Los Altos Town Crier » LAH rabbi named first woman to lead Jewish clergy

By Linda Taaffe

Image from article LAH rabbi named first woman to lead Jewish clergy

Sexual equality in the Jewish pulpit became more than a concept recently with the unprecedented appointment of Los Altos Hills Rabbi Janet Marder as head of one of the nation’s largest groups of Jewish clergy. Marder is the first woman to lead a major rabbinical association.

The Central Conference of American Rabbis named Marder to a two-year term as its president March 26, a position she assumed last Saturday. Marder will lead the approximately 1,800 Reform rabbis in North America that the organization represents.

“The Reform movement has articulated the notion that men and women are religiously equal since the 19th century. But it wasn’t until 1972 that we ordained a woman rabbi, and it took 30 years for a woman to be named president. So it’s taken some time for those values to be translated into action,” Marder told The Washington Post during an interview last week.

Since 1999, Marder, 48, has been the spiritual leader for the approximately 1,300 families at Congregation Beth Am on Arastradero Road in Los Altos Hills, directing her energy to revitalizing worship and increasing a sense of community.

Beth Am became the largest Jewish congregation in the country, possibly the world, to be headed by a woman when it hired Marder.

Prior to coming to Beth Am, Marder served an 11-year term as director of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, Pacific Southwest Council, where she supervised about 75 congregations in several states. She was previously rabbi of Beth Chayim Chadashim in Los Angeles, the first synagogue with an outreach to gays and lesbians to be accepted by the Reform movement.

Marder is married to Sheldon Marder, who gave up his position as director of the School of Rabbinic Studies at Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles to follow his wife to Los Altos. The couple have two daughters, Betsy and Rachel. Marder will remain rabbi at Beth Am during her term as president.

Reform Judaism, which began more than 125 years ago, is North America’s oldest and largest Jewish movement. The movement, known for its innovative and sometimes risk-taking actions, is a radical departure from Orthodox synagogues, many of which do not even permit women to read publicly from the Torah. Of the Central Conference’s 1,800 members, 377 are women.