The Editor’s Turn

CHAIR Marlene Post EXECUTIVE EDITOR Lisa Hostein DEPUTY EDITOR Libby Barnea SENIOR EDITOR Leah Finkelshteyn DIGITAL EDITOR Talia Liben Yarmush EDITOR EMERITUS Alan M. Tigay DESIGN/PRODUCTION Smash Studio, Inc.

Roselyn Bell Ruth G. Cole Nancy Falchuk Gloria Goldreich Blu Greenberg Dara Horn

Ruth B Hurwitz Carmela Kalmanson Francine Klagsbrun Anne Lapidus Lerner Curt Leviant Joy Levitt

Bonnie Lipton Marcie Natan Nessa Rapoport Sima Schuster Susan S. Smirnoff Barbara Topol

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Sacred Paths

Rabbis who surprise and inspire | By Lisa Hostein

It is no longer news when a woman is appointed the rabbi of a non-Orthodox synagogue. Which shows how far we’ve come in the past 50 years since Rabbi Sally Priesand became the first woman in history to be ordained by a rabbinical seminary. This issue of the magazine is a celebration of that milestone and of the estimated 1,500 women worldwide who have chosen that sacred path since Priesand’s ordination on June 3, 1972.

The timing of this special issue is intentional. March is Women’s History Month and the season when we celebrate Purim (beginning the evening of March 16) and prepare for Passover (the first seder is April 15). Both holidays feature strong female figures who asserted their leadership and helped shape the course of Jewish history. We also celebrate, around Purim, the founding of Hadassah, an organization that since its inception 110 years ago has been an exemplar of female Jewish leadership and action.

Had history unfolded differently, women, including some of Hadassah’s early leaders, would have broken through the sanctuary’s glass ceiling decades earlier, Rabbi Andrea Weiss reminds us in “The Would-Be Rabbis” (page 12), which begins our special coverage.

Our feature package, beginning on page 14, includes stories that explore multiple facets of women in the rabbinate and introduce clergy in the field who will surprise and inspire you. We also share exclusive essays by the “Four Firsts,” the pioneers who became the first women to receive ordination in their respective denominations (page 18).

We are thrilled to have brought these four women—Rabbis Sally Priesand, Sandy Eisenberg Sasso, Amy Eilberg and Sara Hurwitz— together for an exciting virtual event in our March Hadassah Magazine Discussion. If you missed the live Zoom event on March 10, look for a recording of it on hadassahmagazine. org or on hadassah.org.

These women are also among those featured in a new art exhibit that is reviewed in “A Showcase of Rabbinic Achievement” (page 48). Who knows, they may even be found among the clues in our crossword puzzle on “Rabbinic Pioneers” (page 47). And in the Q&A on page 64, find the reflections of Blu Greenberg, one of the early Orthodox leaders of the Jewish feminist movement.

Beyond the rabbinate, sometimes Jewish women lead in unconventional ways, as we see in Danielle Berrin’s “Can Psychedelics Make You Whole?” (page 30), a deep dive into the use of psychedelic drugs to treat trauma.

For Passover, Adeena Sussman leads us out of the holiday dessert desert “Toward a Grain-Free Flour Pantry” (page 44) and we share a new crop of Haggadot (page 52).

As you celebrate the spring holidays, take the time to savor this issue—and all that women have achieved since the early days of Jewish feminism. We shouldn’t take those triumphs for granted.