Can a woman be a rabbi? For many American Jews, the issue is long settled: The Reform movement first ordained a woman in 1972; the Reconstructionist movement in 1974; and the Conservative movement in 1985. Regina Jonas, usually considered the first female rabbi, was ordained in Germany in 1935, and died at Auschwitz after serving as a rabbi in the Theresienstadt concentration camp.
For Orthodox Judaism, however, the issue has been more complicated. In the past week, the two major Orthodox rabbinical associations in the U.S., the Rabbinical Council of America, which is roughly modern Orthodox, and the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah of America, roughly ultra-Orthodox, issued public statements condemning in definitive terms the possibility of Orthodox women being ordained as clergy. Their target is the emerging movement known as “open Orthodoxy,” associated with two rabbinical colleges in New York, one for men and one for women.
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