Seymour Siegel

Seymour Siegel (born September 12, 1927, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.—died February 24, 1988, New York, New York) was an American theologian who helped shape contemporary Conservative Jewish theology and who, with his learned writings, was especially instrumental in paving the way for the ordination of female rabbis.

As head of the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards of the Rabbinical Assembly for more than a decade, Siegel helped initiate in 1973 the practice of allowing women to be counted in a minyan, the quorum of 10 or more adult Jews required for communal worship. Previously, only men could be counted. That breakthrough paved the way for the committee’s decision some 10 years later to allow women to serve as Conservative rabbis. Siegel, who spent 41 years with the Jewish Theological Seminary, wrote hundreds of articles and edited such important books as Conservative Judaism and Jewish Law (1977) and Jewish Ethics and Contemporary Problems (1980); at the time of his death he was preparing a work on medical ethics from a Jewish perspective. A political conservative with close ties to the Reagan administration, Siegel also served on the President’s Commission on Ethics in Medicine and Biomedical Research and on the Advisory Council of the Republican National Committee.