When someone first told Rabbi Esther Lederman that she should pursue the rabbinate, she laughed. There weren’t any rabbis that she liked.
“My childhood rabbis were fine, but they weren’t exactly the role model a young, burgeoning feminist was looking for,” the Arlington resident said.
That changed when Lederman heard Rabbi Eric Yoffie speak at the Million Mom March, a 2000 rally that called for stricter gun control in the wake of the Columbine school shooting. Yaffe, then the head of the American Reform movement, was Lederman’s first exposure to a Reform rabbi.
“I had never met a rabbi who cared about Jewish things that were beyond antisemitism, Israel and intermarriage,” Lederman said. “I’d never met a rabbi who thought that we, as Jews, have something to say about the issues of our day, like gun violence.”
A year and a half later, Lederman landed a job working with the Union for Reform Judaism toward a two-state solution. “That was my entry into Reform Judaism and learning about Reform Judaism,” she said.
After nearly three years of this work, becoming a rabbi didn’t seem so far off.
“It actually was a calling that brought together many of my talents and many of my passions,” Lederman said.
She applied to rabbinical school at Hebrew Union College in New York and was ordained in 2008.
“Judaism was never the issue for me,” Lederman said. “I just needed to sort of see myself, and I’d never seen role models I could live up to. After three years of working in the Reform movement, I was like, ‘I can do this.’”
The oldest of two, Lederman was born and raised in Ottawa by a father who’d grown up in Montreal’s Jewish community pre-World War II and a mother who converted to Judaism. Lederman attended Jewish day school through eighth grade and spent summers at Camp Gesher in Ontario.
Her family belonged to an Orthodox synagogue in her early childhood, then a Conservative one later on. But Reform Judaism ultimately called to her.
After a rabbinic fellowship in New York, Lederman moved to Washington, D.C., to serve as assistant rabbi at Temple Micah, a Reform shul on Wisconsin Avenue. She worked there for six years and now belongs to Temple Micah as a member.
Lederman currently oversees the team that works on URJ’s youth movement, NFTY, as the vice president of Leaders in Action. She focuses on leadership, engaging in consulting work and thinking about how to grow Jewish leadership.
“We think about, ‘How can Reform Judaism grow beyond synagogues?’” Lederman said.
She added that those who aren’t affiliated with a house of worship make up the fastest-growing Jewish group, according to a study by the Pew Research Center. But most American Jews live by the values of Reform Judaism, Lederman said.
“When I think about Jewish peoplehood or justice or the evolving nature of our beliefs, I think there’s a value in being in deeper relationship with people who may not join a synagogue, but are looking for meaning and spirituality,” Lederman said. “They just might not be living for it in the package that has been given to them.”
She noted that while synagogues provide a myriad of Jewish programming, she hasn’t always felt comfortable in those spaces: “There’s a lot of opportunity outside the walls of a synagogue.”
These include “organic Jewish communities” that form around a particular leader or value.
“OneTable is a great example,” Lederman said of the organization that aims to make Shabbat dinners accessible to young adults. “I think that we as a movement also [have] something to give and something of value in that space, too.”
Lederman said she enjoys what she does.
“I love the people I work with,” she said. “I love that [URJ is] mission-driven — that it feels that we’re trying to do something for the Jewish world and for the world in general.”
She serves on the boards of the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington, T’ruah: the Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, the Habonim Dror Foundation — honoring her camp roots — and New Jewish Narrative, a progressive Zionist organization.
Lederman also engages in dialogue between fellow religious leaders as the co-chair of the Shoulder to Shoulder Campaign, which was created to counter anti-Muslim discrimination and violence.
“We do a lot of what’s called Faith Over Fear trainings to say, just like Jews were welcomed as a minority on these shores many decades and centuries ago, same with Muslims in this country,” Lederman said. “We’re a stronger country if we’re a multifaith country.”
She discusses antisemitism in addition to Islamophobia in these interfaith sessions “because … many times, it comes from the same group hatred.”
Lederman wants to remain optimistic amid the current political and geopolitical strife.
“I believe that it’s not OK to be a Jew without hope,” Lederman said. “That shouldn’t just be a hopeful feeling — we also have to act. So, I’m going to do what I can to make this a more loving, kind world and [a] more just world.”
