Hanukkah starts this weekend, which means my yearly request to my spouse that we celebrate our combined traditions by buying one of those plastic Santa-and-sleigh lawn ornaments and making the reindeer noses all light up over eight nights. (Rudolph himself, of course, would be the shamash.) Timely, then, is this video from Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, senior rabbi at the largest LGBT congregation in the world, Congregation Beit Simchat Torah in New York City—and also a lesbian mom.
Kleinbaum recorded the video as part of AOL’s “You’ve Got” series, and in celebration of her 20th year at CBST. (Thanks, GLAAD!)
Despite her many professional accomplishments, a biography of Kleinbaum at the Jewish Women’s Archive notes, “From the time her first niece and nephew were born to the graduations of her two grown daughters, children have been central in Rabbi Kleinbaum’s life. Of all her accomplishments, these children are among her proudest.”
She doesn’t talk specifically about parenting in the video, but she’s a mom who is clearly working to create positive change in the world for her children and her community.
