14
Friday, March 15, 1985
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
t.
S.
BI
What's life like
for the 20 women
in the Conservative
movement's first co-ed
rabbinical class?
BY PAMELA MENDELS
Special To The Jewish News
New York — A single sentence in the 1984
catalogue for the Jewish Theological Seminary of
America bears witness to the revolution that has
occurred in the nation's training ground for the
Conservative clergy. "Candidacy for admission to
the Rabbinical School," it reads, "is open to any
Jew."
That means female as well as male.
Admission of rabbinical candidates of both sexes
to the Seminary followed almost a decade of debate
that pitted proponents of women's equality against
traditional thinkers, among them Talmudic scholars
who argued that female ordination violated Jewish
Law. The event that ushered in a new era for the
institution — and the Jewish women who longed
to join the Conservative clergy — came in October,
1983, when the seminary faculty voted 34-to-8 to
allow the rabbinical school to go co-ed.
Last fall, a bare year after the faculty vote, 20
women students entered the seminary in Manhat-
tan's Morningside Heights, forming a class of rab-
binical candidates about equally divided between
Reading the Torah during morning prayers
(left to right), Gary Karlin, Carolyn Braun,
Shelly Melzer and Marion Shulevitz
follow the lead of the pointer.