Deborah Kahn-Harris is the Principal of Leo Baeck College, a rabbinical seminary and centre for the training of teachers in Jewish education, based at the Sternberg Centre, Finchley, in the London Borough of Barnet. She was appointed to the post in September 2011. [1] Kahn-Harris, a graduate of the college, is one of the first woman rabbis to lead a mainstream rabbinic seminary. [2] [3]
Kahn-Harris was brought up in Houston, Texas, United States. [4] She has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Art History from Mount Holyoke College, Massachusetts [4] and a doctorate in biblical studies from the University of Sheffield.
Kahn-Harris was one of the members of the rabbinic staff at Sha'arei Tsedek North London Reform Synagogue and a lecturer at Leo Baeck College before her appointment as the college's principal. [5]
She has both American and British citizenship [6] and is married to the writer, lecturer, and music critic Keith Kahn-Harris, with whom she has two children. [5]
The Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion is a Jewish seminary with three locations in the United States and one location in Jerusalem. It is the oldest extant Jewish seminary in the Americas and the main seminary for training rabbis, cantors, educators and communal workers in Reform Judaism. HUC-JIR has campuses in Cincinnati, Ohio, New York City, Los Angeles, and Jerusalem. The Jerusalem campus is the only seminary in Israel for training Reform Jewish clergy.
Leo Baeck was a 20th-century German rabbi, scholar, and theologian. He served as leader of Reform Judaism in his native country and internationally, and later represented all German Jews during the Nazi era. After the Second World War, he settled in London, in the United Kingdom, where he served as the chairman of the World Union for Progressive Judaism. In 1955, the Leo Baeck Institute for the study of the history and culture of German-speaking Jewry was established, and Baeck was its first international president. The Leo Baeck Medal has been awarded since 1978 to those who have helped preserve the spirit of German-speaking Jewry in culture, academia, politics, and philanthropy.
Regina Jonas was a Berlin-born Reform rabbi. In 1935, she became the first woman to be ordained as a rabbi. Jonas was murdered in the Holocaust.
Reform Judaism, formally the Movement for Reform Judaism (MRJ) and known as Reform Synagogues of Great Britain until 2005, is one of the two World Union for Progressive Judaism–affiliated denominations in the United Kingdom. Reform is relatively traditional in comparison with its smaller counterpart, Liberal Judaism, though it does not regard Jewish law as binding. As of 2010, it was the second-largest Jewish religious group in the United Kingdom, with 19.4% of synagogue-member households. On 17 April 2023, Reform Judaism and Liberal Judaism announced their intention to merge as one single unified progressive Jewish movement. The new movement, which may be called Progressive Judaism, will represent about 30% of British Jewry who are affiliated to synagogues.
The Israel Movement for Reform and Progressive Judaism is the organizational branch of Progressive Judaism in Israel, and a member organization of the World Union for Progressive Judaism. It currently has 40 communities and congregations around the state of Israel, 13 of which are new congregations – referred to as U'faratztah communities – and two kibbutzim, Yahel and Lotan.
Leo Baeck College is a privately funded rabbinical seminary and centre for the training of teachers in Jewish education. Based now at the Sternberg Centre, East End Road, Finchley, in the London Borough of Barnet, it was founded by Werner van der Zyl in 1956 and is sponsored by The Movement for Reform Judaism, Liberal Judaism and the United Jewish Israel Appeal. It is named after the inspirational 20th-century German Liberal rabbi Leo Baeck.
Jacqueline Hazel "Jackie" Tabick is a British Reform rabbi. She became Britain's first female rabbi in 1975. She retired in 2023 as convenor of the Movement for Reform Judaism's Beit Din, the first woman in the role, and until its closure in 2022 was also Rabbi of West Central Liberal Synagogue in Bloomsbury, central London.
The Hildesheimer Rabbinical Seminary was founded in Berlin on 22 October 1873 by Rabbi Dr. Israel Hildesheimer for the training of rabbis in the tradition of Orthodox Judaism.
Jonathan David Magonet is a British rabbi theologian, Vice-President of the World Union for Progressive Judaism, and a biblical scholar. He is highly active in Christian-Jewish dialogue, and in dialogue between Jews and Muslims. He was the long-time Principal, now retired, of London's Leo Baeck College, the first Liberal Jewish seminary of all of Europe since World War II. He resides in London with his wife Dorothea.
Abraham Geiger College is a rabbinic seminary at the University of Potsdam in Potsdam, Germany, founded in 1999 and named after Abraham Geiger, a rabbi and scholar.
Women rabbis are individual Jewish women who have studied Jewish Law and received rabbinical ordination. Women rabbis are prominent in Progressive Jewish denominations, however, the subject of women rabbis in Orthodox Judaism is more complex. Although a significant number of Orthodox women have been ordained as rabbis, many major Orthodox Jewish communities and institutions do not accept the change. In an alternative approach, other Orthodox Jewish institutions train women as Torah scholars for various Jewish religious leadership roles. These roles typically involve training women as religious authorities in Jewish Law but without formal rabbinic ordination, instead, alternate titles are used. Yet, despite this alteration in title, these women are often perceived as equivalent to ordained rabbis. Since the 1970s, over 1,200 Jewish women have been ordained as rabbis.
The first openly lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender clergy in Judaism were ordained as rabbis and/or cantors in the second half of the 20th century.
Brighton and Hove Reform Synagogue is a synagogue in Hove, Sussex, England. It has 500 adult members.
Keith Kahn-Harris is a sociologist and music critic. He is an honorary research fellow and senior lecturer at Birkbeck College and an associate fellow of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research and a lecturer at Leo Baeck College.
Werner van der Zyl was a rabbi in Berlin and in London, where he came in 1939 as a refugee rabbi from Germany. He was the prime mover and first director of studies of the Jewish Theological College of London. The college was inaugurated in 1956 and was renamed Leo Baeck College shortly afterwards at his suggestion.
The Westminster Synagogue is an independent Jewish Progressive synagogue and community near Hyde Park, London. It is located in Kent House, a restored Victorian town house in Knightsbridge. The building, which dates from the late 1800s, also houses the Czech Memorial Scrolls Centre.
This is a timeline of women rabbis:
Deborah Waxman is an American rabbi and the president and CEO of Reconstructing Judaism. Waxman was inaugurated as the president of both on October 26, 2014. The ceremony took place at the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia. Waxman is believed to be the first woman rabbi and first lesbian to lead a Jewish congregational union, and the first lesbian to lead a Jewish seminary; the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College is both a congregational union and a seminary. She previously served as the vice-president for governance for the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. In 2015 she was named as one of The Forward 50.
Ellen Littmann (1909-1975) was a German-Jewish scholar of Judaism and the first woman to graduate from the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums, the rabbinic seminary of German Jewry. Littmann was later associated with the Leo Baeck College of London where she taught biblical studies.