Jewish Law and a Woman’s Right to Vote

In our era, when women assume professions such as judges, politicians, and military roles, it may be hard to imagine a time when women weren’t allowed to vote. Actually, women achieved political equality relatively recently in human history, and among Torah scholars, as well as in society at large, there was a time when this equality was controversial. 

The women’s suffrage movement achieved its victories in the United States and Great Britain more than a century ago. When the State of Israel was founded in 1948, the right of women to vote was included in the country’s Declaration of Independence, which said, “The State of Israel (…) will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex.”¹

Although by 1948, an Israeli woman’s right to vote was the law of the land, it may be surprising to consider that there was a rabbinical dispute over women’s suffrage in the Mandate of Palestine in 1920, at a time when most Western countries were also debating the issue. 

Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak Kook, who was then the Chief Rabbi of Jaffa, opposed women’s suffrage for three main reasons². He argued that women going to the polls would violate standards of modesty and cause mixing between men and women. Secondly, Rav Kook believed that women voting and taking political positions that might conflict with those of their husbands would threaten shalom bayit. 

Third, Rav Kook was concerned about the growing secularism in the land of Israel and felt that further assimilating to modern values, such as women’s liberation, would alienate the State of Israel from other nations. In addition, it would undermine the Jews’ claim to the land of Israel if they were seen as not upholding Torah values, including conforming to traditional gender roles. 

Rav Kook’s opinion was opposed by the Sephardic Rabbi Ben Zion Uziel, who addressed Rav Kook’s three main arguments. First, Rabbi Uziel said that if going to the polls violated modesty, then it was hard to see how women could be allowed to leave the house at all. 

Rabbi Uziel wrote, “Women and men would be prohibited from walking in the street or entering a shop together; it would be forbidden to negotiate in commerce with a woman lest this encourage closeness and lead to licentiousness. Such ideas have never been suggested by anyone.”³

Regarding Rav Kook’s concerns about shalom bayit, Rav Uziel argued that there are many cases in which people in the same household disagree with each other, but such disagreements don’t necessarily undermine family harmony. 

The answer to Rav Kook’s third objection is apparent in history itself.  Most Western countries signed into law women’s right to vote in the early 20th century, with the US ratifying it in 1920 and the UK Parliament passing the law in 1928. 

The concern that other countries would look askance at the State of Israel for allowing women the right to vote was no longer relevant in the 1920s and onward. If the Jewish State had forbidden women from voting when it was established in 1948, it would have been seen as backward and might have earned global disapproval. 

The election of Golda Meir in 1968 and the many Israeli women serving in the Knesset are testaments to Israel’s commitment to allowing women to participate in the political process. However, is there a Torah basis for giving women an equal political voice as men?

If the Torah didn’t consider a woman’s opinion important and if it didn’t hold that women have a say in legal, financial, or political matters, the story of the daughters of Zelophehad would have ended quite differently. Instead, the story proves that women have the right to ensure their voices are heard and their rights are respected. 

One of the most prominent examples of women speaking truth to power is the case of the daughters of Zelophehad. When their father died without leaving a male heir, the daughters pleaded before Moshe Rabbeinu, “Let not our father’s name be lost to his clan just because he had no son! Give us a holding among our father’s kinsmen!”⁴

This was a case in which Moshe Rabbeinu didn’t have an immediate answer, and it was Hashem who decided the case and told him to allow the daughters to inherit directly from their father. In addition, this case was established into Torah law allowing daughters to inherit from their fathers if there was no available male heir. 

If the Torah didn’t consider a woman’s opinion important and if it didn’t hold that women have a say in legal, financial, or political matters, the story of the daughters of Zelophehad would have ended quite differently. Instead, the story proves that women have the right to ensure their voices are heard and their rights are respected. 

The list of influential Jewish women is a long one. This list not only includes women who affected change in the domestic sphere and within their own families but women like Devorah who served as judges and the daughters of Zelophehad, who advocated for their rights and set the stage for the revelation of women’s rights regarding property. 

There’s no doubt that women have come a long way from the times preceding women’s suffrage, but we can see in the Torah that women’s voices were respected from the beginning and we were destined to play a central role in Jewish history.

¹ _{Israel Declaration of Independence, 1948}

² _{Rav Kook,”On Women’s Voting” Open Letter, April 1920}

³ _{Mishpatei Uziel 44}

⁴ _{Bamidbar 27:4}