Rabbi Julie Gordon, ordained in 1984, was the first female Conservative rabbi in Brooklyn. She was among the first 100 Reform Jewish women to be ordained at Hebrew Union College and among the first 10 to switch their affiliation to the Conservative Jewish movement.
Congregants and lay leaders of Congregation Kol Ami in Northern Virginia celebrated Gordon’s 40th anniversary of ordination with a Shabbat morning service led by Gordon on Aug. 10. About 40 community members, including some who attended virtually from Israel, gathered for the service.
“It’s really amazing. I’m 67, but I don’t feel like I’ve been a rabbi for 40 years — it’s just such a large number,” said Gordon, a retired rabbi educator. “I don’t think I knew what my retirement would look like, and I am very pleased.”
Gordon, who joined Kol Ami in 2022 as a volunteer rabbi, said she is excited and grateful to celebrate this milestone with the community.
Also in attendance were Kol Ami’s founding rabbi Leila Berner; Berner’s guest, the son of a Ugandan Jewish spiritual leader sponsored by Kol Ami; and Gordon’s two adult children who live in Washington, D.C.
During the services, Jim North, Kol Ami’s cantorial soloist, sang and played the guitar. North said he met with Gordon ahead of the service to decide on the music — they settled on a combination of community tunes and traditional melodies, including the “Adon Olam” hymn to close out services.
“We’re not doing calm and peaceful — we’re doing lively and celebratory; upbeat,” North said.
North, who joined Kol Ami with his husband in 2003, has known Gordon for upward of two years and sings with her at services.
“She’s the warmest person I’ve ever met. She is full of joy, laughs readily and always has a good story to tell,” North said of Gordon, describing her as a “mover and shaker.”
Rabbi Gilah Langner of Kol Ami, who attended the services, echoed this sentiment.
“Forty years of rabbinic ordination — that’s quite impressive especially because back then, 40 years ago, it was not anywhere like it is today,” Langner said. “You really had to have a pioneering spirit and be willing to do something that was definitely not made easy for the last 40 years.”
Gordon said her road to the rabbinate was challenging as a woman in a largely male-dominated space. Reform Judaism was ahead of the other denominations for gender equity, allowing women to receive rabbinic ordination in 1972.
“There wasn’t a clear path. We were always asking questions. We were all trying to find our way,” Gordon said of the female rabbinate. “It was exciting. It was hard because there was misogyny and misunderstanding. People weren’t sure how they felt about women as rabbis. There was a lot of work that was being done to welcome feminist theology into Jewish thought and Jewish life.”
She added that she and other female rabbis faced comments about what they wore and struggled to find jobs, which technically were open to women but “the congregation or the community wasn’t going to hire a woman, it was very clear.”
After ordination, Gordon served as an educator and rabbi, then senior rabbi, at a synagogue in her home state of Minnesota. She worked in various positions in the Minneapolis Jewish community before earning her master’s in Jewish education in 2012 and studying Talmud and Hebrew for a year.
Gordon served as director of education at Adat Shalom Reconstructionist Congregation in Bethesda from 2013 to 2019 and has since retired.
Gordon said she joined Kol Ami because she needed a space to “nurture the soul” after two years of attending services on Zoom. There, she leads services four times a year and tutors bar and bat mitzvah students.
“I help kids who are just putting their toes in the water of Jewish life,” Gordon said.
During the Aug. 10 service, Gordon connected portions of the Torah with her journey.
“We’re starting a new book of the Torah, and Moshe is talking about his 40 years, and I [taught] about my 40 years and some of the values that have inspired me along the way,” Gordon said.
She spoke about the five lessons she has learned over the past 40 years: dream big with the support of your community, be persistent, be flexible, learn from everyone and keep doing mitzvot — although it’s not one’s duty to finish the work, one is not at liberty to neglect it.
The Shabbat service concluded with bagels, lox, North’s baba ganoush — which he called a crowd favorite — and cake to celebrate Gordon’s milestone.
Even in retirement, Gordon is living out her life’s mission to build Jewish community, help people find their spiritual path and serve God.
“Being part of a Jewish community and helping to strengthen it is essential to my Jewish soul,” Gordon said.
