Toba Spitzer
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Toba Spitzer is a native of Chevy Chase, Maryland, and grew up in a non-observant Jewish family.[2][3] However, as a child her family attended a havurah in the D.C. area.[2] She studied at Harvard University graduating in 1986, and then spent a year in Jaffa, Israel, working for Friendship's Way, an after-school program for Jewish and Arab students. There, she taught Hebrew and Arabic and assisted in opening a community center.[3] Upon returning to the U.S. she worked as a political activist in Washington, DC registering young people to vote[3] and working for the Jewish Peace Lobby, where she helped to build a Jewish advocacy group promoting a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.[4][5] Inspired by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., she realized she wanted her activism to be anchored in religion and in 1992 enrolled in the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College.[2][4] When she entered rabbinical school she was warned that "out" graduates would not able to find a job. Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, who was out when she graduated in 1990, shared that she could not find a pulpit job upon graduating.[6] However, when Spitzer's class graduated in 1997, three "out" rabbis including two lesbians and one gay man, were hired by congregations that had been through a workshop series created by the Reconstructionist movement designed to help congregations be welcoming to gay and lesbian rabbis.[6]
