevailing norm. If we are not for ourselves, who will be?

National Post
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