ABSTRACT
Every March the Hebrew Union College—Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) observes Founders' Day, celebrating the founding presidents of the two institutes for rabbinical study that eventually merged to form the American Reform movement's present-day College-Institute. On Founders' Day the school's early leaders are remembered, and those rabbis who graduated from the College-Institute twenty-five years earlier are awarded honorary doctoral degrees in recognition of their years of service as rabbis. Until March 12, 1997, every rabbinical honoree at the Founders' Day celebrations held at the various branches of the College-Institute in Cincinnati, New York, and Los Angeles had been a man. But that particular March day was a special one, as it marked the first time at one of these occasions that a woman would be honored for having had the opportunity to serve the Jewish people as a rabbi.
