BERLIN (JTA) — Gesa Shira Ederberg was not yet a rabbi when she was tapped to lead a Passover seder, teach Hebrew, and organize an egalitarian prayer service in her home city of Berlin. She happened to be in the right places when help was needed, recalls Ederberg, who was pursuing a degree in Jewish studies at the time. But she wondered: Could she be doing more?

Three decades later, Ederberg is a veteran rabbi of Berlin’s first official egalitarian congregation on Oranienburger Strasse — and this month she reached a new milestone.

She was installed last week as the international head of the Conservative/Masorti movement’s Rabbinical Assembly, the organization representing more than 1,600 rabbis worldwide. For the first time, the group is being led by a European rabbi.

Her installation marks another milestone as well. “As far as the Rabbinical Assembly is aware — Rabbi Ederberg is the first Jew by choice to serve as president,” said a Rabbinical Assembly spokesperson.

For observers of Jewish life in Germany, the moment carries symbolic weight.

“This is quite an extraordinary deal, actually, because there’s never been a non-American or non-Israeli to head the Rabbinical Assembly,” said Deidre Berger, an American who has lived in Germany for more than 40 years and serves on the boards of both the German and worldwide Masorti organizations.

“It’s also a major step forward in relations between a broader group in the American Jewish community with Germany — with being willing to acknowledge that postwar Jewish life did get relaunched in Germany and is here to stay,” added Berger, the former head of the American Jewish Committee office in Berlin.

Rabbi Jacob Blumenthal, CEO of both the Rabbinical Assembly and the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, said Ederberg’s election also reflects the movement’s embrace of Jews by choice.

“Welcoming converts is one of the ways in which our communities are growing and thriving,” he said. “So to have a colleague who made this choice to lead a Jewish life and then to become a rabbi is certainly something to celebrate.”

Ederberg’s installation took place in two parts: last week at Congregation Beth Sholom in Teaneck, New Jersey, followed by a second ceremony on Tuesday in Berlin, where her synagogue received a Rabbinical Assembly Torah mantle that remains with each president during their term.

“I will see it every time we open the ark,” she said. “It will be a reminder of my new responsibilities.”

Born in 1968 in the German city of Tuebingen, Ederberg grew up in a Lutheran family. Her father was in........

© The Times of Israel