Rabbi Regina Jonas

Ometz Lev Hero: Rabbi Regina Jonas

Early Life

Regina Jonas was born on August 3, 1902 in Berlin, Germany. The family was Orthodox and came from Eastern Europe. Her father, Wolf, died in 1913. He left his widow, Sarah, and two children penniless. The family moved to a new apartment. The small Orthodox synagogue next door changed Regina’s life. She was attracted to the synagogue and the rabbi, Dr. Max Weil, who was one of the first in Germany to conduct bat mitzvah ceremonies. The rabbi took Regina under his wing. He was the one who paved the way for her studies, first in a Jewish school and afterward in the Hochschule (high school). In 1930 she was certified as a teacher and began to support herself and her mother as a Judaic studies teacher.

Rabbi Jonas

Jonas never married and lived with her mother her whole life. She lived as an Orthodox Jew, yet she studied at the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums, the College for the Science of Judaism, which was considered liberal. She believed there was no contradiction between halakhah (Jewish religious law) and her desire to serve in the rabbinate. After completing her teaching certification she continued to study. She wrote a paper discussing the question “Can a woman be a rabbi?” Her answer was “Yes.” Her teachers praised her dissertation, but none of them agreed to ordain her. In 1935, at the request of the Union of Liberal Rabbis in Germany, Regina Jonas was ordained by Max Dienemann, a liberal rabbi. She was the first female rabbi. After her ordination Rabbi Leo Baeck sent her a letter of congratulation, and in 1942 he added his signature to her ordination certificate. She was unable to find a congregation to hire her as a rabbi. She served only in old age homes and hospitals. After Kristallnacht (“The Night of Broken Glass”) in November 1938, Regina Jonas preached in various synagogues in Berlin, often replacing rabbis who were in concentration camps or had escaped Germany.

Wa iting for th e Tra ins

In 1942 Rabbi Jonas was sent to Theresienstadt, a Nazi concentration camp. Even though many in Berlin had failed to accept her as a rabbi, there she worked as a rabbi. She worked as a counselor and a teacher. Dr. Viktor Frankl, a famous psychiatrist, had a team that worked in Theresienstadt to protect the mental health of those in the camp. Both Rabbi Regina Jonas and Rabbi Leo Baeck were on his team. She showed Ometz Lev and did important work. In 1944 she and her mother were sent to Auschwitz. They died there.

Forgott en an d Then Celebrat ed

Somehow, Rabbi Jonas was forgotten until 1991. No one had told her story or included her in the telling of the story of the Holocaust. People thought that Rabbi Sally Priesand, who was ordained in 1972 by the Hebrew Union College, was the first woman rabbi. In 1991 East and West Germany united and Jews got access to the files of the Hochschule. There one of the researchers found a file with papers by and a photograph of Rabbi Regina Jonas. Suddenly her story was recovered.

Ometz Lev Text: Eyewitness Testimony

A Holocaust survivor said this about Rabbi Jonas:

In Berlin there lived at this time in the 1930s the first woman rabbi, Fraulein Rabbiner Regina Jonas. She watched carefully that one said “Fraulein Rabbiner,” because a “frau rabbiner” was the wife of a rabbi. She came into the hospital and old age home very often, and there she wanted to function as a rabbi. Generally, this worked in the old age home and in the hospital. When she came into the synagogue wearing a purple robe—not black—she sat herself downstairs next to the men on the rabbi’s seat. She wanted to give her lecture or sermon during the prayers, but always when this doctor was there and prayed with the people, he said to her, “You can do what you want, but for the prayers you go upstairs to the women, and afterwards you can come downstairs.”

1. How do you think it felt for Rabbi Jonas not to get respect as a rabbi? 2. How did she demonstrate ometz lev?