First woman Rabbi, First Bat Mitzvah

Each year on Parashat B'reishit, we commemorate the life and legacy of Regina Jonas, the first woman to attain ordination as a rabbi. This year, we also pay tribute to Roslyn Lieberman Horwich, the 92-year-old woman who was our congregation's first bat mitzvah. These historic firsts are inspirational on the grand and the local scale, reminding of us the cascade of firsts that pave the way for future generations of achievement.

Raise Your Firsts
 
Of the Torah’s 5,845 verses, none clamors for interpretation more loudly than the very first.[1] The phrase that opens the Bible, בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים, has no accurate translation into English, and it makes little sense on its own in Hebrew. The most grammatically satisfying rendering of the Torah’s first verse would read: “With ‘beginning of’ did God create the heavens and the earth.”
 
In this reading is a reservoir of possibility. The fundamental stuff of creation is newness itself. And not just the newness of that first pre-dawn moment but the ever-renewed newness that can be encountered year after year, week after week, day after day. Thus each morning we bless God who בְטוּבוֹ מְחַדֵּשׁ בְּכָל יוֹם תָּמִיד מַעֲשֵׂה בְרֵאשִׁית—who “in divine goodness renews every day the work of Creation.”
 
Today is Shabbat B’reishit, the Sabbath of Firsts – the first day, the first people, the first sin, and the first repair. Firsts are important. They are important simply because they are first, embodying in their essence the spirit of Creation. What’s more, firsts are important because the world is never the same again; the realm of possibility has expanded to include a new kind. In previously uncharted territory, we human explorers can expand our understanding of ourselves and the world, connecting more deeply to our common Source through channels carved by someone or something never seen before.
 
Shabbat B’reishit is famous for its stories of the first human couple, opening with their creation as absolute equals and then relating the sordid events that lead to Adam’s domination of Eve. Feminists have endeavored for decades to bring tikkun, to effect a reparation, on this week’s Torah reading, an effort we continue tonight. By highlighting significant women firsts, we remind ourselves of how the world has changed through their example and take to heart the possibility they inspire in each of our lives.
 
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We begin tonight with the world’s first female rabbi.[2]


[1] See Rashi’s comment to Gen. 1:1: אֵין הַמִּקְרָא הַזֶּה אוֹמֵר אֶלָּא דָּרְשֵׁנִי

[2] A version of these remarks about Regina Jonas appears in my 2015 sermon “Remembering Two Firsts: Lilith and Regina Jonas,” available: danielkirzane.com/sermons/remembering-two-firsts-lilith-and-regina-jonas.

Meet Fräulein Rabbiner Regina Jonas. The first woman to earn rabbinic ordination.
 
Born in Berlin, Germany in 1902, Regina Jonas was raised in a poor Orthodox Jewish family. At age 21 she enrolled as a student in the Higher Institute for Jewish Learning in Berlin. At that time, every other young woman at the Higher Institute was enrolled in a teaching degree; but Jonas declared early that she intended to receive rabbinic ordination.
 
During the next six years, Jonas distinguished herself as an outstanding student. Though the Higher Institute was itself a liberal institution, Jonas had never strayed from her Orthodox practices and beliefs, and she devoted careful and diligent attention to the traditional sources. Jonas’ thesis was entitled “Can a Woman Hold Rabbinical Office?” Through her research, Jonas demonstrated that the ancient rabbis held a variety of attitudes toward women, both positive and negative. Despite this range of views, however, “[disparaging] opinions of the sages … penetrated the people who, unfortunately, often-times remembered only the negative and doubting assertions.”[1] In other words, Jonas showed that Jewish tradition does have room for women’s leadership; but generation after generation, only the limiting opinions were followed. Maintaining the patriarchy is the only real justification for excluding women from ordination.
 
This argument was persuasive enough to satisfy her thesis adviser. He concluded “that according to [Jewish law] … a woman can be appointed to rabbinical office.”[2] However, the head of Talmud at the time was not convinced. It took an additional four years after her graduation for the liberal movement in Germany to authorize a private ordination for Jonas, and seven years after that, the world-renowned Rabbi Leo Baeck certified her ordination during his tenure as the head of all German Jewry.[3]
 
The early years of Jonas’ rabbinate were spent as a teacher. In 1937, she became officially employed by the Jewish Community of Berlin and began serving as a chaplain in hospitals and homes for the elderly. The following years under Nazi rule saw arrests, deportations, and emigrations of German rabbis, and Regina Jonas often filled in at local synagogues as Jewish leadership became more scarce. And then, on November 6, 1942, she was deported to Theresienstadt.[4]
 
If anything, Jonas’ efforts redoubled in the concentration camp. She saw to the spiritual and emotional needs of her neighbors, and she sought to teach and preach whenever she could. She gave a number of lectures on topics such as Jewish history, prayer, and women in the Talmud, seeking to bring some meaning and hope into the bleak life of a concentration camp.[5] She was in every respect a rabbi, and her congregation consisted of her fellow prisoners at Theresienstadt.
 
On October 12, 1944—on the week of Shabbat B’reishit—Rabbi Jonas was transported to Auschwitz, where she was immediately murdered. Three months later, Auschwitz was liberated.
 
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It would be nearly thirty years until Sally Priesand became the next woman to earn rabbinic ordination, here in the United States. Much would change during that time and even more in the five decades hence.
 
There is a woman we remember tonight who lived through it all. She died last week at the age of 92, and members of her family are here to honor her tonight. Her name was Roslyn Horwich.


[1] Quoted in Katharina Von Kellenbach’s “‘God Does Not Oppress Any Human Being’ The Life and Thought of Rabbi Regina Jonas.” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook (1994) 39 (1): 213-225. Page 216.

[2] Ibid. note 11 on p. 214.

[3] Cf. Elizabeth Sarah’s “The Discovery of Fräulein Rabbiner Regina Jonas: Making Sense of Our Inheritance.” European Judaism (1995) 28 (2):91-98.

[4] Von Kellenbach 221-224.

[5] Ibid. 224.

(Photo courtesy of Bruce Horwich)

Roslyn was born in Chicago and grew up at Washington Boulevard Temple, our congregation’s precursor on the West Side. She would go on to raise three sons as a rare 1950s divorcee, launch her career as a novice salesperson at Marshall Fields, and eventually retire as the owner of more than twenty travel companies and the founder of a travel agent training school. Roslyn worked closely with Bob Pritzker, and her clientele included notables such as the chairman of United Airlines and Secretary of State Colin Powell.
 
Roslyn was, in many ways, a groundbreaker, and we remember her tonight for the mark she made in our own local history book. On September 27, 1941, while Regina Jonas was serving as a rabbi in Nazi Germany, on the Sabbath between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, Roslyn Lieberman became our congregation’s first bat mitzvah.
 
This was a historic moment for our community, a fact which was not lost on young Roslyn. Here’s what she wrote in her d’var Torah [image below]:
 
Dear Parents, Rabbis and Friends,
I feel honored and happy to know that I am the first girl in our Temple to have the privilege of being Bas Mitzvah.  It has been the custom in Reform Congregations to celebrate confirmation for boys, and girls, alike, at the age of approximately fourteen.  In recent years, we have added to our Reform ritual the observance of the Bar Mitzvah, and in some Temples, also the Bas Mitzvah.  Our Rabbis have given me the privilege of being the first girl in our Temple to be Bas Mitzvah. {pause}
 
Roslyn goes on to detail the progress she observed for Jewish women in the 1930s and early 1940s. What she describes may sound old-fashioned to us but reveals the growing role women played in the American Jewish community at that time.
 
In the course of our history, many changes have taken place in the religion and ritual of Judaism.  Among these changes is the place and function of the Jewish woman in the synagogue.  In the olden days she took no part in religious, business or social life.  The Jewish woman of today in the Reform Congregations prays side by side with her husband.  She observes all the holidays both in her home and in her Synagogue.  She has affiliated herself with Jewish charities, such as the help to the aged, crippled, blind and orphaned.  The Jewish woman takes active participation in the rebuilding of Palestine through Hadassah.  She takes active part in the legislation against anti-semitism, and anti-defamation, through the American Jewish Congress and B’nai Brith.  Through the Vocational Guidance Service, and the Hillel Foundation at state universities, she guides the education and future lives of boys and girls like myself. {pause}
 
Most importantly of all, Roslyn knew that she stood in a chain of tradition. Though she was our congregation’s first bat mitzvah, the role models who taught her served as reminders that she could serve as a role model to others. In her own words: “We Jewish girls with this background, this training, and this spiritual home life must become the future leaders in our Jewish world.”
 
Roslyn’s family remain in the mourning period of sheloshim, and we join them in remembering this most extraordinary woman who gave so much to her family, her temple, and the world.
 
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With beginnings, God created the world, and it is with beginnings that we renew creation day by day.
 
Rabbi Regina Jonas is remembered every Shabbat B’reishit, on the anniversary of her death, for her historic accomplishments. Others unseen by history books have made similar impacts on communities around the world, including ours. Roslyn Horwich’s bat mitzvah speech is on its way to the American Jewish Archives, where it can take its place in the public record. She and so many other women continually inspire us with their first-ness, helping us to find our own paths of Creation.
 
May this Shabbat B’reishit be one of renewal and commitment for each of us as we embark on this year of possibility encouraged by the achievements of the past.

(Roslyn Lieberman's bat mitzvah speech pictured below, courtesy of Bruce Horwich.)