Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, 48, has been the Senior Rabbi of New York City's Congregation Beth Simchat Torah (CBST) since 1992. Under her leadership, CBST has become an important voice in Judaism, in the world-wide discourse on the nature of religious community, and in the movement to secure basic civil rights for gay people everywhere and social justice for all.

Rabbi Kleinbaum's education and experience cut across all varieties of contemporary Judaism: Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist, and secular activist. She received her ordination from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in 1990. A 1977 graduate of Frisch Yeshiva High School of Northern New Jersey, she graduated cum Laude from Barnard College in Political Science in 1981. Rabbi Kleinbaum has also studied at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and at the Oxford University Centre for Post-Graduate Hebrew and Yiddish.

Prior to joining CBST, Rabbi Kleinbaum was Director of Congregational Relations at the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism in Washington, DC, and the Assistant Director of the National Yiddish Book Center, in Amherst, MA.
Photo by
Richard Howe

Raised in a family of social activists, Rabbi Kleinbaum's own has been actively leading protests against the school's investments in South Africa and against the proliferation of nuclear weapons. It has continued nonstop ever since. As a human rights advocate-for blacks, women, gays and lesbians, immigrants, Palestinians-she has been jailed, arrested, vilified, and lauded, all with equal aplomb.

Rabbi Kleinbaum has testified in Federal Court and before the U.S. Congress in hearings on the subject of same-sex marriage. She attended the President's White House meeting of national religious leaders in 1999. Rabbi Kleinbaum has been a speaker or a panelist at numerous feminist and gay rights conferences. She has frequently been engaged to speak about same-sex marriage, Judaism & homosexuality, gay synagogues, and Judaism and social justice. Rabbi Kleinbaum has been the subject of a New York Times Profile and has been featured and interviewed in many books, magazines, and newspaper articles.

Rabbi Kleinbaum is a recipient of the Jewish Fund for Justice Woman of Valor Award. She has been named one of the country's Top 50 Jewish leaders by both national Jewish weeklies, The Forward, and Jewish Week. Newsweek (April 2007) named her one of the country’s most influential 50 rabbis.

Rabbi Kleinbaum is a member of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association, the Central Conference of American Rabbis (Reform), and the New York Board of Rabbis. She is a founding member of the NGLTF’s National Religious Leaders Roundtable and a member of Empire State Pride Agenda’s Pride in the Pulpit and the Human Rights Campaign Religion and Faith Advisory Board.  She has served on the board of GMHC, and is the former Co-Chair of Rabbis for Human Rights, North America and the North American Co-Chair for WorldPride in Jerusalem.

"An unusual rabbi with a unique congregation; a gifted teacher, a natural leader."
Rabbi Alexander Schindler, z''l, Past President
The Union of American Hebrew Congregations

"Rabbi Kleinbaum is a national treasure."
Elizabeth Birch, former Executive Director
Human Rights Campaign