How many times can you fit the word “first” into a sentence?
Rabbi Einat Ramon, the first Israeli woman to be ordained as a rabbi, Israel’s first Conservative female rabbi (naturally) and the creator of Israel’s first accredited program for hospital chaplaincy, has become the first woman to head an Israeli seminary.
Ramon — a formerrabbi at Berkeley Hillel and an educator at Berkeley’s Lehrhaus Judaica and JCC — was tapped earlier this month to head the Conservative movement’s Schechter Rabbinical School in Jerusalem.
Along with her husband, Reform Rabbi Arik Ascherman, Ramon moved back to her native Israel in 1994. Ascherman has since been active in Rabbis for Human Rights, while Ramon has been a spokesperson for Masorti, Israel’s Conservative movement, and an advocate for egalitarianism and women’s rights concerning issues such as conversion and liberal Jewish services at the Western Wall. She had been interim dean of the seminary since June of last year.
Ramon, 47, rubbed shoulders with professor Arnold Eisen, the chancellor-elect of New York’s Jewish Theological Seminary, when she earned a Ph.D. in religious studies there. Eisen was delighted his former pupil is now a trans-Atlantic colleague.
“Einat did her Ph.D. under my supervision a number of years ago, and I still remember vividly the qualities of mind and character that informed her conversation and work,” he said.
It’s been a long road for the woman who was ordained in 1989 and revealed to the Jewish Bulletin (now j.) that “I didn’t think I was ever going to practice in Israel.”
And it hasn’t always been easy. During a visit back to the Bay Area in 2000, she said being a pioneer sometimes isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
“You always read about pioneers — about their heroic points. You never read about their frustration and pain and ‘Why am I banging my head against the wall?'”
As a native-born Israeli with strong ties to the Masorti movement, Ramon hopes to bridge barriers and banish Masorti’s longstanding reputation as an Anglo-dominated faction.
“The problem has been one of image and sociology,” Ramon told Israel’s Ha’aretz newspaper. “If you are a sabra, you have a problem getting involved with a predominantly North American community because you feel excluded. The second problem is that the American Jewish culture that brought the Conservative movement and Schechter [to Israel] is not versed in the local Jewish culture here, such as Hebrew literature, poetry, folk songs and folk traditions.”