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.

The press release begins unremarkably enough with a description of the client as “the first organization to ordain women to become Rabbis (Rabbas) in the Orthodox Jewish community.” From there, however, it descends into the stuff of really top-drawer parody.

Thus, we are told that “the Orthodox Union — the body that manages rabbinic law — was contemplating a rule to reinforce the longtime practice of precluding women from serving as Rabbas, even though several had already been ordained and were performing their duties in synagogues and shuls around the country.” Yes, of course, something had to be done about that rabbinic law managerial body known as the OU, and its reigning chief rabbi, Moishe Bane. It really ought to stick to giving hechsherim and running NCSY and get out of the Sanhedrin business.

But TASC was just getting warmed up. “In order to put pressure on the Orthodox Union and prevent it from issuing a rule that would expel Rabbas,” the statement explains, “TASC was tapped by Yeshivat Maharat to initiate a crisis and advocacy communications campaign.”

Pressure? This is so disappointing. All along, we thought the Maharat folks were advancing what they believed to be an authentic Torah perspective on the dignity and equality of the female role in the spiritual realm, about learned, pious women taking their deserved place as disseminators of Torah and yiras Shamayim and about winning the hearts and minds of Orthodox Jews in this struggle on behalf of these deeply held, time-honored principles.

And yet we now learn that they’ve hired some non-Jewish PR flacks, with clients like the Islamic Circle of North America and the Trayvon Martin Foundation, to pressure the rabbinic law management folks at the OU in order to get the clergy gals in? Avi Weiss, how could you?

The TASC statement goes on to share its secret pressurizing strategy: “Along with writing and circulating press releases as well as conducting dozens of interviews with the media, TASC’s comprehensive campaign was involved in creating an op-ed strategy promoting Yeshivat Maharat’s case and connecting it to the #MeToo movement. TASC helped to write, edit, and place a crucial op-ed in the New York Daily News by Rabba Sara Hurwitz that leveraged the #MeToo movement to make the case for more women in clergy positions.”

The Rabba-rousers’ strategy of “leveraging” the #MeToo movement to agitate for women clergy is sheer brilliance. As for that bit about writing the Rabba’s op-ed for her, we’re sure no slight was intended; she was probably just too busy preparing a shiur to find the time to pen a silly Daily News column.

Speaking of learning Torah, TASC also organized “brown bag meetings… with leading religion reporters from a variety of influential outlets, including Jewish newspapers, the Associated Press and the New York Daily News [to brief them] on the intricacy of the rabbinical issues pertaining to the ordination of Orthodox women.” (Our sources tell us that voluminous handouts containing hundreds of marei mekomos on the relevant sugyos were studied in depth with the journalists, and that an Episcopalian AP reporter actually decided to convert after this first-ever exposure to the beauty and depth of the halachic process.)

In the end, TASC proved itself not up to the task: The OU gave the handful of its member synagogues with rabettes on staff three years to offload them. Somehow that resolution of The Crisis didn’t make it into the press release, which concludes triumphantly, “TASC’s crisis, communications and advocacy efforts generated community-wide pressure on the Orthodox Union not to expel Rabbas.” And at last word, TASC is on to its next assignment, in Ramallah, working to generate world community-wide pressure on the Israelis not to expel Abbas.

Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 755. Eytan Kobre may be contacted directly at kobre@mishpacha.com