Reflections on the 40th Anniversary of Women’s Ordination

I had the good fortune to come of age in the 1970s just as the Jewish feminist movement came into its own and the struggle for women’s ordination in the Conservative Movement reached its peak. As a PhD student at The Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS), the Conservative Movement’s flagship institution, in the 1970s, I encountered many brilliant, gifted women who dreamed of rabbinic careers and were taking Jewish studies courses in JTS’s graduate rabbinical school. Studying with them in class and hearing of their longing to serve the Jewish people moved me deeply. It also pushed me, years later, to seek answers to the question that kept gnawing at me: “What were the Jewishly educated, talented,
ambitious women doing before they could become rabbis themselves?”

This led to my full-length study of rabbis’ wives. What I ultimately discovered—which didn’t surprise me since my mother was a rabbi’s wife—was that many of them channeled their learning, expertise, and sense of calling into impactful careers as part of a two-person rabbinate with their husbands.

Amy Eilberg was the first woman ordained in the Conservative Movement, at JTS in 1985. In the 1990s, I had the privilege of returning to JTS where I taught rabbinical students and saw up close the dedication and capacity of women to serve the Jewish people, as so many men had done for centuries. But I also saw the ways in which women’s ordination had the potential to impact Judaism and Jewish life much more broadly.

In teaching women and men, JTS faculty quickly came to understand that the expectation that one could simply “add women and stir” to the curriculum was doomed to fail. On the contrary, women in rabbinical school changed everything: How we struggled to understand difficult texts that debased or discounted women. How we amplified our understanding of sacred texts by imagining the perspective of women whose names and voices were absent from it. How much more deeply we grew to appreciate our texts by incorporating women’s interpretations, addressing newly awakened sensitivities to gendered language and women’s experiences. How much more expansive our ritual options became when we developed celebratory ceremonies for newborn girls and grieving rituals for miscarriages and more. Finally, how the uncovering of a usable past that incorporated Jewish women’s stories, experiences, and material culture over the ages could fortify us for the present and future.

Just as women rabbinical students changed the experience of rabbinic education for faculty and students, so too did women rabbis change the rabbinate itself in numerous ways. When pulpit rabbis began to require maternity leave for themselves, congregations were forced to rethink expectations and develop new protocols for their clergy. This focus highlighted broader issues about priorities and work-life balance not only for these rabbi/mothers but for all clergy. It also often forced a reckoning around what the congregational rabbinate ought to look like when there were no rebbetzins to fill the countless unofficial roles that many had taken on for so long.

(L–R) Rabbi Amy Eilberg, Chancellor Shuly Rubin Schwartz.

Similarly, the questions women raised led all clergy to rethink their own career aspirations. Where in the priority continuum ought conventional measures of success, such as the size of one’s congregation or the amount of money raised, lie? How else might clergy think about the impact of their work? Finally, as women took on rabbinic roles in pastoral care, day school leadership, organizational work, and more, they expanded our definition of what it means to be a rabbi in the late 20th and 21st centuries.

Today there are more than a thousand women rabbis in North America; they have not only opened doors and served as role models for younger women but expanded the way we think about religious leadership in general. These rabbis have enriched Judaism enormously— intellectually, spiritually, aesthetically,
and communally by breathing new life into every aspect of Judaism. Although I am not a rabbi, my own appointment as chancellor—the first woman in this role— is an outgrowth of this transformation.

Moreover, once women rabbis opened our eyes to the ways in which our tradition neglected to see, consider, or address the lived reality of women, we began to see other areas of exclusion as well. We
began to realize that LGBTQ+ Jews were invisible in Jewish history and seemingly absent from Jewish texts. However, based on our experience with feminism, we realized that if we combed our tradition, we could indeed find relevant paradigms, write new interpretations, and create new rituals. Same-sex marriage ceremonies are one of the outgrowths of these efforts.

Similarly, we gradually came to appreciate how Judaism could be more inclusive to Jews of all genders, to Jews of Color, and to Jews marginalized by disabilities or by age; the Jewish community began to devote attention and resources to removing impediments to accessibility and proactively cultivating a more inclusive community. The quest for female religious leadership revitalized Jewish life in ways far greater than its pioneering rabbis could have imagined.

Just as Eilberg and others served as drivers of change more than 40 years ago, today’s clergy students also have the opportunity to ensure that the process of learning, questioning, experimenting, evolving—and then leading—continues for generations to come.

Dr. Shuly Rubin Schwartz is Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary.