Today's Spotlight is an advocate, author, activist, and a American Reform rabbi. She is also the first female and the first openly gay President of the Board of Rabbis of Southern California. Today's Out Spotlight is Rabbi Denise Eger.
Denise Eger grew up in Memphis Tennessee, and knew she wanted to be a Rabbi by the time she headed to the University of Southern California for college. She said of her upbringing in Memphis, where Jews of all denominations knew each other and interacted, embedded within her a sense of klal Yisrael, the oneness of the people of Israel. Something that she has carried with her throughout her career.
After receiving her bachelor's degree in Religion with a specialization in Judaic Studies at USC she headed back East to New York where she continued her education at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. The four year graduate and ordination program, included a year studying in Israel. Eger received a Master of Arts in Hebrew Letters in 1985 and was ordained in 1988.
In her first appointment following her ordination, Eger took the pulpit at Beth Chayim Chadashim (BCC), the world’s first congregation for gays and lesbians, founded in 1972. It was not the easiest of first assignments for anyone. It was period marked by tremendous loss in the GLBT community
During her tenure she worked extensively (and continues to) with people with HIV/AIDS.
“1988 was a very dark and awful time in the gay community,” Eger said. “People would get diagnosed with HIV and would be dead six weeks later. Mortuaries questioned whether they could take the body, nurses would leave food on a tray outside the door and refuse to come in,” she recalled.
Worse was dealing with patients’ families.
“Jewish parents would swoop in, having not talked to their child for years, and kick the lover out of the house,” Eger said. “And they didn’t understand why the rabbi would not side with them.”
In 1992, she and 35 people from the congregation moved on to found Congregation Kol Ami,a Reform Synagogue for all ( gay and straight)in West Hollywood. In 2001, the congregation completed building their own building, and now has over 300 members.
Through her work and experience, Rabbi Eger has become widely known as an expert on Judaism and GLBT civil rights. First regarding HIV/AIDS rights and now Marriage Equality.Eger and her followers have been at the forefront of the fight to legalize gay marriage in California.
During the brief window of time in 2008 when same sex
marriage was legal in California, Eger had the privilege of officiating at the first legal wedding in Los Angeles County between two women, activist Robin Tyler and Diane Olson on June 16th.That same summer, Eger married her longtime partner, Karen Siteman. The couple has a 17-year-old son.
In 2009 she wrote Standing Up to Miss California, regarding "Carrie Prejean and the National Organization for Marriage feel they are the victims because of the outcry when Carrie spoke out againt same sex marriage during the interview portion of the Miss USA pageant.
Eger continues to fight for Marriage Equality in California and around the US.
And even with the struggle and opposition, she is thrilled that there are more lifecycles she gets preside over in her congregation than when started.She noted her career has been all out of order, first funerals, then a gay baby boom, then weddings and now b’nai mitzvah.
In 2008 Rabbi Eger was named one of the Forward 50; one of the fifty most influential Jews in North America for her work in GLBT rights. In the summer of 2010 she was named one of the fifty most influential women Rabbis.
She has previously served as the chair of the Search Alliance Institutional Review Board; Treasurer of the Women's Rabbinic Network and is a past president of the Pacific Association of Reform Rabbis. She has chaired the Gay and Lesbian Rabbinic Network of the Central Conference of American Rabbis and is past chair of the Task Force on Gays and Lesbians in the Rabbinate.
She is also a founding member of the Religion and Faith Council of the Human Rights Campaign and a founding executive committee member of California Faith for Equality.
She was also the founding President of the Lesbian, Gay, & Bisexual Interfaith Clergy Association.
A noted author, she has contributed to anthologies such as Torah Queeries, Lesbian Rabbis, Twice Blessed, and Conflicting Visions: Contemporary Debates in Reform Judaism.
She has won numerous awards for her activism including the Morris Kight Lifetime Achievement Award from Christopher Street West/LA Pride.In 2009, she became the first female and the first openly gay President of the Board of Rabbis of Southern California.