More rabbis of color are being ordained. Why aren’t they on the bimah?
Virtually no Black rabbis lead mainstream Jewish congregations
Virtually no Black rabbis lead mainstream Jewish congregations
Rabbi Capers Funnye leads the largest Israelite movement in the United States. He's tired of people conflating it with extremists
One of the suspects identified in Tuesday’s mass shooting in Jersey City, N.J. is believed to be a onetime member of a movement called the Black Hebrew Israelites. The movement, composed of people of color — primarily African-Americans — who believe the biblical Israelites to be their forebears, has existed for over a century. Black…
Standing beneath the charred remains of their synagogue, members of Brooklyn’s Hebrew Israelite community mourned the destruction of their historic house of worship. B’nai Adah Kol Beth Israel was gutted by an accidental fire last month and the building now stands vacant and boarded up. There are gaping holes in the roof, with beams poking…
When Rabbi Capers Funnye was inaugurated to the role of Chief Rabbi of his Hebrew Israelite community, he laid out dramatic plans. One of his “highest goals” as leader of the International Israelite Board of Rabbis, he said, would be to admit women into the organization’s rabbinical academy, and allow women to serve on the…
During a community meeting on police accountability in Chicago, a prominent African-American rabbi read the names of individuals killed by the police and chanted the traditional mourners kaddish in Hebrew. Rabbi Funnye, @JCUA_News Pres, reads names of Chgoans killed by police, chants mourner’s kaddish. #ReformCPD pic.twitter.com/FR4HtRJ16i — Aryeh Bernstein (@aryehlou) April 2, 2017 Rabbi Capers…
Tamar Manasseh likely won’t be ordained as a rabbi until next year, but she already has her congregation: a street corner in the Englewood neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side, where she has worked out her own solution to the city’s gun violence problem. Every afternoon during the Chicago Public Schools summer vacation, Manasseh and what…
The actor Ato Essandoh is taking on a particularly challenging role in the new NBC drama “Chicago Med,” which centers around life in an emergency room. He not only has to learn how to convincingly play a cardiothoracic surgeon — Essandoh also has to take on the role of an Orthodox Jew. “His head is…
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