Tag: First woman rabbi

Categories
Books CCAR Press Women in the Rabbinate

Among the Pioneers: Rabbi Sue Levi Elwell on ‘The First Fifty Years’ of Women in the Rabbinate

Rabbi Sue Levi Elwell is the coeditor of The First Fifty Years: A Jubilee in Prose and Poetry Honoring Women Rabbis, available from CCAR Press. In this post, she reflects on the editing process, her personal path to the rabbinate, and the many meaningful contributions of women rabbis.

Tell us about the process of coediting this book.

I was honored and delighted when Rabbi Hara Person, CCAR Chief Executive, approached me about partnering with her on The First Fifty Years, and was pleased to have the opportunity to work with the talented Jessica Greenbaum as well. I have been blessed to spend my rabbinate exploring—and living—the feminist transformation of Judaism, and collaborating with others on several other books that open new doors to Jewish text and practice.

Collecting and reading the powerful submissions of colleagues who serve in a range of leadership roles was a delight. I learned from each essay, and was moved and lifted up by my colleagues’ thoughtfulness, their insights, their resilience, and their courage. And because we asked for brief essays, the process of editing was a pleasure. As all writers know, it is a greater challenge to write a succinct piece than a longer one, and as editors we benefited from our contributors’ efforts to submit short, well-crafted pieces.

How did you decide to become a rabbi?

I graduated from college in 1970, and to continue my Jewish learning, I moved to Boston to pursue an MA in Contemporary Jewish Studies at Brandeis. A world of intense Jewish life opened for me there; I joined the Zamir Chorale, became a regular davener at Havurat Shalom, joined the editorial staff of Response magazine, and immersed myself in a vibrant, if male-centered, Jewish counterculture. But this was before any of us knew that women could be rabbis! Several years later (1976 or 1977), as the program director at Indiana University Hillel in Bloomington, I met Rabbi Sandy Sasso, the first woman to graduate from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. As she spoke to our students, I thought, I can do this! I designed a course on Jewish women’s history for the university, and traveled to the HUC-JIR library in Cincinnati to search for resources to teach the course. Was my moment of revelation standing at the card catalog, thumbing through the small wooden box of cards under the heading “Women”? I don’t remember how the light shone through the library windows that day, but I think I knew then—I belong here.

I completed my doctorate, was accepted at HUC-JIR, and moved to Cincinnati in the fall of 1981 to study intensive Hebrew at the College. My second daughter was born in December, and in September 1982, I joined my classmates as a second year student.

What contributions have women made to the rabbinate?

I think that we have taken the feminist dictum of the late 1960s, “the personal is political,” and expanded it. The College, and the American Jewish world, was not ready for us. Our school had few women’s bathrooms! Many of us felt invisible—or worse, targeted by male professors and mentors who could not see beyond the oppressive patriarchy and overt and covert sexism and homophobia of our texts, and thousands of years of interpretation and practice.

Five decades after Rabbi Sally Priesand smashed the glass ceiling of male rabbinic hegemony, we have challenged and changed both the face and the body of Judaism. We bring our full selves to our work, to our families, to our communities, to our world. We claim kol ishah as a chorus of diverse voices that include many who had not felt heard or seen by the Jewish community. We women rabbis are powerful preachers, scintillating scholars, compassionate comforters, and creators of transformative rituals and liturgies. We build and sustain community with vision and humor. We challenge and comfort, we cajole and console. We are rich and varied.

It is a privilege to be among the pioneers. May we continue to learn from and delight in those who are now shaping the future!

Rabbi Sue Levi Elwell, PhD, serves as Spiritual Director at Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion. She is the editor of The Open Door: A Passover Haggadah (CCAR Press, 2002) and coeditor of The First Fifty Years: A Jubilee in Prose and Poetry Honoring Women Rabbis (CCAR Press, 2023).

Categories
CCAR Press

The First Fifty Years: Opening the Door for All

Rabbi Hara E. Person is one of the coeditors of The First Fifty Years: A Jubilee in Prose and Poetry Honoring Women Rabbis, forthcoming from CCAR Press. In this excerpt from the introduction, she discusses the importance of acknowledging the joys, challenges, and complexities that have characterized the half century since women have been included in the American rabbinate.

In many ways, the genesis of this book began with the groundbreaking ordination of Rabbi Sally J. Priesand in 1972 from Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) in Cincinnati. But we could also argue that it began with the ordination of Rabbiner Regina Jonas in Berlin in 1935. And further back again, this evolving story began with the many women who aspired to become rabbis throughout Jewish history, whose dreams were deferred by centuries of patriarchy, and who had to find alternative paths of service and leadership. 

For me, this book begins on a brownstone stoop in Brooklyn, when my rabbi told me the first woman was being ordained. Until that moment, I had never thought about the fact that women couldn’t be rabbis—it had just never occurred to me that that option wouldn’t be open to me if that was something I wanted to do. And in that moment I was determined to meet this pioneer, this first woman rabbi, who became my hero right then and there. While it was years before I finally met Rabbi Priesand, as a child on that Brooklyn stoop I could not have imagined what her courageous act of opening the door to the rabbinate would mean for me, both personally and professionally. That is an essential debt that can only be paid forward. I hope the publication of this book stands as part of that gratitude, and I am grateful to have Rabbi Priesand’s essay, fittingly, at its start. 

This collection serves as a mile marker along the journey, a momentary stopping place for reflection and commemoration. While we experience the evolution of women in the rabbinate as inevitable, that doesn’t mean it was easy. These pages likewise acknowledge challenges and complexities of these fifty years, identifying some of the detours and roadblocks that still lie ahead. Alongside tremendous gains and systemic changes, pain and inequity are not yet eradicated. Women rabbis still face bias, microaggressions, pay inequity, and other obstacles. Naming challenges is one of the ways that we are able to break through the barriers that keep us from getting to the goal of equity. 

The work continues. In a mere half century, rabbinic leadership effected a dramatic turning point in Jewish history, an acknowledgment that the voices that were silent or silenced, marginalized, unheard and unseen, are an essential part of the rich and variegated fabric of the Jewish story and must be included. We now claim a richness of experience that nourishes us all, individuals of all genders, identities, and roles in our Jewish communities. Becoming the most beautifully diverse, inclusive, and thriving community of our highest aspirations, we all need to know what has led us here on the path to a healthy, equitable, and flourishing future. 

Today we recognize that the rabbinate is made up not only of women and men but also rabbis with diverse gender identities. This knowledge, too, is grounded in Torah. For centuries, our scholars recognized that Genesis celebrates inclusivity: both heaven and earth and the heavenly bodies and angelic beings. God created humans and animals and everything in between. God created human beings in God’s image, a full spectrum of gender expressions and sexualities. Binary thinking has blinded us to a fuller appreciation of the beauty and power of God’s creations. The ongoing work of equity includes all rabbis of every identity, including the full spectrum of gender, sexual, and racial identities. One of the key learnings from these fifty years of change is that the door to opportunity and inclusion must not be opened just once with great fanfare, but must be held open continually for all who wish to enter. As Rabbi Priesand writes in her piece in this collection, “I would like to think that my opening the door for women in the Jewish community was a first step toward opening the door for all who would serve the Jewish people.” 

Rabbi Hara E. Person is the chief executive of the Central Conference of American Rabbis. Previously, she was the CCAR’s chief strategy officer, publisher of CCAR Press, and editor-in-chief of URJ Books and Music. Alongside Jessica Greenbaum and Rabbi Sue Levi Elwell, she is coeditor of The First Fifty Years: A Jubilee in Prose and Poetry Honoring Women Rabbis (CCAR Press, 2023).

Categories
Books

The Sacred Calling: Courage to Dare and to Dream

“[The Sacred Calling] is going to be an important document forever”

The Sacred Calling: Four Decades of Women in the Rabbinate, newly published by CCAR Press, examines the ways in which the reality of women in the rabbinate has impacted upon all aspects of Jewish life. Rabbi Sally J. Priesand, first woman rabbi to be ordained by a rabbinical seminary, explains the personal and historical significance of an anthology that documents the journey of women in the rabbinate during the last four decades.

Q: How did you decide you wanted to be a rabbi? What part of the rabbi’s role made you want to fulfill this position?

A: I wanted to be a rabbi because I loved ritual and conducting services. When I was 16 and first came up with this idea, my temple encouraged me and let me do services and other kinds of things in the summer.

I am also very grateful to my parents because they didn’t throw up their hands and say, “What kind of a job is that for a nice Jewish girl?!” Instead, they said, “If that’s what you really want to do, you should do it.” And they gave me what I consider to be one of the most important gifts that any parent can give to a child: the courage to dare and the courage to dream.

Q: Do you see changes in Jewish life since the 1970s that can be attributed to women entering the rabbinate?

A: I think that women have changed the rabbinate in terms of leadership because of their desire for networking and establishing relationships; that’s really how women function. And I think they’ve brought that to the synagogue. When I was interviewed for my congregation, I told them that I wanted to come to be a partner with them. I wasn’t going to change anything about the way I am and the way I function in order to meet other people’s expectations. And I was very lucky, because they hired me.Sacred Calling

When I was in rabbinic school, success seemed to mean that you had a big congregation. Everybody talked about it, and everybody talked about rabbis who never moved on from their first congregation as if they were failures. As the first women rabbi, I thought that I had to have a big congregation. When I first came to Monmouth Reform Temple, they thought it just a stepping stone. I did, too. I was always thinking, “I have to go to a really big congregation for the idea of women rabbis to become successful.” My congregation taught me that success doesn’t mean bigger. To me, success means, “Are we doing better today than we did yesterday?” My congregation helped me understand that.

Q: How have women in the rabbinate helped to shape people’s views of women in other leadership positions?

A: I do see a connection, and I think that, whenever anyone opens a door, it makes it possible for others to consider walking through that door, too. One of the lessons we learned from the Civil Rights Movement is that if you don’t see someone who looks like you in a position of authority or leadership, you don’t think it’s possible for you to do the same. And I’ve been thinking a lot about that today, because I believe that America needs a female president. Just seeing that someone was able to make a change should give anyone the courage to also make a change. You have to somehow gather the courage to move forward, and it’s always better if you have others to support you in that effort. And I think that the fact that we have so many women rabbis today is an encouragement that the Reform Movement supports others in fulfilling their dreams, too.

One thing that we still have a ways to go in is equal pay. I didn’t really know this until several years ago, when I discovered that women rabbis were being paid only 80% of what male rabbis were being paid. I was shocked, and said as much at a URJ board meeting. I don’t always say what people want to hear, but I feel I say what needs to be heard.

PriesandSallyQ: What purpose do you think The Sacred Calling will serve? What do you believe is the importance of the book?

A: This book is going to be a very important document forever, because it is so well-rounded; it has so many different views, and talks about so many different topics, and it wasn’t just written by women but by men, and that’s important, too.

I believe, as I wrote in the preface, that this is a book of history. Women have been silenced for too many generations. We’re very fortunate to live in a time when women’s voices can be heard publically. When I retired, I asked all women rabbis of all denominations to donate their papers to the American Jewish Archives in Cincinnati so that there could be a place for scholars to learn about the history of women in the rabbinate. When I speak to a congregation that has a woman rabbi, I always say, “You’re a part of history, so gather your material and make sure it goes to the American Jewish Archives.” That is why I think The Sacred Calling is so important.

Q: What advice do you have for aspiring female rabbis?

A: My advice is quite similar to the advice I would have given a long time ago: to be yourself, to maintain a sense of humor, and not to fear failure. Another important thing, that I think we’ve lost sight of, is trying to maintain a sense of humility. I believe very strongly that you should be proud of what you accomplish, but that you should always remember that you didn’t accomplish it alone. We should all live lives in such a way that makes a difference in the world. And rabbis have many extra opportunities to do that. And quite often, you’ll touch lives in ways that you will never know.

Q: What do you hope your legacy to be?

A: I want my legacy to remind people that any person can do or be whatever she or he wants to, and that you shouldn’t put your dreams aside even if they seem impossible.

—

Rabbi Sally J. Priesand was ordained at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion of Cincinnati in 1972, making her the first woman rabbi to be ordained by a rabbinical seminary.  She served first as assistant and then associate rabbi at Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York City before leading Monmouth Reform Temple in New Jersey from 1981 until her retirement in 2006.  

Rabbi Priesand will be a panelist at “The Sacred Calling: Then and Now” on Thursday, September 8th, 11:00 AM at HUC-JIR in New York.

Excerpted from the filming of the official trailer for The Sacred Calling.