Rabbi Linda Bertenthal joined our congregation as our Interim Rabbi on July 1, 2018. She was later hired as our permanent Rabbi and now shares rabbinical duties with Temple Emanuel and Congregation Beth Israel.
Rabbi Linda Bertenthal is honored to serve as Temple Emanuel’s rabbi. She was attracted to our community by its culture of being a welcoming and mutually supportive community. Her primary goal is to partner with the Board, committees, auxiliaries and membership to build on those congregational strengths; she also hopes to strengthen Temple Emanuel’s relationships with the larger Jewish community and Quad Cities community. She looks forward to creating relationships with all our members and all who are interested in joining our Temple community.
Rabbi Linda was ordained by the Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR), from which she won six awards for academic excellence. Following her ordination, Rabbi Linda worked with the Union for Reform Judaism for eleven years, serving congregations in the Western Region of the United States and Canada in a wide range of areas. Rabbi Linda then served as the rabbi of Congregation Beth David of San Luis Obispo for six years, bringing innovations in worship, life cycle event celebration and education, as well as becoming a community leader, presiding over the Interfaith Ministerial Association and co-founding two interfaith organizations.
Rabbi Linda came to the rabbinate as a second career, following a career as a public interest attorney, both as a law clerk in a federal district court and as a Legal Services attorney serving low-income clients in crisis. Rabbi Linda’s husband Phil, a retired public interest attorney, likes to say that Rabbi Linda went from the law to “The Law” when she became a rabbi. Rabbi Linda and Phil are both extremely proud of their two adult children, Jacob and Sarah Beth.
