On the night of September 27, we celebrated Simchat Torah by unrolling the entire Torah while we consecrated our kindergarten and first grade students, officially welcoming them into their Jewish learning. We read the very end and very beginning of our ancient text.
As we begin again, I can’t help but think about the past. June 2022 will mark the 50th anniversary of the ordination of Rabbi Sally J. Priesand, the first woman publicly ordained as a rabbi. Yet her ordination, which opened the door for future generations of women, was preceded by the impactful lives of others.
One of these women who paved the way for Rabbi Priesand was Rabbi Regina Jonas. Jonas was born in Berlin on August 3, 1902, into a poor Orthodox Jewish family. Early on in her life, she had a passion for Jewish history, Bible and Hebrew. She was influenced by her rabbi, Dr. Max Weil, who, though Orthodox, allowed girls to become bat mitzvah. At his suggestion, Jonas continued her studies.
All the other women in her classes were there to become teachers. However, Jonas, like the men she studied with, wanted to become a rabbi. She received a great deal of pushback but eventually became a rabbi in 1935 and is known today as the first female rabbi. She taught in Jewish schools, served as a pastoral counselor in Jewish hospitals and welfare agencies, and preached in liberal synagogues in Berlin and other German towns. On October 12, 1944, she and her mother were deported to Auschwitz and likely killed the same day. She would probably have been completely forgotten, had she not left traces of her work in Theresienstadt and in her native city, Berlin.
How fitting that Rabbi Jonas’ yahrzeit falls every year on Shabbat Bereshit. She created something, an opportunity, a first, from nothing. The opening words of our Torah do the same. We are told that the earth was unformed and void – tohu vavohu. Rashi teaches that the word “tohu” signifies astonishment and amazement, for a person would have been astonished and amazed at its emptiness. And the word “vohu,” Rashi says, signifies emptiness and empty space. Maybe we need to feel a sense of emptiness to be able to create something that allows for astonishment and amazement. Maybe, when we do this, it is an opportunity to be God-like. I assume Rabbi Jonas felt empty when she received pushback on her dreams, but once they were achieved, she and others were amazed. She was just the beginning. The tohu vavohu was also just a beginning.
As we begin again, we stand on Rabbi Jonas’ shoulders and even in the days where we feel empty, we need to find our amazement to keep creating.
By Rabbi Sarah Smiley,
Sustaining Rabbi at The Temple, Congregation B’nai Jehudah