c. 1997 Religion News Service

UNDATED _ Rabbi Maya Leibovich is the only Israeli-born woman to be ordained a rabbi in Israel and the first to serve as a congregation’s spiritual leader.

But those firsts aren’t enough for the 49-year-old rabbi. She has a dream to become the first female leader of a Progressive _ or Reform _ congregation to build a new synagogue in Israel.

It is a dream with many obstacles to overcome before it can be realized, not least the fierce resistance of Israel’s Orthodox Jewish establishment.

Leibovich, however, is not one to be put off by obstacles.

She lost most of her family in the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz. Her father escaped to Israel, but his first wife and a young daughter, as well as many other family members, died in the camps.

Leibovich, born of a later marriage her father had in Israel, recalled how as a child, a picture of the first wife and the child who perished hung on the wall in her home. She learned of their identity while quite young.

Her first name, Maya, is a variant of the name of her maternal grandmother, Maria, whom the Nazis killed.

Leibovich decided later than usual to enter the rabbinate, after spending many years as a teacher. She was ordained in 1993 after graduating from Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem. She also holds a master’s degree in Jewish philosophy from the Rabbinical Smicha Hebrew University.

Despite Leibovich’s credentials and her ordination by Reform Judaism, Orthodox Jewry in Israel and elsewhere does not recognize her rabbinical standing. Nor can she perform such religious rites as marriages and have them sanctioned by Israeli law.

Neither the Reform nor Conservative denominations of Judaism are officially recognized in Israel, where only Orthodoxy has legal standing and the support of tax money.

Leibovich calls the situation”offensive.””I believe Israel should be a pluralistic democracy in which all Jews are accepted as religious Jews,”she said.

But Rabbi Daniel Schur rejects such thoughts.

Schur is chairman of the Orthodox Rabbinical Council of Cleveland and spiritual leader of Heights Jewish Center, an Orthodox synagogue. He said religious Jews are those who believe God gave them the Torah, and who follow it without variance.

Other wings of Judaism, including the Reform and Conservative, modify the traditions of the Torah, Schur said, and having women as rabbis is one of those unacceptable modifications.

Leibovich, while aware of such arguments, rejects them and believes strongly hers is an authentic expression of Judaism.

Since her ordination, Leibovich has founded a Progressive Jewish congregation in Mevasseret Zion, a town of 20,000 people in suburban Jerusalem.

Her congregation of about 120 families has been meeting in a middle school but received land for a new synagogue after”a long and sometimes bitter and near-violent battle with the town council.”The council opposed making land available because her congregation was not Orthodox, she said.

Now, with the land, she wants to build.

She is supported in her efforts by Reform Judaism in this country and by the New York-based Association of Reform Zionists of America.”It has been a problem being a woman Reform rabbi in Israel,”Leibovich said. She said there are about 25 Reform congregations there, and even fewer Conservative congregations, while about 20 percent of the approximately 5 million Israeli Jews regard themselves as traditional Orthodox.”My fight is to have a pluralistic society in which alternatives to Orthodox Judaism are recognized,”she said.”It makes me angry that I have to pay taxes, some of which go to a religious partner that I don’t support and which fights me.”

MJP END HOLLAND