Francine Klagsbrun


Francine Klagsbrun, born Francine Lifton in 1931, is a writer. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Brooklyn College, a Bachelor of Hebrew Literature from the Jewish Theological Seminary, and a master's degree in art history from the Institute of Fine Arts. She edited The First Ms. Reader and Free to Be... You and Me. Some of her books are Too Young to Die—Youth and Suicide, Married People: Staying Together in the Age of Divorce, and Jewish Days: A Book of Jewish Life and Culture Around the Year.
There was a special commission appointed by the chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America to study the issue of ordaining women as rabbis, which met between 1977 and 1978, and consisted of 11 men and three women; the women were Francine Klagsbrun, Marian Siner Gordon, an attorney, and Rivkah Harris, an Assyriologist. After years of discussion, the JTS faculty voted to ordain women as rabbis and as cantors in 1983.
In 1988, at the First International Jewish Feminist Conference in Jerusalem, a group of women organized a prayer service at the Western Wall and selected Klagsbrun to carry the Torah at the head of the group, making her the first woman to carry a Torah to the Western Wall. In 1989 she helped dedicate a Torah to the Women of the Wall.
She has served as chairwoman of the Board of Overseers of the Jewish Theological Seminary Library and secretary of the board of trustees of the Jewish Museum and cochair of its exhibitions committee, as well as a member of the Publication Committee of the Jewish Publication Society of America, the Professional Advisory Board of the Petschek National Jewish Family Center of the American Jewish Committee, and the Artistic Advisory Committee of the National Foundation for Jewish Culture.

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