Rabbi Debra Newman Kamin

President

For the last 20 years, Rabbi Debra Newman Kamin has been involved in supporting many of the Conservative Movement’s institutions through her volunteer work. She served on the Executive Council of the Rabbinical Assembly for about 10 years before moving up the ranks and eventually holding all of the Officer positions, culminating in her role as President of the Rabbinical Assembly. Throughout that journey, she learned a tremendous amount. She served on numerous committees and co-chaired the Strategic Development Initiative, which played a key role in transforming the Board into the active and dynamic body it is today. Holding these various positions gave her significant leadership experience. She learned when to compromise and when to push forward. Working with Rabbis who held diverse perspectives required unity and collaboration to achieve meaningful progress. Her ethos is that serving on a lay Board means one’s main purpose is to support the work of the paid professionals, who possess a deeper understanding of the organization. Her own synagogue’s Board does the same for her, giving her the added perspective of having served both as a professional and as a lay leader. During her time as President of the RA, she organized trips to Argentina and Uganda so that Rabbis could witness firsthand the extraordinary communities that are part of the global movement. She became deeply passionate about the worldwide Masorti/Conservative community. While many in the U.S. sometimes feel discouraged about the movement locally, experiencing the vitality of communities around the world can be reinvigorating. Seeing her colleagues work tirelessly to build institutions—and witnessing their amazement when they visit the U.S. and encounter the infrastructure that exists there—renewed her own appreciation for what has been built. When she was invited to serve as a Vice President of Masorti Olami, she was delighted to accept. She is now in the first year of her second term. Finally, she takes great pride in the efforts that helped increase voter participation in the United States for MERCAZ, and she now fully recognizes the importance of matching that effort across global communities.