With the 2025 spring semester in full swing, we are delighted to highlight our talented and dedicated community members.
Today we are thrilled to spotlight AJRCA alumna, Rabbi Linda Seidman.
Many of AJRCA’s students and graduates pursued surprising paths to the Academy. From rocket scientist to rabbi, Rabbi Linda Seidman is no different.
A serendipitous meeting at Kaiser hospital many years ago led to a full scholarship to UC Berkeley and a career in biostatistics, gathering and analyzing data. She studied the connection between smoking and lung disease, and was one of the early researchers to find the connection between the two.
Rabbi Linda’s storied career is proof that an optimistic outlook and a willingness to say ‘yes’ to challenges can lead to extraordinary accomplishments. Whether analyzing groundbreaking research or leading a program for the Department of Defense to develop the nation’s GPS system, Rabbi Linda has combined her expertise with her outlook to create her own luck.
Her connection to Judaism and her ultimate path to AJRCA began in her childhood in New York. In grade school, Rabbi Linda attended after school programs in Jewish education. To deepen her study of Judaism, she enrolled in the AJRCA rabbinic program. (Her husband Larry, also a retired rocket scientist, had enrolled at AJRCA the year before her.) It was only once she enrolled that Rabbi Linda realized the stories her grandfather had told her throughout her childhood were, in fact, Talmudic stories.
Through a grant from the Jewish Federation and AJRCA she interned in the county jails, providing spiritual counseling to ‘anyone that wanted to see a rabbi’. Today, Rabbi Seidman provides hospice counseling to unaffiliated Jews, helping to fill a deep hole in individuals’ end of life journeys.
Thank you to Rabbi Seidman for your remarkable story!
Written by Susan Casamassima