Una donna può diventare rabbina? La "fondazione" di Regina Jonas tra genere e diritto

Can a woman become a rabbi ? Regina Jonas’ cultural ‘foundation’ between gender and law · This essay analyses the figure of Regina Jonas, the first woman rabbi, focusing on her halachic work « Kann die Frau das rabbinische Amt bekleiden ? » (« Can Women Serve as Rabbis ? ») written at the end of her career at the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums in Berlin. In this essay Jonas tried to demonstrate by means of Halachah ( Jewish Law) that time had come for women to serve as rabbis, asserting that biblical, Talmudic, and post-talmudic texts do not explicitly prohibit women to do it. Drawing on biblical and talmudic female figures (Deborah, Esther, Bruriah) who had ʻrabbinicʼ functions, Jonas operates a ʻcultural foundation’ of the figure of the woman rabbi, implying the creation of a new category and inspiring the most important – and opposite – feminist approaches to Jewish texts of the last century (Hauptman, Tal Ilan, Last Stone, Biale). This specific ʻfoundingʼ feature can be also linked to two important aspects in Jonas’ life : to her education at the Hochschule on the one hand and to her being part of a specifically German cultural constellation of women writers and essayists between the 20s and 30s on the other hand.