Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, Senior Rabbi

Rabbi Kleinbaum serves as the spiritual leader of CBST and is regarded as one of the most important rabbis in America. The national Jewish weekly, The Forward , named her as one of the country’s 50 top Jewish leaders and The New York Jewish Week identified her as one of the 45 leading young American Jewish leaders in New York.

Newsweek magazine named her #17 on its list of "Top 50 American Rabbis"; she is also the highest ranked woman on the list. The subject of a profile in The New York Times, among many other titles, Rabbi Kleinbaum has lectured and published widely. She is a graduate of the Frisch Yeshiva High School and Barnard College and was ordained by the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College.

Under her leadership, CBST has become an important voice in Judaism, in the worldwide discourse on the nature of religious community, and in the movement to secure basic civil rights for gay people everywhere.

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, from 1990-1992. In 1987-1988 and again from 1989-1990, she served as Student Rabbi at the gay synagogue, Congregation Beth Haverim, in Atlanta, GA. Earlier, she served as Senior Educator at the National Federation of Temple Youth, in Jerusalem, Israel, and was Assistant Director at the National Yiddish Book Center, in Amherst, MA.

Raised in a family of social activists, Rabbi Kleinbaum's own social action career began in her first year at Barnard College, leading protests against the school's investments in South Africa and against the proliferation of nuclear weapons. That spirit 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 and 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 featured and interviewed in many books, magazines, web and newspaper articles. A book of her sermons, Listening for the Oboe , was published by CBST in 2005.

Rabbi Kleinbaum is a recipient of the Jewish Fund for Justice Woman of Valor Award. She 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 Leadership Roundtable and a member of Empire State Pride Agenda's Pride in the Pulpit and the Human Rights Campaign's Religion and Faith Advisory Board, former co-chair of Rabbis for Human Rights, North, and was the North America co-chair for the WorldPride festival held in Israel in 2006.

"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, Executive Director
Human Rights Campaign