Brief Biographies for International Co-Chairs, Circle of Presidents and International Vice Chairs of Rabbis for Women of the Wall

Rabbi Morris Allen is the first rabbi of Beth Jacob Congregation in Mendota Heights, Minnesota. During that time, Beth Jacob Congregation has become a vibrant, affirming, and accessible egalitarian community. Rabbi Allen has been involved in immigration rights issues for the past twenty years, and represented the Jewish community in  speaking at the April 2010 Immigration Rights  Rally on the Washington Mall. Responding to reported abuses in the production of Kosher food at certain plants throughout the United States, Rabbi Allen became the driving force behind the Magen Tzedek. This new seal on kosher food will provide assurance to consumers that both Jewish ritual and ethical laws and norms have been met in its production. As a result of this work, Newsweek Magazine recently recognized Rabbi Allen as one of the ten most influential rabbis in the United States.

Rabbi Laurie Katz Braun is the co-President of the Women’s Rabbinic Network. She has served as a rabbi at Westchester Reform Temple in Scarsdale, New York; as rabbinic counselor at the Solomon Schechter School of Manhattan; and as an instructor in the Doctor of Ministry program at Hebrew Union College in New York. Rabbi Braun is a volunteer counselor for the National Council for Jewish Women’s Pregnancy Loss Support Program, and is currently completing her Doctorate in Pastoral Counseling.

Sharon Brous is the founding rabbi of IKAR (www.ikar-la.org), a Jewish spiritual community in Los Angeles dedicated to reanimating Jewish life through soulful religious practice that is rooted in a deep commitment to social justice. Rabbi Brous has been listed among the Forward’s 50 most influential American Jews and Newsweek’s leading rabbis, she is a panelist on Newsweek and The Washington Post’s “On Faith” and was a guest on Krista Tippet’s Speaking of Faith on NPR. She serves on the faculty of REBOOT and sits on the rabbinic advisory board of the American Jewish World Service and the regional council of Progressive Jewish Alliance.

Rabbi Menachem Creditor is the spiritual leader of Congregation Netivot Shalom in Berkeley, California.  He is Chair of Bay Area Masorti, a founder of ShefaNetwork: The Masorti/Conservative Movement Dreaming from Within, and author of TheTisch, an electronic commentary on Jewish Spirituality. Rabbi Creditor sits on the steering committee for Hayom: The Coalition for the Transformation of Conservative Judaism and is a member of the Chancellor’s Rabbinic Leadership Team at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.

Rabbi Elliot N. Dorff, Ph.D. is Rector and Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the American Jewish University and Visiting Professor at U.C.L.A. School of Law. He is Chair of the Conservative Movement’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, and in that capacity has been actively involved in making traditional Judaism as inclusive as possible. As a Past President of Jewish Family Service of Los Angeles and now Co-Chair of the Los Angeles Jewish Federation’s Task Force on Serving the Vulnerable, he has worked assiduously to make sure that all Jews are afforded the respect due them as fellow Jews and as creatures of God. His eighteen books on Jewish thought, law, and ethics spell out the theoretical foundations for these stands in Jewish tradition.

Rabbi Ellen Weinberg Dreyfus is President of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the organization of nearly 2000 Reform rabbis in North America and around the world. Rabbi Dreyfus is the rabbi of B’nai Yehuda Beth Sholom, a congregation in the south suburbs of Chicago. She was the first woman to serve as President of the Chicago Board of Rabbis, and was a founder and past-president of the Women’s Rabbinic Network. Rabbi Dreyfus is a Senior Rabbinic Fellow of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. She was ordained at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York in 1979.

Rabbi Gilah Dror is the spiritual leader of Rodef Sholom Temple in Hampton, Virginia and President of the Rabbinical Assembly, the international association of Conservative/Masorti rabbis. Rabbi Dror also served for ten years as the rabbi of Congregation Eshel Avraham in Beer Sheva, Israel. While in Israel, she championed the Conservative Movement and was instrumental in setting up the first alternative cemetery in Israel. Through her work with the Law Committee in Israel, she has published responsa on issues ranging from the ordination of women as rabbis to the donation of bodies to medical science.  Rabbi Dror is a Vice President of Mercaz USA and a member of the WZO Zionist General Council.

Rabbi Amy Eilberg is the first woman ordained as a Conservative rabbi by the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. After many years of work in pastoral care, hospice and spiritual direction, Rabbi Eilberg now directs interfaith dialog programs in the Twin Cities, including at the Jay Phillips Center for Interfaith Learning and the St. Paul Interfaith Network. She teaches the art of compassionate listening in venues throughout the country, and is deeply engaged in peace and reconciliation efforts in connection with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as well as with issues of conflict within the Jewish community. At work on a book on Judaism and Peacemaking, she currently serves as chair of J Street Minnesota.

Rabbi Jacqueline Koch Ellenson is Director of the Women’s Rabbinic Network, the international support and advocacy organization for women in the Reform rabbinate. She served as Chair and board member of the Hadassah Foundation, serves on the boards of Rodeph Sholom School in New York, and Yedidya Center for Jewish Spiritual Direction, and has held leadership positions with the Women’s Rabbinic Network and Central Conference of American Rabbis.  Jackie was the Jewish Chaplain at Harvard-Westlake School, Los Angeles, and has worked in synagogue education, adult education and hospital chaplaincy. Jackie led a Rosh Hodesh: It’s A Girl Thing! Group at Congregation Rodeph Sholom, New York. She is a graduate of the Rabbinic Enrichment program of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, and serves as a spiritual director.

Rabbi Pamela Frydman is a writer, mystic, teacher, counselor, and spiritual leader in the Jewish Renewal Movement. She served as founding rabbi of Or Shalom Jewish Community, now a Reconstructionist congregation. She co-founded OHALAH, Association of Rabbis for Jewish Renewal, and served as its first woman President and first woman Director. She co-founded the Rabbinic Advisory Council of Shalom Bayit, Jewish Women Working to End Domestic Violence, is founder and Director of the Holocaust Education Project at the Academy for Jewish Religion, California, and co-founder and Co-Chair of Rabbis for Women of the Wall.

Rabbi Rosalind Glazer is the spiritual leader of Congregation Beth Israel Judea of San Francisco, California.  A Reconstructionist rabbi, she publishes a blog called The Rabbi Speaks. She is rabbinic co-chair for the Northern California Rabbis for Civil Discourse on Israel and a steering committee member of Friends of Women of the Wall. A co-founder of the Jewish women’s a cappella ensemble VOCOLOT, Rabbi Glazer recorded three albums with the group. Publisher of the Egalitarian The Telling: A Loving Hagadah for Passover, Rabbi Glazer served as an intern at Kolot’s Center for Jewish Women and Gender Studies in Wyncote, Pennsylvania.

Rabbi Dan Goldblatt is the spiritual leader of Beth Chaim Congregation in Danville, California. He serves as Vice President of the National Board of Aleph: the Alliance for Jewish Renewal and is also Vice President of OHALAH: The Association of Rabbis for Jewish Renewal. Rabbi Goldblatt served previously as Chair of the Ethics Committee of OHALAH and was one of the authors of the organization’s ethics policy.  He has helped found a number of faith-based environmental and social justice organizations in the Bay Area and is very active in interfaith work.

Rabbi Jarah Greenfield serves on the board of Rabbis for Human Rights – North America and is the co-chair of Rabbis for Human Rights’s upcoming conference, Human Rights Under Fire: A Jewish Call to Action, to be held December 5-7, 2010 in New York City.  Rabbi Greenfield graduated from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in 2009 and serves Reconstructionist Temple Beth Israel in Maywood, New Jersey.

Rabbi David Kalb is the Director of Jewish Education at the 92^nd Street Y in New York City, where he directs and teaches a variety of different learning programs for a range of ages. He also serves as a Jewish resource to the professional staff and lay leadership of the 92^nd Street Y. Additionally, Rabbi Kalb serves on faculty of CLAL, is a Senior Rabbinic Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem and is on the Ecumenical Advisory Board to the Office of Minority Health of the City of New York. He has taught at the Academy for Jewish Religion, New York, Touro Colleague and at Norwalk Community College.

Rabbi Lori Klein works as an oncology hospital chaplain in the San Francisco Bay Area.  She serves as Chair of the Board of Directors of ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal. She is a spiritual leader in Santa Cruz, has taught on religion and spirituality in the United States and Central Europe, and creates rituals for every stage of the lifecycle.  She was ordained through the ALEPH Rabbinical Program in 2006.  She also has worked as an attorney and community activist since 1985, advocating for underserved individuals in the private, government and nonprofit sectors.

Rabbi Stan Levy is founding rabbi of Congregation B’nai Horin-Children of Freedom in Los Angeles. He is co-founder of The Academy for Jewish Religion, California, a transdenominational, spiritually based Rabbinical and Cantorial School and Chaplaincy Program. Stan compiled and edited a Siddur, Mahzor, Haggadah, and booklets for Succot, Simhat Torah, Hanukkah, Purim, Shavuot,  Selihot and Tashlich. He is an attorney with the law firm of Manatt, Phelps and Phillips, co-founder of Bet Tzedek Legal Services, founding Executive Director of Public Counsel, a former Executive Director of the Western Center on Law & Poverty, and founding national director of The Holocaust Survivors Justice Network.

Rabbi Jane Rachel Litman is the Western Regional Director of the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation, serving and consulting with twenty-four Reconstructionist congregations from Houston to Seattle. She has served on the faculty of American Jewish University, Loyola Marymount University, and California State University Northridge, where she cofounded its Queer Studies Institute. Rabbi Litman is Rabbinic Co-Chair of the Northern California Progressive Jewish Alliance and on the executive committee of Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice. She served Rabbi of gay outreach congregations Kol Simcha and Sha’ar Zahav, and is an authority on moral education for diverse families. Widely published in the fields of queer theory, Jewish women’s history and contemporary theology, Rabbi Litman edited Lifecycles 2: Jewish Women on Scripture in Contemporary Life with Rabbi Debra Orenstein.

Rabbi Yocheved Mintz is the President of OHALAH, Association of Rabbis for Jewish Renewal, and serves as rabbi of Valley Outreach Synagogue-P’nai Tikvah, a Reconstructionist congregation in Las Vegas, Nevada. Rabbi Mintz is Vice-President of the Board of Rabbis of Southern Nevada, serves on the Board of the Academy for Jewish Religion, California and the Executive Board of the Clark County Ministerial Association.  She is a member of the Interfaith Council of Southern Nevada, is co-founding manager of the Las Vegas Jewish Center for Education, Media & the Arts (CEMA), and Director-Emeritus of the Moadon Kol Chadash of Chicago, Illinois.

Rabbi Sue Mauer Morningstar was ordained through the Aleph Rabbinic Program. She lives in Ashland Oregon and also works as a women’s health nurse practitioner, combining spiritual and physical healing. With her husband Howard, a physician, Rabbi Morningstar co-created Morningstar Healing Arts, an integrative-medicine sacred healing temple. She founded the “Shechinah Shabbaton Retreat” an annual three day celebration of Jewish women, and is actively involved in revealing and reveling in women’s Torah. She is a
third generation Zionist and strong supporter and defender of Israel, whose grandfather was an original founder of the town of Kfar Saba.

Rabbi Barbara Penzner is the spiritual leader of Temple Hillel B’nai Torah in West Roxbury, Massachusetts, an inclusive and urban Reconstructionist congregation. She has served as President of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association and the Massachusetts Board of Rabbis. Prior to coming to Hillel B’nai Torah, she spent two years in Jerusalem as a Jerusalem Fellow. Rabbi Penzner is a founder of Mayyim Hayyim: Living Waters Community Mikveh and Education Center in Newton, Massachusetts. She was ordained in 1987 at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College.

Rabbi Linda T. Potemken is the spiritual leader of Congregation Beth Israel of Media, Pennsylvania, where she has served for over thirteen years. She has served on the Executive Boards of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association and of the Philadelphia Board of Rabbis. Rabbi Potemken has served as an adjunct faculty member at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, where she has taught several different courses, and she is a contributor to the Reconstructionist Guide to Jewish Practice.

Rabbi Sarah H. Reines is co-president of the Women’s Rabbinic Network. She was ordained from HUC-JIR in 1997 and received a Masters Degree from the Hornstein Program of Jewish Communal Service at Brandeis
University. Rabbi Reines sits on the board of Kavod: a Tzedakah Collective and is part of the Central Conference of American Rabbi’s Machzor Committee.  She is a contributing author to Kveller.com and
The Living Pulpit and served for 11 years as a rabbi of Central Synagogue, New York.

Rabbi Yael Ridberg is the spiritual leader of Congregation Dor Hadash in San Diego. Previously she served for twelve years first as the associate rabbi and then sole rabbi of West End Synagogue in New York City.  Rabbi Ridberg serves as President of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association.  In 2007, Rabbi Ridberg became certified as a yoga instructor by Yogaworks. She is a commentator and advisory board member for the Guide to Jewish Reconstructionist Practice (Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, forthcoming) and is the author of a chapter in Life, Faith and Cancer (URJ, 2007).  A graduate of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, Rabbi Ridberg served for two years as the first Marshall T. Meyer Rabbinic Fellow at Congregation B’nai Jeshurun in New York.

Rabbi Andrew Sacks is the Director of the Rabbinical Assembly in Israel and of the Religious Affairs Bureau of the Masorti Movement. Rabbi Sacks is deeply involved in the push for greater religious pluralism in Israel as well as the advancement of gender rights. He made Aliyah from the Philadelphia area in 1987. His blog, “Masorti Matters,” appears on the Jerusalem Post web site at http://cgis.jpost.com/Blogs/conservative/.

Rabbi Jonathan Singer is co-senior rabbi along with his wife, Rabbi Beth Singer, at Temple Beth Am in Seattle, Washington’s Jewishly happening north end. A graduate of HUC-JIR Cincinnati, he first worked at Temple Israel of New Rochelle, New York, and then came to Beth Am sixteen years ago, where he has been blessed to be part of a rapidly growing, engaging progressive Reform community.

Rabbi Ed Stafman serves as Rabbi and spiritual leader of Congregation Beth Shalom in Bozeman, Montana.  He holds a J.D. and previously practiced civil rights and criminal defense law for twenty-five years, and has completed all but his dissertation for a Ph.D. in Religion of Western Antiquity. Rabbi Stafman is Vice-President of OHALAH, Association of Rabbis for Jewish Renewal, where he also serves on the Ethics Committee, and he is a Rabbinic Chaver of Rabbis for Human Rights.

Rabbi Martin Weiner is the Rabbi Emeritus of Congregation Sherith Israel of San Francisco, California. He is a past President of the Central Conference of American Rabbis and the Pacific Association of Reform Rabbis. Rabbi Weiner currently serves as a member of the Reform Pension Board and chairs the Ethics Process Review Committee of the Central Conference of American Rabbis. He has served on many community and national boards including the Human Rights Commission of San Francisco.

Rabbi Shawn Israel Zevit (www.rabbizevit.com) is a congregational consultant and the Director of Outreach and Tikkun Olam for the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation, developing resources and organizing for social justice. Rabbi Zevit is also Co-Director, with Rabbi Marcia Prager, of the Davennen Leader’s Training Institute (www.isabellafreedman.org/dlti), and a spiritual director and trainer of clergy in spiritual direction. He is author of “Offerings of the Heart: Money and Values in Faith Communities” (Alban, 2005), co-editor of “Brother Keepers: New Essays in Jewish Masculinities” (http://www.mensstudies.com) and numerous resources for the Jewish world. (see www.jrf.org/to and www.jrf.org/omer for tikkun olam resources).

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