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May 21, 1999/6 Sivan 5759, Vol. 51, No.34
Female rabbis, cantors meet in first European conference
TOBY AXELROD
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
BERLIN - It was a rare scene: a student rabbi from Belarus and a cantor from California stood on the same bimah (synagogue platform), both thousands of miles from home, and both women. But it happened last week in Berlin, at the first-ever European conference of female rabbis, cantors and Jewish educators.
The conference, called Bet Debora Berlin, featured presentations by some 25 European women and one American. It was designed as a forum to air new ideas and address current problems regarding women in Judaism.
Sponsored by a variety of groups - including the Berlin Jewish Community; the Jewish College of Berlin; the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation; Berlin's City Department for Jobs, Education and Women; and the City Ministry of Family, Seniors, Women and Youth - the event drew some 200 participants from across Europe.
Most discussions, workshops and services took place in the Jewish Community Center of Berlin, in a building that occupies the same space where the first female rabbi delivered a sermon. Rabbi Regina Jonas, ordained in 1935, died in Auschwitz in 1944, only a few months before the camp was liberated.
Jonas' spirit was invoked by several opening speakers, including Rabbi Sybil Sheridan of the Leo Baeck College in London. "We are her future," she told the crowd May 13. "May we prove ourselves worthy of the aspirations that she did not live to fulfill."
By the end of the conference on May 16, that goal seemed to have been met - despite the fact that Jonas might have felt uncomfortable here as a more observant Jew.
Some observant guests felt shut out by the lack of strictly kosher food and meager opportunity for traditional prayer. Otherwise, praise for the conference was overwhelming.
"This was so very positive, especially for those of us who live in the far corners of the Jewish world," said Nelly Kogan, who leads the progressive congregation Simcha in Minsk.
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