Rabba-Rousers

It’s not often I’m wary of covering a story because I think it might be revealed as a hoax, leaving me with egg on my face. But that’s the case with a document that came to my attention the other day, a press release from The TASC Group, a New York City public relations firm.

It celebrates TASC’s receipt of the PR News’ Nonprofit Award for Best Crisis Management Campaign for its work on behalf of a client called Yeshivat Maharat. The press release informs that the crisis TASC managed — to create, that is — was that of “Protecting the Role of Female Rabbis in the Orthodox Jewish Community,” a framing of the issue they settled on only after toying with another one. But “Rebelling Against the Chachmei HaMesorah and Replacing Halachah with a Secular Feminist Agenda” didn’t poll well with focus groups, and so “Protecting…” was chosen instead.

I’ve never met the people at TASC, but that title itself tells you these folks know what they’re doing. “Protecting the Role” is such a great phrase for the sense it conveys of rising in defense of a venerable, long-standing institution of impeccable pedigree. And that’s crucial, considering that the entire “Rabba” positioning is more recent than Gourmet Glatt in Lakewood.

Indeed, the very notion of “protection” is precious, since who’s not in favor of protecting the vulnerable from aggressors? In this case that would be those bad men with long beards — they literally wear black hats, like in the Westerns! — who would dare to attack and dismantle what has been a central, deeply cherished fixture of Orthodox Jewish life since at least the fall of 2017.