‘Rabbi For Every WomanRabbi Out There’

Rabbi Jacqueline Koch Ellenson For empowering Jewish girls and women.

Rabbi Jacqueline Koch Ellenson For empowering Jewish girls and women.

by Sandee Brawarsky
Special To The Jewish Week

Rabbi Jacqueline Koch Ellenson is a rabbi’s rabbi. For the women who are rabbis and rabbinical students in the Reform movement, she’s the central address for questions and conversation, whether professional, personal or practical.
That address is usually the dining room table of her Upper West Side apartment, where she’s easily reached by phone and computer. She has crafted an uncommon rabbinate for herself, one that combines her support and advocacy on behalf of other rabbis with work with teenage girls, philanthropy, education and spiritual direction. In all of her work, she promotes the advancement of girls and women in the Jewish community.
In addition to directing the Women’s Rabbinic Network, an organization with international reach, she chairs the board of the Hadassah Foundation, dedicated to creating social change for women in the U.S. and Israel. For the last four years she led a “Rosh Hodesh: It’s a Girl Thing” group for girls at Congregation Rodeph Sholom. Earlier this fall, she was honored by Moving Traditions, a national organization that brings attention to issues of gender and sponsors the Rosh Hodesh groups.
Although she grew up on the Upper West Side, she spent about 25 years in Los Angeles, returning to New York in 2002, when her husband, Rabbi David Ellenson, was named president of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. They have five children, and in a note for the tribute book at the Moving Traditions benefit, the kids said that as talented as she is at the work she does, she’s even better talking around the kitchen table.
At 52, she’s in a moment in her life where she is cycling back to her beginnings. She’s living just a few blocks from where she grew up, and while she and her family attend many synagogues in the neighborhood, her main shul is Rodeph Sholom, the place where she was first inspired as a Jew, as a teenager. Since then, she managed to dream and build her own Jewish life, which has richly flourished. She looks back, and also ahead, with much gratitude.
In an essay for a just published book, “New Jewish Feminism,” she writes in “From the Personal to the Communal” about how the presence of women in the Reform rabbinate has been a blessing for congregations, communities and for the Jewish world. She says that while the number of women rabbis and women in rabbinical schools continues to climb, the rabbinate remains a male-dominated field. Women rabbis seek support from one another on issues ranging from funeral attire to models of leadership, including the challenges of raising a family while serving a congregation, which may range from the handling of inappropriate comments and maternity leave to contracts and salary equity.
“People are still getting used to the idea of having women in the rabbinate, even after all these years,” says Rabbi Alysa Mendelson Graf, associate rabbi of Temple Israel in Westport, Conn., in an interview. When issues related to women’s rabbinates come up, “the person we turn to first is Jackie.”
“She’s rabbi for every woman rabbi out there,” Rabbi Mendelson says. “Jackie is the ultimate role model, somebody who has figured out how to do it all. There’s nothing fake about her, which is why people are drawn to her. She’s just a wise, beautiful human being who teaches from her heart.”
In a family photo taken when she was about 7 or 8, Rabbi Ellenson is at a Passover seder, and she’s wearing a kipa. She explains that no girls wore them in the 1960s, but for some reason her grandfather wanted her to put one on, so she did. Her grandfather didn’t live to see her ordination as one of the first generation of women rabbis.
She’s a granddaughter of Selma Koch, the late proprietress of the Town Shop, well known for her skills in the bra and lingerie business. Koch worked long days in the family business, founded in 1888, until her death at age 95, when she was still able to gauge a bra size at first glance.
Rabbi Ellenson speaks lovingly of her grandmother, and gets teary as she mentions how much she learned from her, especially about balancing work and family. Interestingly, her grandmother never expected her to work at the shop, while she did expect her brothers and cousins to do so.
“My grandmother had a definite understanding of the thing that pulled me toward a more Jewish life. She took me to Israel when I was 16 in 1972. I was confirmed at Rodeph Sholom, I was involved in youth group, but I had no understanding of Jewish history. I was literally a blank slate.”
After their fabulous 10-day trip, the student at Bronx Science knew that she wanted to learn Hebrew, that she wanted to return to Israel one day.
“Even as a teen, I had the sense that there was something bigger than me that I could be part of, bigger than my congregation, something that I wanted to belong to, that was important to me, even if I didn’t know what it was.”
As a freshman at Barnard, she immediately began studying Hebrew, and remained connected to Rodeph Sholom, whether working with the youth groups or teaching. After graduating, she began a program in education and communal service at Hebrew Union College, and later transferred to the rabbinical program — and never looked back. She met her husband at the College, where he was a professor, and they married in 1982. She was ordained the following year.
For 11 years in Los Angeles, she served as rabbi — the first female chaplain — at the Harvard Westlake School. Her job description there was to be a force for good. While she has no regrets about her career, she is sorry that she hasn’t had the experience of serving a congregation. But she’s come to understand that “the idiosyncratic nature of women’s career paths in the rabbinate make it interesting.”
About that “something bigger than me,” she’s still trying to work it out. “I’m always searching for meaning,” she says. “I think a lot of it is an expression of my yearning to have a deep relationship with God, manifested in my relationships with others.”
For the last few years, she’s been involved with the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, where she is teaching. She is both working with a spiritual director on her own growth and has an emerging practice as a spiritual director.
In her marriage to Rabbi David Ellenson, she has some responsibilities as the official first spouse, but her role is different than her predecessors, and her friends point out that she has carved out her own presence. While she raised all of their five children, two from his first marriage, she describes the achievement she’s most proud of as “the blending of our family, the power of the connection all five kids feel toward each other.” Earlier this year, she took great pleasure in officiating at their oldest son’s marriage.
Having raised three daughters, Rabbi Ellenson says, “I’ve always thought that you can’t hide a girl from what’s going on in our culture. It’s everywhere.” She felt that the best she could do for them, when they watched certain television shows or read magazines, was to open a conversation with them, analyzing what the show was really about, or talking about how no one really looks like the models in advertising photos.
“One of the things I love about “Rosh Hodesh: It’s a Girl Thing” is that it’s a Jewish way to help girls be educated consumers of the culture,” she says. In her group, she never shied away from talking about sex, understanding that “the more we didn’t talk about sex, the more we were contributing to the girls’ embarrassment.” She saw her role a guide, teacher and facilitator, trying to get them to work together.
“I wanted the girls to understand that it’s a larger thing than just you in the group. It’s about all of us, and about how we’re Jewish and part of the larger Jewish world and have to take care of it,” she says. “For me, it’s ultimately a theological conversation about what God really wants us to do, what kind of life God wants us to have. Every conversation leads to some manifestation of God’s presence.”
Deborah Meyer, executive director of Moving Tradition, says that they chose Rabbi Ellenson as their first honoree “because she embodies what we think is so important for the Jewish future — her commitment to Jewish life and to helping people connect with Judaism and Jewish life in ways that are personally meaningful. She does this with a very clear view through the gender lens.”
A participant in Rabbi Ellenson’s Rosh Hodesh group, Katherine Joseph, a junior at the Fieldston School, says, “Jackie’s greatest strength as a leader is guiding us without controlling us. She always played a supportive role, and allowed us to explore what our religion meant to us, without pressuring us in any way.”
At the Moving Traditions benefit, Rabbi Ellenson not only spoke but led the 350 men and women present in a sample Rosh Hodesh group, engaging small groups in conversation and a project relating to personal risk taking and leadership. She left the podium and moved through the crowd, using the microphone with the ease of a talk-show host. Even the more skeptical participants, who hadn’t been teens in a while, seemed to enjoy it.

Westchester Jewish Conference

Westchester’s Jewish Community Relations Organization