Contributing writer Stuart Franklin ’26 sits down with Dr. Joan Friedman, Professor of Religion and History, to speak about her career, experience at the College and plans for retirement.
When did you first know you wanted to be a rabbi, and what did that journey look like?
“I was one of those students in high school and college who was very committed to living a Jewish life. [I was] interested in studying it and very involved with Hillel where I went to school, and [at] the level of interest and activity that if I had been a guy, everybody would’ve said, ‘Oh, of course he’s going to be a rabbi.’ Sally Priesand (the first female rabbi in the U.S.) was ordained in ’72 [when] I was an undergraduate in college in Philadelphia, which is where the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College was. I knew the women who were studying there, so it was sort of ‘Oh, okay, this is a possibility.’ But I had grown up in the Conservative moment and they were not yet ordaining women, and I, for a variety of reasons, went to Hebrew Union College in New York City. So, I became a Reform rabbi and I was ordained in 1980. I think I was among the first 20 women ordained.”
How was your rabbinic school experience influenced by your being a woman in an overwhelmingly male-dominated field?
“My class was the first class that had more than one or two women. [There] were eight women and seven men. [There was an] incredible amount of tension going on. But congregations in the New York area were like, “Everybody wants to hear from the women rabbinic students,” right, so we’d get invited to a congregation on a Friday night to speak about women in Judaism or whatever, and they’d pay us like $25. But all the men were totally paranoid that we were getting known and they were not, and therefore we were all going to get all the good jobs and they were not.
From being a rabbi, what led you to your career in academia, and how did you ultimately end up at Wooster?
“Immediately after ordination, I took a position as an assistant rabbi at a very large congregation, and for a whole variety of reasons, it was an unpleasant experience. After a couple of years, in sort of an ongoing process of ‘What am I meant to do here?’, I went back to graduate school, and I was in the doctoral program in Jewish history at Columbia.
I was going to write a dissertation on the career of an individual who was the chief rabbi of Prague and Bohemia in the early 1700s. I did all of this on the basis of my graduate advisor saying that when he had been in Prague in the early 1980s, they told him at the State Jewish Museum that they had a particular manuscript, and everything was built around the existence of that manuscript. I showed up there after this whole process my first week in Prague, and I said, ‘Hi, here I am, I’m here to look at this manuscript,’ and they said, ‘What manuscript? Who told you we had that manuscript? It doesn’t exist.’
I had an incredible…six months in communist Prague getting to know the Jewish community there and the extent to which they could have any Jewish life. I happened to be there on the 20th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Prague. I just happened to be in Václavské Náměstí — Wenceslas Square — watching this spontaneous protest start, so I was in that demonstration. [But] in the end, there was nothing that I could write that hadn’t already been written before World War II.
So I came back to the States and I was kind of screwed. I took a position as the rabbi of the small synagogue in Bloomington, Indiana. I eventually left Bloomington and became the Jewish Chaplain at Colgate University for six years, which included a half-time teaching load.
“I finally said, “Ten years have gone by, what do I want to do here?” So, I restarted my doctoral program with an entirely new topic… I, at the age of 48, became a penniless graduate student again. I finished my dissertation, which then eventually…I turned it into a book, which was a National Jewish Book Award finalist. [Then] I bounced around. Along the way, Nancy (Friedman’s wife) and I met, [but] she…had to be in Columbus. We commuted for a couple years, and I finally said ‘I’m going to move to Columbus and I’ll find something.’
I started sending letters to every place within a 100-mile radius, and Wooster hired me to advise Hillel five hours a week and teach one course each semester. The next year, they hired me to advise Hillel ten hours a week and teach. [Then] they hired me as a Visiting Assistant Professor that was one-third History, one-third Religious Studies and one-third Interfaith Campus Ministries [now called RSL]. That’s what I did for ten years, and it was satisfying and exhausting. [Eventually], the visiting position became tenure track, and I was tenured. I was able to leave the chaplaincy, and I’ve spent the last ten years half History, half Religious Studies.”
What are your hopes for the College’s future after your retirement?
“For one thing, I hope that they get to a point in the next couple of years where they can hire somebody into my position, because…I like to think that not only the courses that I teach, but the way that I’ve taught them, has made a difference on campus. And I just find it mind-boggling that in this particular junction in time…the College doesn’t think it’s a priority to keep my courses on. [It’s] frustrating …I’ve seen my role here as a complement to the other courses in both departments so that I round out the picture. And now [these courses] are disappearing.
What are you most looking forward to in your retirement?
“Nancy and I, we love to camp…so we’re going out to the Northwest to national parks and state parks…in late summer [or] early fall. But our pipe dream…is to get recumbent tricycles with electric assist and spend a couple months cycling around the UK. [While] we’re staying in town, I’d like to convert the entire yard to sustainable, native landscaping. I’m a very amateur carpenter — I want to get better at that — [and] I have a book I’d like to write.”