Bea Wyler was the first female rabbi appointed to a German congregation. The first female rabbi in Germany (and worldwide) had been
Regina Jonas, whom Rabbi
Max Dienemann had ordained in 1935. Rabbi Jonas preached in several Berlin
synagogues from the 1930s to the 1940s and also served as rabbi there after her
deportation to the
Ghetto Theresienstadt in captivity. Bea Wyler was appointed in the year of her ordination, 1995, to serve the Conservative Jewish synagogue of
Oldenburg. Her appointment was much criticized by Ignatz Bubis, the head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, who generally opposed the appointment of female rabbis, saying that he would not visit a service led by her. she was Germany's only Conservative rabbi. She served as a rabbi in
Oldenburg,
Brunswick and
Delmenhorst until 2004, over a decade in which Jews from the former USSR came to Germany. The congregation in Oldenburg grew from 90 to 350 members under her rabbinate. Her direct successor in Oldenburg in 2004 was Jonah Sievers; in 2010 however, her second successor became
Alina Treiger who had been ordained as the first female graduate at
Abraham Geiger College in Potsdam. In May 2004, for family reasons Bea Wyler resigned from her posts in Germany and returned to Switzerland. Since, she has been active primarily in teaching and publishing, but also holds synagogal services at various places, e.g. in Basel. In June 2021, Bea Wyler received an
honorary doctorate from the
Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) in New York in recognition of her contribution to Jewish life. ==See also==