Regina Jonas

Regina Jonas: ‘The one and only woman rabbi’ during dark times

If you’ve read this month’s Sussex Jewish News, you will already know that today, August 3rd 2002, is a very important date – the 100th anniversary of the birth of the first woman rabbi, Regina Jonas, who was ordained on December 27th 1935 in Offenbach, Germany, and died in Auschwitz in the last quarter of 1944. But before those who’ve read my SJN article decide to doze off – rest assured, I’m not about to repeat myself!

Although I began my rabbinic studies at Leo Baeck College in October 1984, I didn’t hear any mention of Regina Jonas until nine years later: In October 1993 Rabbi Sybil Sheridan and myself, were invited by the college as representatives of the ‘women rabbis’ to participate in a small ceremony at which, the ordination certificate of Regina Jonas, together with a photograph of her in her rabbinic robes, was presented to the Principal, Rabbi Jonathan Magonet, by Dr Hermann Simon, Director of the Zentrum Judaicum Foundation at the Oranienburger Strasse Synagogue in Berlin.

It was a very curious little gathering – with the emphasis on the word little. Here we were, a half a dozen people meeting in Leo Baeck College prior to the annual Degree Ceremony and reception, which marks the start of each academic year. Scheduled to meet at 7.15pm, just forty-five minutes later, we six joined the one hundred plus people assembled for the main event, at which not a word was said about Rabbi Regina Jonas. And yet, the presentation of her ordination certificate and photograph to the college created as the successor to the institution where Regina Jonas had studied was, in fact, an historic occasion: The Jewish world had forgotten about her – and until the re-discovery of Regina Jonas in archives in East Germany, following the fall of the Berlin wall in December 1989, her legacy was lost to the women who became the first generation of women rabbis in the 1970s and 80s.

A month after that strange small, momentous moment, I travelled to Berlin, the birth place of Regina Jonas, to meet with Dr Simon at the recently re-occupied Oranienburger Strasse Synagogue where Regina Jonas had worked, to obtain permission to read her papers held in an archive in what had been East Germany. In addition to securing that permission, I was also given a microfilm, containing Regina Jonas’s writings, which I deposited at the Leo Baeck College a week later. So, I journeyed 100 kilometres eastwards, and with the help of my German-speaking companion, spent a day reading through some of Regina Jonas’ papers.

Of course, I wasn’t the first person to open the archive. The wall had already been down four years, and in the course of my research – which included plumbing the silence surrounding Regina Jonas, after my return - I discovered that Katerina von Kellenbach, a German Christian feminist had already published a paper – in German, of course - in 1992 (in Schlangenbrut 38). But when I wrote my first article on Regina Jonas for publication in the first anthology of women rabbis in Britain, Hear Our Voice (SCM, 1994) – which included some of von Kellenbach’s findings, translated into English, as well as the results of my own investigations - I had the satisfaction of knowing that, finally, women rabbis had laid claim to our inheritance.

But satisfaction was mixed with dismay – about the silence that had engulfed the memory of Regina Jonas; about the way in which her memory was now being marginalized; about the discrimination she had had to confront. Regina Jonas studied at the Hochschule fur die Wissenschaft des Judentums – the College for the Science of Judaism - in Berlin, together with twenty-six other women. She, alone among them, became a rabbi - but not without a struggle. Although Regina Jonas had the support of the majority of her teachers, the Talmud Professor, Dr Chanoth Albeik, declined to put his name to a rabbinic diploma. The controversy raged but was unresolved, and despite the fact that Leo Baeck was her teacher for many years, he did not ordain her. Perhaps he was afraid of rocking the boat in the Einheitsgemeinde - what was supposed to be the ‘unified congregation’ of Berlin, which included all sections of the community. Fortunately, at the request of the Union of Liberal Rabbis in Germany, on December 27th 1935, Regina Jonas received semichah from Max Dienemann, a liberal-minded rabbi who worked in Offenbach. Having examined her, he declared her ‘qualified to occupy the office of rabbi’ – and interestingly, Leo Baeck wrote to Regina Jonas just four days later on December 31st, congratulating her on her performance in her examination. And it was Leo Baeck again, who, over six years later on February 6th 1942, signed a certificate confirming her semichah.

So, what was it like being the first woman rabbi, working in the midst of a community, whose leaders included those who opposed her ordination? A survivor’s account, gives us some idea:

In Berlin there lived at this time in the 1930s the first woman rabbi, Frl. Rabbiner Regina Jonas. She watched carefully that one said ‘Fraulein Rabbiner’ because a ‘frau rabbiner’ was the wife of a rabbi. She came into the hospital and old age home very often, and there she wanted to function as a rabbi. Generally, this worked in the old age home. In the hospital, she came into the synagogue wearing a purple robe – not black – and she sat herself downstairs next to the men on the rabbi’s seat. She wanted to give her lecture or sermon during the prayers, but always when this doctor was there and prayed with the people, he said to her, ‘You can do what you want, but for the prayers you go upstairs to the women, and afterwards you can come downstairs.’

Interestingly, after Kristallnacht in November 1938, Regina Jonas preached in various synagogues in Berlin, often replacing rabbis who were thrown into concentration camps or had emigrated. The Nazi onslaught created these unexpected opportunities for the first woman rabbi, but, of course, it caught up with her in time. On November 6th 1942 Regina Jonas was deported to Terezin. But her rabbinic work did not end with her deportation. Working together with the psychologist, Viktor Frankl, her particular task was to meet the transports at the railway station and help people deal with their initial hock and disorientation. Curiously, Viktor Frankl, in common with all the other important figures who lived to tell the tale, never mentioned Regina Jonas in his writings or spoke about her – until Katerina von Kellenbach paid him a visit in 1991, when he described her as ‘loaded with energy and a very impressive personality.’ He also called her a ‘blessed preacher and speaker’ - and, indeed, a hand-written list of twenty-three titles, entitled, ‘Lectures of the one and only woman rabbi, Regina Jonas’ has survived in the Terezin archives.

Alongside this lecture list, just one sermon has survived. Delivered to a congregation imprisoned in a ghetto, whose future was extremely bleak – to say the least - the sermon concludes with this courageous affirmation of our people’s continuing task:

Our Jewish people is sent from God into history as ‘blessed’, ‘from God blessed’, which means, wherever one steps in every life situation, bestow blessing, goodness and faithfulness – humility before God’s selflessness, whose devotion-full love for his creatures maintains the world. To establish these pillars of the world was and is Israel’s task. Men and women, women and men have undertaken this work with the same Jewish faithfulness. This ideal also serves our testing Theresienstadt work. We are God’s servants and as such we are moving from earthly to heavenly spheres. May all our work, which we have tried to perform as God’s servants be a blessing for Israel’s future and humanity.

Rabbi Regina Jonas was clearly an inspiring presence in the ghetto. After two years of tireless work on behalf of her fellow prisoners, she was dispatched to Auschwitz. There is some dispute about the exact date – but it was probably October 9th 1944. We cannot know how many women may have become rabbis after her if the Shoah had not intervened. What we do now know is that although she knew that she was, in her own words, ‘the one and only woman rabbi’, Regina Jonas herself, hoped that she was paving the way for others to follow. Of the two theses she wrote in preparation for receiving semichah, the one based on rabbinic sources, presented the halachic case for women’s ordination.

It is hard to get a full picture of Regina Jonas – there is so little material about her, and virtually nothing available about her personal life. In view of this, I can’t help exploring the significance of her birthday – since my mother, Edie Klempner – nee Waltzer – zichronah livrachahl, was also born on August 3rd, twenty-one years later. My mother was a very powerful personality – a Leo to her fingertips, and a natural leader. Although, as a Londoner, she escaped the horrors of the Shoah, like so many women of her generation, she fell prey to the drive to get women back into the home after 1945. So, having done her bit for the war effort, she married my father in 1947, and spent the next few years following him around various parts of the globe – and having children: my brother in 1951; me in 1955; my sister in 1958. Although she spent the last eighteen years of her life doing voluntary work at the Day Care Centres run by Jewish Care in Golders Green, and the Association for Jewish Refugees in West Hampstead, she only spent two short periods in paid employment. Instead, she filled her days with people. A superb cook, our home was always full of guests, and on Friday nights, blessed with a wonderful contralto voice, she would lead us in Yiddish and Hebrew songs. Finally, a frustrated actress who had won a scholarship to RADA her father hadn’t let her take up, in the 1980s she became the leading lady in the Spiro Yiddish Theatre Group, participating in her last production less than a year before she died on November 3rd 1991.

Of course, my mother and Regina Jonas were totally separate people, born at different times, in distinct places, but I can’t help feeling, that perhaps, their shared birthday meant that they had a few things in common. And, of course, although the circumstances of their lives were so totally disparate, both of them lived during times when females were expected to inhabit a separate domestic sphere, apart from the male-dominated public arena. Today, things are very different - but not completely. Although, women now constitute half the workforce, women remain responsible, still, for most of the work that goes on in the home – including the care of children. And as long as the world of work does not adapt to take the parental responsibilities of employees into account, women will continue to predominate in underpaid part-time employment, and those with careers in the professions and the business world, will continue to bang their heads against a ‘glass ceiling’.

The present is far from perfect – but perhaps the future will be rosier. Today we are celebrating the birth of Niamh and Finn, born just a few short weeks ago to Cindi and Barry Halloren. One hundred years ago, when Regina Jonas was born, Finn and Niamh would have had totally divergent prospects. Today, we can hope, with confidence, that both of them will enjoy equal opportunities, and that as they grow through their childhood, and into adulthood, each of them will be encouraged and supported to fulfil their potential, so that each of them may realise their own unique abilities, ambitions and dreams. Perhaps one of them may even become a rabbi! And if you think that’s an extraordinary notion, just think about what Regina Jonas’ parents might have been expecting of their daughter when she was born… As we give thanks for Niamh and Finn – and for my mother, and for Rabbi Regina Jonas - let us also be thankful that Life, for all its heartache, continues to surprise us in wondrous ways each and every day. And let us say: Amen.

For all references see my articles: ‘Rabbi Regina Jonas, 1902-1944: Missing Link in a Broken Chain’. In Hear Our Voice edited by Sybil Sheridan. SCM Press, 1994; ‘The Discovery of Fraulein Rabbiner Regina Jonas: Making Sense of Our Inheritance’. European Judaism 95:2. December 1995.