Jacqueline Mates-Muchin, a San Francisco native, is the first Chinese-American rabbi in the world. [1] [2] Her mother was second-generation Chinese-American and her father was the son of Austrian Jewish Holocaust surviving immigrants. [3] She was ordained by Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York in 2002. [4] After serving as an assistant rabbi in Buffalo, New York, she joined Temple Sinai in Oakland, California in 2005. [5] She was chosen as the first female senior rabbi of Temple Sinai in January 2015. [6] She's married with four children, aged twenty two, twenty, eighteen, and fifteen, as of October 2024. [6] She has received numerous awards for her academics and service. [7]
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.
Sally Jane Priesand is America's first female rabbi ordained by a rabbinical seminary, and the second formally ordained female rabbi in Jewish history, after Regina Jonas. Priesand was ordained by the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion on June 3, 1972, at the Plum Street Temple in Cincinnati. After her ordination she served first as assistant and then as associate rabbi at Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York City, and later led Monmouth Reform Temple in Tinton Falls, New Jersey from 1981 until her retirement in 2006. She is featured in numerous books including Rabbis: The Many Faces of Judaism and Fifty Jewish Women who Changed the World.
David J. Wolpe is an American rabbi. He is Visiting Scholar at Harvard Divinity School and the Max Webb Emeritus Rabbi of Sinai Temple. He previously taught at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York, the American Jewish University in Los Angeles, Hunter College, and UCLA. Wolpe was named the most influential Rabbi in America by Newsweek in 2012, and among the 500 most influential Angelinos in 2016 and 2018. Wolpe now serves as the Inaugural rabbinic fellow for the ADL, and a Senior Advisor for the Maimonides Fund. Wolpe resigned from an advisory group on antisemitism assembled by Harvard President Claudine Gay in December 2023 in response to what Wolpe characterized as a hostile environment to Jews at Harvard.
Jewish feminism is a movement that seeks to make the religious, legal, and social status of Jewish women equal to that of Jewish men in Judaism. Feminist movements, with varying approaches and successes, have opened up within all major branches of the Jewish religion.
Ammiel Hirsch is an American Reform rabbi and attorney. He is the senior rabbi of Stephen Wise Free Synagogue and former executive director of the Association of Reform Zionists of America/World Union for Progressive Judaism, North America. In 2024, The Jerusalem Post named him among “The 50 Most Influential Jews of the Year.” In 2016, City & State New York magazine praised him as “the borough's most influential voice” for Manhattan's more than 300,000 Jews, and, in 2015, the New York Observer named him among “New York’s Most Influential Religious Leaders.” He has written two books: "The Lilac Tree: A Rabbi's Reflections on Love, Courage, and History" (2023) and "One People, Two Worlds: A Reform Rabbi and an Orthodox Rabbi Explore the Issues That Divide Them" (2003), which he co-authored with Rabbi Yaakov Yosef Reinman.
Temple Sinai is a Reform Jewish congregation and synagogue located at 2808 Summit Street in Oakland, California, in the United States. Founded in 1875, it is the oldest Jewish congregation in the East San Francisco Bay region.
Stephen Wise Free Synagogue is a Reform Jewish synagogue at 30 West 68th Street in the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City, New York, U.S. The congregation was the first of multiple "free synagogue" branches in the early 20th century.
Temple House of Israel is a Reform Jewish congregation and synagogue located at 15 North Market Street, in Staunton, Virginia, in the United States. Founded in 1876 by Major Alexander Hart, it originally held services in members' homes, then moved to a building on Kalorama street in 1885, the year it joined the Union for Reform Judaism.
Temple Emanuel Sinai is a Reform Jewish congregation and synagogue located at 661 Salisbury Street, Worcester, Massachusetts, in the United States.
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.
Temple Israel is a Reform Jewish synagogue located at 5725 Walnut Lake Road, in West Bloomfield Township, Oakland County, Michigan, in the United States.
Sara Hurwitz is an Orthodox Jewish spiritual leader aligned with the "Open Orthodox" faction of Modern Orthodox Judaism in the United States. She is considered by some to be the first female Orthodox rabbi. She serves at the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale as Rabba and she is the president and co-founder of Yeshivat Maharat, both in Riverdale, New York.
Angela Buchdahl is an American reform rabbi. She was the first East Asian-American to be ordained as a rabbi, and the first East Asian-American to be ordained as a hazzan (cantor). In 2011 she was named by Newsweek and The Daily Beast as one of America's "Most Influential Rabbis", and in 2012 by The Daily Beast as one of America's "Top 50 Rabbis". Buchdahl was recognized as one of the top five in The Forward's 2014 "Forward Fifty", a list of American Jews who had the most impact on the national scene in the previous year.
Tamara Ruth Kolton is an American non-denominational rabbi and clinical psychologist. She was the first person ordained as a member of the Humanistic Jewish movement. Over time, her religious position evolved from agnosticism to a more spiritual perspective that drove her away from Humanistic Judaism. Kolton later became known for her controversial feminist reinterpretation of the Biblical Eve, which has received both support and criticism from other religious and spiritual writers.
Danya Ruttenberg is an American rabbi, editor, and author. She has been called "the Twitter rabbi" for her social media presence. She lives in Chicago.
This is a timeline of women rabbis:
This is a timeline of women in religion. See also: Timeline of women in religion in the United States, and Timeline of women's ordination.
This is a timeline of LGBT Jewish history, which consists of events at the intersection of Judaism and queer people.
Sinai Temple is a Reform Jewish synagogue located at 1100 Dickinson Street, in Springfield, Massachusetts, in the United States.