Sybil Sheridan History of Women in the Rabbinate
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Sybil Sheridan History of Women in the Rabbinate: a Case of Communal Amnesia* It seems strange to be offering as history something that has in the main occurred in my own lifetime. Part of this makes me feel very old, as when my son asked me: “Mummy, was it the first world war or the second world war when you were a little girl?” But the history actually goes back quite some way: not just to 1976, when Rabbi Jacqueline Tabick was first ordained in England, nor to the ordination of Rabbi Sally Priesand in the USA in 1972, but at least a century. Why have we not heard of it? Because 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. 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 Zentrum Judaicum Foundation 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. The story of Rabbi Jonas may be well known to some; to others it will be new. Regina Jonas was born on 3 August 1902 in Berlin1 and at the age of 21 began working as a teacher of religion in the Orthodox Jewish School where her brother, Abraham also taught. Not content just to be a teacher, she * This article is based on a lecture given at Bet Deborah, Berlin to the European Conference of Women Rabbis, Cantors and Scholars, 13-16 May 1999 / 27 Iyar – 1 Sivan 5759; a shorter version has been published in German in the report of the conference: Sybil Sheridan, “Der Geschichte nicht trauen,” in: Bet Debora Berlin, Journal Nr. 1 (Jan 2000), 6-7. 1 See Elizabeth Sarah, “Rabbi Regina Jonas 1902-1944: Missing link in a broken chain,” in: Sybil Sheridan (ed.), Hear our Voice (London: SCM 1994), 2-9; here 3. Compare also Katharina von Kellenbach, “Frl. Rabbiner Regina Jonas (1902-1944). Lehrerin, Seelsorgerin, Predigerin,” in: Elizabeth Green and Mary Grey (eds), Ecofeminism and Theology (ESWTR Yearbook 2; Kampen/Mainz: Kok Pharos/Grünewald 1994), 97-101, and see now Elisa Klapheck (ed.), Fräulein Rabbiner Jonas, “Kann die Frau das rabbinische Amt bekleiden? Eine Streitschrift” (Teetz: Hentrich & Hentrich 1999). 143 Forum attended the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums, the academy training Rabbis and teachers for the Reform movement in Germany. Regina Jonas studied initially to attain the title of “Academic Teacher of Religion”, but at some point she decided to seek semicha. In order to do this, she had to produce a thesis based on Talmud and she chose for her subject the question of women’s ordination. Her application caused quite some controversy, but she had the support of her Talmud professor who, according to the tradition of the Hochschule, was the one who would actually ordain her. However – call it divine intervention if you like – he died before Jonas had finished her preparations and the new Talmud professor, D. Chanoch Albeik, steadfastly refused to ordain her. Rabbi Dr. Leo Baeck, the principal of the Hochschule supported her application, but felt he could not intervene. As so often in sto- ries of this kind, the highest authority was reluctant to be the instrument of a schism. Berlin fell under a system of Einheitsgemeinde, a laudable idea in which different denominations of Jews, from Orthodox through to Liberal, worked together in one community. Leo Baeck was also the leading rabbi of the community, and he felt that he could not compromise his work there. But Regina Jonas did have support from the Liberal end of the spectrum, and in 1935, at the request of the Union of Liberal Rabbis in Germany, she was ordained by Rabbi Max Dienemann, of Offenbach. Of course, the controversy did not end there. Rabbi Jonas worked in Berlin, but not in the main synagogues. She led services in the old people’s home in Berlin, and taught. She called herself Fräulein Rabbiner Jonas – “Miss Rabbi” – since Frau Rabbiner would have described her as a Rabbi’s wife and Rabbiner as a man. But this was 1930s Berlin and after Kristallnacht, when many of the male Rabbis found themselves interned, or prepared to leave the country, Rabbi Jonas came to take more of a leading role in the Jew- ish life of the Berlin community. On 6 November 1942 Rabbi Jonas was deported to Terezin, where she con- tinued her teaching and also worked with the well-known psychologist Viktor Frankl helping people on newly arrived transports to deal with their initial shock and disorientation. In Terezin Leo Baeck gave her a second ordination – or ratified the first, though whether in a private capacity or on behalf of the Hochschule is not clear. On 9 October 1944 Regina Jonas was transported to Auschwitz and by the end of December she was dead. But back to that day in 1993 when we received her photograph and certifi- cate. 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 144 Sybil Sheridan History of Women in the Rabbinate room at the Sternberg Centre where Rabbi Professor Jonathan Magonet, the Principal of the Leo Baeck College gave a speech. Then the artefacts 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. My parents came to England from Germany as refugees. Had there been no Shoah, my life, my upbringing, my education would have been 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 – a Rab- binate of men and women. 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? As a lecturer at the Leo Baeck College and as one of the first women to be ordained there, I had been asked to accept the presentation from Dr. Simon and to 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 cer- tificate. 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 made up primarily of women, celebrating what seemed to be almost the dis- covery 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 that he had simply forgotten. He told me he was far too busy to think about it because that evening would see 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 mod- ern 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 elab- orate hall. The lecturers of the college processed in solemnly, in full academic dress, to the sounds of a string quartet which 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 145 Forum present. It was a very grand occasion. What I have never understood 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 the second lesson I learned was this: despite the many ordained women, and 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, the London resident who had discovered that the ordination certificate of Rabbi Regina Jonas still existed in Berlin, addressed a very hard hitting speech specifically to the women rabbis present. Why were they not interested? Why had no one both- ered to follow up the leads regarding Regina Jonas’ life and death? A stunned audience replied with one voice: “We did not know about her.”2 But 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? Although 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.