Women Who Would be Rabbis: A History of Women's Ordination

By Nadell, Pamela Susan
Beacon Press, 1999, Paperback, 320 pp., ISBN: 0807036498, $18.00

Women Who Would Be Rabbis is a 1998 National Jewish Book Award finalist.

Pamela S. Nadell mines a wealth of untapped sources to bring us the first complete story of the outstanding Jewish women who passionately defended their right to equal religious participation through rabbinical ordination. These personal stories - of women like Ray Frank, hailed as "the girl rabbi of the golden West" at the turn of the century, and Sally Priesand, ordained in 1972 as the first woman rabbi - are woven with fascinating history and accounts of the controversies that continue in many Jewish communities today.