RELIGION / JOHN DART : Women Rabbis Satisfied With Roles

Rabbinate: Five clergy in the Valley say their careers have been largely free of the sexual discrimination reported in a nationwide survey.

Five women rabbis who serve synagogues in the San Fernando Valley area say they are very satisfied with their work, enjoy the respect of their congregations and have encountered little or none of the sexual harassment reported by some female Jewish clergy in a recent national survey.

“I absolutely believe that my congregation sees me as their rabbi, not as their woman rabbi,” said Rabbi Sally Olins of B’nai Hayim in Sherman Oaks. “It’s very hard work, but it’s gratifying to share in the sacred moments of people’s lives.”

As the culmination of Judaism’s High Holy Days approached, Rabbi Leah Kroll, now in her 12th year at the large Stephen S. Wise Temple atop Sepulveda Pass, said she has been highly satisfied with her work--with a temporal qualification.

“Not necessarily just before Yom Kippur,” she added with a smile, citing a harried schedule between Rosh Hashanah and today’s Day of Atonement when the synagogues fill to overflowing.

Likewise, Rabbi Leslie Alexander of Adat Ari El in North Hollywood said during a quick interview that “being a rabbi is great most of the time, but this week not so much.”

The Valley-area women rabbis said that synagogue members and male rabbinical colleagues have come a long way toward accepting and being sensitive toward women rabbis since the Reform branch of Judaism started ordaining women in 1972, and the Conservative wing broke the ice in 1985.

The small Reconstructionist movement began ordinations shortly after Reform, but Orthodox bodies have resisted any such change as contrary to Jewish law.

To gauge how well women rabbis are faring, the American Jewish Congress’ Commission on Women’s Equality in New York sent surveys during the summer to the 328 women ordained to date. About 45% returned the questionnaires, considered a good response rate for mailed surveys, a spokeswoman said.

The overwhelming majority of women expressed great satisfaction with their rabbinical careers, said Ann F. Lewis, commission president. “They believe they have the respect of their congregation and of other professionals and lay people with whom they work,” Lewis said in releasing the findings this month.

But some women reported encountering incidents of sexual harassment or discrimination.

Of the 146 respondents, 21% said they get unsolicited sexual comments or are told jokes with sexual content at least once a month. Twelve percent said that, just as frequently, they are subjected to uninvited touching or closeness. Over the course of their careers, about 73% said they had been subjected at least once to some type of sexual harassment.

Nearly three out of four women rabbis said they have never had an unsolicited attempt to fondle or kiss them, but 16% said it happened once or twice to them and 7% said it happens at least once a month. Another 4% didn’t answer the question.

Two-thirds of the sexual harassment incidents, from mild to serious in nature, come from lay persons, the respondents said. The rest are mostly from rabbis or other professional colleagues, they said.

Of the five women rabbis interviewed by The Times in the Valley area, only Alexander said that she was once subjected to physical sexual harassment as a rabbi. She said it was in her first position--before she joined the staff at Adat Ari El Congregation nearly eight years ago. She filed a complaint with rabbinical authorities at the time.

Alexander said, however, that she does not agree with cries of sexual harassment over what she called minor offenses. “I always felt bad if one couldn’t tell an off-color joke in front of me,” she said.

For Olins, 51, the sole rabbi for her 235-family Conservative Jewish synagogue in Sherman Oaks, touching and hugging is not a problem because she is usually the initiator, she said.

“I’m a hugger and people hug me; that’s my choice,” said Olins, who has a grown daughter and lives with her lawyer husband in Century City. “One of the roles of a rabbi is to comfort, to take someone’s hand.”

Rabbi Carole Meyers, 36, and married, the lone spiritual leader for the 225-family Temple Sinai in Glendale, said she has never faced anything she would call sexual harassment. The occasional off-color joke or request for a kiss from the rabbi is “inappropriate, but not sexual harassment,” she said.

Of greater concern to several of the rabbis was discrimination simply because they are female.

“Judaism is a patriarchal religion and Jewish institutions are considered patriarchal,” Meyers said. “I love my work and my congregation, but it’s a challenge for a female rabbi trying to make a place for herself.”

She held two positions in Houston before coming to Temple Sinai in 1986 as the first woman in the Los Angeles area to have a full-time congregation of her own.

“I’m certain I was not invited for some (positions) because I was female or didn’t get them because I was female,” said the Reform rabbi.

“When my contract was up (for renewal) here, there was clearly a backlash against having a woman rabbi. After a huge battle that we won, some people left the congregation,” she said. “But my tenure here is certainly witness to the fact that progress is being made.”

Rabbi Miriam Biatch, 43, ordained in 1982, credited her Reform branch predecessors in the first 10 years of women’s ordination with “blazing the trail for me and my contemporaries.”

After spending her first eight years at two congregations in the San Francisco Bay Area, Biatch, who is single, secured a position in 1990 as rabbi for Temple Beth Solomon of the Deaf in Arleta. At least one family member in the 100-family synagogue is deaf or has a hearing disability.

During job interviews in her career, she said, “I don’t think I ever felt that I was asked a question that was inappropriate or brought up improper issues,” Biatch said.

Women are not often in leadership committees or placed on many committees in Reform’s national bodies, but they are trying, she said.

In the national survey, 47% of the women rabbis said they have had at least one instance of being offered a lower salary than a male rabbi for the same job.

Kroll said that there are usually salary discrepancies, but added that she has no such complaints at Stephen S. Wise Temple where she is one of six rabbis.

“I have no complaints,” said Kroll, whose duties are with day school education and social action programs for the Reform congregation. “Comparing my salary and benefits to what a man would receive after 11 years, I am not one who comes out poorly,” she said.

The future is already evident in Conservative and Reform seminaries. At the University of Judaism near Sepulveda Pass, about one-third of the students beginning their study for the Conservative rabbinate are women. In Saugus at Temple Beth Ami, where Reform rabbinical student Janet Offel fills in as rabbi, she said that of the 12 second-year students at the Hebrew Union College campus in Los Angeles, seven are women.

“Most women rabbis in synagogues today are assistant rabbis or the solo rabbi of a relatively small congregation,” Offel said. “The time is going to come when women will be senior rabbis and even have men as assistant rabbis. Then we will truly be on a par with men and it will be a positive thing for Judaism.”