A child of the 1960s who protested the Vietnam War, Carol Stern is more than accustomed to advocating for change.
The Chevy Chase resident co-chaired the marriage equality effort at Adat Shalom Reconstructionist Congregation that united 100 community members to phone bank, canvass and advocate in Annapolis for the right for same-sex couples to wed.
A member of Adat Shalom since 1994, Stern worked with Rabbi Fred Dobb to revise the guidelines on being a welcoming community for LGBTQ+ members shortly after he stepped into the role in 1995. At the time, the decision to perform commitment ceremonies for same-sex couples had been at the discretion of the rabbi.
Stern and Dobb updated the guidelines to maintain that clergy would perform commitment ceremonies for same-sex couples even though same-sex marriage wasn’t yet legal.
Stern began volunteering with Equality Maryland, a state-wide nonprofit organization for marriage equality, then got involved with the Marylanders for Marriage Equality coalition in 2007.
The Adat Shalom community wanted to join the fight, so Stern and fellow congregants formed a group with David Ehrenstein as its co-chair. Ehrenstein and Stern approached Adat Shalom’s board and expressed interest in organizing and achieving marriage equality in Maryland: “We wanted to do it in the name of Adat Shalom.”
In 2008, the group began meeting with fellow congregant Sen. Brian Frosh (D-Md.), who represented Maryland’s 16th district, which houses Adat Shalom. Frosh chaired the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee, which approves bills and sends them before the full Senate.
It wasn’t until 2011 that the marriage equality bill had enough votes to go from the committee to the Senate floor, and Maryland had a Democratic governor who would sign the bill.
“It took a lot to get there,” Stern said. “It took fundraising, it took house parties, it took going to Annapolis, which we did. It took writing our state legislators. It took organizing about 100 people at Adat Shalom working on this.”
The bill was passed, signed by Gov. Martin O’Malley in March 2012 — “We were just jubilant,” Stern recalled — and put on the ballot that November.
Stern hosted phone banking sessions as volunteers made call after call: “We knew that was going to be the hardest thing; we needed to get a majority of Marylanders to say yes.”
“There were times we had 25 people in our condo here, including in the laundry room and everywhere,” Stern said. “We did 5,000 calls just on the referendum.”
Marriage equality is a cause near and dear to her heart.
“I am a lesbian, and my spouse and I wanted to get married,” Stern said, adding that she and her now wife, Miriam Eisenstein, had plans to travel to Massachusetts for their marriage license.
Since they lived in Washington, D.C., Stern and Eisenstein planned their wedding for the week that the referendum passed in 2012. The two were married at Adat Shalom that Sunday in front of 250 attendees.
“It was a celebration of marriage equality,” Stern said. “Everybody came. The house was packed.”
Stern and her wife live in Chevy Chase. The two met at Bet Mishpachah, a D.C. congregation for LGBTQ+ Jews and allies, and later joined Adat Shalom because Miriam was raised Reconstructionist.
Stern’s advocacy work is far from over: She is a full-time volunteer for Jews United for Justice, where she is a founding member of its Maryland Core Team and a member of the C3 board and Montgomery County Leadership Council since its founding in 2018.
Stern is currently most passionate about protecting immigrants’ rights, working on advancing the proposed Maryland Data Privacy Act and reinstating the Biden administration’s “sensitive locations” policy, which forbade United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from conducting enforcement actions in schools, hospitals and places of worship.
Stern, who travels to Annapolis at least once a week for advocacy, enjoys the communal aspect of volunteering for JUFJ.
“The coalition piece is so important because we realize that most of the change we make is not for us, meaning the Jews,” she said, noting that her efforts to reform Maryland’s juvenile justice system mostly affect Black and brown youth.
When writing testimony to the Maryland General Assembly, Stern connects her social justice goals with Jewish values.
“I always put a paragraph in there where I pull out something from either Torah, Talmud, Mishnah, whatever I can find,” she said. “Everything we do comes strictly from something that our ancestors wrote. … In many cases, we were the first ones to figure out that we had to treat people fairly.”
The Torah emphasizes fairness for immigrants and renters, Stern added.
“We were immigrants, and we treat immigrants fairly. Immigration is a very big issue for us,” she said.
Outside of the “huge part of her life” that’s JUFJ, Stern helps advocate for democracy on the federal level with NOPE Neighbors and volunteers at Adat Shalom. She enjoys cooking gourmet meals and spending time with her grandchildren. As she looks towards her 75th birthday, the retiree aims to “just stay healthy and active and continue doing what I’m doing.”
Great and interesting coverage on Carol Stern from our synagogue, Adat Shalom. Thank you.