The Blogs: An Open Letter to The Women/Gender-Expansive Rabbis of the 2026 HUC Class

July 1, 2026 / 16 Tammuz, 5786

The First Message from Rabbi Rachel Van Thyn, WRN’s New Executive Director

An Open Letter to The Women and Gender-Expansive Rabbis of the HUC Rabbinic Class of 2026

Dear Colleagues:

First and foremost, mazel tov.

Ordination is a remarkable achievement. It is the culmination of years of intense study, discernment, sacrifice, and growth. More than that, it reflects your willingness to pursue a profession that few people choose to embrace—the sacred responsibility of serving the Jewish people as rabbis.

As you begin your rabbinate, I begin a new chapter of my own, serving as Executive Director of the Women’s Rabbinic Network. While our journeys are different, we share something important: we are both stepping into an inheritance.

It feels especially meaningful that the Torah portion we will read this week, Parashat Pinchas, contains one of Torah’s most powerful stories about inheritance.

Five sisters—Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah, the daughters of Zelophehad—approach Moses with a question about inheritance.

Their father has died. They fear that their father’s name and legacy will disappear. Yet they do not reject the tradition they have inherited. Nor do they seek to stand apart from it. Instead, they ask whether there is room for them within it.

Moses listens.

God affirms their claim.

And Torah itself expands.

I have always found that story remarkable. The daughters of Zelophehad honour what they have inherited while helping shape what it will become. They remind us that inheritance is never passive. It carries both privilege and responsibility.

As I think about your ordination and about the future of WRN, I find myself returning to that lesson.

None of us arrives at this moment alone.

Long before any of us entered rabbinical school, others were already doing the work of building the rabbinate we now inherit. Beginning with Rabbi Sally Priesand and our other cherished vatikot, and continuing through the founders of WRN and generations of women rabbis, they challenged assumptions, opened doors, built institutions, and helped make room for those who would follow.

They advocated for equity and opportunity. They ensured that those who followed would find not only access, but community; not only opportunity, but belonging.

We also owe gratitude to those who built and sustained the Women’s Rabbinic Network. For more than four decades, WRN has provided community, mentorship, advocacy, and support. It has helped women rabbis navigate challenges, celebrate successes, and claim their rightful place in Jewish leadership. And it has continued to highlight unresolved structural issues.

I am especially honoured to follow Rabbis Jackie Koch Ellenson and Mary Zamore, whose visionary service strengthened WRN and expanded its impact across our movement and beyond.

The inheritance they leave us is extraordinary.

And now, it is ours.

Looking at your class gives me hope for the future of Jewish life.

You are a generation of rabbis with incredible gifts, experiences, and perspectives. Some of you arrived at rabbinical school directly from university. Others found your way here after careers, families, and lives already richly lived.

You are educators, activists, organizers, musicians, caregivers, scholars, entrepreneurs, innovators, bridge-builders, and community builders.

The diversity of experiences, perspectives, and talents represented in your class is not simply a strength. It is essential to our future.

Looking at your class also reminds me that there is no single path to meaningful rabbinic service.

When I was ordained, I could not have predicted the path my own rabbinate would take. Having grown up at camp and in NFTY, I went on to congregational life. Since then I have accompanied individuals and families as a chaplain and spiritual caregiver, and have served as a Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) supervisor.

I have worked as an advocate and activist, striving to advance justice, inclusion, and human dignity. I have been an entrepreneur, building new initiatives and organizations from the ground up. I have stood with and supported families wrestling with the challenge of infertility.

And now I have the privilege of serving WRN and the extraordinary rabbis who make up this community.

Each role has been different. Each has taught me something essential about what it means to be a rabbi.

One of the gifts of this moment is that there is no longer a single path to meaningful rabbinic service.

Your first position will shape you, but it will not define you.

If my own rabbinate has taught me anything, it is that some of the most meaningful chapters may be the ones you cannot yet see.

Remain open to possibilities you cannot yet imagine.

October 7 and its aftermath continues to reverberate throughout Jewish communities around the world. Antisemitism is rising. Conversations about Israel, Zionism, Jewish peoplehood, and the future of Jewish life are often painful, deeply personal, and intensely contested.

People are searching for connection, meaning, and community.

Your communities will look to you for guidance.

But they will need something even more fundamental. They will need your presence.

Again and again in my work as a rabbi, chaplain, advocate, entrepreneur, and spiritual caregiver, I have witnessed the extraordinary power of relationships. Learning to build relationships across difference has been one of the greatest gifts of my rabbinate. I have seen people find strength in the midst of illness, loss, conflict, fear, and loneliness because someone took the time to truly see them, hear them, and walk beside them.

In a world that often rewards division, relationship-building is sacred work.

In a culture that encourages certainty, curiosity is sacred work.

In communities fractured by bias and prejudice, bridge-building is sacred work.

And in a society where too many people feel unseen, helping people experience belonging is sacred work.

I believe these will be among the defining rabbinic responsibilities of your generation.

The Jewish world needs your scholarship and leadership. But it also needs your compassion, your emotional intelligence, your creativity, and your commitment to justice. It needs rabbis who can build communities, nurture relationships, advocate for human dignity, and help people encounter one another’s humanity.

That vision also defines the future I hope to help build at WRN. And I will look to you as trusted partners in that project.

No rabbi should have to navigate this work alone.

That conviction has animated WRN since its founding.

For more than four decades, WRN has provided community, mentorship, advocacy, and support. It has fought for equity, helped shape healthier workplaces, and created spaces where rabbis could learn from one another, celebrate one another, and sustain one another.

The organization I now have the privilege to serve was founded to support women rabbis. That mission remains sacred.

Like the rabbinate itself, WRN continues to grow and evolve. Today we proudly support women and gender-expansive rabbis. Like the communities we serve, we continue to learn how to honour our history while creating a future in which every member can bring their full self to this sacred work.

Supporting rabbis means more than offering programs and resources. It means working to create a profession—and a Jewish community—in which every rabbi can flourish.

That work is ongoing.

It is hard.

And it is holy.

I also believe that sustaining Jewish communities requires sustaining the people who lead them.

We want you to thrive not only as rabbis, but as whole people.

We want you to build meaningful careers and meaningful lives.

We want you to know that you are part of a community that will celebrate your successes, support you through challenges, and remind you that you do not have to navigate this work alone.

Colleagues, the daughters of Zelophehad did more than receive an inheritance. They helped shape it.

Because of their courage, those who came after them inherited something different and better than what existed before.

That is the responsibility of every generation.

We inherit a tradition.

We inherit institutions.

We inherit communities.

We inherit unfinished work.

And then we are called to leave them stronger, broader, and more just than we found them.

And now it is our turn.