Rabbi Margaret Moers Wenig preaches increasingly to the converted: Hebrew congregations and rabbinical and cantorial students who no longer assume that a rabbi has to be a he or heterosexual. Rabbi Wenig, 52, has seen and propelled her share of changes in Judaism since being ordained in 1984, and now teaches classes of more women than men at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Greenwich Village, seminary of the Reform movement, Judaism’s liberal branch. A lesbian with two grown daughters from a previous marriage whom she raised in Brooklyn with her longtime partner, Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, Rabbi Wenig won acclaim for her widely published 1990 sermon “God Is a Woman and She Is Growing Older,” portraying the deity as a loving if long-suffering mother who wonders why you haven’t called.
God as a long suffering Jewish mother. This is a stand up comedy routine waiting to happen.
She wouldn’t be recognized as a Rabbi by any observant Jew (i.e. Orthodox or Chassidic), and neither would her Judaism. These days people can call themselves whatever they want. Caligula gave his horse Incitatus the office of Consul, but I doubt if Incitatus was truly one.
Another example of making God in our own image, so as to remove the imperative toward transformation. If God shares all your sins, there’s no reason to think you need to stop committing them.
Reformed Judaism – another emasculated religious organization – is probably declining as fast as the TEC.
#4,
That may be, but please don’t think that this rabbi’s views are held by all Reformed Jews.