(Image: Interior of Congregation Emanu-El, New York, New York. Photo by AlbertTan17, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license.)
By Miriam Abrams (’24)
Reform Judaism, at its very core and defined in its name, is a denomination about how sticking strictly to tradition is not always necessary for religion. Thus, it might be surprising to learn that Reform Judaism only began ordaining women as rabbis less than 50 years ago, in 1972 (Nadell 168).
It’s not that Reform was entirely resistant to change and reform, even within the area of feminist reform. Throughout the 19th century, women began attending synagogue much more often than before, and started getting more involved in their communities, particularly in the roles of teaching Judaism (Nadell 10). By the 1890s, some common reforms for women included “mixed seating, mixed choirs, and confirmation ceremonies for girls… and, in Reform settings, the abrogation of many of women’s legal disabilities” (Nadell 31).
Among all of these other reforms, there were always many women who wanted to become rabbis and argued for ordination. Nonetheless, it seemed like the debate never looked backwards to build upon this rich history, and stayed stuck in a circular discourse where women had to reinvent the same arguments time after time again (Nadell xiii). For example, early twentieth-century opponents of women’s ordination continuously argued that despite Judaism having survived other radical reforms, ordination would simply be too much of a change and would break the religion apart (Nadell 4). After hearing this argument for so many years among so much other change, one is left to wonder, when would ordination not be considered too radical for Judaism to survive? As well, women’s ordination was not so radical of a schism from tradition as opponents painted it as, looking at the examples of female religious leaders in the Bible such as Miriam and Deborah (Nadell 4).
Another typical argument against women’s ordination was that women simply were not qualified for the work of the rabbinate, especially because they would not be able to handle it when they supposedly inevitably ended up marrying and raising a family (Nadell 67). However, this argument was used against women for pretty much all other debates about women entering the workplace, and had long been proven wrong by ordained women in various branches of Christianity. Advocates for ordination argued that in the modern world, women must be afforded all the same opportunities for professions for they were no less worthy, and excluding them would be doing the field a disservice (Nadell 5).
Plenty argued against women’s ordination using the points outlined above and more, but what was more common in Reform Judaism was rhetorical support for ordination without any real reform to back it up. Back in 1920, Hebrew Union College student Martha Neumark requested to be assigned to a pulpit like her male peers for the high holidays, opening up the question that she might request ordination. Thus, in 1922, inspired by both Neumark’s request and the ratification of the 19th amendment, the Central Conference of American Rabbis voted in support of female ordination, making the radical statement that “women cannot justly be denied the privilege of ordination.” Despite this vocal support, the Conference never took any actual action to make their statement a reality, and the next year, Hebrew Union College’s governing board voted explicitly to ban women’s ordination anyway, blocking the option for Neumark.
Bureaucratic hurdles blocked women’s ordination year after year. Decades later in June 1955, the president of the CCAR, Barnett Brickner, brought up the topic of ordaining women once more, challenging his colleagues to act (Nadell 130). The CCAR promised to discuss it again at their conference in 1957, but “other matters took up most of the evening. Only after midnight did the men turn to the matter. By then, ‘too late to have a discussion on these very important questions,’ the rabbis postponed the debate for another year. Unfortunately, before that meeting, [Bricker] died. Without him to bring up the woman rabbi, she failed to reappear” (Nadell 137). Once again, the opportunity of women’s ordination was quashed by evasion of the issue and bureaucracy rather than any legitimate argument against it.
Even with rhetorical support for ordination, there was an insistence that the first woman rabbi must be “outstanding” (Nadell 95). With every year that passed without equality, it seemed that in actuality, no women were considered good enough to qualify for the role. Thus, women were forced into a false sexist meritocracy where they were held to standards men never were, all in service of delaying the possibility of woman rabbis. Men in power could advocate for ordination when it was a purely academic and theoretical question, but when it came to each specific aspirant, they could always find at least one issue to raise that prevented the woman from being perfect and thus qualified for the job.
No woman could ever be perfect, of course. But finally, in June 1972, Sally Priesand became the first officially ordained Reform woman rabbi. Priesand was deeply inspired by her experience with leadership in Reform youth groups and camps in the early 1960s, and became determined to be a rabbi early on. Looking at the backdrop of the 70s, the act of Priesand’s ordination wasn’t actually all that revolutionary, for it ended up marking “[Reform’s] engagement with the times, a symbolic embrace of the justice of women’s renewed demands for equal rights” (Nadell 158).
Today, the conversation has shifted more to women’s ordination in Orthodox Judaism, but there are still unfortunately challenges for women rabbis within the Reform tradition. When Priesand graduated and sought jobs as a properly ordained rabbi, she found that many synagogues refused to consider her for the open position simply because she was a woman. As recently as 2011, some synagogues still have the issue that women rabbis are never considered the priority in hiring. The easy discardingof women rabbis raises the question of whether almost 50 years later, their hiring is still only a matter of tokenization, a gesture towards equality.
Ultimately, it took far too long for Reform Judaism’s rhetoric of equality to match up with its reality, a reality which has still not been totally achieved, but finally women are no longer denied the privilege of ordination.
Works Cited
Berkenwald, Leah. “When Synagogues Downsize, Women Rabbis Are the First to Go.” Jewish Women’s Archive, 29 June 2011, jwa.org/blog/when–synangogues–downsize–women–rabbis–are–first–to–go.
Nadell, Pamela S. “Sally Jane Priesand.” Jewish Women’s Archive, jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/priesand–sally–jane. Accessed 15 Mar. 2021.
—. Women Who Would Be Rabbis: A History of Women’s Ordination 1889-1985. First Edition, Boston, Beacon Press, 1998.
“Ordination of Women Rabbis – Resolutions & Statements: 1963.” Women of Reform Judaism, 1963, wrj.org/ordination–women–rabbis.
“Reform Rabbis Debate Women’s Ordination.” Jewish Women’s Archive, jwa.org/thisweek/jun/30/1922/ccar. Accessed 15 Mar. 2021.