This Shabbat, we join Jewish communities around the world in beginning our Torah story again, as we read Bereishit, the story of creation, the origin story for all humankind. It is a fitting and symbolic Shabbat that has been designated as the yahrzeit commemoration for Rabbi Regina Jonas, the first female rabbi, whose exact date of death at the hands of the Nazis is unknown. For years, Rabbi Jonas’ story – part of our own Jewish story – was lost to history, buried in the Jewish archives in East Berlin. In the absence of Rabbi Jonas’ story, we identified other firsts: Rabbi Sally Priesand was known to be the first female rabbi, ordained in the United States in 1972. Rabbi Jackie Tabick, the first female rabbi in Britain in 1975. 1980 – Rabbi Joan Friedman, the first female rabbi to serve in Canada. Rabbi Naamah Kelman, the first female rabbi to be ordained in Israel, 1992. 2009 – the first woman to receive Orthodox rabbinic ordination. Each of these women has her own origin story – her own b’reishit moment.
Jonas’ story begins in Berlin, in 1902. Her parents imbued her with a love for Jewish life and learning, and her early education took place at an Orthodox Jewish girls’ school. Her classmates recalled that even at a young age, she already wanted to be a rabbi. Imagine that – having the imagination, the foresight, to dream up something that didn’t exist yet. To look into the void, and to create, to bring something into being that had never been done before. In the absence of role models to look up to, to become the role model for subsequent generations.
She studied at Berlin’s liberal rabbinic seminary – the only institution that would admit and ordain her. Jonas’ rabbinic thesis explored the question, “Can women hold rabbinic office?” from the perspective of halacha, Jewish law. She was doing something brand new, yes, something never done before in the history of the Jewish people – but she grounded her innovation in tradition and precedent. Through her thesis, Jonas located herself in the spectrum of the Jewish community, somewhere between Reform and Orthodoxy – the Reform movement in Germany in the first half of the twentieth century abandoned Jewish law, and the Orthodoxy of the time saw women’s equality as incompatible with halakha. She grounded her rabbinate in tradition, even as she forged a new way forward. Her thesis lifts up examples of Jewish female spiritual leaders who came before her – going beyond well-known biblical figures to include women from the Talmud – Beruriah and Yalta, as well as Rashi’s daughters and granddaughters in medieval France. These women may not have held the title rabbi, but they served as spiritual leaders, halachic deciders, and teachers.
Jonas embraced all of these roles, and more – taking seriously the pastoral care, preaching, and youth work elements of her rabbinate. As German Jewish life became more fraught through the 30s and 40s, her pastoral care work became even more important, up through her last days in Theresienstadt and Auschwitz.
Rabbi Regina Jonas’ story is part of our story, part of who we are as a Reform Jewish community. It’s part of my story – I’m proud to be part of her spiritual lineage, having served as the first female rabbi in Singapore, and to have chosen the rabbinate at a time when I had dozens of women rabbis as role models, mentors, and teachers. We live Rabbi Jonas’ legacy when we imagine something new, something that has never been done before, when we’re told we can’t and we do it anyway, when we create, out of chaos and void, something incredible.
