Post-racial rabbis: Alyssa Stanton and other black rabbis enter the American Jewish mainstream.
Moment › Vol. 34 Nbr. 4, July 2009
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Post-racial rabbis: Alyssa Stanton and other black rabbis enter the American Jewish mainstream.
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ONE OF THE FIRST THINGS THAT SIX-YEAR-OLD ALYSSA STANTON noticed when her family moved into a predominantly Jewish neighborhood in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, was a rectangular ornament affixed to the doorpost of her new home. Her uncle Edward, a "devout Catholic who went to shul on occasion," explained to her that it was a mezuzah. "He would wear a yarmulke sometimes," she says, "and he knew a lot about a lot of things." A few years later her uncle, who spoke eight languages, gave her a Hebrew grammar book, which she still has. This fleeting introduction to Judaism set Stanton--the granddaughter of a Baptist minister and daughter of a Pentecostal Christian--on a journey that led her to convert to Judaism 18 years later. Stanton, now 45, recently passed another milestone on her spiritual journey. On June 6 in Cincinnati's historic Plum Street Temple, she was ordained by Hebrew Union College, the Reform rabbinical school, making her the movement's first African-American rabbi and the first African-American woman ordained by a mainstream Jewish denomination. The path she took to get there was challenging. ...See the full content of this document
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