(RNS5-FEB12) Rabbi Ellen Dreyfus of suburban Chicago has been named the second female president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis. For use with RNS-DIGEST-FEB12, transmitted Feb. 12, 2009. Religion News Service photo courtesy CCAR.
NEW YORK (RNS) The largest organization of Jewish clergy has tapped Rabbi Ellen W. Dreyfus to serve as president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis.
Dreyfus, 57, will be the second woman to helm the group, which represents 1,850 rabbis affiliated with Judaism’s Reform movement. During her two-year term, Dreyfus said she plans to focus on incorporating new generations of Jews and technology into the Reform community, and working to help congregations through the financial crisis.
“As rabbis, we need to look at what is happening around us and be agile enough to make changes to serve and nurture a new generation of Jewish individuals,” said Dreyfus, who succeeds Rabbi Peter Knobel.
Dreyfus, a mother of three, is a graduate of Fairhaven College in Bellingham, Wash., and Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Jerusalem and New York. She leads B’nai Yehuda Beth Sholom in Homewood, Ill., and is a senior rabbinic fellow of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem.
The first woman to lead the Central Conference was Rabbi Janet Marder, who served from 2003 to 2005.
With Dreyfus’ Feb. 28 installation in Jerusalem, during the CCAR’s 120th annual convention there, three of the four Jewish clergy associations will simultaneously have female leaders: The Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly hired Rabbi Julie Schonfield as executive vice president last year; in 2007, the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association picked Rabbi Toba Spitzer, the first openly gay leader elected in the four groups.
The Orthodox movement does not ordain female rabbis.
