Julia Neuberger
Julia Babette Sarah Neuberger, Baroness Neuberger, (née Schwab; born 27 February 1950) is a British member of the House of Lords. She previously took the Liberal Democrat whip, but resigned from the party and became a crossbencher in 2011 upon becoming the full-time senior rabbi of the West London Synagogue, from which she retired in 2020. She became the chair of University College London Hospitals (UCLH) in 2019. Neuberger was the second woman to be ordained as a Rabbi in the UK, the first being Jackie Tabick. Early life Neuberger was born Julia Babette Sarah Schwab in the Hampstead area of London on 27 February 1950, the daughter of art critic Liesel ("Alice") and civil servant Walter Schwab. Her mother was a German-Jewish refugee who had fled the Nazis, arriving in England at the age of 22 in 1937, while her father was born in England to German-Jewish immigrants who had settled there before World War I. The Schwab Trust, which supports and educates young refugees and asylum seekers, was later set up in her parents' name. She attended South Hampstead High School and Newnham College, Cambridge, where she first studied Assyriology. After she was refused entry to Turkey because she was British, and then to Iraq because she was Jewish, she had to change her subject and instead studied her second language of Hebrew full-time. Her lecturer at Cambridge, Nicholas de Lange, suggested she should become a rabbi. She obtained her rabbinic diploma at Leo Baeck College. Career Religious roles Neuberger taught at her alma mater, Leo Baeck College, from 1977 to 1997. She later became Britain's first female rabbi to have her own synagogue. She was rabbi of the South London Liberal Synagogue from 1977 to 1989 and is president of West Central Liberal Synagogue. On 1 February 2011, the West London Synagogue (a Movement for Reform Judaism synagogue) announced that she had been appointed as senior rabbi of the synagogue. She retired from her West London Synagogue role in March 2020. She also regularly appears on the Pause for Thought section on BBC Radio 2. Public sector activity Neuberger was Chair of Camden and Islington Community Health Services NHS Trust from 1992 to 1997, and Chief Executive of the King's Fund from 1997 to 2004. She was also chancellor of the University of Ulster from 1994 to 2000. Who's Who lists a large number of voluntary and philanthropic roles she has undertaken. Her book, The Moral State We're In, a study of morality and public policy in modern Britain (), was published in 2005. The title is an allusion to Will Hutton's 1997 book, The State We're In. Political and parliamentary roles Neuberger was the Social Democratic Party candidate for Tooting in the 1983 general election, coming third with 8,317 votes (18.1%). She was appointed a DBE in the New Year Honours of 2003. In June 2004, she was created a life peer as Baroness Neuberger, of Primrose Hill in the London Borough of Camden. She served