Darby Jared Leigh — actor, juggler, teacher, athlete, and new father — is soon to add another achievement: first profoundly deaf person to be ordained as a rabbi by any of the major rabbinical seminaries in the U.S.

The New York Times called him “a virtuoso of an exuberant actor.” Alternative-rock musician Perry Farrell invited him to perform on stage with the band, Jane’s Addiction.

Leigh is profoundly deaf. He is a native New Yorker and fire-juggling Generation Xer who toured as a leading actor with the Tony award-winning National Theater of the Deaf. He received positive reviews from The New York Times and Variety for his 1997 NTD performance as the lead in Henrik Ibsen’s Peer Gynt.

In 2001, he provided consulting services for the Oscar-nominated documentary Sound and Fury and for Hands ON, an organization that provides sign-language interpreting for Broadway and off Broadway productions.

In 2003, he was a plenary speaker at the Jewish Deaf Congress Conference.

Leigh has taught on Deaf issues for the New York City Fire Department, the American Musical and Dramatic Academy and the New York City Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities.

An accomplished athlete, he was once asked to compete for the US Deaf Olympic snowboarding team.

Leigh wore dreadlocks for more than 10 years but gave them up to live as a new father, husband of a medical student and rabbinic intern at the largest gay and lesbian synagogue in the world.

Leigh’s route to the rabbinate may have been full of detours, but he is grateful to the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College (RRC) for helping him accomplish his ambition. “After I began to study Jewish ethics, I knew I wanted to become a rabbi. I wanted to sing and dance and pray, to engage people in this search for truth. But I pushed the thought away. A deaf rabbi? The RRC faculty has been incredible in their willingness to experiment. As a result of my experience, we’ve actually improved the study tools available for all students.”

Leigh is expected to graduate from the RRC in 2008. He has already received his B.A. in religion, summa cum laude, from the University of Rochester and an M.A. in religion from Columbia University.rection and went to New York University.”

*Editor’s note: Correction to the first paragraph, there are six deaf Rabbis to date, David Rabinowitz, Fred Friedman, Daniel Grossman, Chaim Tzvi Kakon, David Kastor and Rebecca Dubowe.