Regina Jonas (1902-1944) was the first female rabbi. She was ordained in Berlin in 1935 and murdered in Auschwitz in 1944. This is a picture of a picture in the Jewish Museum in Berlin. To explain her call as a Rabbi, Regina Jonas said the following:
"If I am asked ... to confess, what drove me, as a woman, to become a rabbi ... (it was) belief in my calling and love of my fellow man. God has bestoyed on each one of us special skills and vocations without stopping to ask after our gender. This means each one of us, whether man or woman, has a duty to create and work in accordance with those God-given gifts."
Addendum: At the New Synagoge in Berlin (Oranienburgerstr.) I learned that Rabbi Jonas was the first and only female Rabbi in Germany. She was never given her own pulpit, but ended up filling in for male colleagues who were taken to concentration camps, until she herself was taken.
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