This lecture explores the question of women's religious authority in Judaism through biblical sources, rabbinic tradition, and the historical development of Jewish communities. Beginning with the biblical prophetesses and other remarkable women who shaped the spiritual, moral, legal, and political life of Israel, the lecture demonstrates that female religious leadership is not merely a modern phenomenon but has deep roots within Jewish tradition. It will also examine the lives of learned Jewish women who, despite social restrictions, studied and taught the Torah and the Talmud, as well as those who paved the way for women's ordination in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Particular attention will be given to Regina Jonas, the first woman to be ordained as a rabbi, and to the development of the female rabbinate in contemporary Judaism. The lecture will invite participants to consider whether the ordination of women represents a break with tradition or rather the rediscovery of possibilities that have existed within Judaism since biblical times.
Perhaps, then, the real question is no longer: Can women be rabbis? Rather: How did we ever come to believe that they could not?
Lecturer: Elma Kaunitz