Photo of Rabbi Pamela Frydman                                 by Ellen Shireman

Rabbi Pamela Frydman is the founding Director of the Holocaust Education Project of the Academy for Jewish Religion, California. She is the co-founder and International Co-Chair of Rabbis for Women of the Wall, a campaign to raise consciousness about women’s rights at the Kotel, the Western Wall in Jerusalem.

Rabbi Pam was a co-founder and the first woman to serve as President of OHALAH, the international association of Jewish Renewal rabbis and cantors. She served on the Rabbinic Cabinet for academic and curriculum oversight of the ALEPH Ordination Program, and she co-founded and served as spiritual leader of Or Shalom Jewish Community, now a Reconstructionist congregation in San Francisco.

She is the author of Calling on God, Sacred Jewish Teachings for Seekers of All Faiths.

She was a founding leader in Shalom Bayit, Jewish Women Working to End Domestic Violence, and she co-founded Shalom Bayit’s Rabbinic Advisory Council. She was a co-organizer of Women of the Wall’s Legal and Education Fund. She organized and, together with 59 rabbinic colleagues, she co-chaired one of the many campaigns to free Gilad Shalit.

She holds a bachelor’s degree in linguistics and psychology from Tel Aviv University and rabbinic ordination from B’nai Or Religious Fellowship, predecessor to the ALEPH Ordination Program of the Jewish Renewal Movement.

Prior to entering the rabbinate, she studied Sufism, Buddhism and Theosophy. She served as a spiritual teacher in Sufi Ruhaniat International and a leader of the Dances of Universal Peace. She also served as a Board member of the San Francisco Lodge of the Theosophical Society and as a founding member and leader of the Aquarian Minyan of Berkeley.

While a rabbinic student, she founded a model of religious school education based upon the creation and fostering of self-motivation and love of learning among children and teens. While serving as rabbi of Or Shalom Jewish Community, she created a training program for teens to become religious school teachers and role models for younger children.

She has counseled adults through the healing of religious wounds and created a model for Torah study that encourages students to read the original text first and then the commentaries.

She is the proud mother of two wonderful young men: her son Josh and stepson Terry.