Rabbi Lewis' message for April 2005
Week after week, I teach
Jewish history to our 6th & 7th grades.
If you accept the traditional reckoning,
that’s 5765 years
worth of history (give or take a couple thousand
years if you prefer historical reckoning).
In either case, twenty-five years is no
time at all compared with the span of Jewish
history. And yet the twenty-five year period
since I was ordained has seen seismic
changes in our Reform movement and in the
larger American Jewish community. When I
was ordained in 1980, fewer than twenty
women had become rabbis in the Reform movement.
When people asked us (and everyone did), “How
many women rabbis are
there?” we could not only count but
also name each one. Years later, after we
had passed the four hundred number, I simply
lost
count of how many women had been ordained.
In planning for the weekend of May 6, I thought
about what I wanted said about this past
quarter century. I realized that I did
not want to bring in a famous scholar or
an important official of our movement. Rather,
I wanted you to hear from people who
have lived through these past twenty five
years with me, who can place the issue of
women’s ordination within the larger
context
of Jewish history but who can also express
the personal experience we shared along the
way. Buddy Rosenthal was the
Chairperson of the Search Committee of Temple
Emanu-el in Dallas, Texas, in 1980 and was
brave enough to take the risk of hiring
me. Dr. Milly Brichto, whom some of you met
two years ago when she came to speak for
Kristallnacht, was the first Religious
School principal for whom I taught when I
was a rabbinical student in Cincinnati; she
was and continues to be my mentor in the
rabbinate. Rabbi Kim Geringer became first
a congregant and later a friend of mine when
I went to Temple Sinai in Summit in
1985; she entered rabbinical school as a
second career and now serves as Associate
Rabbi at Temple Har Shalom in Warren, NJ.
I have learned so much from each of these
people; I know you will enjoy them as well.
Thank you again for celebrating with me.
I would have it no other way.
Rabbi Ellen J. Lewis
April 2005
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