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.

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