How many female rabbis are there in the us

She faced many challenges on the road to acceptance. But she continued to struggle to carve a place for herself—and for all women—within the panoramic diversity of Judaism.

In , when Sally Priesand crossed the threshold of the Cincinnati campus of the Hebrew Union College—Jewish Institute of Religion as a freshman in its undergraduate program, she followed the path of pioneers, like Martha Neumark, who had already raised the question in the very same halls. But unlike the earlier unsuccessful challengers, the future Rabbi Priesand found an ever-widening circle of supporters, whose imaginations were sparked by the nascent feminist movement.

In June , Priesand became the first woman in America ordained a rabbi and the first in the world ordained by a rabbinical seminary. Already it was clear she would not be the last. In , in Germany, Regina Jonas received private ordination. She was murdered in Auschwitz. In Philadelphia at the same time, a new rabbinical school, the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, had also admitted its first students.

Once the liberal wing of Conservative Judaism, Reconstructionist Judaism had since split off. In its rabbinical school opened, and women were among its first students. In , Sandy Eisenberg Sasso was ordained. But Seminary officials routinely diverted women interested in rabbinical school to their teacher-training programs. As Sally Priesand was nearing ordination, the question surfaced anew in the Conservative movement. In the spring of , a group of committed Conservative Jewish and passionately feminist women vociferously demanded equality in their branch of American Judaism.

National media attention involved a wide audience in the debate. The New York Times published feature-length articles on the first women in Conservative synagogues in para-rabbinic jobs and those who abandoned Conservative Judaism to become Reform and Reconstructionist rabbis.

For a long decade between and , they engaged in an intricate political dance of shifting alliances, studies undertaken, commissions formed, hearings held, motions tabled, and votes counted. Finally, in , over the objection of a number of colleagues who boycotted the vote, the faculty of the Jewish Theological Seminary agreed to admit women to the rabbinical school.

Two years later, Amy Eilberg, one of a cluster of women waiting in the wings for a favorable decision, biding their time by taking the curriculum necessary for rabbinic ordination, was ordained. Greenberg wondered where did she ever get the idea that a girl could be a rabbi.

No longer were these texts, the basis of rabbinical education, the exclusive province of Jewish men as they had been for millennia. The access route to Orthodox female religious authority was being paved.

It was only a matter of time before that education would produce deeply pious, learned women who, if they were men, would have become rabbis.

Greenberg expected that one day a small cluster of maverick rabbis would stand up to the censure they were sure to receive from their colleagues and dare to ordain these women. As had happened in the other sectors of modern Judaism, brave pioneers began pushing the question for themselves. Rejected for her sex, Haviva Ner-David, after a decade of study, was privately ordained in by an Orthodox rabbi. She calls herself rabbi, although Aryeh Strikovsky, who signed her ordination, deliberately avoided the term.

But Ner-David was not even the first. Mimi Feigelson, known as Reb Mimi, was ordained in by disciples of the charismatic rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, and, since then, has called herself an Israeli Orthodox woman rabbi.

Then there is Rabba Sara Hurwitz. She never enrolled in rabbinical school because no Orthodox one was open to her. Instead, she embarked on a five-year-long course of private study with Rabbi Avi Weiss at the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale in New York and served as his congregational intern.

At the time, the event scarcely made the news. After all, by then, in Israel, women who had mastered Jewish legal texts had been accepted as advocates for women appearing before rabbinical courts and as advisors to women on legal matters pertaining to female sexuality yoetzet halachah. Rabba is one way of rendering in Hebrew, a language that has no neuter gender, the feminine of rabbi.

The title unleashed a firestorm. But it did not stop Rabbi Weiss and Rabba Hurwitz. They had already opened Yeshivat Maharat to educate and ordain committed Orthodox women. In , its first three female ordainees took the title maharat. But, since then Yeshivat Maharat—which, as of , had ordained another 23 women and had 30 in the pipeline—permits these future clergy to choose their honorific at ordination.

Some continue to take the title maharat; others prefer rabba. Rabbanit, another way of rendering rabbi in the feminine, has also won favor. Historically rabbanit signified the wife of a rabbi. But these women use it to show that they are masters of Jewish law. For the sectors of the Orthodox world farther to the right, like the Hasidim and the yeshivish, traditionalist affirmations of essentialist male and female difference apparently make the question of women rabbis moot.

But, with women being ordained in Orthodox settings in Israel too, no matter the title— rabba, maharat, rabbanit, rabbi—the first generation of women Orthodox rabbis has arrived. Once women had broken the stereotype of who could be a rabbi, they paved the way for the ordination of gay men, lesbians, and transgendered men and women as well.

Rabbis were traditionally expected to be married and the fathers of children. Surely gay men became rabbis in the Jewish past, but their history is invisible. By the mids, gay and lesbian rabbis and rabbinical students—the former remaining in the closet to keep their jobs, the latter to receive ordination—began meeting secretly to support each other and strategize.

On the one hand, they had very public roles as clergy and clergy-in-training. On the other hand, they had to be private in order to protect themselves. In , the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College became the first denomination of American Judaism to admit openly gay students. While the rabbis of Reform Judaism had called for an end to a discrimination against gay people in , not until —after Rabbi Stacy Offner, who remained closeted in rabbinical school, had come out to her congregation and had her contract renewed—did the movement ordain openly gay students.

Once again, the clash over the issue was particularly contentious within the Conservative movement. Unlike Reform and Reconstructionist Judaism, Conservative Judaism remains bound by Jewish law as interpreted by its rabbis.

Five years later, Rabbi Carie Carter of the Park Slope Jewish Center, by then open as a lesbian after having remained closeted during rabbinical school, participated in the ordination of Rachel Isaacs, the first openly gay student ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary.

Rabbi Steven Greenberg, a graduate of Yeshiva University, is considered the firstly openly gay Orthodox rabbi. The prehistory of women rabbis closed with the decision to ordain the first women.

Since then, hundreds, if not already more than thousand, women have become rabbis. Maariv News. Tools and services. JPost Premium. Ulpan Online. JPost Newsletter. JPost News Ticker.

Our Magazines. Learn Hebrew. RSS feed. Digital Library. Promo Content. Special Content. Sites Of Interest. Jewish Broadcasting Service. Jerusalem Hotels. I t was created in by a group of female rabbinic students to provide the support and advocacy needed in the early years of women in the Reform rabbinate. Since then, the organization has grown to include over women reform rabbis who have been ordained since at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.

The WRN has consistently worked to promote the personal and professional growth of female rabbis and rabbinic students within the Reform Movement. Women Rabbis have had a profound impact on the world Jewish community.

We have contributed to the growth of feminist biblical commentary and midrash, and have paved the path for ritual innovation and creativity.