were standing on the bimah working out the final committee itself worked hard and continues to wr details of the ceremony, Beth looked up at me, work at helping me define my job so that I can Vs " Lewis," she began hesitantly, "for my Bat fulfill both personal and professional goals. Last vj Mitzvah, do you think we could wear matching year, when I broached the idea of maternity leave, V dresses?" their response was: "If it's right, we'll do it." IP The presence of women in the rabbinate has One year after my arrival, the Temple Board voted |L changed it and will continue to; but not because to establish a pre-school with extended day care for IT women possess greater sensitivity or more compas- children eighteen months and older. The Temple is ,|r sion than men— all of us know insensitive women presently looking into setting up an infant care prcNW and sensitive men. The entrance of women of gram. A congregation which demonstrates this kind's* diverse backgrounds by definition broadens the of concern for young families would be as attrac- lli> rabbinate. tive to many of my female colleagues as it is to me., ml The presence of women in the rabbinate may These kinds of priorities on the part of female rab- change the rabbinate in another equally fundamen- bis may well change the nature of the rabbinate. I ff tal way. When I was still a student, an older and may yet end up in the congregation of my original ; V" wiser friend once predicted that women will bring fantasy, but for now, as a rabbi committed both W new priorities to the rabbinate. "These new personally and professionally to the future of the : priorities will change the definition of a 'plum' Jewish people, I know I have made the right V congregation," she said. "Congregations which choice. • ff weren't considered desirable might be more appeal- ing to women." Women make progress in reform rabbinate Id Being A Mother And Choosing A Job A. Stanley Dreyfus H My own case is a case in point. My fantasy con- gregation, I always thought, would be much like In this decade the Hebrew Union College-Jewish I' 1 the one in which I had grown up: a solo position in Institute of Religion has conferred the rabbinic I a 300-family traditional Reform congregation in diploma upon forty-nine women. Of these, eight I' the New York- Metropolitan area. How have their own congregations. Twenty-one are ser- ft* did it happen that I now serve as the third rabbi in ving as associate or assistant . Seven are car- V 1 a 2200-family Classical Reform congregation in (of rying on campus ministries through Hillel or iff' all places!) Dallas, Texas? similar organizations. Two are general university k, chaplains. Three are engaged in graduate studies, n Like most other women rabbis and rabbinical One, a part-time hospital chaplain, is taking Ij students, I am in my prime child-bearing years. courses in counselling. Three are employed by It Unlike the resumes of the other women in my class, secular Jewish organizations. Three have tem- L my resume included a baby who was three months porarily withdrawn from full-time rabbinic work K old at the time interviewing began. That baby was to care for their newborn children. One left the Ik the central (often unspoken) issue of my first few rabbinate in order to take a degree in law. If job interviews. It quickly became clear to me that my being a mother was considered a handicap The entrance of women into the spiritual leader- W rather than an asset, despite the Reform move- ship of the synagogue has occasioned a spate of BP ment's advocacy of the three-child family. It denunciations from representatives of Orthodoxy, a Rr became equally clear to me that I did not want to bitter debate over the proposed admission of If work for a congregation which thought of my child women to the Jewish Theological Seminary, and B as an impediment to my rabbinic effectiveness. the appearance of a gaggle of apologetes who have • undertaken the task of defending the indefensible. V My first interview with the congregation where I They attempt to demonstrate that a religion which V now work bore a marked contrast to my previous in its classic form denies half its adherents access toB* interviews. This time, the first question was, "We the Ark and the pulpit, relegating them to the I' notice you have a young child. How could we best balcony or else concealing them behind screens in Ij help you and your family feel at home in Dallas?" its houses of worship, inflicts no pain upon those A Congregation Concerned For Families A. Stanley Dreyfus is the Director of Placement /orB| A member of the Rabbinic Search Committee the Central Conference of American Rabbis, and if B volunteered to help us find childcare. The search Rabbi Emeritus of Union Temple of Brooklyn, N. Y®

75 T

. iter children of God whom it excludes from first- is their presence now in the ranks of our lay leader- jcjss status. Only the Reform and Liberal ship. • I fejpvements in North America and Great Britain, "rud the Reconstructionist movement in this coun- Reconstructionist women rabbis ty, have defied male-established tradition and VfjW l»ve assigned women equal rights within the Rebecca Trachtenberg Alpert te^jnagogue. In 1973 when Sally Priesand was ordained as ipIt«i4omen Rabbis Are "Moving Up" America's first woman rabbi, the Reconstructionist /•'nibmen rabbis have fared rather well in their un- Rabbinical College graduated its first class, which consisted of one individual, a man. The following precedented vocation. In the American Reform year, America's second woman rabbi was bbinate eligibility for congregational posts is DUi graduated from the second class at the RRC. Sandy termined by the number of years which have Eisenberg Sasso went on to serve a Reconstruc- rab- upsed since ordination. Most ordinees who intend tionist Havurah in New York and then, several •make a career of the congregational rabbinate He.i years later, to become co-rabbi with her husband ifoose to spend their first two to four years as eici at Congregation Beth El Zedek in Indianapolis, a listants in large congregations. Since the majority )th large congregation which has both Reconstruc- women rabbis have graduated within the last the tionist and Conservative affiliation. jr years, they are still chiefly to be found in try-level assistantships. As to those who elected Ilene Schneider and I were graduated in 1976, two fttake their own congregations, a survey of two years later. Ilene has served a Reconstructionist uating classes six years apart indicates that in congregation in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania these older group, with seventeen classmates serving past few years, while working towards a doctorate \HC congregations, the sole woman holds the in education. I completed a Ph.D. in religion while th largest, while in the other class, women working part time for several Reconstructionist isfa inister to the seventh and tenth largest congrega- congregations around the country and am currently £ as out of thirteen. Of course, success in the rab- Dean of Students at RRC. All three of RRC's first fnate ought to be calculated by criteria other women graduates are married to other RRC 'an the number of congregants a rabbi serves, but graduates. That status is shared by only one other car- lis significant that in professional mobility women of the twelve RRC women graduates, Joy Levitt, le keeping pace with their male colleagues. and only one of the 22 women currently enrolled in RRC. lie acceptance of women rabbis has been hilitated by the work of the national organiza- The next woman to graduate from RRC, two years us of : the Hebrew Union later, was Ruth Sandberg. She has been the Educa- dlege-Jewish Institute of Religion; the Union of tional Director at Reform Congregation Keneseth •erican Hebrew Congregations and its affiliate, Israel in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania since her 3 National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods; the graduation. » satral Conference of American Rabbis, with its •k Force on Women; and die Rabbinical Place- Woman Serves Conservative Congregation lMt Commission, which several years ago In 1979 a major breakthrough in the placement of i cablished an elaborate system to encourage women rabbis occurred when RRC graduate Linda . { 4brm congregations to give a fair hearing to Holtzman was hired to serve Beth Israel Congrega- '' Men applicants. Happily, women who sought tion in Coatesville, Pennsylvania. That made her . qgregational posts found them before the Com- the first woman rabbi to have her own full time Mrion's scheme had become fully operative. In- pulpit. Holtzman's position made the New York iwd, the professional competence displayed by the Times and Good Morning America in part because ien rabbis as a group persuaded a number of it was full time, but more because Beth Israel is a h committees last year to indicate that they member congregation of United Synagogue, af- welcome applications from women, but the filiated with the Conservative movement, which has ent Commission then had no available can- to this day refused to ordain its own women rabbis. 5 ^ «jdbtes to recommend. As the number of ordained With the placement of Rabbi Holtzman, women escalates— it will pass one hundred in the rabbis became a phenomenon to be reckoned with. rabbinate within die next three years— the ice of women in the spiritual leadership of Rebecca Trachtenberg Alpert is Dean of Students synagogues will become as commonplace as at Reconstructionist Rabbinical College.