Two women have become the first Britons to be formally ordained as Jewish priestesses.
Rachel Rose Reid, one of the country’s top storytellers, and Brighton-born Rabbi Sarah Bracha Gershuny, who now leads a Jewish Renewal community in Boulder, Colorado, are among this year’s graduates from the Kohenet (priestess) Institute in Connecticut, in the United States.
Rabbi Jill Hammer, co-founder of the institute in 2006, said that “with the ordination of Kohenet Rachel Rose Reid, Kohenet now has a base in the UK from which to grow, and we are excited to see what the future holds”.
For her course, Kohenet Reid, a Limmud regular who was also one of the founders of the London Moishe House, a community centre for young Jews, completed a three-and-a-half year distance learning programme with twice-yearly trips to the US.
The institute was set up to train Jewish women as “facilitators of spiritual experience”.
It draws on stories of women in the Bible and Talmud, forgotten or suppressed traditions of women’s involvement in sacred rites and mystical ideas such as the Shechinah, the Presence of God, which the kabbalists portrayed as the feminine aspect of the divine.
One of its roles is to enable the creation of new rituals to mark different stages and events in people’s lives.
Kohenet Reid said, “In the years I have been involved in grassroots communities, there is a hunger for acknowledging a wider spectrum of practice in Judaism.
“There are a lot of people who think the way they connect to Judasim doesn’t fit in with the Judaism they were brought up with.”
She said she looked forward to launching her own projects as well as collaborating with other partners.
Another new kohenet, American Sarah Chandler, who has a special interest in environmental and food ethics, will be a presenter at this month’s Limmud in the Woods in Oxfordshire.
The Kohenet Institute is based at Elat Chayyim, a leading centre for alternative Jewish spirituality. It was taken over a couple of years ago by Hazon, the environmental organisation founded by the Mancunian expat Nigel Savage.
To get more news, click here to sign up for our free daily newsletter.