The first time a woman sat for Israel’s Chief Rabbinate exams did not happen in a vacuum. It happened in the middle of reserve duty, between operational briefings, in a room where secular officers debated theology over maps and radios.

That matters. Because the story being told is that something new has begun. It hasn’t.

Women have already been learning, teaching, and ruling on halakha for years. Communities have already been turning to them with their most intimate, complex questions about mourning, about family, about how to live a Jewish life. The only thing that changed is that the State of Israel finally caught up.

When I sat for the Rabbanut exam, I did so as a major in the IDF, studying the laws of mourning between shifts. Around me were Israelis of every kind, observant and secular, skeptical and supportive, who took for granted that I could open a religious text and answer a halakhic question. No........

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