Helene Ferris

Helene Ferris is the first second-career female rabbi in Judaism.

Early Career and Rabbinic Education Helene Ferris began her career as a first grade teacher and was a stay at home mother before deciding to pursue the rabbinate in 1976 and attending Hebrew Union College (HUC), which requires spending the first of 5 years in Israel. Her 3 children were 7-13 at the time. They accompanied her to Israel, where they attended school, while her husband, Alan, stayed behind in New York.

Rabbinical career Ferris was ordained by the Reform Jewish seminary Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 1981, and worked as an associate rabbi in the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York from 1981 until 1991 when she felt she had reached the proverbial "glass ceiling". Ferris is a board member of the International Committee for Women of the Wall (ICWOW), which is a group working to give women the right to lead public prayers at the Western Wall, which is now illegal. In 1989 she presided over a same-sex wedding ceremony for Ileen Kaufman and Jan Catalfumo; few rabbis would officiate such a ceremony in those days.

In 2007, Letty Cottin Pogrebin chose her as one of "The Other Fifty Top Rabbis in America." She has written for Reform Judaism magazine.