Schools are intended to be laboratories of opportunity. We pursue educations so that we can follow our dreams, have interesting careers, open our minds to new ideas, make friends, and try new things. But imagine if this was not the case.
The right to vote is at the very foundation of democracy. Casting a vote is not only lifting your voice; it is also a claim to a stake in the social and political life of the nation. Today, we recognize that voting is a right to which all Americans have access. It is not a privilege.
This was not always the case: Since America’s founding, the right to vote has expanded from white, male property owners in the original 13 states to all white men, to all men, to all women, to Native Americans and others. There are many more watershed moments in the history of voting rights, but it is important to take a moment and reflect on the fact that for the first seven years of its existence, the women of the National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods could not vote. They could be powerful advocates on a broad range of social justice topics, but they themselves could not fully participate in our political process.
When I was ordained in 1985, women rabbis were still rather rare. I was the first woman rabbi in every congregation I served in the 1980s, and in most cases I was the first and only woman rabbi in that city. I looked to the women who preceded me as my role models and gave them credit for opening the doors to full equality in congregational life through which I was honored to enter. Now that I am working with Women of Reform Judaism (WRJ), the affiliate of lay-women of the Reform Movement, I realize that much of that credit was misplaced. To be sure, the women who were ordained in the 70s crossed that rabbinic threshold with a great deal of difficulty and, in doing so, they made it easier for me to succeed. But long before there were women rabbis, there were women in congregational life who unlocked the doors and opened them just wide enough for us to walk through.
As you may have seen in the news, there has been recent activity regarding plans to provide space at the Kotel (Western Wall) where non-Orthodox Jews can worship according to their own customs. The Reform Movement, including WRJ, has supported the Sharansky...