2 - Stein's and Jonas's views of women: the philosophy student and the rabbinical student

Summary

What drove Stein and Jonas to pursue their paths toward bringing God into the world as a Jewish Carmelite contemplative and a woman rabbi? What underpinned their desires were their views and conceptions of women as being naturally empathetic, whole, and nurturing, which they then brought to professions outside of the private domain, to which women had been conventionally relegated. They needed to bring what they saw as their innate natural feminine qualities to what had originally been male professions. This chapter addresses the fundamental questions asked and answered by Stein and Jonas: What is woman? What are the innate qualities that each associated with being female? How did their perception of woman affect their religious calling and practice? Whom do Stein and Jonas perceive to be the “new women” of Weimar? How did they respond to these women in their writing and lectures? Finally, how did they perceive themselves in light of their concepts of woman?

Both women wrote major academic works at the beginning of their careers. In 1916, Stein completed her dissertation on empathy, which she wrote under the supervision of the phenomenologist Edmund Husserl. In 1930, Jonas completed her ordination thesis, titled “Can Women Serve as Rabbis?,” which she wrote under the supervision of Rabbi Dr Eduard Baneth. In this chapter I will unpack Stein's doctoral dissertation on empathy and her writings on women, as well as Jonas's ordination thesis, which set up the trajectories of both of their life's work.