While she was growing up in New York City, Jennifer Weiner decided that she would become a rabbi. Weiner graduated from Barnard College of Columbia University in 1990 and was ordained at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 1996. She received a master’s degree in Jewish education from HUC-JIR’s Executive Masters Program in 2020 and her Doctor of Divinity in 2021.
Rabbi Weiner also became an Intentional Interim Rabbi for the Central Conference of American Rabbis, and guided two congregations through a merger and finding a settled (full-time) rabbi and cantor.
Weiner, 53, is currently interim rabbi at Temple Emanu-El in Honolulu. She is expected to serve through June 30, 2022.
What made the rabbinate your choice for a career?
It encompasses everything I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to be involved with the religious community on a professional level, I wanted to give back to the Jewish community and to the community — the faith community — and I wanted to be able to teach and to learn for the rest of my life, and it just combined everything.
Some Christian churches accept women as clergy. Some don’t. How accepting is the Jewish community of women as rabbis?
Women have been ordained in the Reform movement in the United States since Sally Priesand in 1972. Before her was Regina Jonas, who was ordained privately in Germany in 1935 and died in the Holocaust. There are many of us now, and within Reform and Conservative and Reconstructionist Judaism, female rabbis are accepted. And it’s not just accepted that women can be rabbis — its men, women, nonbinary, transgender, all across the gender spectrum — especially in the Reform and Reconstructionist movements. It’s a wonderful time to be in the rabbinate.
How did Temple Emanu-El’s Rabbinic Search Committee find you and select you as the interim rabbi?
In the Reform movement, we have an office of placement and they list different positions that are available. I was trained last year as an interim rabbi, and I had a really positive experience doing it, so when Hawaii listed for an interim rabbi immediately, I put in for interviewing. It was a series of interviews and discussions, and we matched.
How has Hawaii been for you?
I love it. I know a lot of people call it paradise, but it really is. I get to go outside each day and see God’s creations out there. I get to work with amazing people, and I get to work with a community that is so caring and diverse. To be in a congregation where social action and social justice are at the forefront — and inclusion of all who are in the community — it’s really wonderful.
What issues concern you?
There’s the unhomed, there’s not enough housing. Housing is extremely expensive, and so is food and fuel. These issues come down to honoring each other, working with food banks, and working with the unhomed population, to help people get to the services that that they need. I would really like to see the Jewish youth of all Hawaii be connected together, and also the Jewish community to be connected together, and for the interfaith work to continue. Coming in there was such a wonderful basis for everything because pieces of the structure were already in place.
What are you looking at long-term?
An interim rabbi cannot apply to be the settled rabbi. We go in there and give (the congregation) the year of seeing what kind of rabbi or clergy they need to go forward and flourish in the future. With COVID, it has been difficult being away from my family for (long) periods of time — last year I was an hour and a half away so we could see each other. For the sake of my family, I would like all of us to be together, and until (my children) are older, I will seek whatever employment is good for the family.
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Reach John Berger at jberger@ staradvertiser.com.
