Lisa Grushcow

Lisa Grushcow is a Canadian rabbi.

Early life

She was born in Ottawa, Ontario, and raised in Toronto.

Education and ordination

She studied at McGill University before earning a doctorate at Oxford. She was a Rhodes scholar in the 1990s. She was ordained in 2003 at the Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion in New York City.

Career

In 2012, she became the first female senior rabbi at Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom in Westmount, which also made her the first female senior rabbi of any Canadian congregation with more than 1,000 member families. Being a rabbi for that synagogue made her the first openly gay rabbi of a large synagogue in Canada.

In 2014 she edited the Central Conference of American Rabbis's The Sacred Encounter: Jewish Perspectives on Sexuality, meant to communicate Judaism and sexuality to lay readers.

Bibliography

• Grushcow, Lisa, ed. (March 1, 2014). The Sacred Encounter: Jewish Perspectives on Sexuality. Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR) Press. OCLC 869141170.
• Grushcow, Lisa (2018). "A Jewish view of sexuality". In Peter Knobel; Simeon J. Maslin (eds.). Navigating the Journey: The Essential Guide to the Jewish Life Cycle. CCAR Press. OCLC 1111664760.

Personal life

She has been divorced, and afterward remarried. As of 2019 she had two daughters.

References

Sources

• Arnold, Janice (March 2, 2012). "Temple's new senior rabbi hopes to 'open doors'". Canadian Jewish News. Archived from the original on June 21, 2021. Retrieved August 8, 2025.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
• "Talk to me about sex, rabbi – Who knew rabbis could have so many interesting things to say about sex?". Montreal Gazette. May 26, 2014.
• Rukavina, Steve (May 8, 2017). "How personal struggles made Lisa Grushcow a better rabbi". CBC News.
• Bilefsky, Dan (July 12, 2019). "Gay and Once Divorced, a Canadian Rabbi Broadens Judaism's Tent". The New York Times.

Further reading

• Shiller, Romy. "Rabbis 2015: Lisa Grushcow". The Forward.
• Stoll, Ira (July 17, 2019). "New York Times Touts 'Gay and Once Divorced' Rabbi". Algemeiner Journal.