74 Women Studying for Rabbinate Under Reform, Reconstructionist Auspices

The number of women studying for she rabbinate under Reform and Reconstructionist auspices during the 1979-80 academic year is 74, one less than the record total of 75 enrolled during the prior academic year, according to a Jewish Telegraphic Agency survey.

However, unlike the 1978-79 year, when, out of a total of 13 women candidates at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Philadelphia two were in the senior class and received the title of rabbi-last June 10, there are no women in the senior class this year, according to Rabbi Ludwig Nadelmann, executive vice president of the Jewish Reconstructionist Foundation. He said there are 27 men and 12 women studying at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College this year.

There are 208 rabbinical candidates studying under Reform auspices this year, including 146 men and 62 women, according to Stanley Saplin, associate information director for the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR). The total of Reform rabbinical students during the prior academic year was 209, with 63 women, Saplin said. The number of anticipated Reform ordainees — those expected to be named rabbis next June — is 32, he reported, 23 men and nine women.

SITES OF REFORM RABBINICAL STUDIES

Noting that all Reform candidates must spend their first year in Jerusalem, at the School of Jewish Studies and the Nelson Glueck School of Biblical Archaeology, Saplin provided a breakdown of the sites of Reform rabbinical studies as follows: The HUC in Cincinnati has 16 women among its 83 rabbinical students; the JIR in New York City has 26 women among its 61 candidates; the Los Angeles school has seven women students among its 23 candidates, and the candidates studying in Jerusalem total 41, of whom 13 are women.

Because no Reconstructionist women candidates are in the senior class this year, all of the new women rabbis ordained next June will be Reform — nine, the same number as those named rabbi last June.

Assuming the nine women Reform candidates complete their studies and become rabbis next June, the total number of women ordained as rabbis under Reform and Reconstructionist. auspices will be 31 — 25 Reform and six Reconstructionist. The process of ordaining women as rabbis began in 1972, when Sally Preisand became the first woman rabbi in America.

Currently, 10 of the 22 women rabbis hold pulpit posts, including Preisand whose first pulpit position was that of assistant rabbi at the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York City from which she was promoted to associate rabbi before she suddenly resigned last July, declining to publicly state her reasons for doing so. Subsequently, she took a position as part-time rabbi at Temple Beth-El in Elizabeth, N, J.

The women rabbis not in pulpits are in education, administration and Hillel posts. Of the 10 women rabbis in pulpits, eight are Reform and two are Reconstructionist.