Regina Jonas (; German: Regine Jonas; 3 August 1902 – 12 October/12 December 1944) was a Berlin-born Reform rabbi. In 1935, she became the first woman to be ordained as a rabbi. Jonas was murdered in the Holocaust. Early life Regina Jonas was born into a "strictly religious" household in the Berlin Scheunenviertel, the second child of Wolf Jonas and Sara Hess. Wolf, who was probably Regina's first teacher, died when she was 13. Like many women at that time, she intended to make a career as a teacher. After graduating from the local Höhere Mädchenschule, she became disillusioned with the idea of becoming a teacher. Instead, she enrolled at the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums (Higher Institute for Jewish Studies), in the Academy for the Science of Judaism, and took seminary courses for liberal rabbis and educators for 12 semesters. While not the only woman attending the university, Regina sent ripples through the institution with her stated goal of becoming a rabbi. To this end, Jonas wrote a thesis that would have been an ordination requirement. Her topic was "Can a Woman Be a Rabbi According to Halachic Sources?" Her conclusion, based on Biblical, Talmudic, and rabbinical sources, was that she should be ordained. The Talmud professor responsible for ordinations, Eduard Baneth, accepted Jonas' thesis; however, his sudden death squashed any hope Jonas may have had in receiving an official ordination. Jonas graduated in 1930, her diploma only naming her as an "Academic Teacher of Religion". Jonas then applied to Rabbi Leo Baeck, spiritual leader of German Jewry, who had taught her at the seminary. Baeck, while acknowledging Jonas as a "thinking and agile preacher", refused to make her title official, because the ordination of a female rabbi would have caused massive intra-Jewish communal problems with the Orthodox rabbinate in Germany. For nearly five years, Jonas taught religious studies in a series of both public and Jewish schools, and also performed a series of 'unofficial' sermons. Her lectures on religious and historical topics for various Jewish institutions often included questions about the importance of women in Judaism. This eventually caught the attention of the liberal Rabbi Max Dienemann, who was the head of the Liberal Rabbis' Association in Offenbach am Main, who decided to test Jonas on behalf of the association. Despite protest from both inside and outside the Liberal Rabbis' Association, on 27 December 1935, Regina Jonas