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Claudia Kreiman

1974–August 12, 1974

by JWA Staff
Our work to expand the Encyclopedia is ongoing. We are providing this brief biography for Claudia Kreiman until we are able to commission a full entry.

Rabbi Claudia Kreiman, photo courtesy of Claudia Kreiman.

As the rabbi for NOAM, the Masorti-Conservative Youth Organization in Israel, Claudia Kreiman modeled new ways for children to think about women’s participation in religion. The daughter of a Conservative rabbi, Kreiman moved with her family from Chile to Argentina at age eighteen to escape the Pinochet regime. While teaching Hebrew school as a teenager, Kreiman noted the lack of female role models in her community and resolved to become a Jewish educator. After her mother died in the 1994 bombing of the AMIA center for Jewish life in Buenos Aires, Kreiman struggled with grief and volunteered at the synagogue where her mother had worked. In 1996 she travelled to Israel to study for a master’s degree in Jewish education at the Schechter Institute for Jewish Studies; in 2002, she became the first Chilean woman ever to be ordained as a rabbi. That year Kreiman became both the rabbi for NOAM and the Israeli rabbinic fellow for Temple B’nai Jeshurun in New York, bringing the lively, experimental approach of the New York synagogue to Israeli teens. During her time in Israel, she spoke out openly for Palestinian rights, beginning an involvement in human rights advocacy that would define her rabbinate. Kreiman immigrated to the United States in 2004 and worked as director of the Jewish Studies program at the Jewish Community Day School in Watertown, MA. In 2007 she joined the clergy of Temple Beth Zion in Brookline, MA, where she became the senior rabbi in 2019. Kreiman’s commitment to social justice is evident through her association with various Jewish non-profits: she is a member of New England J Street’s rabbinic cabinet and serves on the board of directors for T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights. Kreiman and other members of T’ruah visited Florida to support the Coalition for Immokalee Workers, a local organization campaigning for workers' rights. 

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How to cite this page

Jewish Women's Archive. "Claudia Kreiman." (Viewed on March 28, 2024) <http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/kreiman-claudia>.