5 out of 5 stars and 65 reviews
5
(65)Best of Weddings (4x).Westchester, NYC, surrounding area and destinations!
About this vendor
Rabbi Linda is an award-winning wedding officiant based in White Plains, NY, also available for destination weddings and in Los Angeles for February and March. Highly experienced, she has officiated nearly a hundred weddings, each one different and personal for the couple.
Rabbi Linda is known to be very responsive, well organized, creative and compassionate. She serves all couples, especially interfaith and Jewish of any (or no) affiliation, and works with them to create the ceremony that is most meaningful for them. She actively honors diverse cultures. And as an LGBTQ+ ally, she loves working with same sex couples.
Details
Business Attributes
- Woman-owned Business
Ceremony Types
- Civil Union
- Commitment Ceremony
- Elopement
- Interfaith Ceremony
- Non-Religious Ceremony
- Religious Ceremony
Religious Affiliations
- Baha'i Faith
- Buddhist
- Christian
- Catholic
- Mormon
- Orthodox
Wedding Activities
- Premarital Counseling
- Wedding
- Ceremony
Awards and Affiliations
Reviews
Your trust is our goal. Our community relies on honest reviews to help you make those big decisions with ease.
5
out of 5.065 reviews
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We are so truly grateful that Rabbi Linda officiated our wedding in September 2024. From our first meeting to the actual ceremony, she made us feel comfortable at each step and guided us patiently. She is truly a loving, caring, and supporting person. We are so happy to have met her and shared our special day together. As an interfaith and a multicultural family, we also truly appreciated Rabbi Linda’s ability to unite us around our similarities and to strengthen the spiritual and personal nature of our marriage. We are lucky to have her blessings.
Thank you, Rabbi Linda. We are so happy to have met you.
Lana & Erman
My husband and I feel incredibly fortunate to have had Rabbi Linda officiate our Jewish wedding ceremony in the Bahamas. As a fusion couple (Indian & Jewish), we were grateful for Rabbi Linda’s expertise, flexibility, and warmth throughout the wedding planning process. She was always willing to hop on calls to answer our questions and walk us through every step of the ceremony. Rabbi Linda worked with us to customize the ceremony, incorporating our preferences and modern views on partnership.
During the ceremony, Rabbi Linda was engaging and inclusive, thoughtfully explaining each step in both English and Hebrew so that all our guests could follow and feel connected. She added many meaningful, personal touches, such as incorporating my family’s Kiddush cups and tallit, a special wine that held significance for us, and offering a heartfelt blessing that beautifully captured our love. Many of our guests later shared how much they enjoyed and appreciated the ceremony!
Rabbi Linda is exceptionally professional, kind, and an outstanding rabbi. We HIGHLY recommend her to anyone planning a Jewish wedding!
Rabbi Linda was a beyond exceptional. She was incredible throughout every part of the process. From the moment we interviewed her and set up a meeting, we knew she was special. She made us feel as if she knew us our entire lives. She took the time to get to know us, our story, our families, and our love. She is an expert in organizing everything needed for the ceremony and would go out of her way to make sure that we were following the necessary steps for when the wedding day arrived. There is not another rabbi I could imagine hiring. Rabbi Linda was one of the best decisions we made about our entire wedding day.
Our time with Rabbi Linda truly exceeded our expectations. From our very first meeting we knew we made the right choice. Rabbi Linda took the time to get to know us as individuals and as a couple. She explained Jewish traditions and allowed us to pick and explore new elements to make the ceremony our own! Rabbi Linda was very helpful with guidance for our ketubah, reviewing our vows and making sure all of our guests (from a Jewish background and not) could experience each moment in a thoughtful way. Rabbi Linda made many suggestions for ways to honor my non-Jewish family as well. If you are looking for someone you can fully trust with the most important part of your wedding day you have found the right person! Rabbi Linda will narrate your beautiful love story and curate a ceremony that is uniquely yours.
It was such an honor to have Rabbi Goldberg officiate our wedding. From our first meeting to the wedding ceremony and everything in between, she was caring, kind, thoughtful and patient.
We enjoyed every moment under the Chuppah and will forever be grateful. She is a winner!
Carrie and Craig
Rabbi Linda officiated our wedding four years ago and gave us the most personal and meaningful ceremony. Not only did many of our guests say it was the best ceremony they had witnessed, but every wedding we've been to since has copied elements of ours! Rabbi Linda really got to know us over the course of multiple meetings and crafted the ceremony to our specific relationship. Most of our guests assumed she was a long-time family rabbi who had known us for years.
She is very flexible and adaptable to specific needs - we had an inter-faith wedding on a Saturday. She offers a great mix of traditional and non-traditional suggestions, and some of her updates to traditions were some of our favorite moments of the day. She's also such a warm and caring person that she brought a fantastic energy to the role and we loved getting to know her in the lead-up to the wedding.
We just had our first child and asked Rabbi Linda to perform our baby naming. Once again she crafted a ceremony exactly to our style, mixing traditional prayers with modern readings that spoke to us. And she remembered our preferences from four years earlier and referenced elements of the wedding ceremony. We feel lucky to have her as our new family's rabbi, and highly recommend her for all life cycle ceremonies.
Rabbi Linda was just the best! As an interfaith couple, we wanted to have a Jewish ceremony that honored the traditions while still being inclusive to our non-Jewish guests--and she delivered perfectly. We received so many compliments on the ceremony! Rabbi Linda met with us several times leading up to our wedding, getting to know us as a couple and helping us craft a special ceremony that was true us as a couple. We couldn't recommend Rabbi Linda enough!
Rabbi Linda was absolutely phenomenal and she was amazing to work with. She was professional and gave us all the attention we needed. She spent so much time getting to know us and performed a beautiful speech and service. We highly recommend Rabbi Linda
Rabbi Linda is full of warmth and joy, and we loved working with her from our first meeting. She crafted a beautiful ceremony for us that combined traditional elements with wonderful storytelling, and she incorporated elements we requested to make it a perfect wedding for us. Truly could not ask for a better Rabbi!
Rabbi Linda is the best! From our very first call, we knew she was the perfect person to officiate our wedding. As a same-sex couple wanting an interfaith ceremony, finding the right person to marry us was a challenge. We are so happy we found Rabbi Linda, who perfectly melded our customs together beautifully. Working with her leading up to the wedding was so fun, and she made us feel comfortable at each step. Even though we had only known her for a short time, it felt like we'd known her our whole lives. She crafted the most perfect ceremony that felt 100% personalized to us. On the day, she explained all customs so everyone in the room could follow (and even made sure to translate any Hebrew!) We’ve gotten so many compliments on how beautiful, meaningful, and funny our ceremony was. People still rave about Rabbi Linda. We’d work with her a million times over, and can’t thank her enough for making our wedding the most special day. Book her now!!! You won’t regret it.
Rabbi Linda was a godsend and made our wedding ceremony extra special.
Her expertise and her organization made planning the ceremony super easy to prepare for.
As for the ceremony itself, it was a gorgeous ceremony that even the non-english speakers could follow. Every single one of our (200+) guests said it was one of the best ceremonies that had ever attended.
We love Rabbi Linda.
I cannot express how wonderful it was to work with Rabbi Linda for our wedding ceremony. From the moment we met, she was warm, welcoming, and understanding of the unique challenges of planning an inter-faith wedding. In addition to being an incredible officiant, Rabbi Linda was extraordinarily understanding and accommodating when we had to postpone our wedding twice due to the pandemic. She was always quick to respond to our questions and concerns and went above and beyond to ensure we were comfortable and supported during this stressful time. We are so grateful for her flexibility and kindness, and it only added to our overall positive experience with her.
Rabbi Linda crafted a ceremony that was meaningful and inclusive for both of our families, and her delivery was impeccable. Our guests were all raving about how beautiful and heartfelt the ceremony was, and we couldn't agree more. She truly made our special day all the more special, and we are so grateful to have had her as our officiant. So you don't have to deliberate on this one–book Rabbi Linda immediately. Five stars!
We are so glad that Rabbi Linda was a part of our special day. She was very organized, very kind, and very focused on making sure we had an amazing experience. She did a great job of explaining the ceremony to our interfaith guests, and personalized the ceremony so that we felt it was a celebration of both of us individually and as a couple. We cannot recommend Rabbi Linda highly enough, especially for interfaith weddings! So many guests told us afterwards that the ceremony was among the best they have ever attended.
Our wedding really was so perfect thanks to Rabbi Linda. From the very beginning she was so responsive and helpful in planning our ceremony. We wanted a reformed ceremony due to our wedding having Catholic guests as well and she was soo helpful and amazing at creating the most perfect ceremony! She listened to all of our needs and created a beautiful story about our love story. All of our guests could not stop commenting about and saying it was the most beautiful ceremony they have ever attended. You will not regret booking her to officiate your ceremony!!
Linda Portnoy Goldberg was the perfect Rabbi for our wedding. From the tone and structure of the ceremony to the explanations of parts of the ritual we could not have asked for a more gracious, knowledgable and kind officiant.
We were married August 2022 and Rabbi Linda made our ceremony so special, personal, and perfect. We met with Rabbi Linda multiple times in the year before to discuss and plan for our ceremony and she guided us with such wisdom. She helped us with every step of our ceremony. Our ceremony was so memorable and Rabbi Linda tailored it to exactly what we wanted. We were so happy to have Rabbi Linda officiate our wedding and would recommend her over and over again for any life event! Thank you so much to Rabbi Linda!
Rabbi Linda was the absolute BEST!
My husband and I were a bit nervous at first because the first interfaith wedding we were going to attend was our own. We didn’t know what to expect when we started the ceremony planning process. And let me tell you- Rabbi Linda exceeded ALL of our expectations of what we could have ever dreamed of.
From the very beginning, Rabbi Linda was very kind, caring, and professional. She took the time to learn about us as a couple. She also took the time to speak to my husband’s priest. She made everyone feel so loved and so welcomed.
Rabbi Linda has officiated interfaith marriages in the past. Her experience was definitely visible and appreciated by all. When we met up in person about a month before our wedding date, she came ready with plans! Her plans tied in both faiths seamlessly, had many different options for my husband and I to choose from, highlighted our love and families, and most importantly, highlighted our faith.
Everything was just perfect. Our ceremony was absolutely beautiful, special, and so meaningful. All of our wedding guests could not stop raving about the ceremony! My husband’s priest has never officiated an interfaith wedding before ours, and agreed with all of these sentiments. He stated he had a wonderful experience, loved working with her, and that our ceremony was so memorable and so special.
I really could not recommend her enough!
Our review of Rabbi Linda Portnoy Goldberg will not do justice to the incredible job she did officiating our wedding. Rabbi Linda put great time, energy, thought, care and attention into the planning of our ceremony, and executed far beyond our expectations. During the planning process Rabbi Linda gave us all the time we needed, made the planning process easy, provided excellent suggestions, and was always responsive and easily available whenever we had questions. Rabbi Linda is a loving and kind person who truly cares about helping to make the ceremony of your dreams. We could not have imagined a better ceremony, and we will cherish it forever. We unequivocally recommend Rabbi Linda as a wedding officiant without any hesitation.
Rabbi Linda is the absolute best. Stop your search for an officiant now and book Rabbi Linda. We postponed our wedding 1 year with covid, and she was by our side every step of the way. Rabbi Linda is extremely organized, responsive, kind-hearted, and wise. We had a mixed ceremony blending Jewish and Catholic faiths. Rabbi Linda had done this many times before and has the perfect ceremony for it and will give you a recommendation for an amazing Catholic deacon as well. It was seamless. We got so many compliments on how the two cultures blended so beautifully. Further, she made the ceremony personable by adding in our story about how we met and how our personalities and values blend- and she did it with such good storytelling and humor it was a nice moment for the audience to have a break from crying and chance to laugh. And it is not just at the ceremony but every step of the way leading up the ceremony. Rabbi Linda made our ketubah process seamless, recommending an amazing ketubah company and performing a beautiful ketubah ceremony as well and writing out the Hebrew so beautifully for us. Thank you, Rabbi Linda!!
It is hard for me to put in words how fabulous Rabbi Linda is! I thought finding an interfaith Rabbi for our wedding would be hard, but the second we had our first conversation with Rabbi Linda it was clear she was the one. Rabbi Linda made the entire planning process seamless for us, kept us on task, made us feel at ease and produced the ceremony of our dreams. So many guests commented on how beautiful the ceremony was and many even said they want a Jewish wedding of their own someday! We love Rabbi Linda and would recommend you to anyone!
I happen to find Rabbi Linda through a Knot site, but it felt I knew her for ages. Our ceremony was very personable, sweet, inclusive and funny! Its second marriage for both me and my husband and I am Jewish and he is catholic.
So a lot of balls to juggle and Rabbi Linda did it all and with such a grace, love and humor.
From the husbands perspective: Linda was great at getting to know us, asking pertinent questions about our past and our children. She brought sunshine to our special day. She made the ceremony to fit us which is refreshing. She is detailed oriented, as well as flexible, she placed very little pressure on my bride. The wedding flowed naturally which enhanced the moment of I do.
Rabbi LInda was just wonderful. She was incredibly friendly, professional, and calming. My husband and I are an interfaith couple - I'm jewish and he's an agnostic who was brought up Catholic and we didn't really know how to go out developing our ceremony. Rabbi Linda worked with us to offer suggestions and recommendations on the best ways to include important pieces from both of our families and traditions. For us, it was important to make sure that all parties in the room (regardless of their religious faith) felt like they were a part of the ceremony and no one felt unincluded simply because they didn't know the tradition. She truly helped to shepherd us to develop a ceremony that was unique to us. She shared lots of options; not just a formulaic must-do's. We received a ton of compliments during the wedding reception (and since then) about how amazing our Rabbi was. We think so too!! If she officiates your ceremony, we promise, you will be pleased.
We cannot thank Rabbi Linda enough for creating the most beautiful and personalized ceremony for our wedding. She helped walk us through the wedding ceremony process from start of to finish and was always available for a zoom call to discuss last minute details. Rabbi Linda took the time to meet with us in person several times before the wedding to get to know us individually and as a couple. She tailored the ceremony including specific Judaic elements and even creating new more egalitarian options for us. We had many friends and family members come up to us during the wedding and several weeks after, complimenting us on our rabbi and our ceremony. It was such a meaningful and wonderful experience for everyone involved thanks to Rabbi Linda Goldberg.
From start to finish, Rabbi Linda worked with us to create a beautiful and thoughtful program that captured our essence so well. She is so easy to work with and helped us stay organized and on track, which I appreciated especially during moments of wedding planning stress! Rabbi Linda is also just a gem of a person - from the moment we met her, we knew we wanted to work with her. Our guests loved her as well!
After postponing for over a year, my daughter and her fiancé are finally going to have their dream wedding at the end of September in Maryland. However, my mother, who is the matriarch of the family, will not be able to attend due to recent health issues. In order to include my mother (Baba) in the wedding celebration, we decided to have the Ketubah signing at my mother’s house. Rabbi Linda helped us bring this idea to fruition. She helped my daughter and her fiancé chose and write an interfaith ketubah (our family is Jewish and my son-in-law's family is Hindu). She helped create a beautiful and meaningful ceremony. Our blended family all felt a personal connection to this inclusive ceremony. My mother was truly touched by this loving gesture. We can’t say enough about Rabbi Linda. She understood our challenge and worked with us to make the best of a difficult situation.
Rabbi Linda was incredible through our two COVID postponements, and she made our ceremony so special and personalized! My husband is Catholic and we were concerned about our ceremony isolating his family. Rabbi Linda worked with us to put together a beautiful ceremony that made everyone feel included. She's truly the best!
Rabbi Linda made our ceremony so special! She is super flexible and responds to all emails quickly. If you're looking to have a Jewish ceremony - do not hesitate - Rabbi Linda is the best!
Thank Rabbi Linda for a beautiful ceremony. The Rabbi explained each part of the ceremony so our guests could connect and appreciate a Jewish wedding.
Rabbi Linda officiated our wedding a few weeks ago.
She was responsive to our wishes and helped make a our ceremony exactly what we wanted it would be.
I was really clue less how virtual wedding works but Linda was a God sent. She provided everything for us. She made sure that all questions and inquiries are answered before the ceremony. They even took videos & photos for us to keep. We can truly say she loves what her doing. Highly recommended.
Honestly, a wedding during a pandemic was the last thing I thought I would be hosting. I was as excited as any bride but the prospect of not sharing the personal, intimate moment with my loved ones felt heartbreaking. Enter.... Rabbi Linda. My [now] husband and I had met with a bunch of officiants and were disappointed at the quality of service they were promising and the cost of service. Rabbi Linda made us feel special and excited for our big day, despite the undesirable circumstances. To be perfectly honest, it ended up being the perfect day. I don't think it could have gone any better. Rabbi Linda customized the ceremony to our needs and wants. She made it short, sweet and beautiful. We were able to invite over 100 people to our Zoom and my maid of honor was able to host and record the way I wanted. Rabbi Linda's husband even joined our Zoom to take photos! Thank you thank you Rabbi Linda!
Rabbi Linda Goldberg is a fantastic person and has a heart of gold !
She is the best: kind,supportive,caring and conducted a great ceremony !
We highly recommend her !
Where to start! Rabbi Linda officiated our wedding this July and it could not have gone better. Originally, we were supposed to have 200 guests in a great venue that we had to downsize to 4 people in a back yard (thanks Covid). And even though we did the wedding over zoom, Rabbi Linda made it special and intimate. We talked to her many times from January to July and she made the process insanely easy and fun! She catered her officiating to us and made it a very personal ceremony. Would 100% recommend to anyone looking for an officiate.
Thanks Rabbi Linda!!!
I cannot recommend Rabbi Linda as a wedding officiant enough!
My partner and I were in an absolute pickle of a situation - we were supposed to get married in mid-March 2020 in NYC but that of course couldn't happen because of COVID-19. Our original officiant left the state for family reasons, and there was no news at the time of provisions for extending marriage licenses and ceremonies had to be performed in person. We wrote to Rabbi Linda about a week before our license expired and she performed the ceremony the DAY before it expired!
We flip-flopped so much on what we wanted in the ceremony- first, we wanted the full Jewish ceremony and then realized we really wanted our parents there in person to watch and participate in those rituals which was not possible... Rabbi Linda was SO incredibly patient, kind, and accommodating with us during that process of ceremony design.
Rabbi Linda allowed us to come to her lovely backyard and deck with two witnesses for a socially distanced ceremony. Her husband took photos and a video, our parents watched on Zoom and the rabbi performed an absolutely lovely short and sweet legal ceremony for us!
Though she helped with a very quickly planned ceremony during the time of Coronavirus, I have no doubt that every ceremony she is a part of is handled with the same level of care, attention to detail and genuine enthusiasm for the love of helping couples unite in matriomny.
We could not have been happier with the ceremony co- officiated by Rabbi Linda! For any interfaith couples she does a fantastic job of bringing the 2 traditions together! On top of that she took such care in ensuring that we could still have our small ceremony even though there was the pandemic. She made sure to have zoom calls leading up to the day and took all precautions necessary to keep us safe. Her speech about my husband and I was so beautiful and meaningful!
We feel so fortunate to have found Linda! She is such a thoughtful, kind, nice and sweet person. We should have got married online because of covid19, but it turned out that on our wedding day this rule didn’t apply. So Linda kindly offered her deck as a place for our ceremony. We can’t be more grateful and appreciative. You and your husband have made our day so special!! Thank you, thank you, thank you! We love you and hope to see you again one day!!:) I highly recommend her to everyone who wants to have an amazing day and happy life!
Extremely Please and Would Recommend
My wife and I are both reform Jews - we celebrate high holidays, but don't really attend synagogue and therefore did not have a rabbi we knew to officiate our wedding. After some time on Google and various wedding review website, I came across Rabbi Linda's profile and gave her a cold call. From our first conversation, I could tell she was someone that would make us feel comfortable and that we would be excited to work with. We met with Linda in person a few times and had a couple of additional phone/video calls prior to our wedding date.
We are so happy that we found and were able to work with Rabbi Linda. People remarked at how lovely and personal our ceremony was (which was something very important to us). We wanted our guests to remember that they were there to celebrate the love of two specific individuals and we knew that the ceremony set the tone for the remainder of the evening. I would highly recommend Rabbi Linda to a couple planning their wedding.
As practicing but not overly religious Jews, we wanted to incorporate many traditions and prayers into our wedding ceremony, but also chose to exclude some other traditions. For example, our ceremony included Hebrew and English, but we did not do the traditional seven circles. What was great about working with Linda was that she was able to fully customize based on our desires and was able to provide suggestions where we did not have a strong opinion. She understood what we were looking for and had great options of specific wording for each part of the ceremony (and of course was open to us providing our own). It made the process easy, while also preserving the "special" feeling of making it our own.
The day of the wedding can be hectic, especially as it gets closer to the ceremony, since that is the time when more and more people start to gather with the bride and groom. I can say one of the amazing things about working with Rabbi Linda is that she makes you (and your family and friends present) feel extremely comfortable with her - which was pretty notable considering we had only met her just a few times.
Rabbi Linda was wonderful. She officiated a memorable ceremony and we are very happy she was able to be a part of our special day.
Working with Rabbi Linda was one of the best decisions we made, and we truly cannot recommend her enough. She gave us an amazing ceremony that really was the most meaningful part of the whole day. She really made sure to get to know us through multiple pre-wedding meetings, and visiting her house to chat with her was one of the most fun parts of the wedding planning process. Many of our guests assumed she was a family rabbi that had known us our whole lives given how personal her speech was.
She also worked with us to personalize every element of the ceremony to make sure it was exactly what we wanted. We had an interfaith wedding and wanted a rabbi to officiate but didn't want it to be too religious. For each tradition, she told us the traditional way, a nontraditional way, or said we could scrap it entirely. We ended up keeping more traditions than we expected because her creative adaptations were so beautiful. One of the most emotional parts of the whole day was having our family members give us the Seven Blessings, which was one of her ideas. Many said it was the best ceremony they had ever been to. The Catholic side of the family, most of whom had never been to a Jewish wedding, said they were tempted to convert based on Rabbi Linda's ceremony alone. She even had her husband record the ceremony on his phone when she learned we didn't have a videographer!
We cannot thank her enough for making our wedding the most special day of our lives.
Rabbi Linda was an absolutely wonderful wedding officiant. She seamlessly blended reform and conservative traditions with elements that made our ceremony special and meaningful to us and to our families. No detail was too small or unimportant. She has a great sense of humor and was incredibly kind and patient throughout the entire process. Thank you, Rabbi Linda, for making our wedding day so special!
Rabbi Linda is such a kind person whose love for love truly shows in her work. My husband is not Jewish, but I am, and it was very important to both of us that our ceremony reflected my upbringing, but was also very simple and personal. Believe it or not, in 2019 America, I found it so difficult to find a Rabbi who would marry us as an "interfaith" couple even though I am not religious and neither is my husband. From our first phone call, Rabbi Linda made us feel so comfortable and excited to be getting married. She is a great listener, is extremely organized and pays so much attention to every family/ceremony detail. She helped answer every single one of our questions, religious or otherwise, and was available every time we needed her. Our ceremony perfectly captured our simple style, and yet was so tasteful which she made it her very own way custom to us. She was especially helpful in finding ways to include my in-laws and my husband's brothers in our ceremony so that everyone felt included. She proof-read our program and helped us pick a Ketubah that was just what we were looking for. I HIGHLY recommend Rabbi Linda. She is ALWAYS smiling and upbeat as well as willing to meet with us every time we needed to. I look forward to using her in the future when our children are born someday! Thank you, Rabbi!
Rabbi Linda made our wedding ceremony so special. She was personal, kind, thoughtful, and truly took the time to get to know my Husband and I before marrying us. I couldn’t imagine anyone else to perform such an important and personal moment in our lives!
We absolutely LOVE Rabbi Linda! She partnered with our congregation’s rabbi to create the most wonderful ceremony for us that integrated Jewish tradition and was also totally accessible for our non-Jewish guests with lots of meaningful and personal touches. Not only did we love it, our guests all raved about it the entire night! Some even said it was the best ceremony they’d ever seen. The entire process was great - Linda is accommodating, extremely kind, caring, professional, and she also has a great sense of humor :). It was everything we could have hoped for and more!
We had a very short timeline to plan and execute our wedding but due to Rabbi Linda's diligence and assistance, at no point were my wife and I stressed during the process. Though I met Rabbi Linda shortly before we started wedding planning, I'd felt as if I had known her for years as she was so friendly and genuine. Rabbi Linda and her husband Michael made my wife and I feel like a part of the family. She was extremely organized and flexible and as a result, the wedding ceremony was flawless. I am extremely grateful that she was able to celebrate an important life event with us.
We love Rabbi Linda!! My now-husband and I live in Dallas and planned our wedding from afar. Rabbi Linda was so flexible and always accommodating to meet our always changing schedules, whether it was an early morning or late night FaceTime call - she really got to know us!
Throughout the cocktail hour, our guests were asking how we found Rabbi Linda and how beautiful the ceremony was. Even some of our non-Jewish friends commented about how interesting and inclusive the ceremony was. We wanted short, meaningful and sweet and that is exactly what we received. We cannot say enough great words!!
Rabbi Linda made our ceremony so special and we could not have imagined it better. She took the time to get to know each of us and both our family traditions. We worked together to incorporate aspects of both our backgrounds. She was patient, kind, caring, and professional. I could not recommend her enough for your special day.
It was a pleasure and a privilege to have Rabbi Linda officiate at my son's wedding. Rabbi Linda rejoices in her work and customizes each service to fit the needs of her clients. I sense that her work is a labor of love.
Because my son and his wife live and have traveled abroad, we had a guest from Sweden. Whereas Swedish ceremonies are secular/Christian, he found this wedding ceremony to be very special and sought me out to tell me so. In other words, Rabbi Linda reaches all faiths in her service while maintaining the true essence of a Jewish wedding. My 93 year old mother was thrilled.
Thank you Rabbi Linda for putting your heart and sould into the wedding.
Our entire ceremony was just how we envisioned it and Rabbi Linda delivered it perfectly and with grace. Rabbi Linda was such a joy to work with through the process and explained the elements of the ceremony and meanings behind it. Being an interfaith couple and a second marriage for both of us, Rabbi Linda created a nice balance we were looking for but kept the meaning and tone of a Jewish ceremony we wanted. She took the time to get to know us, how we met, what was important to us, was sensitive to both sides of the family and children, and gave us many ideas and options on our nuptials and the flow of the ceremony. She welcomed us into her home and we really felt like family. We adore Rabbi Linda and were so happy she officiated one of the most important days of our lives.
I could go on and on about what an incredible woman Rabbi Linda is. She was recommended by a dear friend of mine, and little did we know that she would become such a special person in our lives. My husband and I feel so fortunate that we crossed paths with her, and that we had the honor of her marrying us at our wedding. WE GENUINELY FELT THAT OUR WEDDING WAS AS IMPORTANT TO RABBI LINDA AS IT WAS TO US. It does not get much better than that. Everyone at our wedding was blown away by the ceremony, and how personal it felt. She truly listened to what it was that we wanted, and she honored our wishes and vision for our wedding. Rabbi Linda is person who exudes warmth and love and we feel so fortunate to know her. She and her husband are incredibly kind and lovely people, and she embraced my husband and I with open arms and an open heart. She accommodated our busy schedules and was incredibly flexible and responsive via phone and e-mail. Thank you so much Rabbi Linda for helping to make our wedding the most special day of our life.
We loved working with Rabbi Linda to create a wedding ceremony that was unique for us. We both wanted a somewhat traditional Jewish wedding, but light on the religious aspects. Rabbi Linda understood our concerns and worked with us to put together a ceremony that felt right for us while respecting the important traditions. We didn't have a prior relationship with her, so she made a point of meeting with us multiple times (including by Facetime to work around our schedule and the distance between us), in order to get to know us better. As a result, the ceremony included a wonderful section in which Rabbi Linda told our story that helped make the ceremony feel very personal. Multiple guests have made a point of telling us how much they enjoyed the ceremony, thanks in large part to Rabbi Linda.
Linda helped us with a funeral and could not have been better. She really made an effort to get to know my family, was very comforting, and was easy to reach. Could not recommend her enough.
Rabbi Linda was truly a pleasure to work with and went above and beyond for our wedding day! She crafted a beautiful and meaningful ceremony for us. We wanted to find a rabbi who could help us incorporate Jewish elements into our wedding and Rabbi Linda was the perfect choice. She met with us in person several times prior to the wedding and twice over Skype. In addition, she was in constant communication over e-mail and very quick to reply to any inquiries. Rabbi Linda expertly guided us through the history and meaning of various Jewish wedding rituals, and we were also able to incorporate some additional elements into our wedding that reflected the non-Jewish parts of our backgrounds. Rabbi Linda let us make our own selections for certain aspects of the ceremony such as The Seven Blessings and add our own elements such as vows to make it a ceremony that was meaningful to us as a couple. From our very first meeting with Rabbi Linda we felt we were in very good hands. Importantly, Rabbi Linda was instrumental to the success of our wedding ceremony. She conducted a rehearsal immediately prior to the ceremony and made sure that guests understood what their roles were. Even though both of us were very nervous, Rabbi Linda's presence made us feel at ease throughout the entire event. She conducted a masterful and personalized ceremony, with a beautiful speech that allowed the guests to learn about our backgrounds, circumstances of our marriage, and convey the emotional impact of a wedding. We had many compliments from guests about our ceremony. One of our guests told us that she had only cried at two weddings and ours was one of them. We recommend Rabbi Linda to anyone looking for a warm and knowledgeable Rabbi to officiate at their wedding.
Rabbi Linda was an amazing officiant for our wedding. Being from out of town, and not having a strong connection to a childhood rabbi, my now husband and I were thrilled with Linda's ability to befriend us and get to know us in the year leading up to our wedding. Linda was extremely accommodating to our busy schedules, and she regularly agreed to do Face Time calls when necessary. She was patient, and she respected our decisions regarding our ceremony. She is warm and friendly, and she is a beautiful public speaker. Many of our guests told us how much they loved our ceremony and how much they loved our rabbi. She even got through our outdoor ceremony just in time before a huge rain storm came in across the Hudson River. You will be very happy for choosing Rabbi Linda as your ceremony officiant. We both hope that we will continue to stay in touch with her through the years, and that is a sign of a great rabbi!
Linda officiated our wedding and she gets our highest recommendation. My wife and I are culturally Jewish but non-practicing. We wanted to be married by a rabbi so that we could honor that part of our heritage, but it was important to have some flexibility to choose which traditions we wanted and didn’t want in our ceremony. Linda was incredibly helpful in this regard, not only in customizing the ceremony to our liking, but explaining what each tradition involves, the history and meaning behind them, and walking us through how they would fit into our ceremony. We learned a lot from her. She was patient as my wife and I debated which traditions we wanted to include, sometimes changing our minds multiple times. She enlightened us to some wonderful aspects of Jewish weddings that we were unaware of. For instance, we didn’t know what a ketubah was, but now we have a beautiful, meaningful document/piece-of-art mounted in our living room. Additionally, she was always available with quick responses to our questions and was willing to meet in person periodically and over skype/facetime. Whenever we had a question, her answers were thorough and informative. Secondly, we thought she did a fantastic job tailoring the ceremony to my wife and I and our story. Early in the process, Linda had us each write her a note about the what other means to us. She wove some of the details of our story into our ceremony in a beautiful and tasteful way. Lastly, she was a joy to work with. It’s clear that she loves doing this and it isn’t just a job for her. She has a warm and welcoming personality which was essential for us, making it easy to talk to her and easier for my wife and I to open up about one another. We knew within moments of speaking with her for the first time that we wanted her to be our officiant and we absolutely made the right choice.
Working with Rabbi Linda was not only a pleasure, but illuminated the experience of designing our ceremony. We come from different backgrounds and wanted our ceremony to reflect that, and Linda was the perfect person to work with.
We spent several hours with her going through the aspects of the traditional Jewish wedding ritual, discussing which aspects we wanted to include, which we wanted to adapt and which didn’t feel right to us. Linda’s knowledge deepened our experience of our marriage ceremony. Her attitude was both scholarly and inclusive. She also took special care to include aspects from Lee’s tradition, even researching it herself, and in the end, seamlessly melded both traditions into a special ceremony that was unique to us. All along the way, she was perfectly prepared, down to having copies of our vows for us to read. And her gentle, open, yet learned manner at the ceremony made everyone in attendance feel the love and care with which all three of us undertook the process. We recommend her to any couple, and especially to couples looking for a unique ceremony especially tailored to them.
Rabbi Linda was INCREDIBLE. From the moment my fiance and I first met with her, we knew we didn't want anyone else to marry us. Every time we went to meet with her, we planned to stay for around 30 minutes, but always ended up there for over an hour since we were having such a great time. She gave us the ceremony of our dreams, and catered every aspect to exactly what we wanted. Rabbi Linda didn't just give us a cookie cutter ceremony, but actually got to know us and gave us a personalized ceremony that made us both (and all our guests) laugh and cry!
We had a wonderful experience with Rabbi Linda for our wedding in June. It can feel a little strange to find a rabbi online, but she instantly made us feel welcome in her home, and even after only meeting a couple of times we didn't at all feel like we had a stranger officiating our wedding. From the beginning, we were both so impressed with how organized she was: she had pre-printed materials for us describing the wedding ceremony and different alternatives we could choose from if we needed help, she created a detailed timeline that we could follow to make sure we she were ready for the big day, and she was very clear about what information she needed from us while keeping detailed notes on everything we told her about ourselves and our families. She was very flexible if we had our own ideas or vision for how we wanted things to go. We are both not super religious or traditional and that was fine with her. Throughout the whole night and still to this day people have been telling us how it was one of the most beautiful ceremonies they'd ever seen. Rabbi Linda did such a great job narrating each part of the ceremony and the meaning behind it. She used our meetings with her as well as the emails we had written about each other to seamlessly work in plenty of personal details, which made all of our guests feel more connected to us and kept a light and fun atmosphere to the ceremony. We are both so grateful to Rabbi Linda for creating such beautiful memories for us!
We cannot recommend Rabbi Linda more highly--she is everything we dared to hope for in a wedding officiant and more!
When we first set out on the search for an officiant, we wanted someone who would be willing to perform a fully custom, modern and progressive Jewish ceremony that matched our values and which deeply reflected us as a secular but culturally Jewish couple. Linda more than rose to the occasion. She took the time to get to know us personally, shared information with us on Jewish traditions for us to consider without ever being pushy or imposing herself and guided us through the process of drafting our own ketubah, vows and Seven Blessings. She is incredibly responsive (it seems like she answered every email within 30 min and often sooner!) and was incredibly generous with her time. This is the rabbi that you want by your side on your wedding day and throughout the wedding process. She is warm, patient, kind and a beautiful writer and speaker.
Dozens of our guests have told us how blown away they were by our ceremony. Over and over again we hear how moved they were, how intimate it was and how much they learned about my husband and me and our relationship through the words that Linda and we shared. For our part, the ceremony was an even more profound and affecting moment than we could have imagined. There is so much to plan during a wedding that you can fear that the reason for the wedding itself--the ceremony and the commitment you are endeavoring to make---may begin to feel like an afterthought. Linda constructed a ceremony that brought both of us to tears and felt like a sacred, reverent moment. We will be forever grateful to her for leading us on this beautiful path and we will always consider her a dear friend. We cannot thank her enough and certainly cannot recommend her any more strongly. I simply can't imagine anyone else having done as perfect a job and it was a privilege being ushered into this new chapter of our lives by her.
Rabbi Linda recently officiated our wedding and she did such an amazing job. My partner and I come from different religious backgrounds and Rabbi Linda was so attentive to both our needs. Communicating with Rabbi Linda was a breeze. She is so organized and the easiest person to talk to. Rabbi Linda clearly loves what she does and she crafted such a beautiful ceremony, we’re still getting so many compliments. We couldn’t imagine our special day with out her. Thank you!
She was so great and helped with picking the right blessings and just explained everything and we were far away from her but it was so easy to communicate and she sent drafts of everything. She made our ceremony absolutely perfect for us.
After our ceremony, guests rushed up to tell us what an incredibly touching, personal, and meaningful experience it was to watch us get married. They were impressed and curious about our amazing officiant, Rabbi Linda Goldberg. We were not surprised! We knew after our first meeting with her that her presence at our wedding would be a true gift. We are a bi-cultural couple with a toddler. She and her lovely husband Michael welcomed the three of us into their home with open arms. During our first meeting with Rabbi Linda our immediate sense was one of being guided and cared for. We can't imagine anyone we could have trusted more to be in sync with our wishes, attentive to both our cultures, respectful of what was most important to us, generous with her time, sincere in her dedication and love of what she does, and completely informed on every technical detail (i.e. Marriage license) that needed to be completed and when! Rabbi Linda might be the most organized person we've ever met and in the chaos around wedding planning, this was so grounding for us. It feels impossible to really put into words our gratitude for Rabbi Linda's warmth, thoughtfulness, and commitment to us and our process as we prepared for marriage. She handled us and our ceremony with a love and grace that will remain in our hearts forever. We believe that in meeting Rabbi Linda we were not only blessed with a great officiant but even more so the opportunity to receive guidance from a truly present, deeply conscious, and joyous human being.
As a gay couple together 14 years who decided to get married, our plans were for a simple ceremony. We are older and wanted something tasteful and uncomplicated. We wanted to hold our ceremony in Central Park NYC. We were so fortunate to find Rabbi Linda Goldberg. She took an ordinary ceremony and turned it into an extraordinary event. She is so diligent and passionate about what she does. She invited us to discuss what our objectives for the ceremony were, asked what we wanted, and she in return suggested so many things that we were oblivious to.
We are an interfaith couple but decided to go for a traditional Jewish ceremony, not very long, so the Protestant side of the family would understand what the Jewish ceremony and traditions meant. She gave us many choices and did the whole ceremony in Hebrew and translated it into English.
She asked us to write personal descriptions of each other and to send them to her separately via email. She then incorporated seamlessly and beautifully both our sentiments into a wonderful narrative. Through her passion and enthusiasm, she brought two totally diverse and different families together and created an ambiance of love, warmth and friendship, and this helped to break the ice between the two families. Rabbi Linda Goldberg is a generous woman who gives her time, passion and herself to make the event the most special of your life. To say that we highly recommend her is an understatement.
She went above and beyond anything we could have ever expected, and we honestly feel she and her husband have become true friends for the rest of our lives.
Rabbi Linda was really great! She was very easy to work with and very responsive. She really listened to our vision for our wedding and performed a wonderful ceremony. Many of our guests said it was one of the nicest ceremonies that they had ever been to. She is thorough, intelligent, thoughtful and the list goes on. We highly recommend Rabbi Linda!
Rabbi Linda was a fabulous officiant for our New York City wedding, which included friends, family, and relatives traveling from all over the world. Though my new husband and I are both Jewish, neither of us are particularly religious and she helped us craft a ceremony that mixed traditions old and new, making us feel as though the ceremony reflected our values while still making our more religious relatives feel at home. She is very smart (a former CEO-turned-rabbi), exceedingly warm and sensitive to the needs of her clients. We would recommend her to anyone!
We can’t say enough wonderful things about Rabbi Linda! We’re an interfaith couple and Rabbi Linda officiated our Jewish wedding. She did an excellent job creating a ceremony that was respective of both of our faiths and explaining the ceremony so that everyone understood the significance of each part. She was a pleasure to meet with, and we felt like we got to know each other over the six months that we met with her- she is caring, considerate, and warm. She also is extremely well organized and professional- she gave us a timeline with everything that we needed to complete for the wedding the first time we met with her. Everyone commented how beautiful the ceremony was and how personal the story of us as a couple was.
Rabbi Linda was the "talk of the town" at our daughter's wedding where the ceremony was as memorable as the reception! The beautiful and meaningful ceremony that she personalized for the wedding couple was flawlessly executed and inspirational. Everyone who attended was mesmerized, educated and inspired regardless of their religious affiliations. From my experience, I must say that rarely occurs during a wedding ceremony. She spent several meetings getting to know the couple and passed on some sage advise about marriage and family warmly shepherding this young couple as they entered this new phase of their relationship. I can't recommend Rabbi Linda Portnoy Goldberg strongly enough. She is the real deal!
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