A record total of 75 women will be studying for the rabbinate in Reform and Reconstructionist seminaries when the 1978-79 academic year begins next month, according to a Jewish Telegraphic Agency survey. Seven women have been ordained as Reform rabbis since the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC – JIR) began accepting women for ordination and four now hold pulpits. Four women have been graduated from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Philadelphia and one is in a pulpit.
Stanley Saplin, associate information director for the HUC – JIR, reported that a total of 209 students are registered for rabbinical studies in the Reform seminaries in Los Angeles, Cincinnati and New York, and that 62 are women. Jennifer Gabriel, registrar for the Reconstructionist school, informed the JTA that there are 13 women candidates registered for the new school year.
WHERE THE RABBIS ARE
Rabbi Sally J. Preisand, a 1972 graduate of the HUC in Cincinnati, is the first woman rabbi in American history. She now serves as associate rabbi at the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York. Rabbi Michal S. Bernstein, a 1975 graduate of the JIR in New York, recently resigned from the pulpit to start graduate study.
Rabbi Rosalind A. Gold is assistant rabbi at Temple B’rith Kodesh in Rochester, N. Y. Rabbi Deborah R. Prinz is assistant rabbi at the Central Synagogue in Manhattan. Rabbi Myra Soifer is assistant rabbi at Temple Sinai in New Orleans. All were ordained last June. Rabbi Laura J. Geller is director of the Hillel Foundation Center at the University of Southern California. Rabbi Karen L. Fox is assistant director of the Federation of Reform Synagogues in New York. Mrs. Gabriel reported that four women are registered for the 1978-79 freshman class at the Reconstructionist school and that there are two women in the senior class.
Saplin, in providing a breakdown on the women Reform candidates, noted that all candidates must spend their first year in Jerusalem, attending the School of Jewish Studies and the Nelson Glueck School of Biblical Archaeology. Candidates then return to the United States to continue their rabbinical studies at the Reform seminary in Los Angeles, the HUC in Cincinnati or the JIR in New York. Those going to Los Angeles study there only for their second and third year, then go to Cincinnati or New York to complete their rabbinical studies.
He said that of the 209 candidates registered for the 1978-79 year, 47 will be studying in Jerusalem, 17 of them women; 23 will be studying in Los Angeles, five of them women; 61 will study at the JIR, 25 of them women; and 78 will study at the HUC, 15 of them women.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
