Central Conference of American Rabbis

Christian Century, April 19, 2003

* Rabbi Janet Ross Marder of Los Altos Hills, California, has been installed as the first woman president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR), the clergy arm of Reform Judaism. The large liberal branch of Judaism ordained its first female rabbi in 1972--seven years before Marder was ordained.

Marder, 48, was the first ordained rabbi for a Los Angeles Reform synagogue with a gay-lesbian outreach. From 1988 to 1999 she was the Southwest executive for Reform's Union of American Hebrew Congregations. She will serve two years as president of the 1,800-rabbi organization, of which 20 percent are women. About half of Reform's current seminary students are female. "This is the fulfillment of a promise of equality that has been inherent in this movement for a long time," said Marder, rabbi of Congregation Beth Am in Silicon Valley since 1999. She and her husband, Rabbi Sheldon Marder, have two teenage daughters.