Note: In actuality, the first female American rabbi was ordained in 1972
(Sally Priesand). But I decided to make Yentl the first in this story, which has Yentl's ordination set in 1930 when she would be 74. If you want to harmonize it with actual history, you can say she was the first and it was just forgotten about. Also, Judith Kaplan was a real person who was indeed the first person to publicly celebrate a Bat Mitzvah, which occurred in 1922, and the Jewish Reform movement's Central Conference of American Rabbis did state in 1922 that "...woman cannot justly be denied the privilege of ordination." Also, Hebrew Union College is a real Reform Jewish seminary, although it is called Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion now.
Rabbi Yentl
Yentl lived a long and interesting life after her arrival in America. She had held many interesting jobs related to her love of Judaism - teaching in a Jewish day school, learning Hebrew and translating Jewish texts from Hebrew to English, and writing about Judaism for various magazines. That was on top of volunteering with Hadassah, of course. And to live to see the State of Israel proclaimed in 1948! Truly, dayenu, it would have been enough. And yet…and yet, she still felt somehow as if there was something missing.
Certainly it wasn't that she hadn't done anything with her life apart from Judaism. She had worked as a nurse for years, but as important and fulfilling as it was to save lives, it just didn't interest her like her work concerning Judaism did. She was grateful for her many friends and her years with her beloved husband Daniel, of blessed memory. But still there seemed to be something in regard to her and Judaism that was unfinished.
When she first heard of Judith Kaplan having a Bat Mitzvah in 1922, she thought surely this must be it. A year later she stood up in front of her astonished Manhattan congregation, which had never seen anything like this before, and read that week's Torah portion, followed by giving a d'var Torah regarding it, and leading the prayer services. "And on the Sabbath no less!", as the congregants whispered. She was terribly proud, but still, still there was something missing.
As she attended services each week after that, she grew more and more certain of what it was, though she tried her hardest to doubt herself. After all, was not the very idea absurd? Who had ever heard of a female rabbi? Yet she had to admit in the end it was what she dreamed of, and in some ways what she had been preparing for her whole life. She was fluent in speaking, reading, and writing Hebrew. Her work as a nurse had given her more compassion and showed her how to serve people, and in her teaching in the Jewish day school she had learned not only how to be more confident in front of a crowd, but how to hold that crowd's attention during a long lecture. And of course her writing about Judaism could easily be applied to sermons.
1922 was not only the year of Judith Kaplan's Bat Mitzvah, but the year the Jewish Reform movement's Central Conference of American Rabbis stated , "...woman cannot justly be denied the privilege of ordination." Armed with this statement, she approached the Reform seminary known as Hebrew Union College, and made her case for admission. The admissions personnel of that school had little idea what to make of a woman who had studied at a yeshiva, having never heard of such a thing, but they had to admit her old transcripts were impressive, as was her record of work with the Jewish community since, and her skills in Hebrew. Eventually they decided to admit her, though it was mostly out of a mixture of pity and respect for a dear sweet little old lady who would soon lose her silly whim and drop out, as they mistakenly believed her to be.
Which is not to say it was easy for Yentl. Her Hebrew, truth be told, was more than a bit rusty, as was her Talmud. After all, it had been decades since she had been in the yeshiva, and perhaps her mind was not quite as sharp as it had been in her youth. But her determination was still just what it had been – that is, considerable. And so, she persisted through her studies, and in 1930 she was ordained as a rabbi. She listened carefully to all the speeches – though not all of her fellow students were so attentive – and cried tears of joy as the tallit was placed across her shoulders. If she had died at that moment, dayenu, it would have been enough.
In fact, however, she lived for two more decades, during which she served as a rabbi for no less than four temples, and advanced from assistant rabbi to senior rabbi at the last of them, Beth El. In addition to the usual rabbinical duties such as leading services, officiating at Bat and Bar Mitzvahs, weddings, and funerals, and so on, she began a food pantry at the temple, and a free coat closet. It was hard for some to accept her at first, but eventually they all grew used to "The Lady Rabbi", as she was often called. Some were pleased to have a woman rabbi on the assumption that she would not lecture the congregation, but would put herself on a perfectly level plane with them, but they soon found that they had been sorely mistaken on that score – for after all, as she reminded them, had she not gone to the same rabbinical school as hundreds of men? Why should authority be considered suitable for them, but selfish for her? "I wouldn't have bothered going to rabbinical school just to be called Miss," as she put it. If others of any gender wanted to be considered equals with their congregation, with no authority over them, that was their own business, but not hers.
Her life was endlessly busier than that of her friends of the same age, and in the end she died with a half-written sermon in front of her – but she died happy.