Applause and laughter rang out at Congregation Emanu-El’s epic Shabbat service as speakers lauded Rabbi Sydney Mintz, who will become rabbi emerita this summer after a 29-year tenure.
Emanu-El Senior Rabbi Ryan Bauer ran the stats: Over her career, Mintz shepherded 320 b’nai mitzvah kids, married more than 100 couples and served scores more in good times and bad.
“There are thousands and thousands of people whose lives have been changed by Rabbi Mintz,” Bauer said from the bimah at the May 8 service.
Mintz’s impact extends beyond even that. In 1997, she joined Emanu-El’s staff when she was just out of rabbinic school, becoming the Reform synagogue’s first openly lesbian clergy. It wasn’t just at any synagogue, though. It was at one of the largest and most prominent congregations on the West Coast.
Although her appointment made history, Mintz downplayed the significance at the time, telling this publication, “I’m ordained as a rabbi, not as a lesbian.”
In fact, her biggest legacy at Emanu-El may be the innovative programs she created to attract unaffiliated and young adult Jews.
“There’s always been enough Sydney to go around,” Emanu-El President Joel Roos said. “She’s a rare gift who makes every person feel seen and essential, and she does it in her own way.”
After her long tenure at Emanu-El, though, Mintz is ready for a change.
“I’m going to turn 60,” she told J. “That’s halfway to Moses. I’ve always had a lot of energy, so I’m never retiring. But working as a congregational and pulpit rabbi for 30 years, it felt like the right time to spread my wings in a different direction.”
Bauer is quick to laud the talents of his colleague, who has a side hustle as a standup comedian.
“Most people think she’s so funny,” he told J. “I realized early on that her gift of comedy was a knife against tension. She’s able to make everybody laugh and make their shoulders relax, on the edge of joy and tears at the same time.”
Tiffany Shlain, an artist, filmmaker and Emanu-El congregant, created a three-minute highlight reel to honor “one of my best friends.”
“Syd is an incredible mix of being a deep scholar and deeply funny,” she told J. “She’s fearless, bold and so warm. It’s an unusual combination. [In the reel] I was trying to distill the essence of Syd, and at the end I list in rapid fire: rabbi, comedian, witness, best friend, mother, daughter, sister and Earthling.”
The Earthling happens to be a native of the Chicago suburbs who became active with her Reform congregation at a young age. She served as president of her synagogue youth group, which gave her a seat on the board and allowed her to attend the Reform movement’s 1978 biennial in Houston, where thousands of Jews came together. She remembers the event for cementing her commitment to Jewish life.
After graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she studied at the Oxford University Center for Post-Graduate Hebrew Studies before launching her rabbinic studies at the Reform movement’s seminary in New York.
Even before ordination, Mintz had fallen for the Bay Area, having worked as an intern at San Francisco’s Congregation Sherith Israel, as well as at JCCSF and Camp Tawonga.
Once she joined Emanu-El’s staff, she quickly stood out for her creativity. She organized a women-only seder, a women’s new-moon prayer group, an adult mitzvah corps and a bikkur cholim group to visit ailing congregants. In 2005, she hosted Spookot, blending Sukkot and Halloween.
While she didn’t plan on her identity as a lesbian to play the most prominent role in her rabbinate, it did guide her.
She officiated LGBTQ weddings at City Hall during a brief period in 2004 when then-Mayor Gavin Newsom ordered the city clerk to issue marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples. (The licenses were later invalidated by the California Supreme Court.)
She led Team Emanu-El in the AIDS Lifecycle Ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles.
When Proposition 8, a ban on same-sex marriage in California, made it onto the ballot in 2008, Mintz took to the streets in protest. Before one rally, she told Emanu-El leaders she might get arrested that day. They told her not to worry; they’d bail her out. She was indeed arrested but was released later that day, with no bail required. The ballot measure passed and wasn’t overturned until 2013 by the U.S. Supreme Court — two years before the justices granted same-sex couples in all the states full and equal recognition under the law.
If anything exemplifies Mintz’s legacy, it’s the raucous Late Shabbat service for young adult Jews she created in 1999 and has co-led with Cantor Marsha Attie ever since.
Bauer describes Late Shabbat as groundbreaking. “Nobody in the U.S. had done this before,” he said. “It exploded and now every young adult program does it. It’s the model, and that’s her brainchild.”
Her May 8 sendoff on Shabbat was picture perfect, except for one hitch: She’s not exactly retiring.
Mintz will continue teaching Torah at Emanu-El and will remain available to officiate weddings, funerals and b’nai mitzvah for congregants.
Likewise, she will keep running 13th Tribe, a nonprofit she founded in 2019 that focuses on unaffiliated Jews. What started as a Torah study group for women, in person and online, with Mintz serving as teacher, expanded over time to include periodic Shabbatons and a Torah study group for men, also led by Mintz.
13th Tribe also hosts Mayyim Chayyim: Living Waters annual retreats in Alaska, offering “Jewish learning, soul lifting music, Shabbat unplugged, exceptional yoga, massage, meditation, hiking, frolicking, Chilkat River gazing and swimming.”
Lily Kanter, a 13th Tribe board member, said Mintz has a unique touch when it comes to Jewish outreach.
“She’s able to weave humor into Jewish wisdom,” Kanter said. “It’s a very special superpower to be able to do that.”
The nonprofit has also benefited from Mintz’s creativity. She hosted a floating Sukkot party last year on the Bay. In December, she will attempt to enter the Guinness Book of World Records by hosting 3,000 people for Shabbat dinner on the Embarcadero.
Mintz has another source of nachas, or pride: her sons Gabriel and Eli, the latter soon to be married. “I have two beautiful and amazing sons, whom I’m very proud of,” she said. “Both do a lot of good in the world.”
As Mintz turns the page on her life as a pulpit rabbi, she has “a lot of faith that Jewish life in the Bay Area will continue to be a vibrant space. I want to continue to make every single day count. I’m grateful for the gift of my life, of being a Jew.”