June 6: A Unique Ordination

Alysa Stanton, the first African-American woman to become a rabbi, was ordained at age 45 by the Reform seminary in Cincinnati on this date in 2009. Stanton grew up in a Pentecostal family and converted to Judaism at 24. “Most people convert because they’re marrying or dating someone who is Jewish,” Stanton says. “. . . I did so because it was the path for me.” Before joining the rabbinate, she worked as a psychologist and grief counselor. During her rabbinical training, she experienced discrimination only during her year in Israel, she says, where her daughter (now 17) was beaten up at school. “Here I was in Israel having left everything I knew to devote my life to serve our people, and not only was I told I wasn’t a Jew, I wasn’t wanted.” Following her ordination, Stanton served for two years as rabbi of Congregation Bayt Shalom, a Reform- and Conservative-affiliated synagogue in Greenville, North Carolina. In 2010, she was invited to the White House to recite a poem at an observance of American Jewish Heritage Month.

“Jews are every hue and color, every ethnic, social and economic group — and I’m one of them.” —Rabbi Alysa Stanton