Women Who Would be Rabbis: A History of Women's Ordination, 1889-1985

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.

In a lucid, accessible book on the long struggle for women's ordination to the rabbinate, Nadell brings to life figures, such as Rabiner Regina Jonas and Ray Frank, who have been obscured by accounts that began with the 1972 ordination of Sally Priesand. Nadell makes clear that that event neither began the history of women's ordination in Judaism nor ended controversy about it. She reaches back from 1972 to 1899 and a question posed in a short story: "Could not our women be ministers?" She records responses to that question by carefully examining the struggles for partial, then full, admission of women to major Jewish theological institutions and rabbinical schools. She attends to each strand of U.S. Judaism--Reform, Reconstructionist, Conservative, and Orthodox--and sets her subject in the context of the concurrent U.S. women's rights struggle. Nadell's work makes a significant story more familiar and contributes to the broader history of women's efforts to fully participate in religious leadership--struggles that continue in many religious traditions Steven Schroeder

Jewish women have been struggling with the "women's issue" for centuries. They have had unequal rights in marriage and divorce, have not been allowed to worship alongside men in their synagogues or participate in certain rituals, and, of course, could not become rabbis. Slowly, things began to change, and in 1972 Sally Priesand was ordained as the first woman rabbi. In this scholarly work, Nadell (director of the Jewish Studies program, American Univ.) chronicles the history of women's struggles to become rabbis. She starts in 1889, when the journalist and Jewish communal activist Mary M. Cohen proposed in a short story for the Jewish Exponent, "Could not?our women?be?ministers?" and ends with a discussion of the ordination of Orthodox women. The struggle has been a long, rocky, often painful one, and Nadell presents it with insight, careful scholarship, and vivid detail. Highly recommended for Judaic collections.?Marcia G. Welsh, Guilford Free Lib., CT
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