For 25 years, Rabbi Debra Newman Kamin has grown with the congregation and it has grown with her. She has bar- and bat-mitzvahed generations of Am Yisrael children. As they grew older, she married them and now names their own babies. She has become an international leader of the Conservative movement, and is credited with creating a more vibrant, joyous, and youthful spirit at the Northfield congregation.
“I cannot convey how grateful I am to Am Yisrael,” said Newman Kamin, one of the country’s first Conservative women rabbis. “I feel like they’ve given me more than I’ve given them. They have given me love and support as I learned how to become their rabbi.”
Am Yisrael, she said simply, feels like her beshert.
On Sunday, Feb. 8, Am Yisrael in Northfield will celebrate Newman Kamin’s 25 years with the congregation and the anniversary of her ordination. The festivities will include an afternoon concert.
Rabbi Kamin is my rabbi, my friend, and my colleague, said Dr. Steven Nasatir, president of Jewish United Fund-Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago. “Her leadership at Am Yisrael and throughout the community has been uplifting and enlightened. The rabbi’s work is a source of pride to all who know her.
When Newman Kamin was a child, women did not become rabbis. It wasn’t until her early teens that the Reform Movement began ordaining women. For Newman Kamin, who grew up Conservative and was always deeply interested in Judaism, becoming a rabbi was not within her world.
In college at the University of Michigan, she majored in Jewish studies. The first female rabbi she met—coincidentally, Rabbi Ellen Dreyfus, another Chicago-area rabbi—suggested she become a rabbi. “It was an eye-opening moment,” she said. Serendipitously, the Conservative Movement’s Jewish Theological Seminary had just begun accepting women.
“Many male rabbis had no problem telling me to my face that they opposed women becoming rabbis,” said Newman Kamin. Now, she said, Chicago is the only Jewish community in the country with women rabbis in senior positions at five congregations, three Reform and two Conservative.
After graduation, in 1999, Am Yisrael hired her as the assistant rabbi. For the first several years, it was easy. She was the assistant of Rabbi William Frankel, the beloved founding rabbi of the congregation, and worked with young families and children. The big challenge for her came when he retired. Many in the congregation, who liked her as the assistant rabbi, were completely opposed to a woman replacing him.
“When Rabbi Frankel retired, I sought out Dr. Steven Nasatir and went to him for advice,” she said. Nasatir is also a long-time member of Am Yisrael. He told her, “Sometimes you just know that a certain position is meant to be yours.”
“Dr. Nasatir told me I should persevere.” Following a yearlong search, the board voted to make her senior rabbi.
The fallout was immediate. Many left the congregation. “People watched Dr. Nasatir to see what he would do,” she said. Nasatir and his family stayed.
Complicating that was the fact that she had three children. Her oldest son, in fact, is getting married in September and she is performing the wedding.
“I am very proud, as a working mother, who I am happy to say, raised three mensch-y children who care about Judaism and humanity,” she said.
“At first I was uncomfortable speaking about it too publically,” said Newman Kamin. “I didn’t’ want people to think I couldn’t do my job because I’m a mother.”
It was a question in the early years she heard a lot. When she was on maternity leave, a mentor whom she loved and respected told her that a working mother couldn’t do the job of a congregation rabbi. “It was very painful at the time, devastatingly painful,” she said.
It took until 1999, when she spearheaded an onsite religious school building, that she became widely accepted as the rabbi.
“A lot has changed in 25 years, but we have a long way to go,” she said.
Female rabbis still have a harder time getting jobs than their male colleagues, she said. Likewise, the Conservative movement is still not fully egalitarian.
Newman Kamin is the treasurer of the International Rabbinical Assembly of Conservative rabbis and is in line to become its president. She has been invited by President Barack Obama to the White House three times, twice to discuss policy and the last time to attend the White House Chanukah party.
“Each time it’s really emotional,” she said. “I wish I could tell my grandparents, who have passed away. How could they possibly believe that their granddaughter went to the White House and went as a rabbi!”
Lisa Pevtzow is a freelance writer living in the Chicago area.