Rabbi Metzger: Married women should give up maiden name

Chief Ashkenazi rabbi tells women they should reconsider tendency to keep maiden name
Neta Sela

Advice to women from the chief rabbi: Married women should give up their maiden name, Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi Yona Metzger told hundreds of women at a convention Monday dedicated to Jewish family values and religiosity.

 

"We are currently in an era of permissiveness and there are many messages that create cracks in the Jewish home's whole structure," the rabbi told the women in attendence

 

Turning his attention to the question of last names, Rabbi Metzger said that even though this was not a Jewish law issue, but rather, a move that took root in the past 200 years, a woman should stick to the husband's last name and renounce her maiden name.

 

"The agenda whereby a woman wants to bring the independent entity of her last name to the home should be reconsidered," the rabbi said. "If this came out of unity it's one thing…but If there is a message that the woman is an independent entity and the husband is an independent entity, this does not unite the home into a whole home."

 

At the end of his talk, Rabbi Metzger recommended that women "reconsider the phenomenon."