NEW YORK – As a rabbinic student in 1980s New York, Denise Eger lived away from other seminarians. She quietly started a group for fellow gay and lesbian students but held the meetings in another borough. By the time of her ordination, she wasn’t formally out, but her sexuality was known, and no one would hire her. Later, she took the only job offered with a synagogue formed expressly as a religious refuge for gays.
Since then, the Reform Jewish movement – Eger’s spiritual home since childhood – has traveled a long road toward recognizing and embracing same-sex relationships. That journey led to Philadelphia, where Eger was installed Monday as the first openly gay president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the rabbinical arm of Reform Judaism.
Reform Judaism was the earliest of the major Jewish movements to take formal steps toward recognizing same-sex relationships. In 1977, the Reform movement called for civil-rights protections for gays. By 1996, Reform rabbis backed same-sex civil marriage. But as these positions developed, gays and lesbians had to grapple with the uncertainties of pursuing ordination at a time when they could easily be kicked out of seminary over their sexuality or graduate without a congregation willing to hire them.
Eger went on to hold several leadership positions within the Reform movement and in the Southern California Jewish community and helped write the Reform Jewish prayer service for same-sex marriages.
And, it turns out, she didn’t have to give up having a family. The mother of a 21-year-old son, she is now engaged to be married.
