Rabbi Ellen Lippmann

Rabbi Ellen Lippmann is founder and rabbi of Kolot Chayeinu/Voices of Our Lives: Building a Progressive Jewish Community in Brooklyn. Rabbi Lippmann is the former East Coast Director of MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger, and former director of the Jewish Women's Program at the New 14th Street Y in Manhattan.

Rabbi Lippmann was co-chair and still sits on the board of T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights. She served as the first social justice chair for the Women’s Rabbinic Network and has served on numerous boards and advisory councils. She is the founder of the Soup Kitchen at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York, and co-founder of the ten year-old Children of Abraham Peace Walk: Jews, Christians and Muslims Walking Together in Brooklyn in Peace.

Rabbi Lippmann was ordained in 1991 by Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, and also received there the degree of Master of Hebrew Letters. She holds a BA in English Language and Literature from Boston University and an MS in Library Science from Simmons College. Rabbi Lippmann and her partner are longtime Brooklyn residents and believe to be absolutely true what a Kolot Chayeinu member once said in jest: "IT DON'T GET ANY BETTER THAN BROOKLYN!" See Rabbi Lippmann's writings.

In 2013, Rabbi Lippmann was named by the Forward as one of 36 of America's Most Inspiring Rabbis Shaping 21st Century Judaism.

Detail, photo by Annette Bernhardt -- A coordinated effort for living wages at fast food restaurants in cities around the world.

News and Politics

Waking Up to Justice: Rabbi Ellen Lippmann on the Fast Food Workers’ Strike (In NYC, 150 cities, 30 countries)

By Rabbi Ellen Lippmann

May 15, 2014. 4:30 am. The alarm rings. Groggily, I rise and dress, and head into midtown Manhattan to meet a motley crew of clergy and fast food workers and organizers, coming together at the beginning of a day of strikes by fast food workers here – and across the country and the world. I join one rabbi, several ministers, lots of workers, flags, banners, an organizer who grew up in my congregation, and curious onlookers still half-asleep before 6 am. The streets are half-empty, unheard of in New York. Soon they are filled by wave after wave of workers, determined that today is the day McDonald’s will change its tune or the governor of New York will grant our city and others the right to set our own minimum wage.