Oy vey, 'n sheet!

Diaspora Affairs: Hue and cry

Last week, Alysa Stanton made history when she was ordained a rabbi, becoming the first African-American woman bestowed that title by a mainstream Jewish denomination.

A graduate of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, a Reform seminary, the 45-year-old convert to Judaism was ordained at the Plum Street Temple in Cincinnati on June 6. In August, she will be installed as the new spiritual leader of Congregation Bayt Shalom in Greenville, South Carolina.

"I am humbled and I am in awe," Stanton said of her achievement.

It was a milestone - both for Stanton and for the American-Jewish community - that was decades in the making. "It's been a long, difficult journey," she said. "If someone had told me I'd be a spiritual leader 15 years ago, I would have laughed."

Indeed, her ordination comes during a particular juncture in American history, just months after the first African-American president took office.

"It is of incredible importance to note that her ordination coincides with the election of Barack Obama," the president of Hebrew Union College, Rabbi David Ellenson, told The New York Times. "It offers a ray of hope that the world can become a better place." (what happened to color blindness, there is no such thing as race, etc. etc.?)

In fact, Obama's campaign itself at times shined a light on black Jews, namely Michelle Obama's cousin, Rabbi Capers Funnye. The chief rabbi of Beth Shalom B'nai Zaken, an Ethiopian Hebrew congregation in Chicago, Funnye struggled for years to be accepted by mainstream Jewry. He was invited to speak at a white (sic!), mainstream synagogue in New York - the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue - on the Friday night before Obama's inauguration. "Been a long time getting here, but I'm ready," he said at the time.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1244371076576&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

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