Teachers, Preachers, and Feminists in America: Women Rabbis

Abstract

2 SHOFAR TEACHERS, PREACHERS, AND FEMINISTS IN AMERICA: WOMEN RABBIS Rita J. Simon and Pamela Nadell Rita J. Simon, University Professor of Justice, Law, and Society, American University, received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Chicago in 1957. She has authored works on immigration , women and crime, the jury system, and transracial adoption . Her most recent book is Women's Movements in America: Their Successes, Disappointment and Aspirations (with Gloria Danziger) (Praeger, 1991). Pamela S. Nadell, Associate Professor of Jewish Studies and History , American University, earned her Ph.D. in History from the Ohio State Universtiy in 1982. She is the author of Conservative Judaism in America: A Biographical Dictionary and Sourcebook (Greenwood Press, 1988). In 1972 Sally Preisand, the first woman rabbi, was ordained in the United States. She was a graduate of Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, Ohio. As of today, there are close to 200 women rabbis who have been ordained by the Reform, Reconstructionist, and Conservative movements. This article describes the findings we have obtained thus far in our study ofwomen in the rabbinate. The larger study compares the motivations, performances, and experiences of women in the rabbinate as opposed to women in various Protestant ministries and as opposed to men in the rabbinate and the ministry . The larger study also has a historical component. In it, we explore the changing patterns of women's participation in the American synagogue. We consider first how middle-class Jewish women in synagogue sisterhoods and congregational schools brought their traditional private nurturing skills to bear on the public setting. Then we discern how, over the course of the twentieth century, women in the largest American Jewish denominations both gained access to lay leadership (outside the sisterhoods) and won, or were given, opportunities for enhanced ritual participation. These striking changes in the status and public roles of synagogue women paved the way for what became the capstone marking Jewish women's religious emancipation, the ordination ofwomen as rabbis. Volume 10, No.1 Fall1991 3 The larger study also explores the stances that organized synagogue women have taken on the issue of female ordination. It examines the ways concomitant European developments, especially in England and Germany, might have affected the American movement for the ordination of women rabbis, and the connections between the woman's movement in the United States and the movement for ordination. As part of this history, we trace the careers of women who tried to become rabbis before 1972 and all the institutional and cultural barriers they encountered. We also view the careers of those few women who, in fact, lead congregations without benefit of ordination . The data reported in this article are based on 35 in-depth personal interviews with women rabbis in different parts of the country who have been ordained since 1976. Each interview has three major sections. The first part asks the respondent to tell her story: why and how she chose to become a rabbi. In the course of the narrative she describes when she decided to become a rabbi, the persons who helped her make that decision, who had the strongest influence on her arriving at that decision, and the steps she took to pursue her choice of profession. The narrative includes her personal background and family environment with particular emphasis on her early Jewish education and experience; parents' occupations; siblings' age, sex, and occupations ; and marital status.. The second part focuses on her training for the rabbinate and on positions she has held since ordination. For each position she describes the institution with which she was associated, her title or position, her major responsibilities , salary, how she obtained the position, and her reactions to the experience. The third section provides the respondent with an opportunity to explain how she performs and interprets her role as a rabbi. For example, how she officiates at such rites of passage ceremonies as bar and bat mitzvahs, weddings, funerals, and baby namings. What kinds of issues and topics does she usually discuss in her sermons? How does she relate to various groups (youngsters, the elderly, the members of the Board, etc.) of her congregation ? This section also has a comparative focus...