Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum is the spiritual leader of Congregation Beth Simchat Torah in New York, the world's largest lesbian and gay synagogue. The national Jewish weekly, The Forward, named her one of the country's 50 top Jewish leaders and The New York Jewish Week one of the 45 leading young American Jewish leaders in New York. Rabbi Kleinbaum is a pioneer in pastoral care for people with AIDS and their families.
Before moving to New York, she was Director of Congregational Relations at the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism in Washington, D.C. and, earlier, Assistant Director of the National Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts.
Rabbi Kleinbaum has lectured and published widely. She was the subject of a profile, "At work with Sharon Kleinbaum," in the New York Times, and was a recipient of New York City Comptroller Elizabeth Holtzman's award for her leadership and courage in the fight for lesbian and gay rights and Hetrick- Martin Institute's 1996 Emery Award.
Rabbi Kleinbaum was graduated from Barnard College and ordained by the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Philadelphia. She has studied at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and the Oxford Center for Post Graduate Hebrew and Yiddish Studies in England. Rabbi Kleinbaum is a graduate of the Frisch Yeshiva High School of Northern New Jersey.
Rabbi Kleinbaum is a member of both the Reconstructionist and Reform Rabbinical Associations, The New York Board of Rabbis, and The Womens Rabbinic Network.
As a rabbinical student Rabbi Kleinbaum served Bet Haverim, Atlanta's gay and lesbian synagogue. While in Rabbinical School Rabbi Kleinbaum received a grant to travel to the former Soviet Union and meet with Jewish activists and Hebrew teachers. She was awarded The Peter Berger Award for Practical Rabbinics at her ordination.
She lives in Brooklyn with her partner and two daughters.
