Assessing the State of Women Rabbis, 50 Years On

Exactly a half-century after the first American woman rabbi, Sally J. Priesand, was ordained, progress for women has been mixed, in the view of Rabbi Sari Laufer of Stephen Wise Temple. When asked if women rabbis are treated as people out of the ordinary, “That is the question,” she said.

Laufer’s first posting after her 2006 ordination was enthusiastically positive: at Congregation Rodeph Sholom in New York City, her hometown. She recalled working with and learning from “amazing female mentors and people who already had blazed the trail.” The shul community was supportive, and no one seemed to find anything unusual about a woman rabbi.

A decade-and-a-half later, the scene is grayer. “I often talk to female-identifying colleagues who are coming into the rabbinate,” said Laufer. “I believe that is my role now. Sometimes they, and sometimes I, am still surprised by all the ways it plays out in the rabbinate.”

There was great enthusiasm for women rabbis on June 3, when Stephen Wise Temple saluted the 50th anniversary of Priesand’s ordination with its “70 Faces of Torah” Shabbat program.

With Laufer out front – the special program was her idea – about a half-dozen women rabbis were in the first row. 

The group included Wise’s senior Cantor Emma Lutz, Melton School of Adult Jewish Learning at Wise’s Rabbi Karen Strok, Rabbi Jaclyn Fromer Cohen of Temple Isaiah, Rabbi Denise Eger of Congregation Kol Ami, Rabbi Heather Miller of Keeping It Sacred, Rabbi Leah Kroll, who spent decades at Stephen Wise, Rabbi Michele Lenke of Yesh Makom L.A. and HUC-JIR rabbinical student Jessica Jacobs.

“Women still are a minority in the rabbinate,” said Laufer, whose title is chief of community engagement at Wise Temple. “There are only so many rabbis I can invite. Los Angeles is a large and diverse community, and the rabbinate reflects that. For rabbis with pulpits, it is difficult for them to get away on a Friday night.” She estimated there are a dozen-and-a-half women rabbis in Los Angeles.

While the notion of a life in the rabbinate not so long ago would have been unlikely for a girl or woman, Laufer was born at exactly the right time. Why did this now married mom of a son, eight, and a daughter, five, choose the rabbinate? Or did it choose her? “It started with a love of books and a love of learning,” Laufer said.

When she was eight years old, her grandfather died. Her strongest memory from that dark time was going into the office of her rabbi, an imposing figure who towered over all in the community. Not the type a child, or anyone, just drops in on. Or as Laufer recalled, he was not the jolly type, sitting on a floor, singing along with preschoolers. “I remember going into his study, and there were all these books,” Laufer said. “Even at eight, I was a voracious reader. I thought to myself, ‘I am going to have this many books when I grow up.’” Later, she said she fell in love with the academic aspect of books. “For me, practice, ritual and connection came from that.”

By the time she graduated cum laude from Northwestern University and was eager to enter rabbinic school, the path for women was smoother than in the past – not ideal, but definitely more favorable. “Thanks to Sally, it really was not a difficult route to get to rabbinic school,” Laufer said. “I was fortunate. Rabbinic school was wonderful, enriching and challenging in all of the right ways.”

“I still am cognizant that there are people who, for a lifecycle moment, still really feel the rabbi has to be male.” – Rabbi Sari Laufer

While she has found the pulpit rabbinate to be “wonderful and challenging in good ways,” gender stubbornly remains a factor.In the daily lives of women rabbis, generations of tradition that only men can be rabbis continues to pop up. “I still am cognizant that there are people who, for a lifecycle moment, still really feel the rabbi has to be male,” Laufer said. “Or someone will specifically call and say, ‘We would like a male rabbi.’” When Laufer walks into a house of mourning and someone says, “We don’t have 10 men,” Laufer readily, and sensitively, responds, “That is not how I count the minyan.”

Central to all discussions of progress is this acknowledgement: “Women rabbis still are not seen with the same gravitas and the same authority as male rabbis,” said Laufer. “Even if some would argue with me, I think that is still true.”

Conversely, there is a sunnier perspective. Laufer can tell stories of “particularly women, sometimes couples, sometimes men, who will bring intimate stories (to women rabbis) that they may not have been comfortable bringing to the rabbi of my youth,” she said.  She added, “he was a wonderful man, but I meant that model of rabbi.”

Briefly, Laufer also alluded to the daily news of women’s reproductive rights.

“I think the existence of women in the rabbinate has helped people in the community open up about their struggles [and] their pain in ways I don’t know if they would have” before women rabbis.”

“I think the existence of women in the rabbinate has helped people in the community open up about their struggles [and] their pain in ways I don’t know if they would have” before women rabbis,” she said. “The extraordinary treatment of female-identifying rabbis cuts both ways, though. Sometimes it is negative. It feels like it is still this extraordinary uphill battle. Then sometimes, you get blown away in the other direction.”

When Laufer encounters pulpit teams that are all men, “I don’t think anyone looks twice at them,” she said. However, when the pulpit team is all female, the comments she hears are inescapable.

After 16 years in the rabbinate, how does she respond to such scenes?“ Sometimes, in my more fired-up moments,I think of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, of blessed memory, and I have that ‘When there are nine’ moment,” she said. “I have heard it from congregants, from lay leaders, from boards. I have been fortunate in my career, though. I don’t think I would have trouble saying to someone, ‘Would you say that if the gender were different?’”