Rabbi Debra J. Robbins is a member of the clergy team at Temple Emanu-El in Dallas, Texas, focusing on teaching, pastoral care, and spiritual practice. She was ordained in 1991 at the Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion, and is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley and the Institute for Jewish Spirituality Clergy Leadership Program.
Rabbi Robbins has served the Central Conference of American Rabbis in a variety of leadership roles and is a member of the Women's Rabbinic Network. She was part of the City of Dallas Ethics Reform Task Force and served as president of Reading Village, a non-profit organization working in Guatemala to help teens become leaders through literacy. She is the cofounder of Common Table at the Fox and Crow, an organization founded in March 2020 to address food insecurity on the Outer Cape of Massachusetts. Rabbi Robbins is the current and founding chair of the Vaad HaMikvah of the Rabbinic Association of Greater Dallas in support of the Dallas Community Mikvah and is pursuing certification with the American Red Cross to do chaplaincy work in emergency situations.
She has published essays in Prophetic Voices: Renewing and Reimagining Haftarah (CCAR Press, 2023), Ecology and the Jewish Spirit: Where Nature and the Sacred Meet (Jewish Lights, 2000), The Torah: A Women’s Commentary (CCAR Press, 2008), Lights in the Forest: Rabbis Respond to Twelve Essential Jewish Questions (CCAR Press, 2014), Gates of Shabbat, Revised Edition (CCAR Press), American Values, Religious Voices: Letters of Hope from People of Faith (University of Cincinnati Press, 2023), and in Reform Judaism Magazine. She is the author of Opening Your Heart with Psalm 27: A Spiritual Practice for the Jewish New Year (2019) and New Each Day: A Spiritual Practice for Reading Psalms (2023), both with CCAR Press.
On a more personal note, Rabbi Robbins is married to Larry Robins, president and CEO of PediPlace in Lewisville, Texas. Her son, Sam, an avid mountain biker, lives and works in Denver, Colorado. She enjoys walking and training her Golden Retriever, treasures time reading (especially historical fiction), and loves relaxing by the tidal marsh in Wellfleet, Massachusetts.
