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.
In 1927, the congregation passed an amendment permitting women to serve on the Board of Trustees. Mrs. Dora L. Morrison and Mrs. Louis Schlecter became the first women to ever serve on the Board of Trustees of a Conservative synagogue.
A Historic First · 1927
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. 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
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.
1935 Regina Jonas
In 1930, Regina Jonas wrote a groundbreaking thesis arguing that modern rabbinic ordination was predicated on learning and communal trust—not gender. In 1935, the same year Hitler passed the Nuremberg Laws, she was privately ordained in Berlin. She was murdered in Auschwitz in 1944.
1972 Sally Priesand
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.
1985 Amy Eilberg
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.
2009 Yeshivat Maharat
Yeshivat Maharat became the first institution to ordain women as Orthodox rabbis. As of 2026, over 100 women have been ordained through this institution.
B'nai Jeshurun · 2001
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.
