Rabbanit Rachel Frankel

Rachel Sprecher Frankel (sometimes spelled “Frenkel”) is the director of the Advanced Halakha Program at Matan, a very advanced women’s institute of Orthodox Jewish studies in Jerusalem. She also teaches Jewish law at Nishmat, another women’s seminary Jerusalem.

Sprecher Frankel is called Rabbanit by her students, not becuase her husband is a rabbi, but because she is very learned.

She is also a yo’atzot halakha in Hebrew (Jewish law adviser) for women.

But more than all this, Rachel Sprecher Frankel is the mother of Naftali Frankel, the 16-year-old boy who was murdered last mont along with two other teens by terrorists who kidnapped them near Hebron in the West Bank. The three boys’ bodies were found early Monday morning. All three were buried yesterday.

At the end of the eulogies at her son’s funeral, as his body lay before her, Rachel Sprecher Frankel stood with her husband and their younger son and began to say kaddish – something most Israelis have never seen, even though Jewish law clearly allows women to recite the mourner’s prayer if they so desire.

There, not more than a few feet away from her, were the haredi Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel David Lau; Rabbi Yaakov Shapira, the dean of the Zionist Orthodox flagship Mercaz Harav yeshiva; and Zionist Orthodox and Sefardi haredi Knesset members.

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I read elsewhere that both Chief Rabbis said Amen when the Rabbanit finished.




Source: S Rosenberg