About bloody time.

Dr. Jennie Rosenfeld has been appointed the chief religious authority West Bank settlement of Efrat:

The moderate West Bank settlement of Efrat has appointed a woman to serve as a religious leader, the Jerusalem Post reported.

Efrat’s Chief Rabbi Shlomo Riskin appointed Dr. Jennie Rosenfeld to the position, which includes the responsibility to answer questions on halakha (Jewish law).

Rosenfeld is a student in the Susi Bradfield Women’s Institute of Halakhic Leadership (WIHL ), which is part of Midreshet Lindenbaum, a liberal Modern Orthodox women’s seminary. The five-year program ordains women, allowing them to issue halakhic rulings and give spiritual advice. The ordination is similar to what Orthodox rabbis have, but the graduates are not called rabbi.

Rosenfeld’s appointment is the first time a woman has been appointed to an official position of Orthodox communal leadership in Israel, Rabbi Shmuel Klitsner, director of the WIHL, told the Post.

Even so, Efrat’s state religious council, which would normally pay the salary of a community’s religious leader, is not paying Rosenfeld. Instead, Riskin is paying her salary privately through charitable donations.

So, she’s not getting paid by the community.

Well, it’s a start.

(On Edit)

My preferred status would be that there is no government funding of religion, but I am very American that way.