Rabbi Regina Jonas 1902 – 1944

Who was the first woman rabbi and when and where did she receive semichah? No, it was not Jackie Tabick in 1975 at the Leo Baeck College in London - the first woman rabbi in Britain; nor was it Sally Priesand in 1972 at the Hebrew Union College in the United States - the first of a genera­tion of women rabbis. On December 27th 1935 in Offenbach in Germany, a thirty-three year old woman named Regina Jonas, born in Berlin on August 3rd 1902, became the first woman rabbi.

An exceptional case? Certainly, Regina Jonas’ ordination did not take place under official auspices. Although she studied at the Hochshule fur Wissenschaft des Judentums, the Reform centre for Jewish studies and rabbinic training in Berlin, completing her examina­tions there in 1931, the Talmud pro­fessor, Chanoth Albeik, declined to put his name to her rabbinic diploma. But that was not the end of the mat­ter. Four years later Regina Jonas received semichah, privately, from Rabbiner Max Dienemann who worked in Offenbach, and it is clear from letters and other documents that she was addressed as ‘Fräuline Rabbiner’ by rabbis, scholars, and the members of the Berlin community with whom she worked as a pastor and a teacher. Indeed, the leader of Berlin Jewry, Rabbi Dr Leo Baeck, actually signed a certificate confirm­ing her semichah, on 6 February 1942 — which is on display, together with a photograph of Regina Jonas in her rabbinic robes, at the Leo Baeck College.

Although the ordination of Regina Jonas was an exceptional event, she was not entirely alone. According to the Hochschule annual report for 1932, she was one of 27 female stu­dents out of a total of 155. Regina Jonas wrote her rabbinic thesis on the ordination of women. What contri­bution might have been made by her -  and by the other women who stud­ied with her — if European Jewry had not been consumed by the fires of Nazism? After serving the Berlin community for six years, on November 6th 1942 Regina Jonas was deported to Terezin, where she continued her rabbinic work. In addition to giving regular lectures and sermons - a list of 23 items enti­tled. ‘Lectures of the one and only woman rabbi, Regina Jonas’ has sur­vived in the Terezin archives — her particular pastoral task was to meet the transports at the railway station and help people deal with their initial shock and disorientation. On October 9th 1944 she was dispatched to Auschwitz and gassed.

Of course, some individuals escaped the furnace: Leo Baeck; Ellen Littman -  another Hochshule student, who later taught Bible at the Leo Baeck College; and Viktor Frankl, the psychologist, with whom Regina Jonas worked closely in Terezin all survived. But the com­munity as a whole was virtually destroyed. Perhaps if the Shoah had not engulfed the lives of European Jewry, Regina Jonas and like-minded colleagues at the Hochschule might have won the argument for women’s ordination - and Regina Jonas might have been the first of many women ordained as rabbis long before 1972.