Join us as we celebrate 50 years in the rabbinate of our members from the RRC class of 1976.Â
On Wednesday, December 3, 2025, we will honor Rabbi Rebecca Alpert, where she will reflect on her 50 years in the rabbinate with a public virtual presentation. At the conclusion of the presentation, we will present Rabbi Alpert with a signed and numbered art print commissioned for this occasion.
The entire RRA membership, Reconstructing Judaism’s Board of Governors, RRC Faculty, RRC student body & larger Reconstructionist community are invited to join us for these free public programs and celebrations.
About Rabbi Rebecca Alpert
Rebecca Trachtenberg. Alpert is Professor of Religion Emeritus at Temple University. She attended Barnard College before receiving her Ph.D. in religion at Temple University and her rabbinical training at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. After spending the early part of her career in academic administration at RRC, Alpert joined the faculty at Temple University in the Department of Religion and as Co-director of the Women’s Studies Program.
Alpert received a Distinguished Teaching Award from the College of Liberal Arts (2001), the Christian R. and Mary F. Lindback Teaching Award (2013), and Temple University’s Great Teacher Award (2016). She taught graduate and undergraduate courses on Religion in Philadelphia, Religion and Sexuality, Religion in Public Life, Sport and Society, Intellectual Heritage, and Baseball and American History.
She has published 10 books, over 40 academic articles, and more than 60 articles and essays for general audiences on twentieth-century American Jewish history and culture, gender and sexuality, Israel/Palestine, and Jewish ethics. Her best-known works are Exploring Judaism: A Reconstructionist Approach, with Jacob Staub, and Like Bread on the Seder Plate: Jewish Lesbians and the Transformation of Tradition. Later in her career she developed an expertise in religion and sport. Her major work in the field, Out of Left Field: Jews and Black Baseball, was published by Oxford University Press in June 2011. She is the book review editor for the International Journal of Sport and Religion and co-editor of a soon to be published Routledge Handbook on Religion and Sport. She is currently working on an autoethnographic collection, Queering the Rabbinate: On Being a Lesbian-Feminist, Teacher, Preacher, Baseball Fan, and Anti-Zionist, to be published by Wayne State University Press in 2027.
She serves on the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations and is active in Jewish Voice for Peace Action and Academic and Rabbinical Councils and is part of the leadership team of Rabbis for Ceasefire.
