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Overview
Early
Influences
Establishing
a Reputation
"The
Maiden in the Temple"
Breaking
Down Barriers
Career
of a Lady Preacher
The
First Woman Rabbi?
Jewish
Women's Congress
Paradoxical
Positions
Marriage
and New Directions
Later
Years
Legacy
Timeline
Bibliography
Artifacts
Alphabetically
Artifacts
Sorted by Source
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Establishing
a Reputation
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In 1885, with the mining industry in decline,
Frank left Nevada and returned to her family in
Oakland, California. While supporting herself by
giving lessons in literature and elocution, she
broadened her own education by enrolling in courses
in philosophy at the University of
California-Berkeley. She also began working in the
Sabbath School of Oakland's First Hebrew
Congregation, transferring her already established
teaching skills to a Jewish setting.
Frank proved extremely popular as a
religious-school teacher. She soon attracted a wide
following of adults as well as children to her
classes, to such an extent that when the rabbi and
school superintendent resigned, the congregation
invited her to become principal. Involvement with
the Sabbath school not only gave Frank the
opportunity to explore the Jewish issues that had
long interested her, but it also allowed her to
hone her skills as a public speaker and to begin to
make a name for herself within the California
Jewish community.
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Frank's work as a correspondent for several San
Francisco and Oakland newspapers added to her
growing reputation. She also began to use letters
to the editors of national Jewish publications to
express her ideas about the state of American
Jewry, increasing her visibility in Jewish circles.
When the Jewish Messenger asked its readers
"What would you do if you were a rabbi?," Frank
submitted a letter expounding emphatically on what
she would not do if she were a rabbi.
Castigating Jewish leadership for its shallowness,
insincerity, and materialism, she argued that amid
the freedom and prosperity of the New World, many
Jews had lost sight of the spiritual and moral
bases of Judaism. She deplored the acrimony between
Reform and Orthodox Jews and even broached the
question of women and religious leadership,
concluding with the observation that "Women are
precluded from entering the Holy of Holies; but it
is a great satisfaction to contemplate what we
would not do were the high office not denied
us."
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How to Cite This Page
For a bibliography:
Jewish Women's Archive. "JWA - Ray Frank - Establishing a Reputation." <http://jwa.org/exhibits/wov/frank/reputation.html>.
For a footnote:
Jewish Women's Archive, "JWA - Ray Frank - Establishing a Reputation," <http://jwa.org/exhibits/wov/frank/reputation.html>.
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