Nina Bieber Feinstein spent years laying the groundwork for women’s ordination before becoming the second woman rabbi ordained by the Conservative Movement.

As someone who came to the rabbinate later in life, Avis Miller has searched for new ways to educate and engage those on the margins of the Jewish community.

As the first female executive vice president of the Rabbinical Assembly, the professional organization for Conservative rabbis, Julie Schonfeld has helped shape the Conservative movement’s approach to prayer as well as its response to world politics.

As the commission delved into the issue, testimony it received from scholars showed that no Jewish legal barriers stood in the way of ordaining women.

Within several months we determined that if any Jewish issue required political action, it was this one, the status of women.

Like my mother and her father, my grandfather, I was both a committed Jew and a feminist.

As it turned out, in the spring of 1985, I was to be the first woman so ordained.

We knew that Jewish feminism needed to be suffused through all of Jewish practice so that it would be impossible to ignore.