Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb

Host: Basima Farhat

Previously Aired On: Tuesday, April 28, 2009 - Listen to the Show!
 

Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb was one of the first ten women to become a rabbi in Jewish history, Lynn Gottlieb has served as a rabbi for the past 32 years.

Lynn is also a professional storyteller, puppeteer, author and percussionist with the Rebbe’s Orkestra as well as one of the few trained Klezmer dancers in the United States. She has performed original work at the Public Theatre in NYC, The Mark Taper Forum and in hundreds of venues throughout the United States, Europe, Canada and Israel for the past thirty years. Her work has been hailed as breathtaking and visionary. Her most recent work: Play With Borders: voices Reflecting Israel and Palestine opens the door to heart felt dialogue.

Lynn began her rabbinic career in 1973-1979 as rabbi to Temple Beth Or of the Deaf in NYC, while she pursued rabbinic training. Lynn’s vision and creativity helped create the Jewish Renewal Movement, and she was the first woman ordained through that movement (1981). From 1979-82, Lynn staffed the Jewish Peace Fellowship. In 1983 she co-founded Congregation Nahalat Shalom in Albuquerque, a Jewish community with an open heart devoted to education, the arts and peacemaking. Lynn has worked with people of all ages and faiths to create meaningful ritual that celebrates and mourns the passages of life: from birth to death.

Lynn is also a life long pursuer of social justice, reconciliation and peace. She has received numerous human rights awards, including recognition from the City of Albuquerque and the UN Chapter of Albuquerque. In 2002 in response to September 11th, Lynn co-founded the Muslim-Jewish Peace Walk for Interfaith Solidarity with Abdul Rauf Campos Marquetti. Together they organized peace pilgrimages between local synagogues, mosques and churches in 16 cities throughout Canada bringing thousands of people together. Programs resulting from those walks continue to thrive. Rabbi Gottlieb has extensive experience in Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation as well, and leads frequent delegations to the Middle East to meet with people involved in coexistence work through the auspice of the Fellowship of Reconciliation.

Rabbi Gottlieb is a founder of the Shomer Shalom Institute for Jewish Nonviolence. Shomer Shalom is an organization of Jews who follow a path of nonviolence based on Jewish principles of religious engagement. Shomer Shalom is committed to cultivating an intergenerational, multi-cultural and interfaith global community of peace, justice, loving kindness, and solidarity.

Gottlieb led a Fellowship of Reconciliation delegation to Iran in 2008, thus becoming the first U.S. Rabbi and the first female Rabbi to visit Iran in a public delegation since the 1979 Iranian revolution.

On September 25, 2008 she participated in an interfaith gathering in New York at which President Ahmaninajed of Iran spoke. Her presence at the event was widely criticized as bolstering President Ahmaninajed’s position after a UN speech in which he expressed relatively crude anti-Jewish stereotypes and reiterated his oft-repeated wish for Israel’s swift demise. In response to President Ahmaninajed’s remarks, Rabbi Goittleib told Reuters “Our world views are rather different. But unless we … dialogue face to face, how will we create any kind of understanding?” adding that she chose to attend because “peace is better than war.”

Lynn is also a frequently published author of poems, essays and the book She Who Dwells Within (Harper San Francisco, 1995), an avid naturalist, a perpetual student of Sephardic culture, and a frequent participant with Buddhist, Native American, Muslim, Ba’hai, Hindu, Sikh and Christian communities in the work of interfaith understanding and reconciliation in national and international settings.

April 1st, 2009 --Previous Guests--, Lynn Gottlieb | 2 comments