On May 12, 1985, at the age of thirty, Eilberg became the first woman ordained in Conservative Judaism. In 1986 she became the first woman appointed to serve on the Rabbinical Assembly's Committee on Jewish Law and Standards. She started her career as a chaplain at Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis. She served for one year as the assistant rabbi at Har Zion Temple near Philadelphia. In 1989, she stepped down from that position at this synagogue, explaining in her resignation letter that her desire to spend more time with her young daughter was one of the primary motivations for her decision. She also realized that her true passion was for caring for the ill. She served as hospice chaplain for the Jewish Hospice Program in Philadelphia, then she helped found the Bay Area Jewish Healing Center in San Francisco where she directed the program's Jewish Hospice Care Program. At the height of the AIDS crisis, the Jewish Healing Center offered spiritual care to Jews people living with illness, death, and loss.