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The Sacred Calling

Cover of 'The Sacred Calling' by Rabbi Rebecca Einstein Schorr and Rabbi Alysa Mendelson Graf

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The Sacred Calling

Name: The Sacred Calling
Author: Rabbi Rebecca Einstein Schorr
ISBN: 9780881232172

Four Decades of Women in the Rabbinate

Edited by Rabbi Rebecca Einstein Schorr and Rabbi Alysa Mendelson Graf

840 Pages6.00 × 9.00 × 1.30 in

Paperback

ISBN: 9780881232172
Published: 1st Jan 2016

$25.95

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Contents
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Acknowledgments
Foreword, Rabbi Sally J. Priesand
Preface, Rabbi Jacqueline Koch Ellenson
Introduction: What Kind of Job Is that for a Nice Jewish Girl?
Short Takes
An Offering Made in Honor of Those Who Have No Time to Make an Offering, Rabbi Karen Bender
Women Rabbis’ List of Firsts

Part One • Those Who Came Before Us: The Pre-history of Women Rabbis
1. Who Controls The Narrative? A “Stop Action” Analysis of the Story of Beruriah and the Implications for Women Rabbis, Rabbi Judith Abrams, PhD, z”l
2. Chasidic Women Rebbes from 1749 to 1900, Rabbi Renee Edelman
3. “The Long and Winding Road” to Women Rabbis, Pamela S. Nadell, PhD
4. Rediscovering Regina Jonas: The First Woman Rabbi, Rabbi Laura Geller
5. The Women Who Set the Stage: Celebrating One Hundred Years of Women in Reform Judaism, Rabbi Marla J. Feldman
Personal Reflection: A First Rabbi, from a Long Line of Rabbis, Rabbi Naamah Kelman-Ezrachi
Personal Reflection: Going into the Family Business, Rabbi Sue Shankman

Part Two • Reform Ordination of Women
6. Letters from Hebrew Union College to Sally Priesand
7. The Ordination of Sally Priesand, A Historic Interview
8. Looking Back to See Ahead, Rabbi Richard F. Address, DMin
9. What’s in a Word? Inequality in the Reform S’michah, Rabbi Mary Zamore
10. A Brief History of the Task Force on Women in the Rabbinate, Rabbi Neil Kominsky
11. From Periphery to Center: A History of the Women’s Rabbinic Network, Rabbi Carole B. Balin, PhD
12. Women Who Chose: First a Jew, Then a Rabbi, Julie Wiener
13. O Pioneers: Reflections from Five Women Rabbis of the First Generation, Rabbi Sue Levi Elwell, PhD
14. From Generation to Generation: A Roundtable Discussion with Rabbi Ellen Weinberg Dreyfus
Personal Reflection: The Pregnant Rabbi, Rabbi Deborah Zecher 223
Personal Reflection: Ima and Abba on the Bimah: Being an RK Squared, Rachel Marder

Part Three • Ripple Effects: The Impact of Ordaining Women
15. JTS, HUC, and Women Rabbis—Redux, Rabbi Gary Phillip Zola, PhD
16. Creating Opportunities for the “Other”: The Ordination of Women as a Turning Point for LGBT Jews, Rabbi Denise L. Eger
17. The Impact of Women Rabbis on Male Rabbis, Rabbi Charles A. Kroloff
18. Women Rabbis in Israel, Rabbi Dalia Marx, PhD
19. The First Thirty Years in Israel: Avnei Derech, Rabbi Kinneret Shiryon, DD
20. A New Reality: Female Religious Leadership in the
Modern Orthodox Community, Maharat Rori Picker Neiss
21. Orthodox Women (Non-) Rabbis, Rabbi Darren Kleinberg, PhD
Personal Reflection: The Presence of Women Rabbis: A Transformation of the Rabbinate and of Jewish Life, Rabbi Sam Gordon
Personal Reflection: Growing Up With Women Rabbis as Role Models, Rabbi Michael S. Friedman
Personal Reflection: A Man’s Experience of Women in the Rabbinate, Rabbi Jeffrey Kurtz-Lendner

Part Four • Women Rabbis and Feminism
22. Women Rabbis and Feminism: On Our Way to the Promised Land, Rabbi Laura Geller
23. “I Find By Experience”: Feminist Praxis of Theology and Knowledge, Rabbi Oshrat Morag
24. Shifting the Focus: Women Rabbis and Developments in Feminist Theology, Rabbi Kari Hofmaister Tuling, PhD
25. Real Men Marry Rabbis: A History of the Jewish Feminist Movement, Rabbi Rebecca W. Sirbu
26. Betty Friedan’s “Spiritual Daughters,” the ERA, and the CCAR, Rabbi Carole B. Balin, PhD
Personal Reflection: Finding a Seat at the Right Table: Gender at HUC-JIR, Rabbi Daniel Kirzane
Personal Reflection: Becoming a Woman of the Wall, Rabbi Susan Silverman

Part Five • Jewish Life
27. Making Up for Lost Time: Female Rabbis and Ritual Change, Rabbi Debra Reed Blank, PhD
28. The Mikveh as a Well of Creativity, Rabbi Sara Luria and Shaina Herring
29. Offering a New Look: Women Rabbis and Jewish Spirituality, Rabbi Michele Lenke
30. El Na R’fah Na Lah, Heal Us Now, Rabbi Eric Weiss with Hilly Haber
31. Kindling Change: Women Rabbis and Social Action, Rabbi Patricia Karlin-Neumann
32. How Jewish Women Have Come to Read the Bible: The Creating of Midrash, Rabbi Sandy Sasso, DMin
33. 140 Faces of Torah and Counting: CommunalTransformation, Theological Evolution, and the Authority of Interpretation, Rabbi Elizabeth W. Goldstein, PhD
Personal Reflection: A Rabbi Goes to the Mikveh, Rabbi Julie Wolkoff, DMin, CT
Personal Reflection: A Rabbi in the Military—Rabbi Sarah Schechter, Chaplain (Major), United States Air Force Academy
Personal Reflection: Born in the USSR: Rabbi Elena Rubinstein

Part Six • Congregational Culture and Community Life
34. Weaving Webs of Sacred Connection: Women Rabbis and Congregational Culture, Rabbi Judith Schindler and Cantor Mary Thomas
35. Forty Years—What Moses Might Have Learned (from His Women Colleagues), Rabbi Amy M. Schwartzman
36. Creating a New Model: From Rabbi and Rebbetzin to Co-Rabbis, Rabbi Linda Motzkin and Rabbi Jonathan Rubenstein
37. Women Rabbis and the Gender Pay Gap: Lessons from the CCAR’s 2012 Landmark Study and a Call to Action, Michael J. Gan and Joshua Scharff
38. Getting to the Gold Standard in Maternity Leave Clauses, Rabbi Alysa Mendelson Graf
39. Figuring It All Out: The Parenting Balancing Act, Rabbi Rebecca Einstein Schorr
Personal Reflection: Why I Almost Did Not Become a Rabbi, Rabbi Alysa Mendelson Graf
Personal Reflection: Being a Public Person, Suffering a Private Loss, by Rabbi Rebecca Gutterman
Personal Reflection: The “Part-Time” Rabbinate, Rabbi Sara Yellen Sapadin
Personal Reflection: Journeying to the Edge of the Known and Comprehended World—Becoming a Senior Rabbi, Rabbi Ruth A. Zlotnick
Personal Reflection: Leaning In, Leaning Out, and Just Managing to Stand Up: Notes from a Rabbinic Working Mother, Rabbi Hara E. Person

Part Seven • Image
40. The Rabbi As Symbolic Exemplar: A Feminist Critique, Rabbi Sara Mason-Barkin
41. From Imagination to Reality: Ima on the Bimah, Rabbi Mindy Avra Portnoy
42. “Funny, You Don’t Look Like a Rabbi”: Transference and the Female Rabbi, Rabbi Ellen Jay Lewis, PhD
43. The Public Image of the Woman Rabbi, Rabbi Wendy Spears
44. A Mirror, A Prism, and a Telescope: Reimagining Role Models, Rabbi Leah Rachel Berkowitz
46. Portraits of the Rabbi as a Young Woman, Wendy Zierler, PhD
47. Searching for the Fictional Woman Rabbi on the Small and Large Screen, Rabbi David J. Zucker, PhD
Personal Reflection: Rabbis in Red Lipstick, Dasi Fruchter
Personal Reflection: Letter to Hollywood—I Don’t Have a Beard or Side Curls and I Look Just Like You: American Judaism’s Image Problem, Rabbi Jordie Gerson
Personal Reflection: Dropping the “R-Bomb,” Rabbi Elizabeth S. Wood

For Further Reading
Contributors

Ordained by the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Rabbi Rebecca Einstein Schorr is a CLAL Rabbis Without Borders Fellow, a contributing writer at Kveller.com, and is the former editor of the newsletter of the Central Conference of American Rabbis. Her writing appears regularly on various sites including Tablet Magazine, Mamalode, SheKnows, The Christian Science Monitor, The Jewish Week, ReformJudaism.com, and Zeh LeZeh (For One Another). Rabbi Schorr is the co-editor of The Sacred Calling: Forty Years of Women in the Rabbinate, published by CCAR Press in 2016 and winner of the 2016 Jewish Book Award in Women's Studies, and is a contributor to numerous anthologies including The Sacred Encounter: Jewish Perspectives on Sexuality, also published by CCAR Press. A sought-after speaker, Rabbi Schorr speaks regularly about disability and the Jewish imperative for inclusion at such places as the 92nd St. Y, the Academy for Jewish Religion (NY), a variety of synagogues and other community organizations; she was also a member of the 2013 Listen To Your Mother - Wilmington cast and 2015 Listen To Your Mother - Lehigh Valley cast, where she spoke about the reality of rearing a child on the autism spectrum. Her popular TedX talk on her grassroots efforts to raise awareness (and funds) for pediatric cancer research by convincing 75 rabbis to shave their heads has been seen by viewers worldwide . Writing at her blog, This Messy Life (www.rebeccaeinsteinschorr.com), Rabbi Schorr finds meaning in the sacred and not-yet-sacred intersections of daily life. Engage with her on Twitter @rebeccaschorr. Rabbi Alysa Mendelson Graf received Ordination from HUC-JIR (NY) in 2004. She has been the rabbi of Port Jewish Center, a small, haimish synagogue in Port Washington, NY, since July of 2014. Prior to coming to PJC, Rabbi Mendelson served Temple Israel in Westport, CT as its Assistant Rabbi, then Associate Rabbi for almost a decade. Rabbi Mendelson grew up in Scarsdale, NY. She is a 1993 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania. After graduating Fordham University Law School in 1997, Rabbi Mendelson worked as a matrimonial attorney in Manhattan before deciding to pursue the rabbinate. Rabbi Mendelson has been an active member of the CCAR and of the Women’s Rabbinic Network. She has served on the board of the WRN for 11 years and is serving her last year on the board, as its immediate past co-president. She is the co-editor of The Sacred Calling: Forty Years of Women in the Rabbinate, published by CCAR Press and winner of the 2016 Jewish Book Award in Women's Studies, and wrote a chapter called “Getting to the Gold Standard in Maternity Leave Clauses.” Rabbi Mendelson is married to Adam Graf. They have three sons, Gideon, Solomon and Rafi and reside in Port Washington, New York.

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The Sacred Calling

Four Decades of Women in the Rabbinate

The Sacred Calling

Four Decades of Women in the Rabbinate

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