Women in the Rabbinate: Second Generation of Women Rabbis Facing Same Challenges As Pioneers

Working Woman magazine recently listed its 25 best career choices for women in the 1990s. After management consultant, private banker and veterinarian came a surprising inclusion: rabbi.

In the 19 years that the Reform movement has been ordaining women as rabbis, and in the six years that the Conservative movement has done so, women in the rabbinate have worked hard to create a place for themselves in a profession that, since its creation at least 1,500 years ago, had been the exclusive province of men.

To date, the Reform movement’s Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion has ordained 185 women rabbis, and the Conservative movement’s Jewish Theological Seminary has ordained 32.

Since 1981, just under half of the incoming classes of rabbinic students at HUC-JIR have been female. At HUC-JIR, of the 190 students in the rabbinical school during the 1991-92 year, 43 percent will be women.

Incoming classes at JTS vary, but the proportion of women seems to be on the increase. Of the 32 students planning to enter the seminary’s rabbinics program next year, 15 are women.

Still, women represent only a small fraction of the two rabbinical organizations that admit them: the Reform movement’s 1,560-member Central Conference of American Rabbis and the Conservative movement’s 1,300-member Rabbinical Assembly.

Integration into this all-male profession has not been easy for many of the pioneers.

And although the newest women rabbis are part of a “second generation,” and may even have had women precede them in their jobs, the challenges they face are no less daunting than those which confronted the first women to walk through the seminary doors.

‘OUT ON OUR OWN’

The issues are no longer about entry into the rabbinate; they now revolve around gaining access to the senior ranks and transforming the profession into one which will accommodate, and even welcome, the unique needs and gifts of women.

Most women rabbis feel that their concerns are beginning to find their way onto the agendas of the movements’ rabbinical organizations.

But “educating and sensitizing lay people and some senior rabbis” is still very much a challenge, according to Rabbi Jody Cohen, religious leader of Temple Beth Hillel in South Windsor, Conn.

“We’re still out on our own,” said Cohen, who is also co-coordinator of the Reform movement’s Women’s Rabbinic Network.

Women in pulpits are still often viewed as novelties and are reminded of that in a variety of ways that run the spectrum from amusing to annoying.

They have come to almost expect certain remarks from congregants, such as, “I don’t believe in women rabbis, but you’re good,” and “You did a good job on that sermon,” in an overly impressed tone, as if such a performance was unexpected.

“It takes people time to deal with it, which I think is perfectly understandable,” said Rabbi Joyce Newmark, who was ordained at JTS last June.

“A woman putting on a tallis is not something they’ve seen before,” she said. “When people develop some comfort with you, the comments go away.”

Some women feel that acceptance has begun to come on a superficial level, the level of remarks and jokes, but that resistance to the idea of having a woman rabbi still exists on some deeper level.

CROSSING LEGS ON THE BIMAH

Rabbi Amy Eilberg, the first woman ordained by the Conservative movement, experienced some of that resistance in her first job out of the seminary.

In a pulpit for one year, she found congregants discussing whether or not she should be permitted to cross her legs on the bimah, something the synagogue considered a sign of disrespect.

“Congregants are always more focused on the body of the woman rabbi than on the male rabbi. They discuss what she wears, whether her shoes are open or closed toe.

“It’s a reflection of the deep place that is touched when women take on the mantle of leadership,” Eilberg said. “People are able to deny how profoundly they are affected.”

In interviews with synagogue search committees, women rabbis continue to be asked if they plan to marry or become pregnant, or, if they are already parents, what they would do if their children were at home sick and they had to attend to a synagogue matter.

These are questions, several women rabbis pointed out, that no male candidate would ever be asked, though single male rabbis are sometimes asked why they are not married.

Bias against women rabbis also has an impact on their paychecks.

A survey recently conducted by the Central Conference of American Rabbis found that Reform women rabbis’ median incomes are 5 to 25 percent lower than the incomes of male colleagues who are at the same level positions.

UNCONSCIOUS BIAS

Men and women start out earning the same salaries, said Rabbi Arnold Sher, director of placement for the Reform movement, but the discrepancies become apparent the longer someone has been in the pulpit and grow as congregations get larger.

Rabbi Joel Meyers, executive vice president of the Rabbinical Assembly, said that no such discrepancy between the salaries of men and women exists in the Conservative rabbinate, where they earn “comparable amounts.”

The bias that leads to salary inequities is often unconscious, said Rabbi Deborah Hirsch of New York’s East End Temple, a 200-family Reform congregation. But that makes it no less insidious while making it harder to combat.

During contract negotiations, “a congregation will say, ‘Her husband works and must make a good salary,’ when dealing with a female candidate.

“But for a man, they might say, ‘He has to support a family.’ “