Rabbi Judith Schindler came to Temple Beth El as an Associate Rabbi in 1998 and was named Senior Rabbi in 2003. Prior to coming to Charlotte, she was an Associate Rabbi at Westchester Reform Temple in Scarsdale, New York.

She received her Bachelors Degree in Clinical Psychology from Tufts University in 1988 (magna cum laude), her Masters from the Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles in 1993, and was ordained at the Hebrew Union College in New York in 1995. Rabbi Schindler has done additional coursework at York University in England, Tel Aviv University, Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and the Jerusalem campus of the Hebrew Union College.

Rabbi Schindler is on the Clergy Advisory Board of Mecklenburg Ministries, an interfaith organization that promotes racial and ethnic understanding and addresses social needs of Charlotte. She is on the Interfaith Advisory Council of Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools, on the advisory board of the North Carolina Conference for Women, and on the board of Providence Day School. She serves on the President’s Rabbinic Council of the Hebrew Union College and is part of the Central Conference of American Rabbis’ Taskforce on Intermarriage.

Rabbi Schindler is a past co-chair of the Women’s Rabbinic Network, which is a national organization of Women Reform Rabbis and founding co-chair for the Kalsman Institute on Judaism and Health. She has served on the board of Charlotte’s Florence Crittenton Services (a home for unwed mothers) and has been a mentor to student rabbis and newly ordained rabbis for the past eight years. Rabbi Schindler was named a Charlotte Jewish Woman of Strength in 2004, was named by the Charlotte Observer as one of the people to watch in 2008, and is a recipient of one of the 2008 Humanitarian Awards from the Charlotte Coalition for Social Justice. Rabbi Schindler is currently the only woman in Charlotte leading a congregation of over a thousand families, and is one of half a dozen women rabbis in our country leading synagogues of that same size.

Rabbi Schindler is married to Chip Wallach, who works for Bank of America and is responsible for bringing her to Charlotte. They have two sons, Maxwell, 8, and Alec, 6. She is the daughter of the late Rabbi Alexander Schindler who was president of the Union for Reform Judaism from 1973-1995.

 

PUBLICATIONS:

Essay in Rabbis: The Many Faces of Judaism by George Kalinsky (New York: Universe Publishing, 2002).

“Don’t ‘Show Me The Money’: The Rewards for Mitzvot” in Living Torah (New York: URJ press, 2005)

“When One Door of Life Closes, Another One Opens: A Baccalaureate Address,” The American Rabbi (Spring 2006).