Rabbi Dr. Denise Eger retired two years ago … and her life has been even busier than ever. After 37 years in Los Angeles one of the country’s most prominent and successful lesbian and gay leaders, Rabbi Eger stepped away. She moved to Austin, Texas, with her wife, Rabbi Eleanor Steinman, a native Angeleno who is senior rabbi of Temple Beth Shalom on a sprawling campus housing Orthodox, Conservative and Reform synagogues. There are three shuls “on this beautiful, huge campus,” Eger said, plus the Jewish Community Center, Jewish Family Service, the Jewish Federation and a day school. In addition to writing, Eger’s focus has been her executive coaching practice: tutoring rabbis, ministers and non-profit executives – on Zoom – all over the U.S. and Canada. Since March, she has also been the interim executive director for A Wider Bridge, an LGBTQ Jewish Zionist organization that brings LGBTQ people to Israel, supports the Israel LGBTQ community and fights antisemitism in the LGBTQ community.And she travels. When she spoke to The Journal earlier this month, Rabbi Eger was in New York for the quarterly meeting of the Reform movement’s Pension Board. Then she was off to Los Angeles for a huge celebratory weekend at Kol Ami Congregation on La Brea Avenue in West Hollywood, which she founded in 1993. Kol Ami is defined as a welcoming space for LGBTQ+ Jews and their allies. As the speaker at Kol Ami’s Shabbat Friday night services, Rabbi Eger urged the community “to live by Jewish values, to love each other, to have chessed for one another, to keep learning Torah with one another.” The next day, she participated in the formal installation of her successor, Rabbi Lindy Reznick. A Memphis native and USC graduate, Rabbi Eger has been an activist throughout her career. She was the first openly gay or lesbian rabbi to serve as president of the Reform movement’s Central Conference of American Rabbis and the first woman president of the Southern California Board of Rabbis. “I have been very busy these last few months,” Rabbi Eger said. Throughout Pride Month, “there has been ugliness around the country for Jews and those of us who love and adore Israel. In particular, San Francisco was really bad. A singer there called for the killing of Jews and Zionists.”
Rabbi Eger was in New York City when Zohran Mamdani won the Democratic mayoral election. The singer in San Francisco, she said, “was worse than Mamdani” and was removed as Grand Marshal of the Pride parade. “We also have a terrible problem in San Diego, …The Pride organization there invited the same singer to be their Grand Marshal. Despite pressure from the Jewish community, they did not back down. So the San Diego Jewish community pulled out of Pride. They are doing their own Pride weekend. It has gotten too horrific, not safe for Jews.”
“To parse it out,” she continued, “the Jewish community in San Francisco always has been a part of Pride. It’s the home of Harvey Milk.” But the LGBTQ community – and the larger San Francisco community – “has not been a place of support for Israel either.”
As leader of A Wider Bridge “where we deal with this,” she thinks about this. As a national activist, she said “we live in the age of disinformation. We Jews are a small people, and gay Jews are even smaller. We live in a TikTok Age. Mamdani, the fellow who won in New York, he’s the TikTok candidate. He’s all over. He has a huge following.”
San Diego troubles Rabbi Eger’s soul. It’s a city where she has a personal connection; her son, daughter-in-law and their first child live there. “It’s typically a more conservative town, way more conservative with the Navy bases there and a lot of military retirees,” she said. “It’s been shocking. The Jewish community is shocked about what’s happened … As a Jewish LGBT person from Southern California, I have to say I am heartened by the larger Jewish community’s response of support for the LGBT community. We have all stood together.”
In almost every city in America, she said, “if there is a Pride parade or festival, it’s on public property. Cities have to underwrite it in some way. They don’t give the money. But they have police and security.” In San Diego, “the city does give the money. Why are they endorsing hate? Very troublesome.”
Rabbi Eger said the wide hatred of Jews and gays is “more coordinated than you might think – Qatari money, Chinese money are going to fund [Jewish] Voice for Peace, which isn’t Jewish or a voice for peace or justice. Women for Peace in Palestine, a group funded by Code Pink – very socialist, far left, not even progressive.”
The rabbi feels betrayed by her party. “Democrats have internal challenges here [in New York]as they allow these voices to take hold. As a mainstream Democrat, it is getting uncomfortable. Never would I have believed this could happen.”
Reflecting on the birth of her career, Rabbi Eger said she “was mentored by some of the greats of our town who took me under their wings in the late ‘80s. There were only two women solo rabbis in Los Angeles then: myself and the late Carole Meyers, the rabbi at Temple Sinai, Glendale. Reform rabbis of that era –– Allen Freehling, Bob Gan, Steve Jacobs, Harvey Fields – were all generous with me. If I had a question or needed guidance, they were all good mentors.”
Jewish Journal: What is your proudest achievement?
Rabbi Eger: That my son Benjamin still loves me and talks to me.
J.J.: What is your favorite childhood memory?
RE: This shaped my life: My father’s family is from Pittsburgh. I was about three. On Sundays, my father the jeweler used to take repair jobs to Pittsburgh. One very cold Sunday, a man outside a restaurant was huddling, freezing. The man asked for change. My father had a better idea, sat the man at the counter, ordered a meal, then ordered something to go for later. That incident shaped my life about our obligation for tzedakah.
J.J.: What is in your future?
RE: I hope for more grandchildren, that I can continue to write, contribute to the Jewish community and support my family.
