Wolfe Kelman

Wolfe Kelman (November 27, 1923 – June 26, 1990) was an Austrian-born American rabbi and leader in the Conservative Judaism in the United States who never led a congregation, serving for decades as a mentor to hundreds of rabbis in his role as the executive vice president of the Rabbinical Assembly, where he also prepared the initial steps for the rabbinic ordination of women in the Conservative movement.

Leadership in Conservative Judaism Upon the completion of his military service, Kelman attended the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, where he received his rabbinic ordination. Eschewing a congregation and a pulpit, and at the prompting of Dr. Louis Finkelstein and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, he accepted a post at the Rabbinical Assembly in 1951. There he helped professionalize the Conservative rabbinate, adding educational retreats and ensuring that rabbis received compensation and benefits commensurate with their role. In the nearly four decades before his retirement in 1989, the number of Conservative rabbis quadrupled from 300 to 1,200 during a period when the Conservative movement grew together with the rise of suburban Jewish communities.

In addition to his duties with the Conservative Assembly, Kelman was the head of the U.S. division of the World Jewish Congress starting in 1986. His son, Levi Weiman-Kelman is a reform rabbi in Jerusalem, and he founded the Progressive congregation Kol HaNeshama. His daughter Naamah Kelman-Ezrachi was the first woman to become a rabbi in Israel when she received rabbinic ordination from Rabbi Alfred Gottschalk of the Hebrew Union College, affiliated with the Reform Judaism movement.