Ellen Weinberg Dreyfus

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Ellen Weinberg Dreyfus is an American rabbi. She is a founder and former president of the Women's Rabbinic Network, which was founded in 1976 by fifteen female rabbinical students. [1] [2]

Contents

Biography

She was ordained in 1979 at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) in New York, and is to her knowledge the first woman to be ordained as a rabbi while pregnant. [3] [4] In 1983, she moved back to Illinois, becoming the first female rabbi in that state. [3] In 2001, she became the first female president of the Chicago Board of Rabbis. [3] [4] [5] In 2004, HUC-JIR awarded her an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree. [4] In 2009, she was installed as the second female president of Reform Judaism's Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR) in Jerusalem, making her the first female leader of a major rabbinic organization to begin her tenure in Israel. [6] In 2009, she was also inducted onto the Board of Governors of HUC-JIR. [4] In 2010, she was selected as one of the top 50 rabbis in America by Newsweek and the Sisterhood blog of The Jewish Daily Forward . [2] In 2011, she received the Rabbi Mordecai Simon Memorial Award. [7] The piece "From Generation to Generation: A Roundtable Discussion with Rabbi Ellen Weinberg Dreyfus", appears in the book The Sacred Calling: Four Decades of Women in the Rabbinate, published in 2016. [8] [9] [10]

Personal life

She is married and has three children. [4] Her father-in-law is the late Rabbi A. Stanley Dreyfus, also a Reform Rabbi.

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References

  1. ↑ "CCAR Journal - 9/97". Archived from the original on 2006-02-05. Retrieved 2014-01-26.
  2. 1 2 "The Sisterhood 50 –". Forward.com. 22 July 2010. Retrieved 2013-05-16.
  3. 1 2 3 Donna Kiesling (2001-07-04). "Rabbi stays at forefront of change - Chicago Tribune". Articles.chicagotribune.com. Retrieved 2013-05-16.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 "HUC-JIR: Press Room - Rabbi Ellen W. Dreyfus Inducted onto Board of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion". Huc.edu. 2009-05-04. Retrieved 2013-05-16.
  5. ↑ "First woman named president of rabbi board - WorldWide Religious News". Wwrn.org. 2001-03-20. Retrieved 2013-05-16.
  6. ↑ "JUF News : Reform Jewish Rabbinate leadership remains in Chicago with new leader". Juf.org. Retrieved 2013-05-16.
  7. ↑ "Chicago Board of Rabbis : Event Photos". Juf.org. Retrieved 2013-05-16.
  8. ↑ Hirshel Jaffe (4 May 2016). "The Message of the Sacred Calling: Our Journey to True Equality | RavBlog". Ravblog.ccarnet.org. Retrieved 2016-05-26.
  9. ↑ Zauzmer, Julie (2012-12-14). "'I not only envisioned it. I fought for it': The first female rabbi isn't done yet". The Washington Post. Retrieved 2016-05-26.
  10. ↑ http://www.ccarpress.org/admin/manage_assetlibrary/file.asp?id=04646 [ bare URL PDF ]
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