The first openly lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender clergy in Judaism were ordained as rabbis and/or cantors in the second half of the 20th century.
The same year the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College admitted Jane Rachel Litman, who is openly bisexual, and she was ordained in 1989.
Four open LGBTQ applicants were then accepted as students, Leslie Bergson, Peter Kessler, Stephen Roberts and Burt Schuman.
[10] This position paper urged that "all rabbis, regardless of sexual orientation, be accorded the opportunity to fulfill the sacred vocation that they have chosen.
[13] In 2003 Reuben Zellman became the first openly transgender person accepted to the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion,[14] where he was ordained in 2010.
[20] Also in 2007, Jalda Rebling, born in Amsterdam and now living in Germany, became the first openly lesbian cantor ordained by the Jewish Renewal movement.
[23] Yosef received death threats in the year leading up to the 2009 Tel Aviv gay centre shooting.
[24] Yosef said that he hopes that his coming out and his visibility as a homosexual rabbi in the orthodox community will be equivalent to participating in the pride parade, which he and the organization he founded (Hod) oppose.
Also in 2009 Juval Porat, who is openly gay, graduated from Abraham Geiger College and thus became the first person to be trained as a cantor in Germany since the Holocaust.
[27] In May 2011, Rachel Isaacs became the first openly lesbian rabbi ordained by the Conservative movement's Jewish Theological Seminary ("JTS"), which occurred in May 2011.
[28] She transferred to JTS from the Reform movement's Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in her third year of rabbinical school.
[36][38] Also in 2013, Rabbi Jason Klein became the first openly gay man chosen to head a national rabbinical association of one of the major Jewish denominations in the United States when he was elected president of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association at the group's annual convention, held in New Orleans.
[40] Also in 2014, Nehirim's first retreat for LGBT rabbis, rabbinic pastors, cantors, and students was held in San Francisco.