Regina Jonas Quotes

If I confess what motivated me, a woman, to become a rabbi, two things come to mind. My belief in God’s calling and my love of humans. God planted in our heart skills and a vocation without asking about gender. Therefore, it is the duty of men and women alike to work and create according to the skills given by God.

In spite of everything, in dealing with the theme at hand, one must, as is often repeated here, take both the changing times and the sensibilities of earlier times into account.

How beneficial it could be to have a woman in the rabbinic role to reclaim the lost meaning of tsni’ut by example and through teaching.

Just as both female doctors and teachers in time have become a necessity from a psychological standpoint, so has the female rabbi.

It is written that “one relies upon women,” so it is not foreign to Judaism if this “support” is broadened from the narrow, permitted range into a larger one of pasken, to which in principle there is no objection.

Their entire work as household “supervisor” is pasken. This is possible for in this area she knows something: no one else can represent her and therefore she had the chance to demonstrate in practice that she can summon the requisite understanding and seriousness for such matters.

Many decrees of our sages were withdrawn, as we earlier have seen; particularly concerning this kind of tsni’ut, they lose much of their severity.

But when it comes to a relaxing of the religious ban in the loosest sense of the word, in which the justification of restricted women from certain religious responsibilities and actions, were quite fitting and earn the highest respect – however, today, where woman is clearly present in public life and accomplishes practical tasks in cooperation with men, contact has become casual.

It is nothing special to see women, it is a matter of being accustomed, it does not excite the fantasies of a man.

I must fight for God.