WASHINGTON — Thirty years after Sally Pries and was ordained as the first woman Reform rabbi, the nation’s largest Jewish movement will install its first female president to lead the Central Conference of American Rabbis March 29.
Rabbi Janet Marder of Los Altos Hills, Calif., will serve for two years as leader of Reform Judaism’s rabbinical arm. About 20 percent of the 1,800 Reform rabbis are women, although half of current seminary students are women.
“This is the fulfillment of a promise of equality that has been inherent in this movement for a long time,” said Marder, 48, who has led Congregation Beth Am in Silicon Valley since 1999.
Marder becomes the second woman to lead a major American Jewish movement. Last year the Conservative movement installed Judy Yudof, a laywoman from Austin, Texas, as its first woman president.
Share with others: