NEWS FEATURE: N.J. Woman to Blaze Trail as Rabbi of Large Synagogue, Controversy Expected

c. 2005 Religion News Service (UNDATED) A New Jersey synagogue has secured a small place in modern Jewish history, becoming the largest Conservative temple anywhere to hire a female rabbi since the denomination began ordaining women in 1985, a rabbinical organization said. Francine Green Roston will become rabbi of Congregation Beth El in South Orange, […]

c. 2005 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) A New Jersey synagogue has secured a small place in modern Jewish history, becoming the largest Conservative temple anywhere to hire a female rabbi since the denomination began ordaining women in 1985, a rabbinical organization said.

Francine Green Roston will become rabbi of Congregation Beth El in South Orange, N.J., which has 550 families, on July 1, when she leaves her current job at Congregation Beth Tikvah in New Milford, N.J., which has 150 families.


She was hired March 7.

“I’m mainly excited because (Congregation Beth El) is a great congregation in a great community, and it’s a great job,” said Roston, 36. “But I’m also excited because a path is being set.”

Orthodox Judaism does not ordain women. The Reform movement was the first Jewish denomination to ordain a female rabbi, Sally Priesand, in 1972. The Reconstructionist movement followed in 1974, and Conservative Judaism ordained its first woman rabbi in 1985.

But a study last year showed that no woman had ever been hired to lead a Conservative temple of more than 500 families, and the concept of female rabbis remains controversial at many Conservative synagogues.

“There will be a few members of the congregation who will resign because they feel this is not what they want,” said James Schwarz, co-chair of Congregation Beth El’s search committee. “For people who are more traditional, meaning they’ve always had a male and they see a male as their rabbinical figure, it’s tough.”

The search committee agreed from the start that in replacing Rabbi Jehiel Orenstein, who has served the temple for 35 years, it would examine candidates without regard to gender, Schwarz said.

Despite some initial grumbling, most skeptical older men and women at the synagogue quickly warmed to Roston when she visited in late February as part of the search, said Aaron Nierenberg, co-chair of the search committee with Schwarz.

“The weekend she was with us … there was an electricity in the room that you could almost feel, just the way she connected with people,” Nierenberg said. “She had no problem just approaching people. She would walk up to little kids, older people, and engage them in conversation.”


One 83-year-old member of Congregation Beth El, who had been skeptical about Roston, turned to search committee members after her appearance and said, “She’s my guy,” Schwarz said.

Roston grew up in Farmington Hills, Mich., a Detroit suburb, and knew from an early age that she wanted to become a rabbi.

“I loved being in synagogue. I felt inspired and energized by studying and praying and singing. … I wanted to share my love of Judaism with other people,” she said.

It helped, she said, that she grew up as a Reform Jew, and that the movement was ordaining women while she was a child.

“When I grew up and said I wanted to be a rabbi, no one told me `no,”’ she said.

During college, she became more traditional in her Jewish practices and gravitated toward the Conservative movement.


After graduating from Brandeis University in 1990, she enrolled in a prerabbinic studies program at Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, a school of Conservative Judaism. She was later recognized at the school for her knowledge of Talmud _ ancient biblical commentary by rabbis _ and graduated in 1998.

Her first job after graduation was at Temple Beth Shalom in Livingston, N.J., where she was associate rabbi for nine months. Then she was hired by Congregation Beth Tikvah.

She won acclaim at Beth Tikvah for starting a Hebrew school that now draws 40 students and for bringing 28 families into a temple that needed younger members.

Julie Schoenfeld, director of rabbinic development for the Rabbinical Assembly, an association of Conservative rabbis, said Roston’s hire is likely to give other female rabbis confidence that they can be in the running for more prominent jobs.

“Rabbi Roston is herself an outstanding rabbi,” Schoenfeld said. “However, it has been the case that other outstanding women rabbis have not yet attained this milestone …

“Hopefully her success there _ and I’m sure she’ll be very successful _ can then become a model for other congregations in their searches.”


(OPTIONAL TRIM FOLLOWS)

The Conservative movement, which is international but concentrated in North America, has ordained 188 female rabbis. The Reform movement has ordained 417, and at least 15 lead congregations with more than 500 families, said Emily Grotta, spokeswoman for the Union for Reformed Judaism.

Still, Roston said, she feels like a pioneer. “I say that with the humility and consciousness that there are Reform colleagues who are out there doing the work and succeeding. But people tend to look within their own movement, and within the Conservative movement it is groundbreaking.”

MO/JL END RNS

(Jeff Diamant covers religion at The Star Ledger in Newark, N.J.)

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