Laura Geller

Laura Geller (born 1950) is an American rabbi. She serves as the rabbi emerita of Temple Emanuel in Beverly Hills, California.

Early life and education Geller was raised in Brookline, Massachusetts until she was 15, when her family moved to New York City. She attended the Dalton School, then graduated from Brown University in 1971. Geller was ordained by the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 1976.

Career Prior to her current position, she was the director of the American Jewish Congress branch in Los Angeles from 1990 until 1994. She was also the first female rabbi to become Hillel director at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, a job she held for fourteen years. While at Hillel, she co-organized the national conference "Illuminating the Unwritten Scroll: Women's Spirituality and Jewish Tradition."

She wrote the pieces "Rediscovering Regina Jonas: The First Woman Rabbi" and "Women Rabbis and Feminism: On Our Way to the Promised Land", which appear in the book The Sacred Calling: Four Decades of Women in the Rabbinate, published in 2016.

Other The 2022 art exhibit “Holy Sparks”, shown among other places at the Dr. Bernard Heller Museum, featured art about twenty-four female rabbis who were firsts in some way; Ruth Weisberg created the artwork about Geller that was in that exhibit.