Sharing Stories
Inspiring Change

Maya Leibovich was the first Israeli-born woman to be ordained as a rabbi, the first woman rabbi in the former Soviet Union, and the first woman rabbi to lead a military funeral service in Israel.

Carol Levithan converted to Judaism and then threw herself wholeheartedly into its midst, counseling converts and interfaith couples alike.

Ellen Lippmann seeks to include everyone in Judaism through her social justice work. After her ordination by the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Lippmann served as East Coast director of MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger, director of the Jewish Women's Program at the New 14th Street Y in Manhattan, the first social justice chair for the Women’s Rabbinic Network, and co-chair of T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, where she is still a board member.

In 1989, Jane Rachel Litman became one of the first women rabbis and the first openly LGBTQ person admitted to a rabbinical seminary.  After their ordination by the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, Litman served as rabbi at LGBTQ-outreach congregations Kol Simcha and Sha’ar Zahav, and lectured at Loyola Marymount College, American Jewish University, and California State University, Northridge where they co-founded its Queer Studies Institute.