Carole Meyers was the first

female rabbi Women rabbis are individual Jewish women who have studied Jewish Law and received rabbinical ordination. Women rabbis are prominent in Progressive Jewish denominations, however, the subject of women rabbis in Orthodox Judaism is more complex. A ...

Southern California Southern California (commonly shortened to SoCal) is a geographic and Cultural area, cultural region that generally comprises the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. It includes the Los Angeles metropolitan area, the second most po ...

to lead a congregation full-time.Rabbi Carole Meyers, first female to head a congregation in Southern California, dies at 50 , Obituaries , Jewish Journal
/ref>A Different Path , Community Briefs , Jewish Journal
/ref> She first became interested in becoming a rabbi after her father died when she was 13 and her stepfather died when she was 19, and the rituals and community support of the synagogue helped her through her grief. Meyers was ordained in 1983 by the

Reform Jewish Reform Judaism, also known as Liberal Judaism or Progressive Judaism, is a major Jewish denomination that emphasizes the evolving nature of Judaism, the superiority of its ethical aspects to its ceremonial ones, and belief in a continuous searc ...

seminary

Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...

, and spent three years as assistant rabbi of Congregation Beth Israel in

Houston Houston (; ) is the most populous city in Texas, the most populous city in the Southern United States, the fourth-most populous city in the United States, and the sixth-most populous city in North America, with a population of 2,304,580 in ...

. She became the rabbi of Temple Sinai of

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in 1986, when she was 29. She resigned in 2001, and died in 2007 of bone cancer. She was married to Ralph Zarefsky and had two sons. After her death, in 2018, a book of her sermons was published, titled ''Leaning on God: Sermons by Rabbi Carole L. Meyers''.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Meyers, Carole American Reform rabbis Reform women rabbis 2007 deaths Year of birth missing 21st-century American Jews