Rabbi Denise Eger today becomes head of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the oldest and largest rabbinic organization in North America. She’s also a lesbian mom.
The CCAR, founded in 1889, is the rabbinic association of Reform Judaism, the largest Jewish denominational movement in the U.S. and one that has long welcomed women leaders as well as LGBT members. It has supported marriage for same-sex couples since 1996, and last month passed a resolution on “The Rights of Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming Individuals.” It also recently marked the 25th anniversary of the first acceptance of openly lesbian and gay students at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, the main seminary for Reform rabbis, cantors, and Jewish educational leaders. (There’s a more detailed historical overview at that last link, in case you’re interested.)
Rabbi Eger, along with her broad congregational work and many positions within Reform rabbinic groups, has been active in working towards LGBTQ equality and helping people with AIDS. She grew up in Memphis, Tennessee, but after ordination in 1988 found herself working at Beth Chayim Chadashim in Los Angeles during the peak of the AIDS crisis. An Associated Press piece about her says that it was her many hospital and graveside visits during this time that fueled her activism for gay rights. She came out in a Los Angeles Times story in 1990. The Jewish Journal, however, notes that, “Much of her activism … is inspired by her own childhood Memphis rabbis, who staged marches and protests during a tumultuous time in the civil rights era.” Clearly, she’s taken the Reform Movement’s commitment to tikkun olam—repair of the world—to heart.
Among other things, according to her bio at the Board of Rabbis of Southern California site, she has been the founding rabbi of Congregation Kol Ami, West Hollywood’s Reform Synagogue; Chair of the Spiritual Advisory Committee of AIDS Project Los Angeles; Co-Chair of the Institutional Review Board for Search Alliance, an AIDS drug research organization; co-chair of the Gay and Lesbian Rabbinic Network; and founding President of the Lesbian, Gay, & Bisexual Interfaith Clergy Association. She served on the Board of the No On Knight Campaign/No on Proposition 22—a 2000 California proposition authored by State Senator William “Pete” Knight that sought successfully (until 2008) to limit marriage to different-sex couples. She is a member of the Religion and Faith Council of the Human Rights Campaign.
She also has a 21-year-old son and is engaged to be married. Mazel tov to her and to her whole family!
