Retiring Kol Ami Rabbi Denise Eger Leads Her Farewell Shabbat Service

It’s perhaps fitting that Rabbi Denise Eger has announced her retirement. After all, she began her first pulpit position at the time of the HIV/AIDS crisis and is concluding it as the world moves on from the COVID-19 pandemic. My rabbinate, she told the Journal, was “bookended by two pandemics.”

Eger, senior founding rabbi at Kol Ami, spoke to the Journal in a phone interview ahead of her final Kabbalat Shabbat with Congregation Kol Ami. Held June 16 at the synagogue’s West Hollywood campus, the farewell service featured Eger saying goodbye to a congregation that has been her spiritual home for 30 years. There were hugs, laughs and a sense of true community among those who’ve been with Eger since the beginning as well as those who’ve joined Kol Ami more recently. 

Several of Eger’s mentors and colleagues, including Rabbis Laura Geller and Steven Jacobs and Kol Ami Board President Peter Mackler, participated in Eger’s final Shabbat service. Underscoring Eger’s longtime commitment to fostering interfaith relationships, Rev. Neil Thomas, senior pastor of Cathedral of Hope of Dallas, also took part. Wearing a yarmulke, the Christian clergy member offered a blessing for the retiring rabbi. Eger’s day-to-day responsibilities with Congregation Kol Ami conclude on June 30. On July 1, the rabbi will begin a yearlong sabbatical. She officially becomes Kol Ami’s first rabbi emerita when her retirement takes effect June 30, 2024. 

Her retirement coincides with the 30th anniversary of a congregation known for being a trail-blazing and inclusive space for the city’s Jewish and LGBTQ community.

Rabbi Barry Lutz is serving as the interim rabbi at Kol Ami while the congregation’s leadership conducts a nationwide search for Eger’s successor. While she won’t be involved in the hiring process, Eger expressed confidence the search committee tasked with appointing Kol Ami’s next permanent rabbi will find the best individual to lead the congregation into its next chapter.

“I will remain supportive of whatever direction they go in, and I will continue to offer whatever encouragement and support I can for the congregation,” Eger told the Journal.

 Before embarking on a celebrated and lengthy career in the rabbinate, Eger had different professional ambitions than the rabbinate. Raised in Memphis, Tennessee, Eger could sing, play guitar and was a song leader at a Jewish summer camp. When she was 12, she discovered the liturgical folk music of the late Debbie Friedman.

So naturally, she said, “I thought of being a cantor.”

During her sophomore year of college, she decided that the rabbinate might be a better fit, so she transferred from Memphis State University, where she was a voice major, to USC, which had a joint program of religion and Jewish studies with Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. Ordained at HUC-JIR in 1988, Eger then assumed her first pulpit position at Beth Chayim Chadashim, the world’s first synagogue for the LGBT community.  At the time, her role included providing services and support to those impacted by HIV/AIDS.

“I started in the rabbinate at the height of the HIV crisis,” she said. “Those were hard years.”

In 1992, she left BCC and founded Congregation Kol Ami, the first Reform community in West Hollywood. Back then, West Hollywood’s Jewish community consisted of a Chabad and Hollywood Temple Beth El, neither of which attracted gays and lesbians, despite being in a neighborhood founded by a coalition of elderly Jews, Russians and LGBT people around the issue of rent control, Eger said.

Under Eger’s leadership, Kol Ami grew into a community of 225 household-members that’s strongly committed to social justice, support for Israel and Jewish unity.

The fledgling Kol Ami congregation began with 35 people and was initially housed at the West Hollywood Presbyterian Church. “We covered their crosses, brought the Torah in every week,” Eger said. “The Torahs lived in the closet in my house.” In 2001, Kol Ami identified an empty lot, undertook a capital campaign and constructed a synagogue building, a modest campus on La Brea Avenue that continues to serve as its home today. Under Eger’s leadership, Kol Ami grew into a community of 225 household-members strongly committed to social justice, support for Israel and Jewish unity.

“We grew from a start-up congregation in 1993 into an institution that affects people’s lives,” Eger said. “We’ve done transformational work on social justice, incredible work around LGBTQ rights and marriage equality. We have a monthly support group for people with HIV/AIDS. We do interfaith work; we’re focused on food insecurity; and we have a tremendous partnership with the Hollywood Food Coalition. I’m really proud. We grew from a group of 35 people into a strong community, and that’s not so easy to do.”

While growing Kol Ami into the thriving congregation it is today, Eger’s rabbinate outside of Kol Ami and within the larger Reform movement shattered several glass ceilings. In 2009, she became the first woman and the first gay rabbi to be named the president of the Board of Rabbis of Southern California. From 2015-2017, Eger served as the president of Central Conference of American Rabbis, the Reform rabbinic professional leadership organization, the first LGBT person to hold that position.

As she begins her sabbatical, Eger is planning on spending more time with family, which includes her wife, Rabbi Eleanor Steinman, who serves at the Austin, Texas-based synagogue, Temple Beth Shalom, and is about to become the congregation’s senior rabbi, effective July 1.  

Eger will also be doing public speaking in support of her book, “Seven Principles for Living Bravely,” which she co-authored with Rev. Thomas, and plans to offer executive coaching to clergy.

When Eger founded Kol Ami as a safe place for the LGBTQ community, the Jewish world, including the Reform movement, was in a different place — significantly less inclusive of the gay and lesbian community than it is today. During her final Shabbat service, Eger addressed whether there’s still a need for Kol Ami in the current, more welcoming Reform community and what the future of Kol Ami, without its founding rabbi, might look like. 

Kol Ami, she insisted, will continue. “This temple is not about Denise Eger,” she said from the synagogue’s bimah. “We have so much to offer in creating a safe and just and holy place.”