Women Rabbis

Charleston is a place of firsts.

It was the first permanent settlement in one of the New World's first Colonies. It fostered the earliest cohesive Jewish community in the South. It was home to two of the four South Carolina men who signed the Declaration of Independence. It was the place where the first shots of the Civil War rang out. It was the American city where Reform Judaism first took root, in 1824.

And this July, Charleston's Reform synagogue, Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim, will welcome the city's first female rabbi: Stephanie Alexander.

Women in the rabbinate are not new, nor are they limited to the most progressive of Judaism's four main denominations. Though Orthodox Judaism separates men and women during worship, exempts women from studying Torah and generally permits women to assume only nonritual leadership positions, Reform and Conservative Judaism have moved in recent decades to grant women full access to religious life.

"Women have always had some sort of power within Judaism," KKBE temple educator Amy Horner said. "In an Orthodox community, the more traditional role for women is in the home, with the idea being that the husband is obligated to care for his wife properly and, with her, run a happy home. That's very important, always. For some women, that exclusion from time-bound commandments is a good thing because Orthodox women aren't required to do all the things men do."

For others, she said, it amounts to an exclusionary policy that relegates women to the status of second-class citizen.

In the U.S., the first woman in the Reform tradition to receive ordination from a rabbinical seminary was Sally Priesand in 1972 (though Hebrew Union College's faculty had agreed in principal to ordain women 50 years earlier). The first woman to receive ordination from the Conservative Jewish Theological Seminary was Amy Eilberg in 1985.

In the early 1950s and again in the early 1960s, Paula Ackerman, the wife of a rabbi who died unexpectedly, was the first woman to lead a congregation, fulfilling rabbinical duties.

Since 1972, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) has ordained 552 women rabbis. Since 1975, it has invested 184 as cantors.

Passing the torch

KKBE's rabbi, Anthony Holz, is retiring at the end of July. After months of interviews and consultations, the congregation selected 34-year-old Alexander to replace him.

"I think she's going to be a very positive asset," Horner said. "The fact that we've chosen a woman indicates that we are committed to moving forward. I think that commitment to moving forward is probably exciting for young families."

KKBE had less than 300 member families when Holz arrived in 1992. Today, there are nearly 500.

"To have female leaders within our congregation is really not new," Horner added. "It is new to have a female rabbi."

She said some members of the congregation have expressed curiosity about how the future will unfold under the guidance of Alexander, "but I don't hear any resistance, I don't hear any worries."

That could be because the new rabbi was carefully determined to be the right fit.

"I think she ... has many of the same qualities that Rabbi Holz has," Horner said, citing her kindness, ability to listen and sensitivity to what others say and feel.

In a recent telephone interview, Alexander praised the deliberative process undertaken by the synagogue.

"I think KKBE, to their credit, did a lot of soul searching before they began the process," she said. To understand who would make a good partner, you've got to understand yourself first, she said.

Sometimes gender or age might influence people one way or another, she added, "but in some cases, I've been very surprised; people open up perhaps because I am a woman."

However, gender is not a defining feature of her professional identity, she said.

"I think of myself as a Reform rabbi and an American rabbi before I think of myself as a female rabbi," she said. "No matter what (people) are looking at, my job is to communicate to them in varied ways, and as much as possible, 'I care.' "

'Choosing this'

Alexander said an intensive summer camp experience, along with early leadership experiences, fired her interest in becoming a rabbi.

"My mom scheduled an appointment with the senior rabbi to talk me out of it," she said.

Her mother thought perhaps Alexander was too comfortable in the cradle of her Jewish community and that she needed to gain some life experience before making such a decision. Mother and rabbi encouraged Alexander to explore the world.

She did. But everything she pursued seemed to reinforce her sense of Jewish identity and purpose. She earned a bachelor's degree in psychology and pursued coursework in Jewish studies at Tulane University. She joined Hillel, a campus organization for Jewish students. She traveled to Israel.

"It wasn't about comfort," she said. "I was choosing this."

By the time she finished college, "all the pieces really came together," so she enrolled at HUC-JIR, spending her first year in Jerusalem, then two years in Cincinnati, where she met her husband, Aaron Sherman. They married in 2000, moved to New York, where Sherman led a congregation, and Alexander continued her studies, obtaining master's degrees in Hebrew literature and religious education.

She was ordained in 2003, then spent two years at Temple Isaiah near Boston. When Alexander and Sherman moved to Iowa, she worked for the Union of Reform Judaism as regional director of informal education, consulting with youth groups and helping to coordinate multicongregation initiatives.

She didn't like being a consultant because it meant leaving just as groups reached the execution stage. She prefers cultivating relationships that last, she said.

In 2006, she became rabbi of Temple Beth El in Dubuque, Iowa. Last year, she moved to St. Louis to be closer to family, though she maintains her post in Dubuque, flying in each week for services, she said. KKBE will be her third congregation.

In response

Scholars say that progressive changes in American religion originate in the 18th century.

The Second Great Awakening, which began in the 1790s and lasted until the 1840s, was a period of widespread religious revival fueled by Evangelical Protestantism.

"The transforming effects of the Second Great Awakening had a particular impact on women," writes Jonathan D. Sarna in a conference paper collected in a 1996 volume on women rabbis. "Already in Colonial times, American women had been deeply involved in religious life as church members, but now for the first time they found themselves enabled, even encouraged, to move beyond passive membership to take an active role in the great task of improving the world so as to speed the onset of the millennium."

They formed prayer groups, charitable institutions, missionary and education societies, Sunday schools and moral reform associations, Sarna writes.

In 1853, the progressive Congregationalist Church ordained the first woman of any denomination in America: Antoinette Louisa Brown (later Brown Blackwell). But not many women followed her to the pulpit. "The 1880 Census listed some 165 women ministers with parish jobs, 33 of whom were Unitarians or Universalists," Sarna writes.

By the 1950s, ordaining women was becoming more acceptable. The Presbyterian and Methodist churches voted to ordain women in 1956. Harvard and Yale divinity schools began to admit women on an equal basis with men. In 1970, two Lutheran denominations voted to ordain women.

"In 1972, when Sally Priesand was ordained, fully 3,358 women were enrolled in major American theological seminaries, representing about 10 percent of students then studying for ordination," Sarna writes. "As a minority faith, rooted in a system of law, blessed with a long religious tradition, and cursed with a long history of persecution, Judaism has quite understandably been reluctant to lead the way into uncharted religious territory."

Initiatives for change generally have come from outside Judaism, Sarna writes. "Progressive Judaism has then moved ... to respond to new social and religious developments, challenging other branches of Judaism to respond in kind."

Reform Judaism took hold in Germany about the same time it was developing in the U.S. The movement strived to loosen the strict requirements of traditional Judaism (now called Orthodox to distinguish it from newer denominations) so its adherents could participate more fully in secular society while maintaining a clear sense of Jewish identity, Horner said.

The first woman ordained a rabbi was Regina Jonas of Berlin. In 1935, after years of study, she obtained a rabbinical diploma. Two years later, during the Nazi nightmare, she began to "carry out rabbinic-spiritual care, according to Gary P. Zola, the author of another conference paper collected in "Women Rabbis." She was arrested and sent to Terezin concentration camp, where she ministered and taught for two years before being transported to Auschwitz. She died there in October 1944.

Rabbi to rabbi

Jonas was a classmate of Holz's uncle, and Holz was a rabbinical student at HUC-JIR in Cincinnati with Sally Priesand, he said. He remembers her ordination.

"As a student, she got all kinds of harassment, less from students and more from professors," Holz recalled.

When Alfred Gottschalk, then president of the college, called Priesand's name at the graduation ceremony, the entire class stood up out of respect, Holz said. "It was unplanned and it was a very moving moment."

Now, ordaining women in the Reform tradition is a nonissue, he said.

"It's brought all kinds of different dimensions, not least reconsidering the patriarchal perspectives in texts and behavior," Holz said. "It's really in many ways been very mind-expanding and liberating, as it has of course been in other professions also."

The choice of Alexander is surely a good sign, he said.

"I think it is part of Charleston's growth, and of course our congregation's growth."

Reach Adam Parker at aparker@postandcourier.com.