Dr. Ellen Taylor: Pikesville Resident Has Been Treating Women for 43 Years

Dr. Ellen Taylor has made a long career in the Baltimore area, working as a gynecologist for the past 43 years in Pikesville and treating generations of women, along with keeping a strong connection to the local Jewish community as a past president of Temple Oheb Shalom.

Taylor was previously chief of gynecology at Northwest Hospital and has spent 40 years treating patients from her solo practice in the Greenspring Shopping Center.

She is also the leader of a daily minyan at Har Sinai-Oheb Shalom Congregation, which she said was the first Reform minyan in the country to meet daily.

Taylor is the proud bubbe of nine grandchildren, seven of whom live in the Baltimore Jewish community.

Tell me about your Baltimore Jewish upbringing.

I’m a third-generation Baltimorean. I went through the Baltimore City Public Schools. My family were members of Oheb Shalom, and we were regular synagogue attendees. I was confirmed at the synagogue, and though we didn’t have formal bat mitzvahs, I did read Torah when I was 12 at a sisterhood Shabbat service, which basically would have been a bat mitzvah. I continued to be a member of Oheb Shalom. I was a two-term president.

How did you get started in gynecology?

I went to Goucher College. I really didn’t leave Baltimore. I went to University of Maryland Medical School. I did a four-year residency at Sinai Hospital, being chief resident the last year.

Then I started a solo practice in obstetrics and gynecology on Park Heights Avenue. And after three years in solo private practice, I moved to the Greenspring Shopping Center on Smith Avenue. And I think this is my 40th year in this location.

I stopped doing obstetrics after five years of practice, and I just limited my practice to gynecology. I was chief at Northwest in the Department of GYN for about 10 years, and I think I stepped down from that in 2012, which was also when I stopped doing major surgeries.

What is it like for you being able to help provide crucial health care to other women?

My relationship [to patients] is more of a partnership in that I feel like we’re going through issues and problems together. I’m a problem solver in my day-to-day work, using common sense and medical knowledge to help patients figure out their difficulties and help them with diagnosis and treatment.

To be able to relate as a woman to a woman is special, and it’s a special relationship. It’s a special privilege. It’s a lot of privacy and intimacy, and it’s been an honor. It’s an honor to do this. I’m still working.

Tell me about the longstanding relationship between yourself as a doctor and the community.

I stayed in the Pikesville area. It’s my pleasure to take care of the Jewish community and my patients, and I take care of patients all through the Baltimore area. It’s a diverse population, and the office has always been accessible.

Can you describe the daily minyan at HSOSC and what that’s like?

Our congregation formed a morning minyan [around] 1990. It was, and maybe still is, the only Reform minyan in the country. It meets daily and didn’t have the highest participation until COVID, and COVID made it easy for all of us who were confined to be on Zoom. And so, we’ve grown into a warm little group of regulars.

We’ve chosen not to make our morning minyan at the synagogue, except on certain occasions. Twice a year or so, we have a Sunday morning minyan together at my house.

What does your Jewish identity mean to you?

It’s major [in my life]. It gives me the calendar to my day, my year, having Shabbat every week, having the holidays to flow through. Looking at the world and looking out at the Jewish community, my parents and my husband’s family were always philanthropic to the Jewish community and beyond. We’ve been active with the Jewish agencies, Technion and Jewish National Fund. We’ve been on the boards of both, [as well as] Israel Bonds.

[And in] doing medicine I look at my children. Three of my four children are in medicine. You help others. You don’t go for financial gain. You pick a profession where you’re thinking of others, how you can make any part of your world better, be it to yourself, to your family, to the community, to the greater world … how you make your choices, how you treat other people, wanting to learn constantly [about] education, morality, social action, philanthropy. It’s hand in hand [with Judaism].

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