October 24: Ordaining Women

The faculty senate of the Jewish Theological Seminary of Conservative Judaism agreed to ordain women by a vote of 34-8 on this date in 1983, after years of debate and delay. In the spring of 1985, Amy Eilberg became the first women rabbi within the movement. Reform Judaism had ordained women since 1972, and the Reconstructionist movement since the founding of its seminary in 1968. See Jewdayo for June 3^rd.

“The years of struggle, of pain and of exclusion are at an end. Our movement faces a new beginning, a new era of equality and vitality, and a beginning of a healing process that will bring us all to a new kind of unity, in which we all may be included and to which all must contribute.” —Rabbi Amy Eilberg