Category: Rabbinic Reflections

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Rabbinic Reflections

Rabbi Gerald Serotta on 50 Years as a Reform Rabbi, Hillel Leader, Activist, and Bridge-Builder

I was born in Miami, Florida in 1946. Schools, lunch counters, and bathrooms at downtown department stores were as segregated as elsewhere in the South, with signs on the bathrooms (and drinking fountains) designating them as “White” and “Colored.” My family and my synagogue, Temple Israel of Greater Miami, co-founded by my grandparents in the mid 1920s, were deeply involved in the struggles for integration, social justice, and voting rights. Our TIFTY youth group did voter registration in the Liberty City Black ghetto in Miami, paralleling the efforts of the Mississippi summer volunteers in 1963. These issues and causes were discussed at the Seder table and at Shabbat services. We were also involved as a family and synagogue community in later struggles for justice and equality for women, for the LGBT community, farmworkers, and Haitian refugees, as well as in active opposition to the Vietnam War in particular, and militarism in general.   

These same values inspired me to become a rabbi and to continue to express my Jewish identity in the way I was taught and raised. At HUC-JIR, I led protests from day one—against an unfeeling attitude toward rabbinical students and required enrollment in the military chaplaincy—and in favor of curricular reform and the first year in Israel program. As an intern in the office of the Reform Movement’s Social Action Commission, I wrote curricula for camps and schools on the theme of Judaism and the Indo China War and Organizing Your Synagogue for Anti-war Activity. 

While living in Jerusalem between 1970 and 1972, part-time as a grad student and part-time working as a journalist, I became exposed to the issues of social justice there, both internal to Israeli society and between Israel and the Palestinians living in the recently occupied West Bank and Gaza. While there, I worked on preservation of the delicate environment and urban scale of Jerusalem. I was one of the key organizers of the Action Committee for a Beautiful Jerusalem (Vaad Peulah L’maan Yerushalaim Yafah), which prevented or altered many development plans in the area of West Jerusalem, preserving the open space that become Gan HaPaamon (Liberty Bell Park). 

From my work travels on the West Bank, it became clear to me that there were two peoples living in Eretz Yisrael and that self-determination for one required self-determination for the other. From that time to the present, I have organized in support of mutual recognition of the right to self-determination for both peoples (Jewish and Palestinian,) helping to initiate Breira, New Jewish Agenda, and Rabbis for Human Rights-NA (now T’ruah,) each of them advocating for human rights in both the US and Israel/Palestine. I served as the founding chair of the RHR-NA Board for eight years until 2010. I am now working to build support for the joint Israeli-Palestinian organization A Land for All (Eretz L’kulam). 

Most of my professional career (28 years) was spent in Hillel work on campus. While in Hillel, I led efforts to form a union to protect the rights of Hillel workers. I next served for eight years as an associate rabbi in Temple Shalom in Chevy Chase, Maryland. Later I worked part-time as the spiritual leader of a small independent congregation, and simultaneously, worked as the executive director of a new non-profit, Clergy beyond Borders. Before retiring in 2020, I continued to do work in promoting interfaith harmony through six years as executive director of the Interfaith Council of Metropolitan Washington. 

I continued to be as involved as I could with other progressive Jewish organizing efforts. I played a role in the early stages to create Jews United for Justice (in DC), and Jewish Fund for Justice (founded in DC and ultimately a national organization that became Bend the Arc), and Friends of Peace Now that later became Americans for Peace Now.    

I have essentially been doing what I was taught and raised to do by my family, especially my mother, who was a devoted activist her entire life, serving on the National Commission for Social Action. She supported every effort to aid the vulnerable and to liberate oppressed groups locally, nationally, and internationally. I was also influenced by many rabbis (including Temple Israel’s Rabbi Joseph Narot, z”l) and ministers such as Martin Luther King Jr. and William Sloane Coffin. I have never wavered that this is the core of my spiritual identity as a Jew as well as my calling as a rabbi. 

 Rabbi Gerald Serotta is celebrating 50 years as a Reform rabbi. We look forward to celebrating him and more of the CCAR’s 50-year rabbis when we come together at CCAR Convention 2024.

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Rabbinic Reflections

Rabbi Eric Yoffie on Optimism, Life and Joy in Torah, and What His 50-Year Career Has Taught Him about Reform Judaism

After serving as a rabbi for 50 years, I would like to share a few thoughts about the Jewish condition, and in particular about the Reform rabbinate.

I believe in the power of leadership and that a people dies from the top.

And I believe that the role of religious leadership—and of the rabbi in particular—is fundamental and decisive.

In saying this I do not minimize the part that volunteer leaders play in Jewish life.   

Nonetheless, it is our klei kodesh who are central—the rabbis, cantors, and educators who do the holy work of serving the Jewish people and supporting them in their religious life.

After all, let us remember what we are: We are a liberal religious movement constructed on pillars of Torah study, piety, and spiritual integrity. And Torah study, piety, and spiritual integrity depend on teachers who believe and on those who serve as exemplars of religious living.

Every Jew I know who is religiously motivated and inspired learned from an inspiring teacher.

How do you teach Jews m’sirut, and anavah, and menschlichkeit? How do we teach them to be not only talmid chacham, but also yirei shamayim?  Such things are not done with books or with programs; they are done with people—with teachers. And it is the rabbis most often who are those teachers. And if they are not, our synagogues can devise a hundred programs, and it will make no difference.

I am sometimes asked if I am an optimist or a pessimist about Jewish life. The answer, I suppose, is that I am an optimist who worries a lot.

But when it comes to the rabbinate, I am optimistic to the core. I have travelled North America from one end to the other, and I can tell you that our rabbis are very, very good, and our younger colleagues are outstanding.

And who are those rabbis who find the most satisfaction in their work and who are best able to shape people’s lives?

It seems to me that there are five things that characterize them. 

First, they are optimists. They are spiritually alive, and they share their enthusiasm and their belief in the future. They avoid endless whining about survival and reject the language of victimhood with which we have become so obsessed. Above all, these rabbis project a message that there is life and joy in Torah.

Second, they learn. We may not have the time for serious scholarship, but I find that rabbis are reading and studying more than they ever have—whether alone or in chevruta, whether in person or online. And they refuse to fall victim to the trendy spirituality of ignorance and passion. They know the danger of soul without mind, and of spirituality that is mere feeling. 

Third, they value the spoken word: the sermon, the d’rashah, the d’var Torah. And they prepare their sermons carefully and thoughtfully. In some ways, preaching may seem less important now. There is a trend toward simple stories and the five-minute d’rash. Still, the best leaders understand that our Jews still care very much about sermons—Jews in Reform communities listen carefully, have high expectations, and search our words for honesty and meaning. With the vast flood of verbiage in this world, they still crave a life-giving word of Torah.

Fourth, they follow the admonition of the Baal Shem Tov, who said to go down to the people so that, by befriending them, they might be raised up.  Our best rabbis know that compassion and menschlichkeit come before all else; they know that our people want us to be with them in the joys and sorrows of their lives. Reform rabbis never forget that there is much our people will forgive us if we do these things, but they will never forgive us if we do not.

And finally, our most dedicated rabbis are people of prayer. It was not always so. Prior to my ordination in 1974, I interviewed in about a dozen congregations. In those dozen interviews, I did not get a single question about prayer, about davening, about spirituality, about God— not one. That would not happen today. We know today that we must be thoughtful about leading prayer and about our own personal prayer lives. Our congregations know, as do we, that the effectiveness of the t’filot at which we preside will be impacted by the fervor of our own prayer.   

There are many other things that effective religious leaders do, of course. But these five things are fundamental, I believe.

I am not naïve. Some rabbis are tired and need renewal, and we all have Torah to study and much to learn. But on the whole, the Reform rabbinate is strong, resilient, and infused with visionary power.

Rabbi Eric Yoffie is the President Emeritus of the Union for Reform Judaism. He is celebrating 50 years as a Reform rabbi. We look forward to celebrating Rabbi Yoffie and more of the CCAR’s 50-year rabbis when we come together at CCAR Convention 2024.

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Rabbinic Reflections Women in the Rabbinate

Rabbi Sandy Sasso Reflects on Lessons in Grace During Her 50 Years as a Reform Rabbi

In 1969, when I began seminary, feminism was just being born and Jewish feminism was an oxymoron. Soren Kierkegaard taught that life must be lived forward but understood backward. So, looking back over 50 years, this what I have learned: 

You will do things you never thought possible. You will take a new path, start over, build a relationship; you will forgive someone; you will forgive yourself; you will forget what you can’t do and remember what you can.   

People and situations may come along to derail you and undermine your hopes. When I was working on a PhD while in seminary, I thought of writing my dissertation about women in Judaism. There was no real scholarship on the subject. My professors told me, “Don’t write about women. Write about something important.”  

You will have doubts and fears. You will fall down, make mistakes, and even fail. But none of that will matter. You will get up; you will take another step forward, because it will feel that what you are doing is the right and important thing to do. 

When women first became rabbis, many of us wore navy or black suits. It was as close to male rabbinic attire as you could get. And then we changed. We realized that we neither had to look like or sound like male rabbis. We not only changed our clothes; we changed Judaism. Our being women wasn’t the only point, but neither was it beside the point. We pulled up a seat to tradition’s table and rearranged the place settings. It made a revolution. It transformed prayer, community, Torah, history, and theology. In 50 years, it has transformed Judaism.   

Moving from the classroom to the pulpit, from texts to people, from year to year, changes you. Somehow you are less sure about life. How can you be so certain when you touch life’s fragile boundaries? How can you not become someone other than who you were when you witness spirit and courage in the face of overwhelming misfortune?   

Here is what I shall always carry in my heart—the terrible pain of losses that happened out of season; the ache of burying a friend; the resilience of those who grieved and still had the ability to get up, to go on and even to sing; the little girl whose mother had just died who asked me, “Who will brush my hair in the morning?” And the little boy whose mother was dying who said, “I would like to call God, Healer.”  

It was then that I fully understood chesed, “grace.” Christianity discovered grace in Judaism, and then Judaism seemed to forget about it. One of the things that gets you through life’s difficult moments is chesed. You can’t make it happen and it doesn’t happen all the time you need it; but it happens now and again, and whenever it does, from wherever it comes, we must simply accept it and be grateful.   

Here is what I have learned from people to whom life was not gracious, but who made their own grace, people who had every reason to give up on life, but didn’t, who had every right to be bitter and angry and who were kind. This is what matters—a good word, a warm embrace, presence.  

I have learned that opposites are best when matched: love and power, justice and compassion, faith and doubt, seriousness and play, religion and spirit. Love without power is sentimentality.  Justice without compassion is cruel. Faith without doubt is dishonest. Doubt without faith is cynicism. Seriousness without play is boring and unimaginative. Religion without spirit is dead. God is the “and” that brings those opposites into one harmonious whole.   

You never lose what you have fashioned, the people whose lives you have touched, and the ones who have touched yours. Social psychologist Daniel Gilbert reminds us, “Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think that they are finished.” We age, but we begin again, working on who we will yet become.

Rabbi Sandy Sasso is celebrating 50 years as a Reform rabbi. We look forward to celebrating Rabbi Sasso and more of the CCAR’s 50-year rabbis when we come together at CCAR Convention 2024.

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Rabbinic Reflections

Goodbye, Vanity… and So Much Else

Rabbi Lisa Rubin shares a personal reflection on the surreal nature of processing October 7 and the personal and professional challenges and strain of living in a world that’s forever changed.

THEN:  

When the Nazis came for me in my dreams, I bit the arms of the soldier who had me in his grip. I bit him again and again. I eventually broke free, and ran until I was awake—drenched and terrified, with terrible tooth and jaw pain. My front teeth veneers had cracked, and now fell out. My dentist said a hockey puck couldn’t have done much better.  

A few weeks later, when I was still using Fixodent to attach my temporary teeth each day, the eye surgeon said he needed to operate.   

Me: Surgery for a little stye? 

Him: It’s clinging to your tear duct, and you keep crying, so it’s agitated and compromising the integrity of the duct. 

I was still enjoying a general anesthesia fog when I vaguely heard the procedure went well and I shouldn’t wear eye makeup for seven weeks. Wait. What? I looked at my husband. “Did he say seven?” He nodded. “Just while the stent is in.” For those who don’t know me, there is no time I am not wearing makeup. I felt the tears well up (the duct worked!). “Did my teeth at least stay in during surgery? Are they in now?” They did, and they were.  

As I got up in the middle of the night for eye drops, I tripped and broke my toe. And dislodged my dentures.  

~~~ 

I am usually the person you want in a crisis. Calm, resourceful, and competent, I’m an expert at compartmentalizing. I can always do the next right thing.  

And yet, the catastrophe that befell Israel on October 7, and the aftermath, has been one of the most excruciating things I’ve ever had to process. Like so many of us, I’m walking around in a stupor—anxious, unsettled, exhausted. Calm and resilience elude me. My body is protesting prolonged strain. 

Maybe epigenetics is to blame. My grandfather narrowly escaped Hitler. His sister and mother— and scores of extended family members—died in Theresienstadt. While I know this family history (and even visited the camp many years ago), I’ve never truly felt it. The details were facts, not feelings; history, not the present. “The latent transmission of trauma is manifesting under stress,” my doctor said. Both tear ducts did their thing. “Hang in there,” she added.  

My profession certainly doesn’t help. I am a rabbi working in New York City. I walk through NYPD to get inside our building. I pass through retired NYPD to clear our security. My commute is often disrupted by protests. Counseling hours have exponentially increased, considerably lengthening the work day. I start my regular classes thirty minutes early to give students a chance to connect and talk through their anxieties.  

What could be on par with the loss and devastation of October 7? The universe answered with two personal, tragic blows. 

On the morning of December 10, Rabbi David Ellenson, z”l, was laid to rest. He was a giant in the Jewish world—my world. He was president of my seminary when I was in graduate school. No one was ever as lucky as me to study under and be ordained by Rabbi Ellenson, except every other one of his thousands of students. Each obituary and eulogy got it right: he was a blessing to humanity.  

On the night of December 10, a lifelong friend of my husband was killed in a freak accident. I adored Rajeev Shah, z”l. A pediatrician, devoted friend, and family man, Raj was one of the rarest people with his warmth, decency, and integrity. All that is good in the world manifested in Rabbi Ellenson and Raj. Yet the same world, represented so favorably in these souls, snatched them both away in a heartrending and untimely way.   

My lower back went out from grief. I was moving into my new office and unpacked one too many books. As I laid on the floor—my very own Rock Bottom—with fake teeth, an eye stent, a taped toe, a seized back, and a shattered heart—I wondered verbatim from Psalm 121, “From where will my help come?”   

NOW:  

So much is still unknown: The fate of those precious hostages. The remedy for the virulent antisemitism worldwide. The future of Israel. The reckoning on university campuses. A host of other things. 

I pray that acknowledging a new year on the secular calendar is invigorating. I hope fellow Jews and clergy colleagues have found a way to refill their reservoirs; find their strength. I hope everyone realizes they are not suffering alone.  

My personal health has not fully resolved, but I’m getting there. My new teeth look natural enough. My back can once again support me, and my toe can withstand exercise. My eye is a work in progress. 

Like a camera lens set not to allow the maximum amount of light in, my eyelid curiously opens two millimeters less than before surgery (and less than the healthy eye). That seems perfect. The world will always look a little darker to me, anyhow.  

Rabbi Lisa Rubin was ordained from HUC-JIR NY in 2007. She first served Temple Beth El of Great Neck, NY before becoming the founding Director of the Center for Exploring Judaism at Central Synagogue in Manhattan in 2010.

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Rabbinic Reflections

‘A Blessed, Holy Reward’: Rabbi Steven Moss on 50 Years in the Reform Rabbinate

My journey as a rabbi started at the age of twelve when I wrote a letter to Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion, at that time located on West 68th Street in NYC. I wrote to the college letting it know that I was ready to start my rabbinic studies. The school, of course, wrote back to me saying that I needed to apply after graduation from college. What was amazing was that at my interview, they took out that letter that I had written many years before.  

There were many influences in my life that led to my writing that letter. I always had spiritual interests. Prayer was a part of my personal life from my earliest years. I did go to Hebrew school for many years and was active in the choir and Temple life. Although my grandmother’s grandfather, Rabbi Wolf Zev Turbowitz, lived during the nineteenth to early twentieth centuries, I do believe that he had a spiritual influence on my life.

His picture hung on my grandmother’s Brooklyn apartment wall. As I would pass by, I could feel his presence not only in the room but in my life. Over the years, I have been able to obtain many of his books, as well as handwritten manuscripts. I even visited his grave in Kraziai, Lithuania, where he served as Av Beit Din. 

In many ways, the directions of my rabbinate were set during my seminary years at HUC-JIR. During my second year, I became chaplain at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan where I remained as chaplain until 2000. During my third year, I took a student pulpit in Oakdale, Long Island, serving B’nai Israel. I retired from B’nai Israel forty-seven years later. 

In 1975, my wife Judy and I moved to Long Island. I became very involved in community activities, including serving three times as president of the Suffolk County Board of Rabbis, and chair of the Suffolk County Jewish Community Coordinating Council.  

One of the most engaging parts of my rabbinate started in 1986 when I became chaplain to the Suffolk County Police Department. In 2019, I was named Chief Chaplain Emeritus and truly enjoyed serving the community in this capacity.  

I also served the Suffolk County community as chair of the Suffolk County Human Rights Commission from 1991 to 2019, and chair and founder of the Suffolk County Anti-Bias Task Force. I also founded an important program called STOPBIAS which educated over 500 defendants, both juvenile and adult, who had committed bias or hate crimes. 

In 2019, I retired from B’nai Israel. Judy and I continued our life in Boynton Beach, Florida, in a home we had purchased many years before. During the next three years, which were those COVID years, I spent the time studying, teaching on Zoom, and publishing three books. In 2022, however, the opportunity came along to take a pulpit here in Florida, in Delray Beach. I applied to Temple Sinai for the position, and I recently signed a multi-year contract. I also serve as chaplain to the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office and the Delray Beach Police Department. I guess I could say I got tired of retirement. 

Looking back over these past fifty years since ordination, I can say I have absolutely no regrets. Many times during my career, I could have left the congregational rabbinate and taken on a full-time position as chaplain, but I did not. There is truly something blessed, holy, and rewarding about being a pulpit rabbi. One has the incredible opportunity to become intimately involved in the lives of congregants during the most joyous, as well as most sad moments of life 

I have no doubt about the influences my parents had on my life, but none of this would have been possible without the support and love of my soulmate, my wife Judy. We met in high school, and it is she who has been my guiding star to help me on this journey for which I am blessed to have taken.  

I do believe the journey is not over. I am looking forward to whatever lies ahead. 

Rabbi Steven Moss is celebrating 50 years as a Reform rabbi. We look forward to celebrating him and more of the CCAR’s 50-year rabbis when we come together at CCAR Convention 2024.

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Rabbinic Reflections Statements

Remembering Rabbi David Ellenson, PhD, z”l: ‘At the Turning: Reflections on My Life’ (2014)

The Central Conference of American Rabbis mourns the death of our beloved rabbi, teacher, and friend, David Ellenson, PhD, z”l (1947–2023). The former president and chancellor emeritus of our Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion, Rabbi Ellenson was a mensch of the highest order who imparted wisdom and kindness in addition to sharing his voluminous knowledge and scholarship.

Rabbi Ellenson was a devoted and generous member of the CCAR and a friend to CCAR Press. His forewords or afterwords appear in three CCAR Press volumes: The Book of Blessings: New Jewish Prayers for Daily Life, the Sabbath, and the New Moon Festival, The Sacred Encounter: Jewish Perspectives on Sexuality, and From Time to Time: Journeys in the Jewish Calendar. In fall 2014, to mark the close of his first term as HUC-JIR’s president, CCAR Journal published “A Tribute to David Ellenson,” with articles by Rabbis Robert Levine and Rachel Adler. The issue also contained an autobiographical piece by Rabbi Ellenson entitled “At the Turning: Reflections on My Life.” We share excerpts of that piece in his memory.

The forces that have animated my life and work cannot be understood without recourse to my family and my past as a Jewish boy growing up in the South during the 1950s and 1960s and the multilayered world I experienced. Everything in my world talked about difference and exclusion. My grandparents had all emigrated from Eastern Europe to the United States in the early 1900s. My maternal grandparents had settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts, while my paternal grandparents improbably came to Newport News, Virginia. My parents, Rosalind Stern and Samuel Ellenson, met at Harvard Hillel in 1945, immediately after World War II, and they married in 1946. A year later, I was born, and six months after my birth, my father, a degree from Harvard Law School in hand, returned with my mother and me to Newport News, where he began the practice of law….

To this day, I cannot fully capture how very much I love the South and the Peninsula. The approximately 2,000 Jews located on the Peninsula lived peacefully and prosperously among more than 150,000 gentiles…. My entire extended family lived in the same pleasant neighborhood, and my childhood and adolescence were filled with family gatherings and events at which aunts, uncles, and cousins were present. …

I was and remain at some very deep level of my being a Virginian. However, I was also a Jew and that was “the rub.” I never felt I fully belonged. My being a Jew in a Christian world made me an outsider and different from the time I was a small boy, an observer even as I was an eager participant in the larger world. It left me feeling alienated even as I was overwhelmingly social and active.

In sum, the fabric of my identity was fraught with tensions. The inequities and evils I witnessed as a child and as a teenager in matters of race and gender and the sense of being an outsider as a Jew to the gentile culture in which I was raised all left a permanent mark on me….

* * *

I enrolled [eventually] in the Religious Studies Department of the University of Virginia, where I received an M.A. degree… There, for the first time, I read the works of Durkheim and Weber, where I was provided the beginnings of a vocabulary that would allow me to frame and illuminate my concerns. It was also equally clear to me that I had so much more to learn if I was to ever explore seriously the nature of what it was to be a Jew in the modern world.

This led me to move to Israel for two years. The first year I lived on Kibbutz Mishmar HaEmek in the Jezreel Valley—where I worked in the fields and advanced my spoken Hebrew—while, in the second year, I enrolled in the rabbinical program at Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion in Jerusalem. Although I seriously considered remaining in Israel and making aliyah at the end of that year, I decided to return to the United States, where for the next four years I would pursue rabbinical ordination at HUC-JIR in New York and doctoral studies in Religion at Columbia University….

The precise character of my [doctoral] work was shaped by two men. Towards the end of my formal graduate education in 1976 and 1977, I came under the tutelage of Fritz Bamberger of HUC-JIR and Jacob Katz of Hebrew University, who was then at Columbia as a visiting professor…. [Professor Bamberger’s teaching made] me aware that the hermeneutic of tension I have employed in all my work is embedded in a narrative that emerged from my own childhood experiences as a Jewish boy in Virginia…. Professor Katz provided me with the content and even more importantly the methodology that would guide and inform my work for decades to come. [He] pointed out that Germany was the crucible in which modern Judaism was born. It was here that the conflict between an inherited Jewish tradition and a highly acculturated Jewish community first played itself out… Indeed, it is a primary reason that I wrote my dissertation on Rabbi Hildesheimer, an Orthodox Jew completely committed to Jewish tradition, who received a doctorate from a German university and who was completely comfortable in Western culture. A study of his life would indicate precisely how Jewish religious tradition could be and was adapted to the demands of the time and place in which he lived. In so doing, I could hold up a mirror to my own being and provide a case study of how Judaism could be adapted to the modern world….

My decision to employ his model to study Rabbinic responsa and prayer book compositions in Western Europe, North America, and my beloved Israel reflect my deepest personal commitments to Judaism and the State of Israel. It also led me to believe that academic scholarship was a vital means to illuminate an understanding of life for myself, my Jewish community, and others in the larger world…

* * *

As a Jew who is commanded every day to remember my bondage and my exodus from Egypt… I cannot forget the books of my Jewish past, nor do I want to. Instead, I hope that my children and my students and their descendants, as our daily liturgy phrases it, will be “yodei sh’mecha v’lomdei toratecha” (knowers of God and students of Torah). My years as president of the College-Institute have been an extension of my entire life and all my values. I have aspired as a Jew born in America and connected deeply both to Israel and the larger world to place myself and my students in a chain of Jewish tradition that is humane and inclusive. Rabbi Leo Baeck provides me with a language for that aspiration…:

Every generation by choosing its way, its present way, at the same time chooses an essential part of the future, the way of its children…. Ways bind, wind, and wander. When a man forms his life, he begins to create community. He is not only born into community as if by fate, but he has now been called to the task of molding it.

My own Jewish way has wandered. Surely, the ways of my own children and grandchildren as well as my students will wander as well. Nevertheless, I and they are also bound, and my way, just as theirs, emanates from those who lived before us. I have tried—through my researches and through my work as a teacher and as president of the College-Institute—to honor the way I have inherited even as I have struggled to mold a direction for a way that reflects who I am. I look forward with confidence to how the students and graduates of HUC-JIR… will mold their own directions for the Jewish people and humanity in the days ahead.

Read the entire piece here.

Rabbi David Ellenson, PhD, z”l (1947–2023), served as president of Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion from 2001 to 2013 and again from 2018 to 2019. He was a prolific scholar of modern Jewish thought and history.

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LGBT Rabbinic Reflections

LGBTQ+ Rabbinic Groundbreaker Rabbi Eric Weiss: ‘The Great Deficit of Breaking Any Ceiling Is That You Have to Be Careful of the Shards’

This Pride Month, the Central Conference of American Rabbis is lifting up an important community within the Reform rabbinate: the groundbreaking LGTBQ+ rabbis who were amongst the first rabbis to express themselves openly, who paved the way—and often fought for—LGBTQ+ acceptance and inclusion in the Reform rabbinate and in the Jewish community.

Generations of LGBTQ+ Jews have lived closeted lives because of outright discrimination and more subtle forms of bias and rejection that have dominated much of Jewish history, including the history of our Reform Movement and the CCAR itself. We are committed to continuing to learn how to rectify the erasures of the past and to embrace all of our colleagues.

While the Reform Movement has advocated for LGBTQ+ inclusion for decades, for many queer rabbis, the personal experience of navigating sexuality in rabbinical school, or being the first out rabbi at a synagogue, in an organization, or even in their city or community, was a fraught, sometimes painful experience, often marked with judgment, shame, or even overt discrimination. 

We share these moments of truth, and we also share important moments of joy and hard-won milestones. We honor the experiences of queer Reform rabbis, their meaningful contributions, and above all else, we thank them for showing up as their authentic selves and bringing diversity and wholeness to the rabbinate and to their communities.

“Neitzei hasadeh—Let us go forth and let our message ring out, that God loves us all, that we love us all, and that love conquers all.” [Based on Song of Songs 7:12]

I was first admitted to rabbinical school, through the Hebrew Union College Los Angeles campus under the deanship of Rabbi Lenny Thal, in 1979, after my graduation from the University of California at Santa Cruz. I declined my admission, requested a deferment for a year, was granted the deferment to 1980, and subsequently declined the deferment. It wasn’t time.

In 1979, I came out as a gay man and moved to San Francisco, where I spent five formative years. During this time, I worked in law firms, attended Congregation Sha’ar Zahav, taught religious school with my sister at Congregation Sherith Israel, and relished the gay life of San Francisco. The era between the Stonewall Rebellion in 1969 and the first reported cases of AIDS in the United States in 1981 was extraordinarily celebratory for gay men. We broke down paradigms and rebuilt them into new communal structures and relational interactions. It was a glorious era. In a heterocentric world, this period is frequently cast as one of sexualized abandon, with life and death consequences. Such homophobic and transphobic tropes have served to diminish sexual identity, gender identity, and otherwise maintain a level of heterocentric hegemony that has denied to this day a medical cure for AIDS.   

With the onset of the AIDS pandemic, I became among the first gay and lesbian hospice volunteers, first with the Coming Home Hospice and then with the Shanti Project, to serve primarily gay men dying of AIDS. These deeply spiritual experiences not only resurrected my interest in reapplying to rabbinical school but also stimulated my curiosity to learn more about spiritual care as a Jewish theological practice. In 1982, I re-applied to rabbinical school, through the Los Angeles campus, under the deanship of Rabbi Lee Bycel, and was accepted, this time as an openly gay student. I began rabbinical school in the fall of 1983.     

There were many points of great support along the way. In Jerusalem, when I wrote an essay that was gay-themed, I received it back with the same grammatical corrections as any other essay I wrote. I met gay Israelis, and, in what seemed an unofficial student mark of Jerusalem life, I had an Israeli boyfriend.

In 1984, upon my arrival to the Los Angeles campus, I had the great luck of landing into a class filled with love, kindness, and great humor. There, Rabbi Stanley Chyet, z”l, sought me out and in a private meeting assured me that my ordination would never be threatened. In 1986, in a private meeting on the Los Angeles campus, then-CCAR President Rabbi Jack Stern, z”l, made clear that the CCAR would welcome me as an openly gay member. My Los Angeles peers elected me to represent the student-body in rabbinical school admission interviews. I still remember an orientation evening with Rabbi Lee Bycel, the L.A. Dean, who said, “Never forget your peers, you will need each other over the years.” For me, his wisdom was prescient. I believe our collegiality is our individual health. Nobody knows what it is to be a rabbi but another rabbi. In 1987, on the New York campus of HUC-JIR, my peers elected me student body president. In the day-in and day-out life of HUC-JIR, it was my peers who gave me an abiding comfort and satisfaction in the midst of the challenges that we all face as we are formed into a rabbinic identity.  

But, there were terrible moments of crassness. A Talmud professor in Los Angeles spoke of a gay man sitting on a fire hydrant, and the sexualization that image invokes as a metaphor to explain the legal principle, shev v’al ta’aseh. Conversations, casual or formal, about officiation at “gay weddings” were filled with spineless and p’shat reflections from rabbi-professors such as “I am glad I have never been asked so that I haven’t ever had to say no.” Discussions of the efficacy of LGBTQI+ synagogues (the entirety of these letters did not exist then) were held as if the most important theological point was that “those people” only want the freedom to kiss one another with “Shabbat Shalom” at the end of a service. The most painful parts of this prejudice still are the extraordinary use of professors’ God-given minds to skew theology into pure prejudice. This cloak of prejudice derails, even to this day, rabbinic careers and causes great economic, social, and personal harm. That this remains without t’shuvah is one of the real stains on HUC-JIR. There were many nights, as I fell asleep, that I was grateful for the enduring power of my Gay-Jewish identity—an identity that was strengthened during my prior years in San Francisco—so that the bruises of prejudice never went deeper than my skin.  

San Francisco became a throughline in the years following my ordination. I spent the entirety of my formal rabbinate in San Francisco. Some might look from the outside and say “how lucky,” but in truth, I didn’t have a choice. I had one solid job offer when I was ordained in 1989, at the Bureau of Jewish Education in San Francisco. I got that job offer because I had gone through the Los Angeles-based School of Education. I then sought further training in clinical pastoral education and spiritual direction—a continuation of the spiritual path that began in those early years of the AIDS pandemic, but also an opening to new job possibilities to continue to be a rabbi. In many of these places I remained the first of something. In many places, I yearned to follow someone else. The great deficit of breaking any ceiling is that you have to be careful of the shards. 

I was able to serve as the CEO of the Bay Area Jewish Healing Center where I helped build the Jewish healing movement. From my own self-reflective practice of Jewish spiritual care, I have had the chance to contribute to a vocabulary of Jewish spirituality and care, develop programs of Jewish spiritual support, and help to define the spiritual narrative in illness, dying, and grief. I have been able to help create spiritual frames for the experience of mental illness, communal spiritual supports, and the ways a spiritual narrative supports Jewish adult identity development in bikur cholim.  

I have had the rabbinate I wanted. I entered HUC-JIR with the desire to go into “pastoral care.” The language of Jewish healing did not then exist. I have also had a rabbinate that never formally attached to the Reform Movement. While I sat on the CCAR board, was asked to write two books from the CCAR Press, and have been honored to work with CCAR leadership, my rabbinate was never supported by the Reform Movement. Today, too many of us can say the same. Our devoted rabbinic contributions to the Movement we love is actually from the outside. And, like many, I would never be the rabbi I am without my husband or without colleagues.   

History, I learned from my HUC-JIR professors, is not neutral. What happened happened from different perspectives, and no history is ever fully true until all perspectives are known. This is why we learn that history is never about the past. All history is an evolving story of love, pain, disappointment, jealousy, relief, celebration, triumph. This is why history is also human intrigue. This is why our own Torah narrative is so abiding to our common identity. This is why, after the destruction of our Temple in Jerusalem, our rabbinic mind formed a Jewish life that would be contemporary to every time. We all know that the realization of one’s own b’tzelem Elohim happens over time. And so then does any history. As soon as I realized that I was gay, in 1979, I “came out.” I was admitted to HUC-JIR as an openly gay student in 1983. I was ordained in 1989. So many of us LGBTQI+ folks end up caught in the heterocentric notions of “coming out.” And yet, we all know the countless ways in which revealing oneself are marked in the range of time. We who fully understand marking time and space, need to shed these heterocentric frames of “coming out” and rather develop our own markings of LGBTQI+ milestones. This is the ultimate theological task. Our b’tzelem Elohim is a diversity which is a testament to God’s unfathomable creativity. We have always existed in the rabbinic mind. Ours is to frame the covenantal relationship to ourselves and the Transcendent as a matter of Judaism’s continual canon for a vital Jewish life.   

Rabbi Eric Weiss was ordained in 1989 at the New York Campus of HUC-JIR. He is formally trained in Jewish education, clinical chaplaincy, and spiritual direction. He is a co-founder of Grief and Growing: A Healing Weekend of Individuals and Families in Mourning and of Kol Haneshama: Jewish End of Life/Hospice Volunteer Training Program. He is the editor of Mishkan R’fuah: Where Healing Resides and Mishkan Aveilut: Where Grief Resides, published by the CCAR Press. He is a founding co-president of the GLRN: Gay and Lesbian Rabbinic Network, now the QESHET listserve. He is executive director emeritus of the Bay Area Jewish Healing Center, where he served for 26 years. He served on the board of the CCAR and is a past president of the Northern California Board of Rabbis. Currently, he currently serves as a CCAR/HUC-JIR Mentor, and he is the Interim Co-executive director of Shalom Bayit, the Jewish community’s central voice for domestic violence in the Bay Area. He resides with his husband of 31 years, Dan, in Palm Springs, California.

Categories
LGBT Rabbinic Reflections

LGBTQ+ Rabbinic Groundbreakers: Rabbi Denise Eger: ‘Speak Loud, Fight Harder, Be Proud’

This Pride Month, the Central Conference of American Rabbis is lifting up an important community within the Reform rabbinate: the groundbreaking LGTBQ+ rabbis who were amongst the first rabbis to express themselves openly, who paved the way—and often fought for—LGBTQ+ acceptance and inclusion in the Reform rabbinate and in the Jewish community.

Generations of LGBTQ+ Jews have lived closeted lives because of outright discrimination and more subtle forms of bias and rejection that have dominated much of Jewish history, including the history of our Reform Movement and the CCAR itself. We are committed to continuing to learn how to rectify the erasures of the past and to embrace all of our colleagues.

While the Reform Movement has advocated for LGBTQ+ inclusion for decades, for many queer rabbis, the personal experience of navigating sexuality in rabbinical school, or being the first out rabbi at a synagogue, in an organization, or even in their city or community, was a fraught, sometimes painful experience, often marked with judgment, shame, or even overt discrimination. 

We share these moments of truth, and we also share important moments of joy and hard-won milestones. We honor the experiences of queer Reform rabbis, their meaningful contributions, and above all else, we thank them for showing up as their authentic selves and bringing diversity and wholeness to the rabbinate and to their communities.

“Neitzei hasadeh—Let us go forth and let our message ring out, that God loves us all, that we love us all, and that love conquers all.” [Based on Song of Songs 7:12]

As we observe Pride in 2023, I am reflecting on many aspects of my LGBTQ+ rabbinic journey. I am particularly nostalgic as I am retiring from my pulpit soon. My entire rabbinic career has been serving the Los Angeles LGBTQ+ Jewish community.  

When I was ordained a rabbi in 1988 by Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion, it was still a time when you could not be openly gay or lesbian and rabbi. (There was not even a discussion that transgender people could be part of this equation at that time!) The College–Institute did not ordain openly gay or lesbian people as rabbis.   

This was a burning question and issue in the mid- to late 1980s within Reform Judaism. What was the place of LGBTQ+ Jews in the community? Could LGBTQ+ Jews be religious leaders? And all of this against a backdrop of a horrible AIDS pandemic that was killing gay men in droves in this country. And in the midst of a political scene where the U.S. government did nothing to help. Ronald Reagan’s administration’s inaction and lack of truth telling about AIDS/HIV contributed to the number of deaths. The right wing of the Republican Party and the religious homophobes they courted called for concentration camps for gay men, and they blocked civil rights for LGBTQ+ people. 

My rabbinate unfolded against this backdrop, fueling me to become an advocate and activist for LGBTQ+ rights in society and LGBTQ+ rites in our Jewish world. There were many closeted LGBTQ+ people who were already ordained, but only a handful who were openly gay. As the Central Conference of American Rabbis and Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion were actively debating the ordination of gay and lesbian colleagues as rabbis, there was to be a resolution at the 1990 CCAR Convention in Seattle. In advance of the Convention, my coming out story ran in the Los Angeles Times, helping to give a face and name to the cause.  

There was no turning back.

From left: Rabbi Ross Z. Levy, Rabbi Denise Eger, Cantor Patti Linsky during High Holy Days 2022 at Congregation Kol Ami.

I stood at the bedsides of countless young men dying of HIV, feeding them and visiting them when they had no one, when their families still rejected them.   

I advocated for gay youth who were often thrown out of their homes.

I did training for Jewish professionals, social workers, and other community leaders about how to be more inclusive of the LGBTQ+ community. We made connections with the Israeli LGBTQ+ community supporting their efforts and worked with the first openly lesbian Tel Aviv city council woman, Michal Eden, who opened the LGBTQ youth shelter, Beit Dror, in Tel Aviv. We raised money for Beit Dror, as well as provided resources to train their social workers in Israel on LGBTQ+ issues for youth.  

These are but some examples of my rabbinate. 

Rabbi Denise Eger, right, with Reverend Susan Russell of All Saints Church in Pasadena, California in 2008, when the California Supreme Court ruled that provisions in the state’s marriage statutes banning same-sex marriages violated the California Constitution.

Over the course of the next thirty-five years, I would push the boundaries of inclusion for marriage equality both in our Reform Movement and the larger Jewish world and in society at large. I performed the first legal same-sex marriage in California in 2008 when the California Supreme Court found same-sex marriage to be legal in the Constitution. I would do over sixty weddings during that summer of love, before voters in November 2008 took away the right to marry until the federal government granted it again in 2015.  

I worked on many other issues of concern for LGBTQ+ people, including advocating for transgender rights and for the expanding understanding of gender expression alongside sexual orientation.  

There are many moments of memory, including becoming the first openly LGBTQ+ person to become president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis in 2015. One story from that moment that most people don’t know, is that even with all the progress on LGBTQ+ civil rights in society and in the liberal Jewish world by 2015, the day I was to be installed as CCAR President, a credible death threat was made against me. At the Convention, I had a bodyguard. My colleagues kept asking who the guy was that was trailing me everywhere. We couldn’t actually say as we didn’t want to draw too much extra attention to the situation, but there was an abundance of caution. I didn’t leave the hotel except once to go to dinner, where the bodyguard sat at the next table with a clear sight line to the door. It was frightening for me and for my family as my son was with me from college.  

The world had changed and yet not so much. There still was an expression of hatred and violence against me as an out lesbian, as an out Jewish lesbian. 

This wasn’t the first death threat I received. There have been many. 

And what worries me most today, is the climate of hatred and harassment and rolling back of civil rights for our LGBTQ+ community. The particular focus on the dehumanization of transgender people and trans children and their families in many states; the threat to marriage equality; the rolling back of hate crime laws; the attack on women’s reproductive health, hearkens back to the time when I became a rabbi.  

Our Reform Movement will need to stand strong and tall for LGBTQ+ rabbis and their families. Our Reform Movement will need to stand strong and tall for our LGBTQ+ congregants and members and in the larger society and use its power and voice and moral suasion to be the advocates we need.  

May this Pride Season inspire us to speak louder, fight harder for justice, and be proud of our queer rabbis, family, friends, and community. 

Rabbi Denise L. Eger is the founding rabbi of Congregation Kol Ami in West Hollywood, California. In March 2015 she became the 60th President of the CCAR, becoming the first openly gay or lesbian rabbi to hold that position. She served from 2015-2017. Rabbi Eger is also past President of the Southern California Board of Rabbis (the first woman and openly gay person to do so) and a past President of the Pacific Association of Reform Rabbis.

In 2020, she released Mishkan Ga’avah: Where Pride Dwells: A Celebration of Jewish Life and Ritual (CCAR Press), a groundbreaking collection of LGBTQ+ prayers, poems, liturgy, and rituals. Her latest book is Seven Principles for Living Bravely: Ageless Wisdom and Comforting Faith for Weathering Life’s Most Difficult Times.

Categories
LGBT Rabbinic Reflections

LGBTQ+ Rabbinic Groundbreakers: Rabbi Don Goor on Opening Doors

This Pride Month, the Central Conference of American Rabbis is lifting up an important community within the Reform rabbinate: the groundbreaking LGTBQ+ rabbis who were amongst the first rabbis to express themselves openly, who paved the way—and often fought for—LGBTQ+ acceptance and inclusion in the Reform rabbinate and in the Jewish community.

Generations of LGBTQ+ Jews have lived closeted lives because of outright discrimination and more subtle forms of bias and rejection that have dominated much of Jewish history, including the history of our Reform Movement and the CCAR itself. We are committed to continuing to learn how to rectify the erasures of the past and to embrace all of our colleagues.

While the Reform Movement has advocated for LGBTQ+ inclusion for decades, for many queer rabbis, the personal experience of navigating sexuality in rabbinical school, or being the first out rabbi at a synagogue, in an organization, or even in their city or community, was a fraught, sometimes painful experience, often marked with judgment, shame, or even overt discrimination. 

We share these moments of truth, and we also share important moments of joy and hard-won milestones. We honor the experiences of queer Reform rabbis, their meaningful contributions, and above all else, we thank them for showing up as their authentic selves and bringing diversity and wholeness to the rabbinate and to their communities.

“Neitzei hasadeh—Let us go forth and let our message ring out, that God loves us all, that we love us all, and that love conquers all.” [Based on Song of Songs 7:12]

When I was ordained in 1987, all I could see in my future were doors that were closed to me.  

When I applied to Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR), I hid the fact that I was gay. I feared that being discovered would bar me from any opportunity to be ordained, let alone allow me to find a position upon ordination. While the seminary accepted me, the door to true acceptance was locked shut. 

When Evan and I first met, we hid our relationship. We did not communicate with each other at HUC-JIR for fear of discovery. Instead of speaking at school, we left messages on each other’s voicemails so that we could meet (always clandestinely), away from eyes that might lead to the door of ordination being shut in our faces.  

I went into placement confident that I could only ever find a position in a synagogue as a closeted “single” man. When I did accept a position in the New York area (this was so Evan and I could be close; he had one more year before being ordained as a cantor), the senior rabbi asked if I was gay. (At the time, the CCAR had a task force on accepting gay rabbis, so it seemed like an innocent question.) With a quivering voice, I answered, “Yes”! He then told me he couldn’t have me on his staff. He didn’t want a rabbi who would be lying about his identity to the congregation and, at the same time, wasn’t willing to hire an “out” rabbi. The door that I feared would be slammed shut in my face did in fact close, in an emotionally devastating moment.  

In follow-up interviews, I was careful to keep the door completely shut and avoid the question of sexual orientation at all costs. As an act of self-preservation, I was complicit in keeping that door closed tightly.  

At Temple Judea in Tarzana, California, I spent many years as assistant/associate rabbi, sharing a home with Evan—my “roommate”! We were careful to build an impenetrable barrier between our professional and personal lives.   

When the senior rabbi position at Judea became available, I knew it was up to me to open the door so I could serve the congregation with a sense of wholeness and integrity. Over the period of a few months, I met with congregational leaders—past, present, and future—to share my story and to come out to them individually and in person. None of them were surprised; all were supportive. Doors began to open. 

Rather than go through an open search, the congregation hired consultants to help them understand what they were looking for in their next senior rabbi. While they quickly reached the consensus that I would be a great match, I’m told that the more senior members of the congregation expressed concern that younger members would be uncomfortable, while younger members were nervous that older members might object. Over several months my personal life was discussed openly by hundreds of congregants. Would Evan and I kiss on the bimah? Would we dance together at synagogue events? It was more than uncomfortable and not at all an easy process. And yet, the door slowly creaked open.   

At the time, it seemed that I was the first openly gay rabbi to be appointed senior rabbi at a mainstream congregation, a story interesting enough for The New York Times to cover. While the synagogue celebrated, protestors attended my installation, and a famous radio personality spoke about abomination on his nationally syndicated program. I’m forever grateful to my teachers and mentors, Rabbi David Ellenson and Rabbi Richard Levy, z”l, for supporting me quite publicly. While the door was slowly opening, there were those trying to slam it shut again.  

A number of years later, as same-gender marriage became legal, Evan and I, at long last, celebrated a chuppah surrounded by friends, family, and congregants. The Shabbat before our ceremony, we were blessed on the bimah at Temple Judea, after which one family resigned. It turns out it was okay to have an out, gay rabbi, but they didn’t want it “shoved in their face”!   

Eventually, despite facing hurdles, I was welcomed for twenty-six years as the rabbi—not as the gay rabbi. I was blessed to share fully in the life of the congregation. 

While the journey to full acceptance and welcome within the community wasn’t an easy one, I never imagined during my time as an HUC-JIR student, hidden deep within the closet, that my career would be so fulfilling and so meaningful. While doors were closed to me along the journey, I’m pleased and proud that, over the years, more and more of those doors swung open. The seminary that wouldn’t have ordained me had I been out invited me to teach and mentor students. The world of synagogue life that was originally closed to me embraced me, and Evan, in the end. They opened doors and hearts, allowing me to serve as their rabbi with complete openness and integrity. I feel privileged to have shared my professional journey with a loving partner, caring friends and family, and a supportive community. Together we forced open the doors so that future generations of rabbis could walk through them with their heads held high. 

Rabbi Donald Goor was ordained in 1987 at Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion in New York. In 1996, Rabbi Goor was appointed the first out, gay rabbi to serve a mainstream congregation. Rabbi Goor served on the faculty of HUC-JIR in Los Angeles for many years and is rabbi emeritus at Temple Judea in Tarzana, CA. He made aliyah in 2013 and now serves as the rabbinic liaison at J2 Adventures—planning trips to Israel for rabbis and synagogues—and on the boards of the Israel Religious Action Center, Shutaf—a program for special needs kids—and the David Forman Foundation. Rabbi Goor is married to Cantor Evan Kent, his life partner of over thirty-five years. 

Categories
LGBT Rabbinic Reflections

LGBTQ+ Rabbinic Groundbreakers: Rabbi Allen Bennett on Finding Identity, Authenticity, and Freedom

This Pride Month, the Central Conference of American Rabbis is lifting up an important community within the Reform rabbinate: the groundbreaking LGTBQ+ rabbis who were amongst the first rabbis to express themselves openly, who paved the way—and often fought for—LGBTQ+ acceptance and inclusion in the Reform rabbinate and in the Jewish community.

Generations of LGBTQ+ Jews have lived closeted lives because of outright discrimination and more subtle forms of bias and rejection that have dominated much of Jewish history, including the history of our Reform Movement and the CCAR itself. We are committed to continuing to learn how to rectify the erasures of the past and to embrace all of our colleagues.

While the Reform Movement has advocated for LGBTQ+ inclusion for decades, for many queer rabbis, the personal experience of navigating sexuality in rabbinical school, or being the first out rabbi at a synagogue, in an organization, or even in their city or community, was a fraught, sometimes painful experience, often marked with judgment, shame, or even overt discrimination. 

We share these moments of truth, and we also share important moments of joy and hard-won milestones. We honor the experiences of queer Reform rabbis, their meaningful contributions, and above all else, we thank them for showing up as their authentic selves and bringing diversity and wholeness to the rabbinate and to their communities.

“Neitzei hasadeh—Let us go forth and let our message ring out, that God loves us all, that we love us all, and that love conquers all.” [Based on Song of Songs 7:12]

Although I had begun the coming-out process in my senior year of high school (1964), for all intents and purposes, I remained essentially closeted until four years after ordination in 1978. This meant applying to seminary under false pretenses because being truthful about being gay would have meant not being admitted to the school. 

There was no support system of any kind throughout this time, and although I was not consciously thinking about it all the time, in the back of my mind there was always the fear of discovery and the stress and pressure of evolving into the persona of a rabbi while at the same time living a lie. 

I was the first openly gay rabbi, at least in the U.S. As one might expect, the organized Jewish community was not receptive to the news of my coming out. While it was never stated directly, it was strongly implied that it would be nigh impossible to find a (congregational) job if people knew that I was gay. Fortunately, I had never wanted to work in congregational life, so my job search took me in different directions, e.g., hospital chaplaincy, that was much more to my liking. As it turned out, the chaplaincy job was only part-time, and to make a full-time living, I ended up becoming the rabbi of the small congregation in the community, but did not disclose my gayness, and thus avoided the challenge that my being out would have posed. 

By the time I left that position, I had decided to enter academia and was able to avoid the issues that would have been associated at that point in time with congregational work. 

One of the hardest things about being a/the first gay rabbi was that in the minds of the people I encountered, I was perceived as gay first and a rabbi second. That was the wrong order of things, and it was an unnecessary burden. Also, there were no peers, there was no support system of any kind, extremely few colleagues to whom I could speak about my personal life, and this resulted in my living a pretty lonely existence for a good part of this time. 

One of the biggest rewards since coming out was that I was free of the burden of deceit, lies, and duplicity. That freedom meant that I could be a role model, a “symbolic exemplar,” and not experience ongoing guilt about being inauthentic. It meant that I could use my own experience to help inform other LGBTQIA+ clergy about the differences between being out, honest, and free, and being closeted, dishonest (with oneself and others), and restricted. 

I would not wish coming out the way I did on anyone. The world seemed completely unready to accept LGBTQIA+ clergy in the 1960s and 1970s, and even now there continue to be risks associated with our authenticity and honesty. Yet despite the risks, I look back with some disbelief at how far we have come, while understanding that we still have so far to go to achieve the unconditional acceptance that we all deserve. For the most part things have changed for the better with non-Orthodox Jewish seminaries accepting, admitting, and ordaining LGBTQIA+ students. Today same-sex marriage is accepted law throughout the land, something many of us in my generation thought we would never live to see. And we have created liturgies and rituals to sanctify these relationships, thus expanding the welcome of our communities in ways many of us never experienced in our early years.

Whatever one’s gender identity or orientation, it is extremely challenging to be a rabbi, cantor, educator, etc., in these times, perhaps even more so than in my generation. Fortunately, in most cases today being LGBTQIA+ is not a major risk factor in our professional lives. For better or for worse, our real challenge is to find ways to keep Judaism and Jewish community relevant to those who are or wish to be Jewish. And our own individual identity is only one part of the totality we bring to our work. 

Rabbi Allen Bennett was ordained in 1974.