Janet Marder was the first female president of the Reform Movement's Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR), which means she was the first woman to lead a major rabbinical organization and the first woman to lead any major Jewish co-ed religious organization in the United States; she became president of the CCAR in 2003.[1] She was also the first woman and the first non-congregational rabbi to be elected as the President of the Pacific Association of Reform Rabbis.[2]
She was born in Los Angeles, and was ordained in New York in 1979 at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, a Reform seminary.[3] She became the first ordained rabbi of Beth Chayim Chadashim (the world's first gay and lesbian synagogue recognized by Reform Judaism) in 1983.[3][4] While there she founded NECHAMA, an AIDS-education program for the Jewish community.[4] In 1988, she became the assistant director of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations Pacific Southwest Council, where she worked for eleven years, eventually becoming director.[2] In 1999, she became the Senior Rabbi of Congregation Beth Am in Los Altos Hills, California.[3]