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]
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Online-Documentation: iris@hagalil.com
Realisation: david@hagalil.com |
