Saturday, June 6, 2009

Another Jewish First

On a happier note, Alyssa Stanton will be ordained as a rabbi at the Cincinnati campus of Hebrew Union College today.

She will be the first African-American woman ordained by a mainstream Jewish seminary.

Rabbi Stanton will serve Congregation Bayt Shalom, a synagogue affiliated with both the Reform and Conservative branches of Judaism in Greenville, North Carolina.

See today's New York Times, p. A13, or use this link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/06/us/06rabbi.html?scp=1&sq=alyssa%20Stanton&st=cse

As a child, she attended a Pentecostal church; later she joined a group of Messianic Christians who both practice Judaism and speak in tongues. Eventually she joined a synagogue in Fort Collins, Colorado, and then went to seminary.

The report cites statistics on how Judaism has grown more diverse.

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