Malka Drucker (born March 14, 1945) is an American rabbi and author living in Santa Barbara, California.
Ordained in 1998 from the Academy for Jewish Religion, a transdenominational seminary, Drucker is the founding rabbi of HaMakom: The Place for Passionate and Progressive Judaism, in Santa Fe, and served for fifteen years. She retired as spiritual leader of Temple Har Shalom in Idyllwild, California, in 2021. [1]
Malka Drucker is married to Dr Sheila Namir, a psychologist.
Drucker is the author of 21 books including the award winning Frida Kahlo, Rescuers: Portraits of Moral Courage in the Holocaust, Grandma's Latkes and The Family Treasury of Jewish Holidays. Her highly acclaimed Jewish Holiday Series won the Southern California Council on Literature for Children Prize series. Eliezer Ben Yehuda: Father of Modern Hebrew won the ADL (Anti-Defamation League) Janusz Korczak Literary Competition and her biography of Frida Kahlo was chosen as an American Booksellers Association "Pick of the Lists." Drucker's collaboration with photographer Gay Block, White Fire: A Portrait of Women Spiritual Leaders in America, received the 2005 Southwest PEN award for non fiction. Portraits of Jewish American Heroes published August 2008 won the New Mexico Children's Book Prize. In 2009 the collection of essays Women and Judaism, edited by Malka Drucker, was published by Praeger Books. With Rabbi Nadya Gross, she has written "Embracing Wisdom: Soaring in the Second Half of Life. [2]
In 1986, rabbi Harold Schulweis, Malka Drucker and Gay Block decided to document activities of non-Jewish Europeans who risked torture and death to save Jews during the Holocaust, a topic they considered both important and under-publicized. Their work would eventually led to a book by Drucker ( Rescuers: Portraits of Moral Courage in the Holocaust ), as well as an exhibition of Block's photographs. [3]
A 2013 dissertation from the University of New Mexico's department of anthropology, "Storied Lives in a Living Tradition: Women Rabbis and Jewish Community in 21st Century New Mexico", by Miria Kano, discusses Drucker and four other female rabbis of New Mexico. [4]
Righteous Among the Nations is an honourific used by the State of Israel to describe all of the non-Jews who, for purely altruistic reasons, risked their lives in order to save Jews from being exterminated by Nazi Germany during the Holocaust. The term originates from the concept of ger toshav, a legal term used to refer to non-Jewish observers of the Seven Laws of Noah.
Emil Ludwig Fackenheim was a Jewish philosopher and Reform rabbi.
Rebbetzin or Rabbanit is the title used for the wife of a rabbi—typically among Orthodox, Haredi, and Hasidic Jews—or for a female Torah scholar or teacher.
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.
Ohr Avner Foundation is a philanthropic foundation that was established in 1992 by the Israeli billionaire and émigré from the former Soviet Union, Lev Leviev and is managed by its Director Rabbi David Mondshine. The foundation was named in memory of Lev Leviev's father Rabbi Avner Leviev. It supports a large network of Jewish educational institutions in the former Soviet Union, such as Jewish day schools, kindergartens and youth camps, a resource center and a teachers training institute.
Avraham Haim Yosef (Avi) haCohen Weiss is an American Open Orthodox ordained rabbi, author, teacher, lecturer, and activist who led the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale in The Bronx, New York until 2015. He is the founder of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah for men and Yeshivat Maharat for women, rabbinical seminaries that are tied to Open Orthodoxy, a breakaway movement that Weiss originated, which is to the left of Modern Orthodox Judaism and to the right of Conservative Judaism. He is co-founder of the International Rabbinic Fellowship, a rabbinical association that is a liberal alternative to the Orthodox Rabbinical Council of America, and founder of the grassroots organization Coalition for Jewish Concerns – Amcha.
Early criticism of Judaism and its texts, laws, and practices originated in inter-faith polemics between Christianity and Judaism. Important disputations in the Middle Ages gave rise to widely publicized criticisms. Modern criticisms also reflect the inter-branch Jewish schisms between Orthodox Judaism, Conservative Judaism, and Reform Judaism.
Harold M. Schulweis was an American rabbi and author. He was the longtime spiritual Leader at Valley Beth Shalom in Encino, California.
Criticism of Conservative Judaism is widespread in the Orthodox Jewish community, although the movement also has its critics in Reform Judaism and in other streams of Judaism. While the Conservative movement professes fidelity to Jewish tradition, it considers Halakha to be a dynamic process that needs reinterpreting in modern times. The criticism by Orthodox Jews and traditionalists within the movement itself revolves around the following:
Gay Block is a fine art portrait photographer, who was born in Houston, Texas. Her work has been published in books, and is collected by the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the El Paso Museum of Art, the Jewish Museum (Manhattan) and the New Mexico Museum of Art.
Zofia Baniecka was a Polish member of the Resistance during World War II. In addition to relaying guns and other materials to resistance fighters, Baniecka and her mother sheltered over 50 Jews in their home between 1941 and 1944. Later, Baniecka was an activist with the Intervention Bureau of the Polish Workers' Defence Committee in 1977. She and her husband were active participants in the Solidarity movement in the 1980s, distributing underground press. In her professional capacity, Baniecka was a long-time member of the Warsaw chapter of the Association of Polish Artists and Designers (ZPAP).
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) affirming denominations in Judaism are Jewish religious groups that welcome LGBT members and do not consider homosexuality to be a sin. They include both entire Jewish denominations, as well as individual synagogues. Some are composed mainly of non-LGBT members and also have specific programs to welcome LGBT people, while others are composed mainly of LGBT members.
Marie Taquet-Martens (1898–1989) and Émile Taquet (1893–1971) were a husband and wife team who saved Jewish children from The Holocaust. She was born in Luxembourg in 1898; they married around 1918.
Sharon Kleinbaum is an American rabbi who serves as spiritual leader of New York City's Congregation Beit Simchat Torah. She has been an active campaigner for human rights and civil marriage for gay couples.
Marion Philippina Pritchard was a Dutch-American social worker and psychoanalyst, who distinguished herself as a savior of Jews in the Netherlands during the Second World War. Pritchard helped save approximately 150 Dutch Jews, most of them children, throughout the German occupation of the Netherlands. In addition to protecting these people’s lives, she was imprisoned by Nazis, worked in collaboration with the Dutch resistance, and shot dead a known Dutch informer to the Nazis to save Dutch Jewish children.
Evelyn Torton Beck has been described as "a scholar, a teacher, a feminist, and an outspoken Jew and lesbian". Until her retirement in 2002 she specialized in women's studies, Jewish women's studies and lesbian studies at the University of Maryland, College Park.
The Wounded Deer is an oil painting by Mexican artist Frida Kahlo created in 1946. It is also known as The Little Deer. Through The Wounded Deer, Kahlo shares her enduring physical and emotional suffering with her audience, as she did throughout her creative oeuvre. This painting in particular was created towards the end of Kahlo's life, when her health was in decline. Kahlo combines pre-Columbian, Buddhist, and Christian symbols to express her wide spectrum of influences and beliefs.
Johtje and Aart Vos, a Dutch married couple, were members of the Dutch Resistance during World War II. They saved 36 lives during the war by hiding Jews in their home.
This is a timeline of LGBT Jewish history, which consists of events at the intersection of Judaism and queer people.
Rescuers: Portraits of Moral Courage in the Holocaust is a 1992 book by Gay Block and Malka Drucker.