An interview with Rabbi Laura Geller
The first female rabbi to lead a major metropolitan congregation opens up about her childhood, her Torah, pay, offending donors, her biggest failure, & the meaning of Jewish meditation.
As a journalist, one of my biggest frustrations is getting clergy to talk frankly. They have congregants whom they pastor and shepherd, and whom they also, in many cases, report to. They are surrounded by people who look to them for wisdom—and who, in Jewish congregations anyway, can fire them. The last thing they can do is be totally candid about their challenges and failures.
One workaround is to interview clergy anonymously, or to interview retired clergy. I sent a questionnaire to a host of rabbis, asking them to reply anonymously. I sent the same, identical questionnaire to all rabbis who agreed to answer, no matter their gender, age, or denomination. A bunch wrote back, and in the interview I run today, a retired rabbi allowed me to use her name (her career was so unusual that she would have been identifiable by her answers anyway). She is Laura Geller, and in 1994 she became rabbi of Temple Emanuel in Beverly Hills, Cal., a job she held until 2016. Here are her replies to my questions.
(And if you are a rabbi who would answer questions confidentially—or not—please drop me a line: markoppenheimer@substack.com.)
Were you a religious child?
I grew up in a Reform home in Brookline, Mass. It seemed as though everybody around me it was Jewish. Only I and the one Irish kid showed up in our public school on the second day of Rosh Hashanah. My parents were active in the social action committee of the temple.
My earliest Jewish memory is sneaking downstairs when my parents were hosting a social action committee meeting at our home to listen to the what the grownups were talking about. I kept hearing the word “straw.” The next morning I asked my father what a straw was. He explained that in our town there were neighborhoods where Black people could not buy a home. He explained that a “straw” was a white person who bought a home from another white person in order to sell it to a Black person to facilitate housing integration.
I remember saying, “But I thought this was a Jewish meeting. What does that have to do with being Jewish?” My father responded, “That’s what it means to be Jewish.“
I actually think that that is part if the reason I became a rabbi. I became bat mitzvah in 1963. It was still not so common. There was no question that my brothers would have b’nai mitzvah, But when it came to me my parents gave me the choice of a bat mitzvah or a sweet sixteen party. It was one of those “aha!” moments.
Why did you become a rabbi?
I think another reason I became a rabbi was learning that after my parents suffered the tragic death of my sister when she was just two years old, it was their congregational rabbi who found a way to bring them comfort and go forward in their lives, including having more children, including me. I guess I wanted to be in a position to bring that kind of healing to other people.
Were your parents/friends pleased by your decision to become a rabbi? Surprised? What was the reaction? (As ever, specific stories are welcome.)
Surprised but supportive.
Was rabbinic school good training?
Rabbinical school wasn’t easy. I was the only woman in my class of fifty. If it weren’t for the wives of some of the guys in my class I never would have survived. We were all struggling with the same challenge—how can one be a feminist at the same time as an engaged Jew? The women’s group we created our first year in Jerusalem (at Hebrew Union College’s campus there) was life saving.
My time at HUC was also challenged by a professor who was a perpetrator and harasser, and no one on the faculty or administration intervened. It was simply the “cost of doing business,” when a woman wanted to succeed in a man’s world.
My time at HUC was also challenged by a professor who was a perpetrator and harasser.
The other issue that affected students in my day is that no professor ever encouraged us to reflect on our inner spiritual lives. We learned how to read texts but not to engage in the Torah of our lives.And there was no one (yet) who offered a feminist lens.
When you graduated, were you prepared for your first job? What did you do best at the start, and what overwhelmed you?
I knew from the beginning that I wanted to be a rabbi in Hillel because my years of college were so central to shaping the person I became—the anti-war movement, civil rights, feminism. During my years at HUC, my internships were always with Hillel, so I was prepared for the work. And once in Hillel there were supportive colleagues all around the country and in L.A. who taught me certain Jewish skills I hadn’t learned, like how to keep a kosher kitchen.
Though I thought I never wanted to be a congregational rabbi, after 14 years in Hillel and four running a Jewish civil rights organization, I became the first woman to be selected by a national search to become the senior rabbi of a major metropolitan synagogue. While the news headline was, “Woman rabbi shatters the stained-glass ceiling,” the real story is that you can start you career anywhere and end up a senior rabbi if that is what you want to be. Until that time the pressure was to eventually be a senior rabbi by first being an assistant, then an associate or solo rabbi, and eventually a senior. Thankfully rabbinic carriers look very different now. Much less hierarchical and more collaborative.
What’s your greatest moment of failure as a rabbi?
My major failure was not being intentional about developing leadership and training new leaders.
What's your greatest moment of success?
Most of the highs came at intimate moments around life cycle or life transitions, including creating new rituals to help people access the Torah of their lives. Other moments included teaching adults in Torah study or the occasional b-mitzvah where the young student really finds his or her voice.
Talk about the pay.
My salary was lower than it should have been because I never learned how to advocate for myself financially. Much if that can be attributed to gender and lack of transparency.
My salary was lower than it should have been because I never learned how to advocate for myself financially. Much if that can be attributed to gender and lack of transparency.
If you have or had congregants, does your level of Jewish observance match your congregants’? Are there particular mismatches—ways your observance is too much for them, or too little?
While I keep kosher and am zocher ( not shomer) Shabbat, most of my congregants are not. In general, I think the majority like the idea of their rabbi being more observant or spiritual.
What aspect of the rabbinate gives you "impostor syndrome"? What makes you feel way out of your depth, or are you embarrassed not to be better at?
Hebrew.
Technology.
What has worked best in your rabbinate? Put another way: what practice have you implemented in your community, or shul, that you think your colleagues should copy? What do you want to get the word out about?
Institute for Jewish Spirituality. It changed my life and empowered me to change my congregation.
And spiritual direction—I have been in direction for over twenty years with a woman Presbyterian minister.
Life-long learning and chevruta study.
Meditation.
Musar.
How do you think about what to wear? What is your personal practice of attire?
For my entire career as a congregational rabbi, I never wore pants on the bima or, until the very end, even to the office. People felt free to comment on my clothes in ways they would never speak about a male rabbi. Thankfully all that has changed with younger colleagues. But it was a drag to be polite when people crossed those kinds of boundaries.
I wear a tallit when I pray and a kippah for prayer, study, or public settings where I want to be identified as a rabbi.
How has being a rabbi affected your relationship with your partner(s) (or your ability to find a partner)?
The challenge of being the partner of a rabbi is the long hours and always being in call makes it hard to have a balanced life. Also, it is sometimes difficult to figure out when your partner needs to show up and when it doesn’t matter.
If you have children, how has being a rabbi affected your relationship with them?
My kids would tell you it was hard for them because I was gone so much, and they sometimes felt other families’ needs took precedence over ours. But as adults they say they learned from me how grateful one can be if you love your work and feel like you are making a difference for the good.
One thing congregational rabbis tell me is it's hard to make new friends, because you can’t really open up to your congregants, or anyone in the area who might know your congregants. Is this true? And how do you make/sustain friendships?
I came to the congregation in my forties, with a life and with friends outside of the congregation. Some joined my congregation; others didn’t. But those connections were always safe and confidential. I continue to have friends who are former colleagues, and I have friends who are not connected to work. As a retired rabbi, I welcome the opportunity to make new friends, and to extend my circle beyond people who are similar to me. So I have joined book clubs that are not Jewish and I am actively pursuing other opportunities to expand my circle.
Do you believe in God? What is your personal Torah or theology? How has that changed over your time in the rabbinate?
I don’t believe in biblical images of God or the God we meet in the prayer book. I do believe in a creative energy that connects all living beings, a Oneness of which I am a small part. I preach and teach about this notion of oneness all the time, that oneness makes a claim on me to be engaged in repairing the world. Prayer is a practice not of asking for things but of aligning myself to the Oneness and being grateful to the truths of the moment. It is the spiritual practice of staying awake. In my view there are too many prayers in our liturgy and not enough silence. I am not a musical person but I have come to understand the power of music and communal singing and chanting in prayer.
Prayer is a practice not of asking for things but of aligning myself to the Oneness and being grateful to the truths of the moment.
Can you be honest with your congregants/constituents/bosses about your beliefs? What do you have to be "careful" about, or even lie about?
My politics have always been left of center, but I didn’t join the rabbinic cabinet of J Street until the day after I retired. I have always been cautious about what I lend my name to, although it is much easier now that I don’t worry about offending donors.
How has your career exceeded your expectations? How has it not worked out as planned?
It has been a really good run though not without challenges. The most important thing I have learned is that you need to have a sense of humor.
Is your denomination useful, either for spiritual guidance or for organizational purposes?
Occasionally it has given me “cover” for speaking out or encouraging edgy programs. And the camps ( though I never went to Jewish camps) are really important, as are the RAC, IRAC, and Letaken, the program that brings teenagers to DC.
What have I failed to ask?
You didn’t ask what retired rabbis are doing in their retirement to continue to find purpose and community, and how they make the transition from VIP to PIP (Previously Important Person.) For me, it has been to continue to explore the issues raised in the book I wrote with my late husband, Richard Siegel, Getting Good at Getting Older, through opportunities to teach in synagogues and JCCs around the country. And a new project is the Synagogue Village Network, where I am helping create new synagogue villages around the country.
Bonus question: Is there a living (or recently deceased) rabbi who inspires you—someone whose example you learn from, someone you admire, someone who really “gets it”?