Part 1 of History Test

Part 1 of History Test

Question 1

The Reform movement was the first to ordain women as rabbis and cantors. Advocacy for women's ordination began in 1922, when the Central Conference of American Rabbis issued an official statement in favor of ordaining women. Despite its egalitarian philosophy, the Reform movement stopped short of actually ordaining women, refusing to confer the title of rabbi on two women who petitioned the movement: Martha Neumark in 1923 and Hadassah Leventhal in 1939 (Prell, 2007).

After decades of internal debate, and influenced by the social changes of the 1960s, the Reform movement ordained its first female rabbi, Sally Preisand, in 1972, followed soon after by Barbara Ostfeld, the first female cantor. Since that time, the movement's seminary, the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR), based in Los Angeles, Cincinnati, New York, and Jerusalem, has seen a steady increase of female rabbinical students and cantors. As of 2009 women make up more than half of the rabbinical school cohort.

Female clergy make up roughly one third of the Reform rabbinate and work in synagogues, schools, universities, and hospitals. More than a dozen women now serve as senior rabbis of large Reform congregations (500 families or more), according to Rabbi Jacqueline Koch Ellenson, Director of the Women's Rabbinic Network. Women in the Reform movement also have distinguished themselves in academia and lay leadership. After a long period in which few women served on its faculty, HUC-JIR started, in the early 2000s, to hire women scholars at equal levels to men. HUC-JIR is also the first Jewish seminary with a female board chair, Barbara Friedman.

Question 2

The muckrakers of the Progressive era were journalists and other writers who used language as their chief medium of reform. With their articles, essays, and books, America's muckrakers advocated for social and political change. Not content to report the news of the day as those in power would wish it to be communicated, muckraking journalists became known for their doggedness in research and their candor of account. Without regard to the displeasure their findings would inspire in the nation's civic and corporate leaders, such Writers spoke and wrote the truth as they saw it.

They worked in the public interest and were unafraid to criticize impropriety wherever they found it. They also pointed out alternatives to their problems their writings exposed and, in some cases, posited necessary steps in redressing such problems. President Theodore Roosevelt was the first to apply the term 'muckraker” to American writers in a March 17, 1906, speech delivered at the Gridiron Club in the District of' Columbia. Roosevelt's use of the term was an allusion to John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress (1678). The specific reference is Lu a man who uses a rake to collect dirt. Roosevelt's analogy was intended to be unflattering to writers, suggesting that they are purveyors of fifth for its own sake.

The language of the speech suggested that muckraking writers always ran the risk of seeking out the most negative features of ...