Rabbi Andrea Weiss, a former provost of Hebrew Union School-Jewish Institute of Faith who made historical past as the primary lady to ordain rabbis within the Reform motion, has died.
Weiss died on Tuesday surrounded by household at her house in Decrease Merion, Pennsylvania, following a year-long battle with most cancers. She was 60.
“Andrea introduced lev shalem — a complete coronary heart to every little thing she did,” Cantor Jill Abramson, HUC’s interim head of seminary and director of its Debbie Friedman College of Sacred Music, stated in a press release. “Whether or not in a classroom or a hallway dialogue, she has all the time been a mannequin of what it means to reside a life guided by scholarship and sacred objective. We’ll miss her presence in these halls and maintain her household in our prayers.”
Weiss’ loss of life strikes one other blow for the management of the Reform motion, which has additionally buried two leaders of HUC who died prematurely whereas Weiss labored there — Rabbi Aaron Panken, then the seminary’s president, in 2018, and Rabbi David Ellenson, its previous president, in 2023. The varsity of sacred music, in the meantime, is called for an additional luminary of the motion who died prematurely at 59 in 2011.
Born on Sept. 9, 1965, Weiss was raised in San Diego the place her household belonged to Temple Emanu-El. In 1987, Weiss obtained her bachelor’s diploma from the College of California, Berkeley, and was ordained as a rabbi at HUC in 1993.
Weiss joined the HUC college in 2000 alongside Rabbi Lisa Grant, who served because the director of the varsity’s rabbinical program.
“There was really 4 of us, 4 girls, who began on the identical time, and we actually modified the entire gender stability of the school, which was very thrilling and serious about, long run potential of what that will imply for the tradition of the varsity,” Grant advised the Jewish Telegraphic Company.
Throughout her tenure on the faculty, Weiss led a number of initiatives together with a curricular redesign, the launch of the Digital Pathway for Rabbinical college students and the creation of the Seminary Hebrew Program.
Weiss taught a number of programs on the faculty, together with “The Poetry and Energy of the Psalms,” “Literary Artistry of the Bible” and “Instructing Bible to Grownup Learners,” a course she co-taught with Grant starting in 2003.
“Rabbi Weiss has been a transformative presence at Hebrew Union School for greater than twenty years,” stated the varsity’s present president, Andrew Rehfeld, in a press release. “Her scholarship, imaginative and prescient, and fierce dedication to the formation of Jewish clergy have formed this establishment in methods that can endure for generations. We’re grateful past measure for her service and maintain her and her family members in our hearts.”
Weiss obtained her PhD from the College of Pennsylvania in 2004, the place her analysis centered on metaphor and biblical poetry, scholarship that knowledgeable her later work together with her 2006 e book, “Figurative Language in Biblical Prose Narrative: Metaphor within the E book of Samuel.”
In 2008, Weiss gained the Nationwide Jewish E book Awards E book of the Yr because the affiliate editor of “The Torah: A Ladies’s Commentary,” the primary complete assortment of Torah commentary written fully by feminine students. Sen. Elissa Slotkin selected the textual content to be sworn in on final yr.
In 2016 and 2020, Weiss led a nonpartisan, interfaith initiative titled “American Values, Non secular Voices” that introduced collectively 100 religion leaders to write down letters to former President Joe Biden and President Donald Trump in addition to Congress through the first 100 days of their administrations. The letters have been later printed as two books.
Weiss described the initiative on the time as “a nationwide, nonpartisan marketing campaign created from the conviction that students who examine and educate our various spiritual traditions have one thing vital to say about our shared American values.”
Grant stated Weiss provided a mannequin of Jewish engagement that was validated by the traditional rabbis.
“There’s an excellent Talmudic debate about which is extra vital, which is larger, examine or motion, and the rabbis have this backwards and forwards about it, and ultimately, they conclude examine as a result of it results in motion,” Grant stated. “She actually lived that, that her examine and her educating led her to be an activist as effectively.”
In 2018, Weiss was appointed as HUC’s provost, changing into the primary feminine rabbi to ordain rabbis within the Reform motion.
Grant stated the glory was “terribly significant and really heavy” for Weiss.
“She would make the time yearly to satisfy individually for an hour with each single pupil, to listen to about their story, their journey, their studying,” stated Grant. “And he or she would craft that into a brief blessing upon ordination.”
As information of Weiss’ loss of life unfold on Tuesday, a lot of her former college students and rabbis whom she ordained eulogized her on social media.
“Rabbi Andrea Weiss helped me to understand and respect biblical poetry in a approach that no one else may,” wrote Evan Schultz, the senior rabbi of Congregation B’nai Israel in Bridgeport, Connecticut, in a publish on Fb. “Her knowledge helped form me as a rabbi and a author. She was sensible, form, and real.”
Rabbi Binyamin Minich, the chief of Kehilat Daniel in Tel Aviv, recalled in a publish on Fb being part of Weiss’ first ordination cohort.
“I bear in mind this sense of awe, understanding that our 2019 cohort of Israeli Rabbinical Program alumni could be the primary ordained by a girl,” wrote Minich. “That meant the concept of girls being rabbis settled absolutely within the Jewish modern life and ascended to a subsequent degree. It was the actual proof of [lalmud velelemed leshmor vela’ashot] – ‘to review and to show, to protect and to behave.’”
Rabbi Shira Koch Epstein, the chief director of Atra: Middle for Rabbinic Innovation, recalled connecting with Weiss in 2019 in Jerusalem and listening to a few bar mitzvah mission Weiss had helped arrange for her son. The mission introduced his baseball staff to Cuba, the place they donated gear and met with locals.
“It was an enormous mission that they did that was actually inspirational; it impressed my son, Ami, to do a baseball-related mitzvah mission for his bar mitzvah,” stated Epstein. “Positively not as formidable as theirs, however Rabbi Weiss actually taught me each Torah and the dwelling Torah, of flip what you care about and your pursuits into tzedakah and motion on the earth.”
Weiss is survived by her husband Alan; her two kids, Rebecca and Ilan; her father, Marty; her siblings, Mitch, Laura and Roger; her sister-in-law Catherine; and her nieces, nephews and cousins.
