Ex-Hasidic Woman Becomes Britain’s First Orthodox ‘Rabba’
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
(JTA) — Dina Brawer, who was raised in the Chabad Hasidic group, became Britain’s first Orthodox female rabbi.
She received her semicha, or rabbinic ordination, on Monday in London from British-born Israeli academic and rabbi, Dr. Daniel Sperber, after he administered a two-hour exam.
She will take the title of rabba.
She sat for her semicha test after completing a four-year program at Yeshivat Maharat in New York, according to the Jewish Chronicle. A graduation ceremony will be held in June at Kehillat Jeshurun synagogue in Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
She served this year as a rabbinic intern at Netivot Shalom, in Teaneck, New Jersey.
Brawer is the founder of the United Kingdom branch of the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance, or JOFA.
She and her husband, Rabbi Naftali Brawer, announced that they will be moving to New York permanently. Dina Brawer is completing the Hillel’s Office of Innovation Fellowship for Rabbinic Entrepreneurship, and her husband will start work as executive director of Tufts University Hillel.
Exhilarating to get to the final stages: #ordination pic.twitter.com/ZcV6Xmhb8t
— Dina Brawer (@DinaBrawer) May 8, 2018
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