Breaking the
Stained Glass Ceiling
The Journey of Women’s Leadership at
B’nai Jeshurun
The story of women’s leadership at BJ reflects broader transformations in Jewish life and the congregation’s willingness to challenge inherited boundaries. From the early organizing power of the Sisterhood to the emergence of women as rabbis and spiritual leaders, BJ has expanded who holds authority, whose voices are heard, and how leadership is understood. These changes reshaped the congregation itself and help model a more inclusive vision of Jewish community.
A Foundation for Women’s Leadership
Justice Justine Wise Polier, the first woman to serve as a justice in New York and the daughter of Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, with Eleanor Roosevelt at an annual Hanukkah luncheon.
Rabbi Stephen S. Wise founded the Sisterhood in 1894 as a reflection of his broader commitment to democratizing Jewish religious life and including voices traditionally kept at the margins of synagogue leadership. Rabbi Wise recognized women as essential partners in shaping a vibrant Jewish community in principle and practice. His daughter, Justice Justine Wise Polier, the first woman to serve as a justice in New York, would later return to B’nai Jeshurun as the keynote speaker at the Sisterhood’s Jubilee celebration in 1944.
The Sisterhood played a central role in stabilizing and sustaining B’nai Jeshurun through fundraising, stewardship of synagogue resources, and hands-on volunteer labor. Its members supported Jewish education by funding materials, organizing lectures and study groups, and embedding learning as a core pillar of synagogue life, particularly for women and families. The Sisterhood also anchored the congregation’s culture of hesed, acts of lovingkindness, by visiting the sick, supporting mourners, assisting families in need, and ensuring communal care in moments of vulnerability. Beyond the synagogue, the Sisterhood engaged in charitable and social action efforts addressing poverty, labor conditions, refugees, and broader civic concerns, linking Jewish values to public responsibility.
Perhaps most enduringly, the Sisterhood served as a foundation for women’s leadership at B’nai Jeshurun. In 1927, the congregation passed an amendment permitting women to serve on the Board of Trustees. This marked a significant milestone not only in BJ’s history, but also in the history of the Conservative movement. Mrs. Dora L. Morrison and Mrs. Louis Schlecter* became the first women to ever serve on the Board of Trustees of a Conservative synagogue.
Through committee work, public speaking, and program development, women emerged as influential leaders who helped reshape synagogue governance and Jewish communal life more broadly. In this sense, the Sisterhood anticipated later developments in attitudes toward women in leadership roles in American Jewish life.
*Despite our best efforts, we were unable to identify Mrs. Louis Schlecter by her given name. This absence reflects the historical conventions of the time, when women were often recorded only in relation to their husbands—a reminder of how far communal recognition has evolved.
Redefining the Rabbinate
Rabbi Felicia Sol
For thousands of years, women were prohibited from entering the rabbinate. Classical rabbinic texts assume communal authority—serving as judges, legal decisors, and public teachers—to be exclusively the domain of men. These restrictions were often grounded as much in prevailing social structures as in law itself, reflecting ancient assumptions about gender roles rather than clear biblical bans on women’s learning or spiritual authority. In spite of this, it is important to note that throughout Jewish history women functioned as scholars, teachers, and spiritual leaders in informal or localized ways. However, the professional rabbinic role as an ordained, salaried, public authority remained closed to women well into the modern era.
In 1930, Regina Jonas, a dedicated Jewish scholar and leader, wrote a groundbreaking thesis. In it, she argued that modern rabbinic ordination was predicated on learning and communal trust—not gender. Since communities possess the authority to appoint leaders they deem qualified, a woman accepted by her community could legitimately serve as its rabbi. In 1935, the same year that Hitler passed the Nuremberg Laws, Regina Jonas was privately ordained in Berlin. Her groundbreaking achievement challenged centuries of male-only rabbinic authority, yet her work went largely unrecognized during her lifetime and was cut short by the Holocaust. She was murdered in Auschwitz in 1944.
In 1972, Sally Priesand became the first woman ordained by a major rabbinical seminary, through the Reform movement’s Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, followed by Sandy Eisenberg Sasso in 1974 within the Reconstructionist movement. In 1985, Amy Eilberg became the first woman ordained by the Jewish Theological Seminary, marking a transformative moment within Conservative Judaism and signaling broader change across American Jewish life.
In Orthodox Judaism, the formal ordination of women as rabbis remains a subject of significant debate and is not recognized by most mainstream Orthodox institutions. Yeshivat Maharat, founded in 2009, became the first institution to ordain women as Orthodox rabbis. The Orthodox rabbinic union, the Rabbinical Council of America, barred its members from ordaining women in 2013 and four years later prohibited its synagogues from hiring female clergy. As of 2026, over 100 women have been ordained through Yeshivat Maharat.
At B’nai Jeshurun, this history reached a milestone with the arrival of Rabbi Felicia Sol in 2001, the first woman rabbi in the congregation’s nearly two-century history. Appointed Senior Rabbi in 2021 and named Rosh Kehillah beginning in July 2026, her leadership stands within a lineage stretching from Regina Jonas’s solitary ordination to a rabbinate transformed by women’s perseverance and vision.