History of Women in the Rabbinate:
A Case of Communal Amnesia
by Rabbi Dr. Sybil Sheridan
Leo-Baeck-College London
It seems strange
to be offering as history something that has in the main occurred in my
lifetime. Part of this makes me feel very old, - like my son who once asked
me ‘mummy was it the first world war or the second world war when you were a
little girl?’ And part of this makes me feel very honoured. I am well aware
of the historicity of this occasion -
the first conference of women Rabbis, Cantors and religious leaders to
have taken place in Europe.
I believe the importance
of this occasion will extend well beyond the numbers of people attending
here today because after this moment , with all its attendant media
interest, its publications, and the network it will undoubtedly establish,
it will be impossible to forget again the presence of women religious
leaders in our midst. Up to this moment, the history of women in the
Rabbinate can be summed up quite neatly as a history of forgetting - a case
of communal amnesia.
And to explain, I must apologise, for
beginning with a very personal moment in my own life - the day in October
1993 when Dr Hermann Simon, director of the Centrum Judaicum Foundation here
in Berlin, came to the Leo Baeck College in London and presented a gift: a
photograph and the ordination certificate of
Rabbi Regina Jonas, ordained in Germany in 1935.
I learnt three things that day that
arose from the events themselves, so let me explain what happened. We
gathered, around forty people, in a conference room at the Sternberg Centre
where Rabbi Professor Jonathan Magonet the principle of the Leo Baeck
College gave a speech. Then the artifacts were presented and passed around
the room. When I saw the picture of Rabbi Jonas standing in her formal robes
I had the strangest sensation. I saw myself. You see, my parents came to
England from Germany as refugees. Had there been no Shoah, my life, my
upbringing, my education would have been here, in Germany. Had there been no
Shoah, Rabbi Jonas would probably have still been alive when I was born and
in the nearly forty years that separated her ordination and mine, there
would undoubtedly have been other women in the Rabbinate. Instead of finding
myself a reluctant pioneer, one of only a few, an outsider to mainstream
Judaism and to the mainstream Rabbinate - I could have taken my place in
what would have by now, become the most natural thing - to have women as
Rabbis. And reflect. Had there been no Shoah, and had there been women
Rabbis in the Progressive Jewish movements of Europe for the last sixty
years - how different would Judaism be today?
I had been asked as a lecturer at the
Leo Baeck College and as one of the first women to be ordained there, to
accept the presentation by Dr. Simon and give a speech of thanks. I worked
very hard on that speech because, I sensed that this was indeed a momentous
occasion. Dr. Simon said a few words, turned to Rabbi Professor Magonet and
gave him the ordination certificate. Rabbi Professor Magonet thanked him and
they both sat down.............what about me? There was one further speech
and then the meeting broke up. There was no way I could say anything without
it looking completely absurd, but as it was, the whole thing was pretty
absurd. Here we were, in an audience primarily made up of women, celebrating
the almost if you like discovery of the first woman Rabbi, with speeches and
a presentation by men.
But that’s not the end of it.
After the ceremony I confronted Rabbi
Magonet who explained he had simply forgotten. He told me he was far too
busy to think of it because that evening was also going to be the
presentation of the first honorary doctorate by the Leo Baeck College and he
had so much to arrange. Now think of this. The Rabbi Regina Jonas
presentation took place in a modern seminar room, we sat simply in a circle
in a very informal atmosphere. Half an hour later, the presentation of the
doctorate took place in a large elaborate hall. The lecturers of the college
walked solemnly in, in full academic dress, to the sounds of a string
quartet who played periodically through the evening.
Speeches by the gentleman who received
the doctorate had been published in a booklet and were given to each person
in the packed audience present. It was a grand occasion. What I don’t
understand is why the two ceremonies were not combined? Without detracting
from the honorary Doctor’ s undoubted merits it does seem to me that the
presentation by Dr. Simon was of far greater significance. So what I learned
was this. Despite the many ordained women: despite the alleged championing
of egalitarian causes by the Leo Baeck College, women had not yet broken
through into the mainstream.
Third lesson. After the presentation,
Hans Hirschberg, a London resident who had discovered that the ordination
certificate of Rabbi Regina Jonas still existed in Berlin gave a very hard
hitting speech addressed specifically to the women rabbis present. Why were
they not interested? Why had no one bothered to follow up the leads
regarding Regina Jonas’ life and death? A stunned audience replied with one
voice: ‘We did not know about her’.1 Fifty years is no great amount of time
How is it possible that a figure so close to us, so significant in Judaism’s
modern development, be forgotten? Questions must be asked.
First, what of her contemporaries?
Though Rabbi Regina Jonas died in Auschwitz, her teacher
Rabbi Dr. Leo Baeck and many other colleagues escaped or
survived Nazi oppression and found homes in England, the United States,
Australia. Why did they never mention her? Or if they did, why was no note
taken?2
Possibly one reason is that her
ordination was not recognised. Her private semicha in Offenbach by Rabbi Max
Dieneman, himself on the very liberal end of the Reform movement, would
invite rejection not only by those opposed to women rabbis, but also those
opposed to him and his views. Another is simply circumstances. Why should
the survivors talk about her? So many great teachers and leaders were lost
in the Shoah. Those making sense of a new life in a new country in a new
world order can be forgiven if their former colleagues did not loom largely
in their minds.
But there were others, involved in the
issues surrounding the ordination of women as rabbis in England and in the
United Sates, who must have known about her. Opposing women’s ordination, it
looks like these people kept silent - for to mention a precedent would
inevitably have meant losing their case.
But these are not the only guilty ones
in forgetting Rabbi Regina Jonas. I had heard about her. greeted the
information, as did other women in the students of the time with monumental
indifference. In the plea today for suitable role models for women in the
Rabbinate it seems extraordinary that we showed not the slightest interest
in finding out more about ‘that woman in Germany who studied to be a
rabbi.’3
Nor were we alone in forgetting her.
Rabbi Sally Priesand the first woman Rabbi in the United States wrote about
her in her rabbinic thesis and in her book "Judaism and the New Woman" 4
Remarking on her discovery of Regina Jonas’ life she admitted that she -
Priesand - ‘was not the first woman Rabbi’.
"I was actually the second woman rabbi,
then, although I was the first to be ordained by a theological seminary."5
Yet, when in 1994 she celebrated twenty
years in the Rabbinate, all tributes to her claimed her as the first . No
one contradicted that statement, not one reference was made to Rabbi Jonas.
In the States, as in England she had been forgotten.How could this be? I can
only think that our indifference in the 1970s grew out of an attempt to be
like men.6 As we struggled to gain recognition and respect in the Jewish
world, we thought that to reclaim the inheritance of another woman - a woman
who was not universally recognised as a Rabbi - would only serve to
marginalise us and emphasise our differences from our male colleagues.
And so I learnt that one cannot trust
history - that what is forgotten may be more significant than what is
remembered and I only hope that our recent ‘discovery’ of Rabbi Regina Jonas
will indeed be the last.
But she was not alone.
Pamela Nadell an American academic has
recently written a book about women’s semicha. It is entitled ‘Women who
would be Rabbis: A history of Women’s Ordination, 1889 -1985’7 .
The earliest chapters are the most
fascinating. In 1889 this issue was raised by a journalist, Mary M. Cohen in
Philadelphia. She wrote a short story published in the Jewish Exponent
entitled ‘A Problem for Purim.’ The story’s protagonist is a young man
Lionel Martinez who is preparing for the ministry. Some days before Purim he
invites a group of friends together to discuss Jewish affairs. The topic for
discussion is ‘Ministers and their work’ and initially the talk revolves
around sermons and the possibility of exchanging pulpits in the hopes that
this might offer ‘some vitalising influence’. Then a young woman one Dora
Ulman, the superintendent for a local sewing school, speaks out warning that
her words "will shock you considerably’. She asks:
"Could not--------- our
women----------be---------ministers?" All but Lionel were struck dumb. Even
Jack’s boasted calmness had taken flight; he sate in open eyed surprise.
Martinez said quickly: "Will you explain your idea or plan, Miss Dora?" He
was, however, secretly a little astonished: he had not expected anything
from her until later on, and then, "views" on sewing schools8 The story then
lays out all the arguments. The discussion reveals all the prejudices and
fears that are still being used against women in the pulpit. Women are not
capable of the job, women may out-do men in their performance, women will
neglect their allotted duties in life. It will invite ridicule of the
office, the congregations aren’t ready for it, and so on. To all this, Dora
replies calmly: ‘If women have a gift for the ministry, they are more in
their place in the pulpit than if they were doing plain sewing, teaching
music, or attempting any other work than the one to which their nature and
their conscience call them.’9
She concludes by citing an anonymous
Christian Clergyman who wrote:‘the pulpit will never reach its sublimest
power until Woman takes her place in it as a free and equal interpreter of
God.’ 10
While the story gives the male students
the last word on the subject, the fact that it was raised at all should not
have been so shocking as the story suggests. American Jewry had introduced
sweeping changes for women in the early decades of the nineteenth century.
They were encouraged to attend synagogue with their brothers and husbands.
They were invited down from the gallery to join their families in worship.
They were given the same education as boys and invited to participate
alongside them in the ceremony of confirmation. Female teachers were
influential in synagogue religion schools, women became more and more active
in the life of their community. In the years that followed the American
civil war, Reform Judaism was in the ascendancy and communities experimented
in every way. The abolition of talliyot and aliyot11 were justified on the
grounds that they heightened the inequality between the sexes. In Europe,
though Reform was never quite so radical, the concern for women that had let
to the abolition of the institution of aguna and of halitsa12 led to a
recognition of her essential
equality with men.
In 1837 Abraham Geiger at the rabbinic
conference in Wiesbaden said, ''let there be from now on no distinction
between duties for man and woman, unless flowing from the natural laws
governing the sexes; no assumptions of the spiritual minority of woman, as
though she were incapable of grasping the deep things in religion; no
institution of the public service, either in form or content, which shuts
the doors of the temple in the face of women; no degradation of woman in the
form of our marriage service, and no application of fetters which may
destroy woman’s happiness''. Then will the Jewish girl and the Jewish woman,
conscious of the significance of our faith, become fervently attached to it,
and our whole religious life will profit form the beneficial influence which
feminine hearts will bestow upon it.13
In England in 1842 at his consecration
at the West London Synagogue the Reverend D.W. Marks proclaimed: "Woman,
created by God as a ‘help meet for man’ and in every way his equal; woman,
endowed by the same parental care, as man, with wondrous perceptions, that
she might participate (as it may be inferred from Holy Writ that she was
intended to participate) in the full discharge of every moral and religious
obligation, has been degraded below her proper station. That power of
exercising those exalted virtues that appertain to her sex has been withheld
from her; and since equality has been denied to her in other things, as a
natural consequence it has not been permitted to her in the duties and
delights of religion. It is true that education has done much to remedy this
injustice in other respects; yet does memory live in the indifference
manifested for the religious instruction of females.14
The surprise then, is not that the
issue of women in the Rabbinate was raised in the 1880s, but rather, why it
took nearly another century to achieve.In 1893, Hannah Solomon organised the
first Congress of Jewish Women in Chicago. An argument with the rabbinic
authorities over Jewish women’s representation at the World Parliament of
Religions resulted in the Congress going it alone. For the first time Jewish
women attending the conference prayed, studied, and discussed, formed
resolutions and engaged in a very real way in shaping the future of Judaism
without the guiding hand of a male religious authority. The women involved
in the conference were no strangers to podium or pulpit. Hannah Solomon,
Louise Mannheimer, Henrietta Frank, Mary Cohen were all experienced
speakers, some of whom on subsequent occasions appeared before large
congregations in major synagogues.
But the the most famous example of the
time was Ray Frank the ‘girl rabbi of the golden west.’ Born in San
Fransciso in 1861 her career as a journalist, took her to Spokane,
Washington where on the Yom Kippur of 1890, she set about arranging services
for the community. There being no Rabbi, Frank was invited to preach. The
result was so electric that from then on, until her marriage in 1901 she
toured all over the country as a popular and charismatic preacher. She was
in such demand that she employed an agent to arrange her appearances and
manage her travelling. Ray Frank studied at the Hebrew Union College,
receiving a Bachelor of Hebrew Letters. Of her, Rabbi Isaac Meyer Wise,
president of H.U.C. said: ‘We glory in her zeal and moral courage to
break down the last remains of the barriers erected in the synagogue against
woman......In the laws governing the Hebrew Union College the question of
sex of race of confession is not touched upon at all.....we can only
encourage Miss Ray Frank or any other gifted lady who takes the theological
course, to assist the cause of emancipating woman in the synagogue and
congregation. 15
Yet she herself was more cautious:
‘I entered the theological college in Cincinnati’, she wrote,‘in order to
learn more of the philosophy of Judaism and was the first woman to take that
special work at the college ......it never having been my intention to take
the regular theological course,having long prior concluded that while
theologies are many, religion is one; and that ordination is not essential
to preachers, or, better yet, to teachers.’16, and she turned down
several invitations to lead a congregation full time.
There were a number of Rabbis at the
time who advocated women’s role in the synagogue most notably, Isaac Meyer
Wise, Emil G. Hirsch and Kaufman Kohler - the former at least, would
probably have ordained a woman had a candidate presented herself. It seems
that it was the women of the time who were more circumspect.
'Let woman be as she ever has been,
content to let men preach while she practices.’ said Katherine de Sola17
While Henrietta Szold, who was to
become one of the first women to study at the Jewish Theological Seminary
wrote: 'I believe that woman can best serve the interests of the
synagogue by devoting herself to her home ....and by occupying the pulpit
only when her knowledge of the law, history, and literature of Judaism is
masterful, and her natural gift so extraordinary as to forbid hesitation,
though even then it were the part of wisdom not to make a profession of
public preaching and teaching ....In other words, the Deborahs and Miriams
need not hide their light under a bushel, but they and the world must be
pretty sure that they are Deborahs and Miriams, not equally admirable
Hannahs and Ruths.’18
Throughout the 1890s and 1900s the
arguments continued. But with the First World War, a hiatus occurred and
when in the twenties a new generation of women arrived at the rabbinical
colleges they appear to have had no knowledge of the earlier debate. Martha
Neumark, Irma Levy Lindheim, Dora Askowith, and Helen Hadassah Levinthal all
entered seminaries with the intention of becoming Rabbis. All were refused
ordination on the rather flimsy ground that the first woman would have to be
someone quite extraordinary. While with the first wave of women it seemed
the men and the seminaries were keen and it was the women who modestly held
back, with the second wave it was the reverse.
Rabbi Regina Jonas knew of at least one
of them. In her essay on Rabbi Jonas, Rabbi Elizabeth Tikva Sarah describes
a former student of hers, one Inge Kallman who was told by Rabbi Jonas that
‘apart from a woman rabbi in America, she was the only woman rabbi.’.19
Rabbi Sarah suggests that the woman was Martha Neumark (1904 -1981) who
requested ordination in 1922. The faculty of Hebrew Union College were
unanimous in their support for this, but her request was turned down by a
majority of the College’s Board of Governors.20 yet the reference could
equally have been to Helen Levinthal (1910 -1989) who in 1939 became the
first woman to complete the rabbinical course at Rabbi Isaac Meyer Wise’s
Jewish Institute of Religion. She was hailed in the press at the time as the
‘The first woman Rabbi (even if unordained)’21 and worked for a period as a
Rabbi in her father’s congregation.
And again history repeats itself. The
second world war brought the debate to a close to be started again from
scratch in the ‘50s. Indeed when the first women were finally ordained some
of this second generation of would-be rabbis were still alive, yet no public
acknowledgment of their role seems to have been made, no ‘honorary’ semicha
granted in retrospect.
The historian Gerda Lerner writes,
Men created written history and benefited from the transmittal of knowledge
from one generation to the other, so that each great thinker could stand "on
the shoulders of giants," thereby advancing thought over that of previous
generations with maximum efficiency. Women were denied knowledge of their
history, and thus each woman had to argue as though no woman before her had
ever thought or written. Women had to use their energy to reinvent the wheel
over and over again, generation after generation.22
While she refers to an earlier period
of our history, the above demonstrates that it is still true and though we
are no longer ‘denied knowledge of our history’, we have been pretty slow in
taking it up.
So what of Europe? When Fraulein
Rabbi Regina Jonas was studying at the Hochschule, there were
twenty six other women there. Did any of them also have aspirations to the
Rabbinate? Were there others inspired by Rabbi Jonas’ teaching who were
thinking of such a path before the Shoah destroyed them? And - were there
any before who would have wished to walk the same path?
The social setting in Europe was very
different from that of the United States. Women did not have the same
freedoms and emancipation for women took longer overall. Moreover, politics
was always a more burning issue amongst German Jewry than religion. Yet I
cannot believe that there were not women, who, having achieved a Jewish
education and motivated by their love for
Judaism, were not moved to practice it as more than passive recipients.
When Lily Montagu (1873 -1963 ) wrote
the article for the Jewish Quarterly that was to launch Liberal Judaism in
England no one queried her right as a woman to engage in a critique of
religion. She had already preached and led services and prepared a
children’s prayerbook under the encouragement of the Reverend Simeon Singer,
the august author of Britain’s Orthodox prayer book. She went on to start
her own synagogue, to found the World Union of Progressive Jews and indeed
she preached here in Berlin in 1926 at its inaugural conference. Lily
Montagu went on to try and found a Liberal Jewish Movement in Poland, but
the war intervened. 23 The story I heard when growing up - which may be
apocryphal - was that Lily Montagu was invited to the Hebrew Union College
to prepare for ordination, but she refused on the grounds that she could not
leave her congregation.
And of the generation before? Jewish
women in England were well educated and took prominent roles in the world of
the arts and literature. Few had an equivalent Jewish education, but there
were some. And of Germany and the rest of Europe? Who knows? Examples of
great women teachers are if not plentiful, certainly present from Beruriah
in the Talmud to Hannah Rachel Werbemacher (c1815-1892) the Hasidic ‘maid of
Ludomir’. Women ‘fitsnogerin’ led women in prayer in the ezrat nashim -the
women’s section - of mediaeval synagogues. Women composed prayers -
’techines’ - in eastern Europe,24 Rabbi’s wives made halachic decisions in
the area of taharat mishpacha - of family purity and others were enabled in
the matter of shechita - the slaughter of meat .25
Now picture this scene. Somewhere in
Europe a community is devastated by a Crusade, by Chmielnitski’s Cossacks,
by a Pogrom. Who were the survivors? Who buried the dead? Who would have
said Kaddish? Who would have kept up the rituals of Judaism in order to
teach the men of the next generation? The women. And who knows, but that
some Rabbi, like Rashi, when faced with only daughters, taught them like
sons, but who, unlike Rashi, had no sons’-in-law and grandsons to continue
the transmission? Who knows, but that in some isolated community a Rabbi
ordained his daughter to fulfil his task until such time as a suitable man
appeared?
Fanciful? With our record of communal
amnesia I would hesitate to pass judgment on such a scenario.
But what of today? Leo Baeck College
has ordained 25 female students in 24 years. Particularly exciting in my
opinion is the presence of Rabbis Elena Bykova,
Katalin Kelemen, and soon to be ordained Nelly Kogan, who as
pioneers for Progressive Judaism in the Ukraine, Hungary and Russia are at
the very heart of the movement , shaping it in an image that will reflect
their capabilities and qualities as women as well as as Rabbis.Women have
changed in the Rabbinate, and women have changed the Rabbinate. I do not
know what character was Rabbi Jonas’, I do know that Lily Montagu was in
some senses no different from other women of her period and class. A single
woman devoting her life to the improvement of others, motivated by a strong
faith and implacable belief in the goodness of others. Rabbi Tabick ‘never
wanted to be first’26 She quietly followed the college curriculum, unsure to
the very end whether she really wanted to become a Rabbi. From what I have
read of Rabbi Priesand, she too, was a quite unassuming person, who
conformed to the expectation of what a good Jewish girl was like. The first
rabbis were, as Rabbi Sheila Shulman puts it, ‘assimilationists’.27 content
to follow a male curriculum, follow a male pattern of rabbinical duties, and
probably deferring to them a little more than was healthy.But as time went
on the students stopped being ‘grateful’ for being there and became prepared
to question, to criticise and to shape both the rabbinical college and the
progressive movements.
A superficial example is in the case of
clothing. Rabbi Tabick was ordained wearing a smart suit and very fetching
hat. Subsequent generations saw the introduction of the tallit, and then the
tallit itself become more and more colourful demonstrating an increased
confidence. While we hesitated to draw attention to our appearance, current
rabbinic students have no such hang-ups.
A more profound example is in our
studies. We first generation rabbis just took what we were told. Yes we
argued, we challenged, but within the age old limits and assumptions of male
rabbinic argument. Later generations were far more on the ball. As Rabbi
Shulman puts it: "It is profoundly difficult and paradoxical to study,
intensively, the texts of a tradition which you love, but in which you
apparently do not exist., a history which is yours, but in which you nowhere
appear, a legal system in which your status is that of a chattel or a minor,
and a theology in which how you are part of the covenant is a moot point".28
The challenges to traditional learning
by women has been wide ranging. I would say with confidence that the
greatest contributions to scholarship today in the fields of Bible, of
Theology and of history come from women. It is a very exciting time to be a
woman engaged in study. There is sense of undiscovered country the chance to
find some really new meat on the old bones.
Finally in the congregational
Rabbinate, women have undoubtedly left their mark. When I asked for
maternity leave to be put into my contract, my chairman looked horrified.
‘Can’t you take sick leave?’ he asked, and that is what I did. Now men are
having paternity leave written in to their contracts and no one raises an
eyebrow. There used to be an unspoken rivalry between colleagues as to who
could work the hardest, stay up the longest, skip their days off and miss
their holidays. Women put a stop to that. Family, recreation and
relationships outside of the community are now valued highly, and while some
congregations may grumble, the majority recognise that Rabbis too need a
life.
The relationship between the Rabbi and
the congregant has also changed with the coming of women to a relationship
of greater closeness and greater informality. Janet Marder, who conducted a
survey of women rabbis in the United States claims that women tend to stay
in smaller communities, not because of restricted job opportunities, but
because size does not matter to them. They are less interested in climbing
the ladder from small to bigger congregations than in forming close
relationships with the congregants they have.29 Moreover, the woman rabbi
does not see herself as the top of a hierarchical structure within her
community, rather she acts as the enabler, empowering others to take on
tasks. This perceived ‘feminist’ model has been taken on by some male
rabbis. Hear this one: 'My goal is to form a congregation with the lay
leaders in which we worked as a team. I’d like to form a community in which
God and Torah - not the rabbi - are at the centre, one in which the members
feel challenged and empowered to become knowledgeable Jews'.30
As Janet Marder, puts it, the three
areas crucial to most women rabbis are balance, intimacy and empowerment. 31
Further explorations spear-headed by women rabbis are going on into changing
the whole model of congregations. There is talk of group rabbinates, where
two rabbis may apply together for a position formerly held by one - or of
three rabbis sharing the responsibility of several small communities between
them.
So much is happening in Progressive
Judaism that is new, challenging and exciting and I make no apology in
saying it is because of us.
And what of Rabbi Jonas? What would she
have made of we Rabbis, Cantors and lay -leaders gathering here in her
honour? Well, she would have been delighted. Her dream of what was possible
has now become a reality.
In her rabbinic thesis Rabbi Regina
Jonas concluded: "In all love and trust to our writings and their holy
ordinances, it should not be forgotten that the spirit of freedom speaks
from them. May it be this spirit which speaks for woman and illuminates this
question.......Apart from prejudice and being accustomed to it, practically
nothing halachically opposes the occupation of the Rabbinic office by a
woman. Thus may she in this activity advance Jewish life and Jewish
religiosity for future generations.32
We are her future. May we live
up to her ideals and prove ourselves worthy of the aspirations she did not
live to fulfil.
This lecture was held by Rabbi Sybil
Sheridan on BET DEBORA
- European Conference of Women Rabbis, Cantors, Scholars and all Spiritually
Interested Jewish Women and Men
[photo-exhibition]
- [program] - [reactions]
[history of women in the rabbinate]
- [women on the bima]
[start in german] - [start
in english]
Online-Documentation: iris@hagalil.com
Realisation: david@hagalil.com |