The Gross Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and the Pascack Valley Jewish Coalition, will sponsor a screening of the recently released documentary Regina, at Bergen County Y/JCC, 605 Pascack Road, Washington Township, NJ 07676, on April 15 at 7 p.m. Sally J. Priesand, the first U.S.-ordained woman rabbi, will introduce and lead a discussion of the film. She will draw on her participation in a study mission to Berlin and Terezin which followed in the footsteps and honored the memory of Regina Jonas. The event is free and open to the public.

Diana Groós’s poetic documentary tells the story of Regina Jonas (1902-1944), a strong woman who made history by becoming the first properly ordained woman rabbi in the world. The daughter of an Orthodox Jewish peddler, Jonas grew up in Berlin’s Scheunenviertel, studied at the liberal Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums (College for the Scientific Study of Judaism) beginning in 1924, and was ordained in 1935. During the Nazi era and the war, her sermons and her unparalleled dedication brought encouragement to the persecuted German Jews. Regina Jonas was murdered in Auschwitz in 1944. The only surviving photo of Jonas serves as a leitmotif for the film, showing a determined young woman gazing at the camera with self-confidence.