First woman rabbi in US to speak at local event honoring 50th anniversary

Rabbi Sally J. Priesand will give the keynote speech Thursday, May 19, at the reception for the opening of two new exhibits on the campus of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion that celebrate the 50th anniversary of her ordination as the first woman rabbi in the United States.

Priesand did her rabbinical studies at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati and was ordained at Plum Street Temple (Isaac M. Wise Temple) on June 3, 1972.

The exhibition Sally Priesand Leads the Way at the American Jewish Archives will feature rarely seen documents and personal artifacts donated to the collection by Priesand relating to her groundbreaking journey. Holy Sparks at the Skirball Museum showcases the lives of 24 pioneering rabbis as expressed in artworks by contemporary Jewish women artists.

Both exhibitions are located on the HUC campus at 3101 Clifton Ave., University Heights. The event runs from 4-7:30 p.m., beginning at the Holy Sparks exhibit. Priesand’s speech at the American Jewish Archives exhibit begins at 5:45 p.m. Registration is required at huc.edu.

Rabbi Sally, as she preferred to be called, had not set out to break down barriers when she became just the second woman to be ordained as a rabbi in the history of Judaism. (The first, Regina Jonas, was ordained in Nazi Germany and was killed at the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944.) Priesand had wanted to be a teacher and ended up being a pioneer.

“When I first came to Hebrew Union College, they thought I came to marry a rabbi rather than be one,” Priesand told the Washington Post in 2016. “I wasn’t really taken all that seriously at the beginning … I always felt the need to be better, to do better than any of my classmates.”

Once she blazed the path, others soon followed. Hundreds of women rabbis have been ordained since the 1970s.

“Sally Priesand was a genuine innovator in American Jewish life and Jewish history,” HUC Chancellor Rabbi David Ellenson said in 2006. “Her decision to study for the rabbinate paved the way for the inclusion of half the Jewish population.”

Priesand served as rabbi of Monmouth Reform Temple in Tinton Falls, New Jersey, from 1981 until she retired in 2006.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Exhibits honor 50th anniversary of first woman rabbi, Sally Priesand