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Laura Geller is one of the three women in the world to be ordained a Reform rabbi (a jewish religious teacher) and the first woman rabbi to lead a major metropolitan synagogue. A 1971 graduate of Brown University, she received her Rabbinic Ordination from Hebrew Union College- Jewish Institute of Religion in 1975.She is currently the spiritual leader at Temple Emanuel in Beverly Hills, California, as well as an activist and a role model for women throughout the international Jewish community.Her goals there are to transform worship are to work for social justice. She is recognized for her work in helping to re-cast American Judaism with an increased emphasis on spirituality, especially women's spirituality. After being ordained as a rabbi, Laura Geller received considerable negative responses for her being a woman rabbi. People would come up to her and tell her that they didn’t think women should be rabbis. Thought this used to make her insecure initially, she believes that such responses are less frequent these days.Rabbis who are women are more or less accepted within the liberal American Jewish scene. ‘Now people come to hear what I have to say, not to see what I look like’, she says.
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