Sherry Levy-Reiner, Ph.D., is the director of development at the RAC.

Last Shabbat I attended Monmouth Reform Temple, where the congregation was honoring Rabbi Sally Priesand, the first woman rabbi to have been ordained by a theological seminary, on her retirement.

Sally and I were undergraduate English majors at the University of Cincinnati (UC). At the same time she was accepted at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) as a rabbinical student, I began graduate school at UC, and we decided to share an apartment. We lived together for four years and have remained good friends since.

So I was Sally’s roommate during those early years at HUC-JIR, when – as she reports – faculty and classmates alike anticipated that she would marry a rabbi rather than be the first woman to become a rabbi herself. Much was written in those days about her, especially during her senior year as her ordination drew near; we fielded dozens of phone calls, I could give her quotes by rote myself (though I never did), and we had a lot of laughs about the fuss everyone was making.

While Sally was aware she was making history, that was not her intent. As she is frequently quoted today, she simply “wanted to be a rabbi.” To her, the fact that she would be the first was truly secondary to her goal: serving the Jewish people with knowledge, understanding, and compassion.

Her Retirement Service testified that she achieved her goal. The core of Sally’s relationship with her congregants was clearly being there for her people, in times of joy and in times of great sadness. Sally, who never enjoyed cooking, would make pots of Cincinnati chili to feed anyone who came to dine with her for seven nights in the synagogue’s sukkah. And Sally would sit for hours at the bedside of an ill or dying congregant, holding their hand and easing their pain.

Rabbi David Ellenson gave the d’var Torah at the Service, speaking both in his role as president of HUC-JIR and as Sally’s former assistant rabbi, emphasized Sally’s compassion and caring.

He noted too, however, that she is an example of how one person can heal the world. Sally’s courage and determination gave a voice – not only to the hundreds of women who subsequently have been ordained rabbis and invested as cantors – but also to the millions of women who play a public role in the educational and spiritual life of the Jewish community.

Sometimes we can foresee the consequences of our actions, and sometimes we cannot. By the time of Sally’s ordination, we recognized that it was momentous. We knew it would have consequences for her and for the congregants and others with whom she would interact in her career. What we did not/could not comprehend were the ways in which her ordination would open the gates for so many other women who had been waiting to enter this new world that is now our new world.