Dora Askowith

Who is Dora Askowith?

Dora Askowith was a college professor, author and historian.

In 1908 she earned a B.A. from Barnard College. In 1909 she earned an M.A. and in 1915 a PhD, both from Columbia University. Her doctoral dissertation was published as the book The toleration and persecution of the Jews in the Roman empire: Part I: The Toleration of the Jews Under Julius Caesar and Augustus in 1915. Askowith also studied at the Jewish Institute of Religion in the 1920s, though she did not complete the rabbinical program. She later wrote, "I took the work at the Institute because of my deep interest in Judaica and Hebriaca rather than because I sought to enter the ministry though I hoped to open the road for women who might be desirous of being ordained." She believed that nothing in Judaism meant women could not be rabbis, as she had found in doing research for her student sermon, "The Woman in the Rabbinate". In 1948 she asked Stephen Wise and Nelson Glueck, presidents of the Jewish Institute of Religion and Hebrew Union College respectively, if women could be ordained once their two schools merged, as they were then planning to do. She also wrote in the magazine Judaism on the matter.