18 Facts About Debbie Friedman

Deborah Lynn Friedman was an American singer-songwriter of religious Jewish music.

Debbie Friedman was an early pioneer of gender-sensitive language: using the feminine forms of the Divine or altering masculine-only text references in the Jewish Liturgy to include feminine language.

Debbie Friedman is best known for her setting of "Mi Shebeirach" the prayer for Healing.

Debbie Friedman's songs are used in Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox Jewish congregations.

Debbie Friedman wrote many of her early songs as a song leader at the overnight camp Olin Sang Ruby Union Institute in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, in the early 1970s.

Debbie Friedman's work was inspired by such diverse sources as Joan Baez, Peter, Paul and Mary and a number of other folk music artists.

Debbie Friedman employed both English and Hebrew lyrics and wrote for all ages.

Debbie Friedman was commissioned by Chicago's Temple Sinai, and Rabbi Samuel Karff invited Debbie Friedman to join his congregation as an artist in residence that fall.

In 2007, Friedman accepted an appointment to the faculty of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion's School of Sacred Music in New York where she instructed both rabbinic and cantorial students.

Debbie Friedman was an honorary member of the American Conference of Cantors.

Debbie Friedman was a religious bard and angel for the entire community.

The daughter of Freda and Gabriel Debbie Friedman, Debbie Friedman was born in Utica, New York in 1951.

In 1969, Debbie Friedman graduated from Highland Park High School in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

Debbie Friedman was inducted into the school's Hall of Fame in 1999.

The story of her music, as well as the challenges she faced in living with illness, were featured in a 2004 documentary film about Debbie Friedman called A Journey of Spirit, produced by Ann Coppel, which followed her from 1997 to 2002.

Debbie Friedman was a lesbian, but did not talk about it in public.

Debbie Friedman was admitted to a Mission Viejo, California Hospital in January 2011, where she died on January 9,2011, from pneumonia.

In 2014, the book Sing Unto God: The Debbie Friedman Anthology was published, featuring a comprehensive collection of her music.