Rabbanit Chana Henkin is the founder and chancellor of Nishmat and one of today’s most celebrated Jewish educators. Together with her husband, the noted halachic authority Rabbi Yehuda Henkin zt”l, she created the role of yoatzot halacha, experts in women’s health and Jewish law, which has transformed how the Orthodox world approaches taharat hamishpacha. A recipient of honorary doctorates from both Bar Ilan University and Yeshiva University, and Israel’s prestigious Agrest Prize for innovative religious education, Rabbanit Henkin lives in Jerusalem, where she devotes her life to advancing Torah and serving Klal Yisrael. 

Rabbi Aron White spoke with Rabbanit Henkin to learn about the publication of a new volume of Rav Henkin’s responsa on women’s issues, the halachic challenges facing women since October 7th, and her vision for the contribution of Anglo olim to Israel’s religious life.

Your late husband, Rabbi Yehuda Henkin zt”l, was a leading posek on contemporary women’s issues. Can you tell us about the new volume of his responsa that is now being published?

This is the book that I wish I had for my granddaughters’ bat mitzvahs – the book I would have wanted to learn with them! Even though they are Hebrew-speaking Israeli girls, and I would have had to translate the material back into Hebrew, this book presents Rav Henkin’s teshuvot on contemporary women’s issues in an accessible, user-friendly fashion. These are very important teshuvot from many decades of my late husband’s writings. Some twenty years ago he published responsa in English, and now we have translated additional material for the English-speaking public, combined with some content that is being republished.

Halacha reaches us through two channels: Codes of Jewish Law and responsa. Halachic codes – such as the Rambam, Tur, Shulchan Aruch, and modern works like Mishnah Berurah, Aruch HaShulchan, and Shemirat Shabbat Kehilchata, are prescriptive: they teach us the halacha. Responsa literature is reactive: it responds to changes in the world, in the socio-cultural, national, economic, and educational climate. From the teshuvot of the Babylonian Geonim and Rishonim to those of contemporary poskim such as Rav Moshe Feinstein and the Tzitz Eliezer, this is where halacha interfaces with contemporary times. Rav Henkin is so important because he was a Religious Zionist posek, in step with the State of Israel and with the times, and he was a powerful voice on women’s issues.

We made Aliyah to Beit Shean in 1973, and my husband served as the regional rabbi. At the time there weren’t many rabbis in the north of Israel; Rav Shlomo Aviner at Kibbutz Lavi, many miles away, was one of our closest Ashkenazi rabbinic neighbors! As a result, my husband was asked questions on many topics. His responsa collection, Bnei Banim, covers a diverse range of topics: eruvin, Shabbat, the synagogue, kashrut, national issues, and women’s issues. But he quickly became a major address for questions relating to women in contemporary times. Now we are bringing more of this important material to the English-speaking world, for the benefit of women who want to understand more about mitzvah observance.

Could you give us an example of Rav Henkin’s halachic approach?

One teshuva that I think captures Rav Henkin’s approach is the question of whether the names of the mothers of the bride and groom may be written alongside the fathers’ names on a ketubah. He begins by acknowledging that he understands why the question is being asked. He was aware that Western social norms make this a fashionable choice today. He then cites the Gemara in Sanhedrin, which discusses a case where a particular practice was also found among non-Jews, raising the question of whether doing so would violate chukot hagoyim – the prohibition against imitating gentile practices. The Gemara responds that since the practice appears in the Torah as well, it was not learned from them.

This psak establishes an important principle: if we have our own Biblical precedent, the fact that the non-Jewish world does something does not make it forbidden. In Tanach, the kings of Judah are listed with their mothers’ names, and so Rav Henkin felt that including the mothers’ names in the ketubah follows Biblical precedent. Moreover, recognizing the mother in a marriage document is fitting, since the mother has an equal, if not greater, part in raising a child from infancy to adulthood. He did add, however, that for an aliyah to the Torah, it would not be correct to use the mother’s name, as the obligation of talmud Torah rests on men. In this teshuva, Rav Henkin is saying that we need not erect walls between ourselves and the surrounding culture – but he also sets clear limits to change, which is critical to sustaining Orthodoxy.

This issue intersects with a personal story from my husband’s family. His grandfather, the renowned sage Rabbi Yosef Eliyahu Henkin, would often include his mother’s name when signing his teshuvot. When Rabbi Yosef Eliyahu was fifteen years old, his mother pawned her featherbed quilt – part of her wedding dowry – to pay a wagon driver to take her son to the Mir Yeshiva in Europe. When he arrived, he was told he was too young to be admitted, whereupon he walked to the synagogue in the nearest village and spent the year learning Masechet Eruvin forty times. Upon hearing that Rabbi Isser Zalman Meltzer was founding a yeshiva in Slutzk, he traveled there and was tested on Eruvin. At the conclusion of the examination, Rabbi Meltzer declared: “This child knows Eruvin better than I do!” And so Rabbi Yosef Eliyahu would sign his teshuvot with his mother’s name, in tribute to the one who had made his Torah learning possible.

What drew you and Rav Henkin to make Aliyah?

I am glad to be speaking with a Mizrachi publication, as my husband and I were profoundly influenced by the Mizrachi movement in the United States! After moving to Israel, we were fully occupied with my husband serving as regional rabbi in the Beit Shean area. After we left Beit Shean, he volunteered for the army. He was in his mid-thirties and enlisted as a regular soldier, not in any rabbinic capacity.

For both of us, our Mizrachi background was fundamental to our desire to help shape Israel’s religious character. I taught in the local school, where the principal wanted me to teach English, but I wouldn’t agree unless I could teach Torah she’be’al peh as well! Looking back over the years, there are abundant illustrations that the dati leumi community does not look over its shoulder to the right, seeking religious authenticity elsewhere. This has been especially true over the last two years, as we have seen who has been fighting for Am Yisrael.

My husband’s greatest student, his talmid muvhak, was our son Rav Eitam, who together with his wife Naama was murdered by terrorists a decade ago. When my husband passed away five years ago, just short of our fiftieth wedding anniversary, I felt that his legacy was now in my hands, when it should have been in Rav Eitam’s. That is why I feel such an acute sense of responsibility to publish and translate his halachic writings.

Since October 7th, tens of thousands of husbands have been called up for milu’im for extended periods. What new halachic challenges has this created for women?

There are thousands of women who have been leading their households during their husbands’ prolonged absences since October 7th, from making havdalah to running a Seder. And, sadly, we now have far too many war widows who have had to take on full parental and religious responsibility on their own. My daughter lives in a yishuv where most of the army-age men were called up. My son-in-law has served four hundred days of reserve duty. He and my daughter have eight children, and rather than haul her children elsewhere to hear havdalah, she, like most women in her community, made kiddush and havdalah herself during his absences. My son-in-law is one of nine brothers, and at one point most of them were serving in Gaza simultaneously, while their wives held down the home front, including religiously.

This reality highlights the importance of women’s talmud Torah. In the modern world, mothers need to be able to impart Torah knowledge alongside fulfilling their traditional role of maintaining a Jewish home. Ensuring that women have the skills and knowledge to learn and teach Torah within their families is more critical today than ever before.

You have spoken about Religious Zionism as a mission to shape the religious character of the State of Israel. Do you believe that Jews making Aliyah today can still contribute to that mission?

Absolutely! Jews from the Diaspora are accustomed to taking responsibility for Jewish life in a way that Israelis often do not. In chutz la’aretz, if we want religious institutions, we have to build them ourselves – we run shul dinners, fundraising committees, the annual mikvah dinner, and so on. Israelis don’t think that way; they are used to religious schools, mikvaot, and religious services being provided by government agencies and local municipalities. This mindset means that Diaspora Jews often take initiative and work proactively to strengthen their communities.

Let me share one of our early experiences. When we arrived in Beit Shean, I was a nursing mother and did not yet need to use the mikvah. A few months later, when I did need to go, I arrived on a Friday night to find it locked. A woman on the street explained: “On Fridays the mikvah lady locks up before Shabbat so she can go home to dress, light candles, and eat with her family.” I was stunned – this was clearly contrary to halacha. I went to the local religious council to have the mikvah attendant dismissed, but moving the bureaucracy took time, and in the interim it fell to the local rebbitzens to open the mikvah on Friday nights. The next week, I opened it myself while my husband stayed home with the baby. I had spoken with the other rebbitzens, and while they agreed it needed to be done, a sixth sense told me to check on them. I arrived the following Friday night to find the rabbi preparing to leave for shul. I said to him: “Your rebbitzen needs to open the mikvah now!” He stayed home reluctantly. Before long, the religious council hired a new and dedicated mikvah lady and mikvah policies were changed. We also began teaching women about taharat hamishpacha, and within a few years the average number of women using the mikvah each night rose from six to twenty-six.

Little did I imagine that this early experience would set me on a path toward the Yoatzot Halacha revolution that my husband and I, together with Rav Yaakov Varhaftig, would lead decades later. Baruch Hashem, women turned to our yoatzot immediately, with significant rabbinic support. Two-and-a-half decades on, the yoatzot have collectively addressed more than half a million questions from women about taharat hamishpacha. And in fact, the women’s learning revolution in Israel was itself started by Anglos!

Today there are hundreds of thousands of Anglo-Israelis – first and second generation – who seek religious leaders sensitive to their backgrounds and needs. There is certainly tremendous scope for Anglo olim to continue contributing to the religious fabric of Medinat Yisrael.

Rabbi Aron White is the Managing Editor of HaMizrachi magazine. He lives in Carmay HaNadiv, Kiryat Malachi, and serves as the Rabbi of Beit Knesset Tzameret Arnona in Yerushalayim.