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
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