Exactly 90 years ago, during the dark days of Nazi rule over Europe’s Jews, a unique light was kindled. On Hanukkah of 1935, for the first time in Jewish history, a woman was ordained as a rabbi: Regina Jonas.

Ordained in Germany and later murdered in the Holocaust, she was also the first woman in Jewish history to make a systematic halachic argument for gender equality in Judaism, including the ordination of women as rabbis.

Born in 1902, Jonas lived with her mother in a poor Berlin neighborhood and never married. From a young age, she taught at a local Jewish school. She later studied at the Higher Institute for Jewish Studies in Berlin, completing her degree in 1930. But she wanted more, seeking rabbinic ordination at a time when such a notion was almost unthinkable. In a measured and traditional tone, Jonas drew on rabbinic sources to demonstrate that women could indeed be ordained.

Read more at: https://www.ynetnews.com/jewish-world/article/hjcwuccq11x