Continuing on the Ofra Haza\Rakim tip, I'd like to report that Adam Serwer sent me a business-like e-mail this morning announcing "We're Taking Over." The news? Well
as Adam notes, "being a black Jews, just got a little less lonely"
Growing up in a black, Pentecostal family in Cleveland, Alysa Stanton never imagined the day when she would be preparing to be ordained as a rabbi.
But that day will come June 6 for the single mother who will be ordained by the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati, becoming the first African-American female rabbi in the world.
Awesome. Rebuilding the coalition one step at a time.
Or not. A little more from Adam:
Ironically, I think that the fact that Stanton is a woman will be more
trouble for her trying to find a congregation than the fact that she's
black. Sadly, female rabbis are still somewhat controversial--there's
that apocryphal saying from a rabbi that "a woman will be a rabbi when
there's an orange on the seder plate." That prompted a number of Jewish
families to actually start putting an orange on their seder plates.
Something for President Obama to think about if he does another White House seder next year.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
Can anyone tell me what the orange on the seder plate thing is about?
As I understand it, the seder plate is a collection of foods that find a special significance in Exodus. Oranges are from Southeast Asia and not introduced to Europe/the Middle East until about the 11th century. So presumably having orange on a seder plate would be as "unjewish" as having female rabbi's.
I guess banana would have worked equally well and the orange doesn't hold any specific symbolic value.
http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/17548/orange-on-seder-plate-tale-is-flawed-feminist-says/
Yay, another urban legend debunked. So the orange/tangerine does hold a special significance, my apologies for misrepresenting Ms. Heschel's noble act.
http://www.myjewishlearning.com/holidays/Jewish_Holidays/Passover/The_Seder/Seder_Plate_and_Table/Orange.shtml
And by that same token, you'll only see women priests when there are fresh vegetables on Irish Catholic plates.
I had friends who used to put a piece of bread on the seder plate in response to some rabbi who had said gays and lesbians had no more place in Judaism than a piece of bread on the seder plate.
This is cool.
Someone's already pointed this out on Adam's original post, but Alysa is being ordained as a Reform rabbi, which in recent years has been ordaining more women than men regularly.
Actually, the three major non-orthodox Jewish movements' (Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionists) rabbinic associations (rabbinic unions, sort of) all have female presidents.
Wait, I think TNC has something up his sleeve...isn't the title of the post a Seinfeld reference (Debra Messing's character in the episode where Wotley converts to Judaism for the jokes)? Thus establishing another Black (TNC)+ Jewish (Seinfeld) connection...maybe I'm reading too much into it though
I have been using this title for months. You're the only person to catch the reference.
Cool! One of my favorite episodes. Now, can you please post a topic on dental health so you can use the term "schtickle of fluoride?" haha
Is that you true? Matched from hat to shoe
Snafu, snatch any brew, LaBatt's Blue
Black jew like that's new, patch me through
No latch attached, skat shoo, catch twenty-two
MF DOOM - Crosshairs
Just thought I'd put that out there.
Yep, you better believe my unstoppable step-mother (the woman founded Maryland's first rape crisis center in her 20's for NO PAY) has an orange on our seder plate every year.
Again - any ethical and social progress has happened despite and not because of religion.
I'm sure that Mohandas Ghandi, Martin Luther King and the Dalai Lama would be fascinated with your theory.
Jezebel also has a pretty good look at this story: http://jezebel.com/5266004/lchaim-woman-becomes-first-african+american-female-rabbi
Hi, first time commenting, though I've been lurking for months.
I'm a Jewish lesbian, and this story has been around for years in Jewish lesbian circles, and it's not originally about female rabbis, but about the place for lesbians in Judaism. I think Rabbi Rebecca Alpert's discussion of this is definitive: http://tinyurl.com/o7q8up, and scroll down to chapter 1.
As others have commented, women rabbis are so common in every movement that ordains women (all but Orthodoxy) that the role of rabbi has actually become subject to the pitfalls of other jobs (like teachers) that lose prestige as women enter the workforce. (I.e., many congregations' expectations of what the rabbi does are shifting away from an emphasis on guiding textual study and more towards providing pastoral care.)
"As others have commented, women rabbis are so common in every movement that ordains women (all but Orthodoxy) that the role of rabbi has actually become subject to the pitfalls of other jobs (like teachers) that lose prestige as women enter the workforce."
I'm not sure about that part. That there are more women becoming Rabbis is indisputable, and in my circles it's just accepted. At least half of the under-40 Rabbis I know are women, and more than half of the Rabbinical students. (The overwhelming number of Reform students I know are women, and the Conservative students are split roughly 50-50)
But I don't believe that has anything to do with the "loss of prestige" of the Rabbinate. Quite simply, there are fewer jobs for the students, so not everyone who wants to be a scholar can be: usually the younger, assistant Rabbis get assigned the community functions of a synagogue in their first jobs. Others have to take non-pulpit jobs altogether. Things are just that competitive, and with fewer Jews engaged, those jobs are just going to be scarcer.
In any case, two of the most prominent intellectual and moral voices of the younger generation of Rabbis -- Jill Jacobs and Sharon Brous -- are women.
As I understand it, the Orange at the Seder plate signifies the struggle for gay/lesbian emancipation in Judaism.
(A Seder plate is a plate, literally, with different foods on it, in six little bowls, that have symbolic significance in telling the story of the flight of the Hebrew slaves from Egypt. The story is told each year at a meal at the beginning of the Feast of Passover. The way it is done has not changed much over time, but lately some things have been added, like the orange, which I like a lot.)
My congregation is looking for a new Rabbi, so who knows... rabbi Stanton! We're in Amsterdam, though. But we already broke through the ceiling once, when we installed the first female rabbi in Holland, rabbi Klapheck from Berlin. That was in 2005, which just goes to show how backward we are.
The Rabbi has also already found a pulpit in Greenville, North Carolina.
We've been doing the orange on the seder plate thing for years. There's always a place in Judaism for radicals.
I have never felt lonely as a black Jew. I attend services and other Jewish events. The U.S. is becoming a mixing pot and throughout Jewish history the diaspora have blended with the larger population. So my kids will be Jews with some color, more importantly they will be Jewish.