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A hazzan or chazzan is a Jewish musician or precentor trained in the vocal arts who leads the congregation in songful prayer. In English, this prayer leader is often referred to as a cantor, a term also used in Christianity.
The ordination of women to ministerial or priestly office is an increasingly common practice among some contemporary major religious groups. It remains a controversial issue in certain Christian traditions and in most denominations in which "ordination" was often a traditionally male dominated profession.
Sally Jane Priesand is America's first female rabbi ordained by a rabbinical seminary, and the second formally ordained female rabbi in Jewish history, after Regina Jonas. Priesand was ordained by the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion on June 3, 1972, at the Plum Street Temple in Cincinnati. After her ordination she served first as assistant and then as associate rabbi at Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York City, and later led Monmouth Reform Temple in Tinton Falls, New Jersey from 1981 until her retirement in 2006. She is featured in numerous books including Rabbis: The Many Faces of Judaism and Fifty Jewish Women who Changed the World.
Amy Eilberg is the first female rabbi ordained in Conservative Judaism. She was ordained in 1985 by the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, one of the academic centers and spiritual centers of Conservative Judaism.
Women rabbis are individual Jewish women who have studied Jewish Law and received rabbinical ordination. Women rabbis are prominent in Progressive Jewish denominations, however, the subject of women rabbis in Orthodox Judaism is more complex. Although Orthodox women have been ordained as rabbis, many major Orthodox Jewish communities and institutions do not accept the change. In an alternative approach, other Orthodox Jewish institutions train women as Torah scholars for various Jewish religious leadership roles. These roles typically involve training women as religious authorities in Jewish Law but without formal rabbinic ordination, instead, alternate titles are used. Yet, despite this alteration in title, these women are often perceived as equivalent to ordained rabbis. Since the 1970s, over 1,200 Jewish women have been ordained as rabbis.
The first openly lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender clergy in Judaism were ordained as rabbis and/or cantors in the second half of the 20th century.
Temple Israel is the oldest synagogue in Columbus, Ohio, and a founding member of the Union for Reform Judaism. Formed as early as 1846 as the Orthodox Bene Jeshurun congregation, its first religious leader was Simon Lazarus, a clothing merchant who founded what would become Lazarus department stores.
Sandy Eisenberg Sasso is the first woman to have been ordained a rabbi in Reconstructionist Judaism. She was ordained by the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Philadelphia, on May 19, 1974. She is also the author of many children's books on religious topics.
Sara Hurwitz is an Orthodox Jewish spiritual leader aligned with the "Open Orthodox" faction of Modern Orthodox Judaism in the United States. She is considered by some to be the first female Orthodox rabbi. She serves as Rabba at the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, and the president and co-founder of Yeshivat Maharat, both in Riverdale, New York.
Angela Warnick Buchdahl is an American rabbi. She was the first Asian-American to be ordained as a rabbi, and the first Asian-American to be ordained as a hazzan (cantor). In 2011 she was named by Newsweek and The Daily Beast as one of America's "Most Influential Rabbis", and in 2012 by The Daily Beast as one of America's "Top 50 Rabbis". Buchdahl was recognized as one of the top five in The Forward's 2014 "Forward Fifty", a list of American Jews who had the most impact on the national scene in the previous year.
Kinneret Shiryon, born Sandra Levine is the first female rabbi in Israel. She is the spiritual leader of Kehillat Yozma, Modi'in's Reform congregation, which she helped establish in 1997; Kehillat Yozma is the first non-Orthodox congregation in Israel to receive state funding for its synagogue.
Laura Geller is an American rabbi. She serves as the rabbi emerita of Temple Emanuel in Beverly Hills, California.
Elisa Klapheck is the first female rabbi to serve in the Netherlands, although she was born in Germany. She was also one of the organizers of Bet Debora Berlin, a conference of European women rabbis, cantors, scholars, and rabbinically-educated Jews in Berlin in 1999. She was ordained in 2004 by the Aleph Rabbinic Program, and in 2005 she became the rabbi of "Beit Ha'Chidush" in Amsterdam. In 2009 she returned to Germany and has since been the rabbi of the "Egalitarian Minyan" in the Jewish Community of Frankfurt am Main. She is a member of the General Conference of Rabbis of Germany (ARK) and an associate member of the Rabbinic Board of "Liberal Judaism" in London.
Julie Schwartz is an American rabbi. She was born in Cincinnati and, in 1986, she became the first woman to serve as an active-duty Jewish chaplain in the U.S. Navy, the very same year she was ordained by the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. She counseled patients at the naval hospital in Oakland, California, and after a three-year tour of duty she returned to Cincinnati and held assorted jobs at HUC-JIR.
Amy Perlin is the first female rabbi in the United States to start her own congregation, Temple B'nai Shalom in Fairfax Station, Virginia, of which she was the founding rabbi in 1986. In 1978, she graduated from Princeton University with a degree in Near Eastern Studies, with summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa honors. In 1980 she received a M.A.H.L., and in 1982 she was ordained by the Reform seminary Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR). She later earned a Doctor of Divinity degree from HUC-JIR in 2007.
Helen Bar-Yaacov is an Uzbekistani-born American rabbi. She is the first ordained female rabbi in West Virginia She began serving in West Virginia in 2002 at Temple Israel in Charleston.
This is a timeline of women rabbis:
This is a timeline of women in religion. See also: Timeline of women in religion in the United States.
This is a timeline of notable moments in the history of women's ordination in the world's religious traditions. It is not an exhaustive list of all historic or contemporary ordinations of women.
References
- ↑ Wilentz, Amy (2002-05-06). "How the War Came Home". New York Magazine . Retrieved 2012-09-04.
- ↑ ""Kol Ishah: The Rabbi is a Woman" - a documentary film by Hannah Heer" . Retrieved 29 October 2014.
- 1 2 3 "The Rabbi is a Woman". "Kol Ishah. Retrieved 2012-07-17.
- ↑ "Sweden names first female rabbi - The Local". Thelocal.se. Retrieved 2012-07-17.
- ↑ "Female Rabbi Reverses Candidacy For Stockholm Post". Jewishmadison.org. Archived from the original on 2012-09-07. Retrieved 2012-07-17.
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