After much debate and despite predictions of a schism, the Rabbinical Council of America, the nation’s largest group of Orthodox rabbis, this week approved without dissent a carefully balanced resolution on women’s communal roles in Orthodox Jewish life.

The statement affirms a longstanding prohibition of women rabbis but allows congregational rabbis flexibility in determining appropriate roles for women in their synagogues and communities.

At the conclusion of the group’s three-day conference in Scarsdale on Tuesday that was closed to the press, the leadership of the RCA announced its decision via press release and a telephone press conference. The group’s two top officials expressed deep gratification to the membership for approving without opposition a resolution that welcomed “the flowering of Torah study and teaching by God-fearing Orthodox women in recent decades as a significant achievement.”

It called for the “ever-broadening and ever-deepening wellspring” of Torah study and faithful observance among young women as they “rise to positions of influence and stature.”

But the resolution did not elaborate on what those positions might be, and asserted that the RCA “cannot accept either the ordination of women or the recognition of women as members of the Orthodox rabbinate, regardless of the title.”

Left unanswered were questions, for example, about the status of individual women like Sara Hurwitz, a member of the rabbinic staff of the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, whose elevation in title from “maharat” to “rabba” earlier this year led to a brouhaha within the Orthodox community over women’s roles in the synagogue.

Maharat is an acronym for Hebrew words connoting worthiness to serve as “a halachic, spiritual and Torah leader.” Although it was not accompanied by any change in her responsibilities, Rabba Hurwitz’s title change was made by HIR’s rabbi, Avi Weiss, because of public confusion about what maharat meant and lack of awareness that Hurwitz was a full member of the rabbinic staff.

Speaking to the press Tuesday afternoon, Rabbi Moshe Kletenick of Seattle, president of the RCA, said the resolution was drafted by a special committee that worked on it for more than two months, polling members around the country. He noted the statement draws the parameters of halacha in not permitting women rabbis, but gives individual rabbis the “latitude” to make decisions about the role of women.

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