Regina Jonas

Regina Jonas (German: Regine Jonas; 3 August 1902 – 12 October/12 December 1944) was a Berlin-born Reform rabbi.

Jonas graduated in 1930, her diploma only naming her as an "Academic Teacher of Religion".

Jonas then applied to Rabbi Leo Baeck, spiritual leader of German Jewry, who had taught her at the seminary.

Baeck, while acknowledging Jonas as a "thinking and agile preacher", refused to make her title official, because the ordination of a female rabbi would have caused massive intra-Jewish communal problems with the Orthodox rabbinate in Germany.

For nearly five years, Jonas taught religious studies in a series of both public and Jewish schools, and also performed a series of 'unofficial' sermons.

Her lectures on religious and historical topics for various Jewish institutions often included questions about the importance of women in Judaism.

This eventually caught the attention of the liberal Rabbi Max Dienemann, who was the head of the Liberal Rabbis' Association in Offenbach am Main, who decided to test Jonas on behalf of the association.

In 1935, she became the first woman to be ordained as a rabbi.

Jonas was murdered in the Holocaust.

Regina Jonas was born into a "strictly religious" household in the Berlin Scheunenviertel, the second child of Wolf Jonas and Sara Hess.

Wolf, who was probably Regina's first teacher, died when she was 13.

Like many women at that time, she intended to make a career as a teacher.

After graduating from the local Höhere Mädchenschule, she became disillusioned with the idea of becoming a teacher.

Instead, she enrolled at the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums (Higher Institute for Jewish Studies), in the Academy for the Science of Judaism, and took seminary courses for liberal rabbis and educators for 12 semesters.

While not the only woman attending the university, Regina sent ripples through the institution with her stated goal of becoming a rabbi.

To this end, Jonas wrote a thesis that would have been an ordination requirement.

Her topic was "Can a Woman Be a Rabbi According to Halachic Sources?"

Her conclusion, based on Biblical, Talmudic, and rabbinical sources, was that she should be ordained.

The Talmud professor responsible for ordinations, Eduard Baneth, accepted Jonas' thesis; however, his sudden death squashed any hope Jonas may have had in receiving an official ordination.

Despite protest from both inside and outside the Liberal Rabbis' Association, on 27 December 1935, Regina Jonas received her semicha and was ordained.

Despite her ordination, Berlin's Jewish community was not welcoming.

Archived files suggest she applied for employment at Berlin's New Synagogue, but was turned away.

With Berlin's pulpits closed to her, Jonas sought work elsewhere.

She found support in the Women's International Zionist Organization, which enabled her to work as a chaplain in various Jewish social institutions.

In 1938, Jonas wrote a letter to Martin Buber, an Austrian Jewish philosopher, where she expressed some interest in emigrating to Palestine to possibly pursue potential rabbinical opportunities there.

Because of Nazi persecution, many rabbis emigrated and many small communities were without rabbinical support.

Jonas, possibly out of consideration for her elderly mother, stayed in Nazi Germany.

The Reich Association of Jews in Germany allowed Jonas to travel to Prussia to continue her preaching; however, the Jewish situation under the Nazi regime quickly degraded.

Even if there had been a synagogue willing to host her, the duress of Nazi persecution made it impossible for Jonas to hold services in a proper house of worship.

Despite this, she continued her rabbinical work, as well as teaching and holding impromptu services.

On 4 November 1942, Regina Jonas had to fill out a declaration form that listed her property, including her books.

Two days later, all her property was confiscated "for the benefit of the German Reich."

The next day, the Gestapo arrested her and she was deported to Theresienstadt.

While interned, she continued her work as a rabbi, and Viktor Frankl, who later became a renowned psychologist, asked for her help in building a crisis intervention service to prevent suicide attempts in the camp.

Her particular job was to meet the trains at the station and screen disoriented newcomers arriving at the increasingly overcrowded ghetto with a questionnaire on the topic of suicide, designed by Frankl.

Regina Jonas worked in the Theresienstadt camp for two years.

Records of some 23 sermons written by Jonas survive, including What Is Power Nowadays - Jewish Religion, the Power Source for Our Ego Ethics and Religion.

During her two-year internment, Jonas was also a member of a group that organized concerts, lectures and other performances to distract others from events around them.

Upon passing the June 1944 inspection, a number of summer months would pass at relative ease, until almost all of the Jewish Council, including Jonas, were then deported amongst the majority of the town, to Auschwitz in mid-October 1944, where she was murdered either less than a day or two months later.

She was 42 years old.