The Introduction of Women’s Right to Vote in Hamburg’s Jewish Congregation

Ina Lorenz

Source Description

This rabbinical opinion by Rabbi Moses Jehuda Hoffmann on the question of women’s right to vote was written in May 1923 at the request of Hamburg’s German-Israelite Synagogue Association [Deutsch-Israelitischer Synagogenverband]. Rabbinical opinions are written in order to decide arguments regarding matters of religious law. Their structure is based on a series of arguments, and in their reasoning they discuss the process of deduction. The textual basis this process requires consists of the Torah, the Talmud, and commentary written by recognized Jewish authorities. Statements taken from the Torah naturally carry the most authenticity and authority. Hoffmann’s opinion applied this method by referring to Moses Maimonides.
  • Ina Lorenz

Women’s right to vote in Hamburg’s Jewish congregation


The elec­tions for the Ger­man Na­tional As­sem­bly of 1919 gave women the right to vote and stand for elec­tion. Ham­burg’s Jew­ish con­gre­ga­tion fol­lowed this new pol­icy in­so­far as it changed its by-​laws in 1919 to the ef­fect that women were now at least granted the right to vote in the elec­tion of its Coun­cil of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives [Repräsentanten-​Kollegium]. The German-​Israelite Con­gre­ga­tion (DIG, Deutsch-​Israelitische Gemeinde) [Deutsch-​Israelitische Gemeinde] in­tended to de­cide the ques­tion of women’s right to stand for elec­tion as part of a fun­da­men­tal re­form of its by-​laws. In order to ac­com­mo­date the con­sid­er­able reser­va­tions held es­pe­cially by Or­tho­dox Jews, they agreed to re­quest rab­bini­cal opin­ions on the ques­tion of how re­li­gious law judged the ques­tion of women’s right to vote. A first re­quest for an opin­ion was made in 1921 to the Chief Rabbi of the local Syn­a­gogue As­so­ci­a­tion, Dr. Samuel Spitzer. Chief Rabbi Spitzer replied on Au­gust 26, 1921 that he was as­ton­ished by the in­quiry since he had pre­vi­ously con­cluded that “the grant­ing of the right to vote or stand for elec­tion to women is pro­hib­ited by re­li­gious law” StAHH JG 301 a, Let­ter by Chief Rabbi Spitzer to the board of the German-​Israelite Con­gre­ga­tion in Ham­burg dated 26.8.1921; quoted in: Ina Lorenz, Die Juden in Ham­burg zur Zeit der Weimarer Re­pub­lik. Eine Doku­men­ta­tion, vol. 2, Ham­burg 1987, p. 844. while de­liv­er­ing a ha­lakhic dis­cus­sion from the pul­pit. An­other re­quest was sent to the highly re­garded rec­tor of Berlin’s rab­bini­cal sem­i­nary, Dr. David Zwi Hoff­mann. In his reply dated June 26, 1921, Hoff­mann re­ferred the board to his opin­ion pub­lished in 1919 (Jeschurin VI 1919, pp. 262-266). As was to be ex­pected, the an­swers were all neg­a­tive. Al­tona’s Chief Rabbi, Dr. Meir Lerner (1857-1930), too, voted in the neg­a­tive in 1922.

In early sum­mer of 1923 the ques­tion of women’s el­i­gi­bil­ity to stand for elec­tion was again de­bated as part of a fun­da­men­tal re­form of the con­gre­ga­tion’s by-​laws. This time it was the board of the Syn­a­gogue As­so­ci­a­tion who sought a rab­bini­cal opin­ion. David Hoff­mann, who had pre­vi­ously is­sued an opin­ion, had died in the mean­time. His son, Wrocław rabbi Dr. Moses Je­huda Hoff­mann, replied on May 24, 1923 with a neg­a­tive opin­ion. It com­bined a sum­mary of his fa­ther’s 1919 opin­ion with his own po­si­tion, which seemed to be of a more prag­matic na­ture, how­ever. In the fall of 1924, an at­tempt to change the con­gre­ga­tion’s by-​laws in favor of women’s right to stand for elec­tion failed. The rea­sons were the same as be­fore. Con­flict with the Or­tho­dox was to be avoided. It was hoped, how­ever, that in the fol­low­ing years the Or­tho­dox would come around to the po­si­tion that women should be given the right to run for of­fice.

The rabbinical opinion


Rab­bini­cal opin­ions are dif­fi­cult to un­der­stand for non-​Jewish read­ers; the present ex­am­ple is in­cluded here in order to show how im­por­tant and in­flu­en­tial the Or­tho­dox in­ter­pre­ta­tion of re­li­gious law could be for Jew­ish con­gre­ga­tional life. The au­thor of this opin­ion, Moses Je­huda Hoff­mann, served as rabbi in Wrocław from 1921 until 1938. He was a coun­cil mem­ber of the Pruss­ian State As­so­ci­a­tion of Jew­ish con­gre­ga­tions [Preußischer Lan­desver­band jüdischer Gemein­den], the As­so­ci­a­tion of Tra­di­tional, Legal-​Literalist Rab­bis of Ger­many [Vere­ini­gung der traditionell-​gesetzestreuen Rab­biner Deutsch­lands], and Agu­das Jis­roel. De­ported to the Buchen­wald camp in 1938, he man­aged to em­i­grate to Pales­tine in 1939. In his opin­ion, Rabbi Hoff­mann refers to a de­ci­sion by Moses Mai­monides (Hil­chot Mĕlachim 1,5) and to the Sifre Deuteron­omy 157. The core of his opin­ion es­sen­tially con­sisted in his in­ter­pre­ta­tion of 5 Moses 17, 14-15. Based on the trans­la­tion by Leopold Zunz, it reads: “14. When thou art come unto the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, and shalt pos­sess it, and shalt dwell therein, and shalt say, I will set a king over me, like as all the na­tions that are about me; 15. thou shalt in any wise set him king over thee, whom the Lord thy God shall choose: one from among thy brethren shalt thou set king over thee: thou mayest not set a stranger over thee, which is not thy brother.” The text ex­plic­itly men­tions a king, not a queen. The of­fices held by the prophet­ess and judge Deb­o­rah and the reign of Jew­ish queen Sa­lome Alexan­dra are con­sid­ered ex­cep­tions ex­plained by the par­tic­u­lar po­lit­i­cal cir­cum­stances of their time. There­fore, Hoff­mann writes, they can­not be cited as prece­dents and women must be de­nied the right to stand for elec­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to Mai­monides (born be­tween 1135 and 1138 in Córdoba, died 1204 in Cairo) none of the de­ci­sions made by Possĕkim stip­u­lated the pro­hi­bi­tion of women’s right to vote. There­fore women should be al­lowed to vote. Moses Mai­monides is con­sid­ered an im­por­tant philoso­pher and legal scholar of the Mid­dle Ages as well as the most sig­nif­i­cant Jew­ish scholar of all time.

Debates within the congregation


In the end the rab­bini­cal opin­ions the Ham­burg con­gre­ga­tion had re­quested blocked the con­gre­ga­tion’s ef­forts at re­form, for they had to re­al­ize that the ques­tion of women’s el­i­gi­bil­ity to stand for elec­tion was a mat­ter of prin­ci­ple for Or­tho­dox Jewry. Thus the ma­jor­ity, which had con­sisted of Lib­er­als and Zion­ists since the be­gin­ning of the Weimar Re­pub­lic, shelved their de­mands for equal­ity of the sexes for the sake of the con­gre­ga­tion’s unity. Through­out past decades, they had re­peat­edly ex­pe­ri­enced con­flicts es­ca­lat­ing into a cri­sis and there­fore acted very care­fully in this sit­u­a­tion. Within the “Ham­burg sys­tem,” the DIG had com­mit­ted them­selves to re­li­gious neu­tral­ity to­wards the re­li­gious as­so­ci­a­tions. When a con­flict about Jew­ish fu­ner­ary rites erupted in the mid-1880s, some Or­tho­dox mem­bers left the con­gre­ga­tion be­cause the Syn­a­gogue As­so­ci­a­tion’s chief rabbi, Anselm Stern, had de­cided that the DIG’s so­lu­tion (at the Ohls­dorf / Iland­kop­pel ceme­tery) did not meet the re­quire­ments for a Jew­ish ceme­tery as stip­u­lated by re­li­gious law. Now the ques­tion of women’s right to vote threat­ened to cause an­other major con­flict. Since the rab­bini­cal opin­ions con­firmed Or­tho­dox Jewry in their strict re­jec­tion of it, the con­gre­ga­tion up­held the sta­tus quo for the time being, mean­ing women were able to vote in con­gre­ga­tional elec­tions as well as serve as mem­bers of the var­i­ous char­i­ta­ble com­mit­tees. It was a prag­matic so­lu­tion that tem­porar­ily cre­ated unity within the con­gre­ga­tion.

In the run-​up to the elec­tion of the Coun­cil of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives [Repräsentanten-​Kollegium] of 1930, the de­bate on the sta­tus of women as stip­u­lated in the con­gre­ga­tion’s by-​laws was re­vived. The Or­tho­dox once again blocked a re­form. No­body wished to deny the Or­tho­dox Syn­a­gogue As­so­ci­a­tion its right to de­cide the ques­tion of votes for women au­tonomously as far as in­ter­nal mat­ters were con­cerned, but the Or­tho­dox were eager to as­sert their re­li­gious views on the level of the con­gre­ga­tion’s in­sti­tu­tions as well. This put them in a mi­nor­ity po­si­tion, how­ever. By the mid-1920s, the share of con­gre­ga­tion mem­bers who also be­longed to one of the re­li­gious as­so­ci­a­tions had sunk to about 35 per­cent, about half of whom be­longed to the Syn­a­gogue As­so­ci­a­tion. A mo­tion filed by the Lib­er­als to grant women the right to stand for elec­tion to the Coun­cil of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives [Repräsentanten-​Kollegium] and an­other mo­tion filed by the Zion­ists to make women el­i­gi­ble to run for a seat on the con­gre­ga­tion’s board ini­tially failed to win the ma­jor­ity re­quired to change the by-​laws to that ef­fect. When the Zion­ists gave up their de­mand, a clear ma­jor­ity was at least won for women’s right to stand for elec­tion to the Coun­cil of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives [Repräsentanten-​Kollegium] by a vote of 13 to five votes against it by the Or­tho­dox. As a re­sult, the chief rabbi’s son, Dr. Alexan­der Spitzer, pub­licly de­clared he was leav­ing the con­gre­ga­tion, and oth­ers fol­lowed him. In the 1930 elec­tion of the Coun­cil of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives [Repräsentanten-​Kollegium], for the first time three women (Anni Bauer, Dr. Lilli Meyer-​Wedell, and Phoebe Caro) were among those elected to its 21 seats. Rab­bini­cal opin­ions sub­se­quently be­came less in­flu­en­tial. Thus the opin­ions writ­ten by Samuel Spitzer, David Hoff­mann, and Meir Lerner at the re­quest of the DIG mainly rep­re­sent a snap­shot in its his­tory. It is not known what the po­si­tion of Joseph Car­lebach, on vot­ing rights for women was when he be­came the Syn­a­gogue As­so­ci­a­tion’s chief rabbi. His views on many other is­sues were less strict than those of his pre­de­ces­sor from Al­tona, Meir Lerner, though. In Berlin women had al­ready been granted the right to vote and stand for elec­tion in the Feb­ru­ary 1925 elec­tions to the Pruss­ian State As­so­ci­a­tion of Jew­ish Con­gre­ga­tions [Preußischer Lan­desver­band jüdischer Gemein­den]. In Sax­ony, Bavaria, and Brunswick, too, op­po­si­tion began to weaken.

Women as officeholders in Hamburg’s Jewish Congregation


The DIG held elec­tions every five years. The ques­tion of women’s right to stand for elec­tion would there­fore have come up again in 1935 – yet that never hap­pened. In light of the changed po­lit­i­cal cir­cum­stances in the Na­tional So­cial­ist state many major Jew­ish con­gre­ga­tions in the spring of 1934 con­sid­ered whether to post­pone their up­com­ing elec­tions. Ham­burg au­thor­i­ties granted a re­quest filed by the DIG to ex­tend the tenure of the Coun­cil elected in 1930 until March 31st, 1937. It was ob­vi­ous that in early 1937 at the lat­est an ul­ti­mate de­ci­sion would be nec­es­sary. The con­gre­ga­tion agreed to de­cide the ap­point­ment of its board and Coun­cil of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives [Repräsentanten-​Kollegium] with­out elec­tions. In 1937 two women, Tilly Zuntz and Dr. Lizzy Valk, were ap­pointed to the Coun­cil. There still was no woman on the con­gre­ga­tion’s board, how­ever. Reg­u­lar elec­tions had be­come im­pos­si­ble any­way. Ac­cord­ing to the by-​laws, the tenure of the 21 mem­bers of the Coun­cil of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives [Repräsentanten-​Kollegium] was to last until March 31st, 1940. This never hap­pened ei­ther. In the wake of the 1938 No­vem­ber pogrom, the Gestapo re­moved the tra­di­tional in­sti­tu­tions of the board and coun­cil and re­placed their col­le­gial struc­ture of decision-​making with the “Führerprinzip [leader prin­ci­ple]. Col­lec­tive co­op­er­a­tion be­tween Jew­ish of­fice­hold­ers sur­vived only on the work­ing level.

The by-​laws of Ham­burg’s Jew­ish Con­gre­ga­tion, whose new be­gin­ning and re­build­ing dates back to the fall of 1945, granted fe­male mem­bers of the new uni­form con­gre­ga­tion the right to vote and stand for elec­tion. Rab­bini­cal or ha­lakhic ar­gu­ments for op­pos­ing it, as David Hoff­mann’s opin­ion cit­ing re­li­gious law had for­mu­lated them against women’s el­i­gi­bil­ity for of­fice, were no longer dis­cussed. The ma­jor­ity of Ham­burg’s Jews dif­fered from his opin­ion and con­sid­ered the con­cerns ex­pressed as a re­sult of cir­cum­stances at the time. In 1995 Gabriela Fenyes fi­nally be­came the first woman to be elected chair­per­son of the con­gre­ga­tion’s board.

Select Bibliography


Katrin Nele Jansen, Hoffmann, Moses Jehuda, Dr., in: Michael Brocke / Julius Carlebach (eds.), Biographisches Handbuch der Rabbiner, Part 2, Die Rabbiner im Deutschen Reich, 1871 – 1945, vol. 1, Munich 2009, pp. 288-290.
Ina Lorenz, Die Juden in Hamburg zur Zeit der Weimarer Republik. Eine Dokumentation, Hamburger Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Juden 13, vol. 2, Hamburg 1987.

Selected English Titles


Michael Brenner, Renaissance of Jewish Culture in Weimar Germany, New Haven (Connecticut) et. al. 1996.

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About the Author

Ina Lorenz (1940), Prof. Dr. phil. habil, deputy research director at the Institute for the History of the German Jews (IGdJ) until 2005 and professor at the Institute for Economic and Social History at Hamburg University. Her work focuses on German-Jewish history in the 19th and 20th century, as well as on social history of the Jewish comunity during National Socialism. She published several critical source editions on the history of the Jewish congregations in Hamburg, Altona and Wandsbek.

Recommended Citation and License Statement

Ina Lorenz, The Introduction of Women’s Right to Vote in Hamburg’s Jewish Congregation (translated by Insa Kummer), in: Key Documents of German-Jewish History, July 05, 2017. <https://dx.doi.org/10.23691/jgo:article-44.en.v1> [April 04, 2025].

This text is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution - Non commercial - No Derivatives 4.0 International License. As long as the work is unedited and you give appropriate credit according to the Recommended Citation, you may reuse and redistribute the material in any medium or format for non-commercial purposes.