Sally Priesand: The First American Woman Ordained as a Rabbi

The Girl Who Knew at Sixteen

When Sally Priesand was sixteen years old, growing up in Cleveland, Ohio, she decided she wanted to be a rabbi. It was 1962. No American woman had ever been ordained. The very idea struck most people — even most Jews — as somewhere between improbable and absurd.

She did it anyway.

Sally Priesand (born 1946) became the first American woman ordained as a rabbi on June 3, 1972, at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati. The moment was a watershed in Jewish history — the beginning of a transformation that would see thousands of women enter the rabbinate across multiple denominations and change the face of Jewish leadership forever.

Cleveland and the Call

Priesand was born on June 27, 1946, in Cleveland, Ohio, to a Reform Jewish family. Her father, Irving, was an engineer. Her mother, Rose, was active in their synagogue’s sisterhood. Sally grew up in a household where Jewish life was central and where women’s participation in public life was encouraged.

At sixteen, she announced her intention to become a rabbi. Her parents were supportive. Her rabbi, who might have been expected to discourage her, instead wrote a letter of recommendation to Hebrew Union College (HUC), the seminary of the Reform movement.

Seminary and Solitude

Priesand entered HUC in 1964, joining a class of all male students. The faculty’s response was mixed — some were supportive, others skeptical. No formal policy prohibited women from enrollment, but no woman had ever completed the full rabbinical program.

She was not the first woman to study at HUC — others had enrolled but did not complete the ordination requirements. Priesand was determined to finish. She studied Talmud, Bible, Hebrew, homiletics, and pastoral care alongside her male classmates, earning the same degree through the same program.

The experience was often isolating. She was the only woman in most of her classes. Some classmates were welcoming; others were uncomfortable. She navigated the solitude with quiet determination, refusing to make herself a spectacle or a cause. “I didn’t want to be a feminist symbol,” she later said. “I just wanted to be a rabbi.”

Ordination Day

On June 3, 1972, Sally Priesand stood on the bimah at the Plum Street Temple in Cincinnati and was ordained as a rabbi. The ceremony was attended by national media. Reporters and photographers crowded the sanctuary. The moment made national news.

Dr. Alfred Gottschalk, president of HUC, placed his hands on her head and conferred the title that no American woman had held before: Rabbi.

“I felt a deep sense of gratitude,” Priesand recalled. “Gratitude that I had been given this opportunity. And responsibility — because I knew that what I did would affect the possibilities for every woman who came after me.”

A Quiet Ministry

After ordination, Priesand served as assistant rabbi at the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York City, then held a series of positions at congregations that were willing to hire a woman rabbi — which, in the 1970s, was not every congregation.

In 1981, she became the rabbi of Monmouth Reform Temple in Tinton Falls, New Jersey, where she served for over twenty-five years. Her rabbinate was characterized not by drama or activism but by steady, devoted pastoral work: teaching, counseling, officiating at weddings and funerals, visiting the sick, and building community.

She deliberately avoided becoming a professional feminist figurehead. She wanted to prove, through her daily work, that a woman could be a rabbi in the most ordinary, essential sense — not as a novelty but as a spiritual leader, teacher, and guide.

The Doors That Opened

Priesand’s ordination set off a chain reaction:

• 1974: The Reconstructionist Rabbinical College ordained its first woman, Sandy Eisenberg Sasso
• 1985: The Jewish Theological Seminary (Conservative) ordained Amy Eilberg as its first woman rabbi
• 2009: Sara Hurwitz became the first Orthodox woman to receive a form of ordination (maharat)

Today, women make up approximately half of rabbinical students in Reform and Reconstructionist seminaries and a growing percentage in Conservative programs. There are over 1,500 women rabbis serving worldwide. Each of them walks through a door that Sally Priesand opened.

Regina Jonas and Historical Truth

In 1991, when documents revealed that Regina Jonas had been ordained in Germany in 1935 — decades before Priesand — Priesand responded with characteristic grace. Rather than defending her claim to primacy, she honored Jonas’s memory and helped publicize her story. “I am delighted that she has been found,” Priesand said. “Her story deserves to be told.”

Legacy

Sally Priesand retired from the pulpit in 2006 but remained active in Jewish life. She has been honored with numerous awards and honorary degrees. The Priesand-Silverman Collection at HUC preserves documents from her career.

Her legacy is not one of speeches and manifestos but of a life lived in service. She proved that a woman could be a rabbi — not theoretically, not symbolically, but practically, daily, devotedly. She taught Torah, comforted the grieving, celebrated with the joyful, and showed that the rabbinate was not diminished by her presence but enriched by it. The thousands of women rabbis who have followed her have confirmed what she demonstrated first: that leadership has no gender, and that the Jewish tradition is large enough to include every voice willing to serve.