WOMEN WHO WOULD BE RABBIS

by Pamela S. Nadell

Tapping archival records, Nadell (Jewish studies, American U., Washington, DC) introduces a century of contenders (e.g. Ray Frank, the 19th century "girl rabbi of the golden West"), their male advocates, and the continuing debate over the question posed by Mary M. Cohen in 1890: "could not our women be ministers?" With the 1984 ordination of the first Conservative female rabbi, the author dares to ask "will there be Orthodox women rabbis?" Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Genres: Feminism, History, Judaism, Jewish

300 pages, Hardcover

First published October 30, 1998

About the author

Pamela S. Nadell is the Patrick Clendenen Chair in Women’s and Gender History and director of Jewish studies at American University. Her books include Women Who Would Be Rabbis, a National Jewish Book Award finalist. She lives in North Bethesda, Maryland.

Reviews

[Lisa Feld]

As Nadell points out early in this book, the way we often construct history, focusing only on people who were the first/best at something, does real damage to women and marginalized people, because there can only be one first/best person, and everyone else gets erased. When they are erased, “first” often translates to “only,” and the door that had just opened a crack is firmly shut against other pioneers. Moreover, as each pioneer or wave of pioneers is erased, the next generation has to start from scratch again, never able to build on the progress of those who came before.

And so instead, Nadell looks at a much fuller range of women in the 1880s, 1930s, 1950s and so on who either studied to become rabbis or did the work of rabbis without formal training. Instead of telling each individual story, she explores what was going on with each of these women in a particular period: Did they know of one another? Did the press/public know that there were multiple women active in the field at any given time? Did the men who helped or hindered them treat one candidate differently from another (or hide the fact that the candidate in front of them was one of many, not an aberration)? This approach meant that even the stories I’d learned before took on a new resonance. And Nadell makes a convincing argument that what eventually turned the tide was the phenomenon of women banding together instead of each fighting for an exception to be made for them. Not just a fascinating history of my own field, but an interesting model for social change.

[Marsha Altman]

This book, which has aged a bit, tells the story of women's ordination in the Reform and Conservative movements. The story is not told completely chronologically, which makes it a difficult text, with a lot of people who are only briefly mentioned. It definitely could have used revision to streamline the book and make it more accessible, but it's still an important read for anyone who is in Rabbinical school or considering it, especially women of ANY domination, including and maybe especially Orthodox, so no one has to go reinventing the wheel.

[Cristina]

A historical account of women's public and private struggle within Judaism to gain the privilege of ordination. Highlights the history by providing detail accounts of individual women who sought ordination, but were repeatedly denied until Sally Priesand in 1972. I'm not particularly a history buff, but it was ok. Wished they would have tried the story of women and ordination more to concurrent womens lib movements, undeniably a factor in empowering women to demand this right.