Linda Rabinowitch Thal

Linda Rabinowitch Thal was born and raised in Palo Alto, California, and attended Congregation Beth Am of Los Altos Hills Hebrew School. Following many inspired summers at Camp Swig, the Camp Director urged her to spend the following year in Israel. Despite the skepticism of her college-bound friends, Linda deferred her first year of college and spent the year instead at Machan L’Madrichai Chutz L’ Aretz (Institute for Youth Leaders from Abroad) in Jerusalem.

Ms. Thal began her college studies at Stanford University, then completed her bachelor of arts degree at the University of California after her marriage took her to Los Angeles. In 1970 she began graduate work in anthropology at Columbia University. From 1973 to 1975 she did fieldwork in Venice, California, in urban anthropology. Grants from the National Institute of Mental Health and from the National Science Foundation supported her research. Concurrent with her anthropological fieldwork she had begun to teach in the religious school of Leo Baeck Temple. At the same time, in 1974, she and her husband traveled to the Soviet Union to visit refuseniks. Deeply moved by their plight, and after an interrogation by the KGB, she understood in a new way what it meant to stand in another Jew’s shoes. This trip sealed her commitment to both communal and educational work in the Jewish community. When she was invited to become the principal of the religious school on whose faculty she was serving, she accepted.

Since then she has expanded the educational activities of Leo Baeck Temple. She developed programs to revitalize holiday observance and improve Hebrew literacy. She created a Committee on Congregational Education whose task is to move the entire congregation toward becoming a learning community. In addition to her duties at the synagogue, Linda Thal has served on the clinical faculty of the Rhea Hirsch School of Education of the Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion. Among the many projects she has developed is the Tzedakah Faire, a program that has been replicated in many other congregations, and which was described in Compass Magazine.