What began as a slight watering down of Jewish law has today reached tsunami levels

1826: My rabbi is a model of piety and scholarship. He knows all of Talmud Bavli and Yerushalmi by heart, and is a recognized halachic authority.

1926: My rabbi is an observant Jew, davens and studies regularly, and gives excellent sermons in flawless English.

2026: My rabbi may not be a world-renowned scholar, but he does know Shema Yisrael by heart.

That entry for 2026 might be an exaggeration, but as we will see below, not by much. Certainly, we are today blessed with an abundance of authentic rabbinic leadership that is learned, inspiring, and wise. But there is another side to this coin, shown by a recent survey of newly minted (non-Orthodox) rabbis. In a word, there are rabbis and there are rabbis.

Not long ago, the raging debate was on the subject of “Who is a Jew?” Today we have progressed, and now the question is, “Who is a rabbi?” And well might we ask….

What does “rabbi” mean? It once meant that one is a teacher, is knowledgeable of Torah and halachah, inspires and elevates his flock, is immersed in Torah study and spiritual growth, answers religious and halachic questions.

Although we are still blessed with such leadership today, in certain circles it is none of the above. Some view it as a profession among professions. Once it was a calling, a mission and a G-d-directed life. Today, one can be a lawyer or accountant without any religious obligations — or a rabbi without any religious obligations. In fact, he doesn’t even have to be halachically Jewish, as we will see below.

Worse: Anyone who so desires can call himself rabbi. There is no central licensing authority that permits the use of this title. There are a number of private rabbinic ordination assembly lines where, upon payment of fees, one receives an impressive diploma, and lo and behold, he — or she — is a rabbi. To add to the confusion, the secular media refer to anyone with a beard, peyos, black hat, and the ability to read elementary Hebrew, as “rabbi.”

Can one be a physician without having studied Gray’s Anatomy or Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine? Or an attorney without having studied Hart’s The Concept of Law? Or an accountant without the ability to add or subtract? Of course not. Can one be a rabbi without being able to read rabbinic Hebrew, and without the knowledge to make it through a Ramban or simple Rashi in the original? Definitely yes. I have known so-called rabbis who could not translate a Rashi on Chumash, much less a section of Mishnah or Gemara. But they delivered fine sermons about what they called “Judaism.” In a community where no one knows an alef, he who knows both an alef and a beis is a brilliant scholar, a thinker, and a teacher of Torah. It is instructive that, as a reaction to the degrading of the title, the Orthodox Rabbinical Council of America stopped referring to its members as “rabbi,” and instead now refers to them as “Ha-Rav.”

If the leadership of non-Orthodox Judaism is in such parlous state, one can only imagine the condition of the followers.

But there is more. In our day, not only are many self-styled rabbis ignorant of Torah and halachah, and not only do they not observe mitzvos or practice Judaism. Today, many of them were either not raised as Jews or are products of highly questionable quickie conversion procedures.

Some of today’s modern rabbis, in their pell-mell rush to identify with the spirit of the times in which all is permitted and nothing is forbidden, are not even deterred by what the Torah calls to’eivah, a highly pejorative term reserved for assaults on G-d’s natural order of the universe and for distortions of His blueprint for mankind. That to’eivah violations are an encroachment on the sacred premises of the Creator does not concern them. They are certain that the Torah’s “thou shalt not”s were never intended to be permanent prohibitions, and when times and circumstances change, these strictures — such as those dealing with Shabbat labor or food restrictions or the meaning of adultery and idolatry — become antiquated and can be ignored. Especially, they add, prohibitions that cause discomfort are by definition not binding, because the Creator loves us, and does not want us to be unhappy or uncomfortable. And thus, almost every Torah restriction is diluted into meaninglessness.

The key, as always in the modern world, is not what G-d wants and desires, but what I want and desire. With this philosophy, the ruler of the world is not the “I” of the first commandment, “Anochi Hashem Elokecha, I am the L-rd your G-d.” Instead, there is a new anochi: not G-d but I myself, and whatever pleases this new anochi is good, and nothing is out of bounds. Because the Torah’s laws are malleable, elastic, and its words mean whatever I want them to mean.

Thus it comes as no surprise that such elasticity should result in the recent ATRA Study of non-Orthodox rabbis in the USA, in which over 50 percent of those about to be ordained as rabbis have no clear gender identity. Not to mention that over 20 percent of newly minted rabbis were not even raised Jewish, and over 58 percent are women (Rosov Consulting Firm, 2025).(Question: When the rabbi is a woman, is her husband the rebbetzin?)

We have come a long way. What began as a slight watering down of Jewish law has today reached tsunami levels. Once we start tinkering with Judaism’s borderline guardrails, soon enough pillars like Shabbos and adultery and the other mitzvos begin to totter, and ultimately all the walls — including who is qualified to be a spiritual leader — come crashing down.

Welcome to 2026. Perhaps, with much prayer and heavenly intercession, the title “rabbi” will speedily be restored to its pristine glory, and we will once again point proudly to many more of our rabbis as old-fashioned, antiquated men of ruchniyus who are talmidei chachamim, models of piety, and halachic authorities, just as they once were. With His help, “once upon a time” might be reincarnated in our own day.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1100)