The Ordination of Germany's First Post-War Female Rabbi
Written by Movement for Reform Judaism Tuesday, 16 November 2010
Rabbi Jackie Tabick, Britain's first female ordained rabbi reflects on the news of the ordination in Germany of Alina Treiger, the first ordination of a woman in Germany since the Second World War.
"I can’t help feeling that Regina Jonas, German’s first woman rabbi, indeed the world’s first woman rabbi, would have been thrilled to welcome Alina Treiger into her new role.
But Regina would also have been thrilled to see the changed world that awaits Alina.
Regina Jonas’s ordination in December 1935 was a small private affair. No institution recognised her as a rabbi, so she was ordained by Rabbi Max Dienemann, head of the Liberal Rabbis’ Association, in Hesse. No synagogue would give her a job, so she found work in various Jewish institutions and as a teacher of religion. And the political world she inhabited was so hostile. The Nazis sent her first to Theresienstadt, where she met the cattle trucks and tried to reassure the shocked deportees, and then in 1944, they deported her to Auschwitz, where she was murdered.
In contrast, Alina Treiger a graduate of a liberal rabbinic seminary in Potsdam, will be ordained very publicly at a ceremony in Berlin attended not only by leading rabbis from around the world, but also by Germany's president, Christian Wulff. And following her own choice of role, she will assume the same rights and responsibilities as male rabbis, preaching, making rulings on religious matters and working in a synagogue.
Unlike Regina, so isolated as the pioneer, Alina will be able to join a large group of female rabbis working throughout the world in progressive congregations, contributing positively and creatively in a variety of leadership roles, in congregations, in Jewish institutions and in the teaching profession. Within those groups Alina will find support and encouragement and a meeting of minds.
But I hope she will not be too disappointed by the problems that she will still face as a female, even within the progressive community. Certainly in Europe, there are still some progressive congregations who cannot countenance a woman as their spiritual head, and still individuals who feel that women, preaching and leading prayers just don’t go together. It can be a difficult and frustrating path for many female rabbis. Indeed, there is still a feeling amongst us that we need to continually prove ourselves as equals, if not more than equals, in a male dominated society.
But Alina’s ordination is a great sign of hope of reconciliation within Germany between the Jews, with our difficult and dark past, and the new German order. Hopefully it will also serve as a reminder to German society of the need to look at the growing forces of the right returning to their streets. There must be no repeat of the evil that led to Regina’s truncated career and cruel death.
There is even hope of change in the orthodox world. There are now two Orthodox women rabbis, who, like Regina, received private ordination and are restricted in their roles. But if Alina can become a symbol of how the difficulties that faced Regina can be overturned, then who knows what the future can hold for all Jewish women! "
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