Ellen Weinberg Dreyfus is an American rabbi. She is a founder and former president of the Women's Rabbinic Network.[1] [2]
She was ordained in 1979 at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) in New York, and is to her knowledge the first woman to be ordained as a rabbi while pregnant.[3] [4]
In 1983, she moved back to Illinois, becoming the first female rabbi in that state.[3]
In 2001, she became the first female president of the Chicago Board of Rabbis.[3] [4] [5]
In 2009, she was installed as the second female president of Reform Judaism's Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR) in Jerusalem, making her the first female leader of a major rabbinic organization to begin her tenure in Israel.[6]
Also in 2009, she was also inducted onto the Board of Governors of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.[4]
The piece "From Generation to Generation: A Roundtable Discussion with Rabbi Ellen Weinberg Dreyfus", appears in the book The Sacred Calling: Four Decades of Women in the Rabbinate, published in 2016.[7] [8] [9]
In 2004, the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion awarded her an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree.[4]
In 2010, she was selected as one of the top 50 rabbis in America by Newsweek and the Sisterhood blog of The Jewish Daily Forward.[2]
In 2011, she received the Rabbi Mordecai Simon Memorial Award.[10]
She is married and has three children.[4]