A Movement Transformed: Women's Ordination and Conservative Judaism

More than 500 people celebrated the twentieth anniversary of women's ordination at the Gerson D. Cohen Memorial Lecture on March 29, 2005. The highlight of the evening was a panel discussion that explored the triumphs, struggles and rich history behind women in the rabbinate and assessed the impact of female rabbis on American Jewry. The discussion was moderated by Abby Joseph Cohen, Chief US Portfolio Strategist at Goldman, Sachs & Co., herself a trailblazer in the business world.

The distinguished panel included: Rabbi Amy Eilberg, the first woman ordained by JTS and the current Co-Director of the Yedidya Center for Jewish Spiritual Direction in St. Paul, Minnesota; Rabbi Nina Beth Cardin, Director of Jewish Life at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Baltimore, founder of the Jewish Women's Resource Center in New York City and a co-founder of the National Center for Jewish Healing, also in New York; Rabbi Susan Grossman, religious leader of Beth Shalom Congregation in Columbia, Maryland, and the longest-serving woman on the Rabbinical Assembly's Committee of Jewish Law and Standards; Rabbi Joel Roth, Louis Finkelstein Professor of Talmud and Jewish Law at JTS, whose responsa played a key role in the debate on women's ordination at JTS; and Rabbi Gordon Tucker, religious leader of Temple Israel Center in White Plains, New York, who was the executive director of the Commission for the Study of the Ordination of Women as Rabbis.

View more photos from the event