Spirituality
Rabbinic Breakthrough
Reform student on track to become first black female rabbi.
Sue Fishkoff
with quiet anger. "We'd been in Israel
three months and her only friend was a
cat."
One day, Shana came home from camp
beaming because one of the other children
held her hand.
"'Nobody ever holds my hand, Mommy,'
she said to me , ) ' Stanton-Ogulnick
recounts. "I said, 'Why?' She said, 'Because
I'm shochor;" or black.
"Ani lo tov, ani lo yafah," the little girl
told her mother, using the Hebrew for "I'm
no good; I'm not pretty"
Even telling the story now, six years
later, Stanton-Ogulnick shakes her head.
"Sometimes, I've been in tears with
what I have put this child through; she
says.
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
San Francisco
A
lysa Stanton-Ogulnick isn't par-
ticularly interested in being a
standard-bearer.
She's proud to be black, proud to be
a woman and proud to be a 45-year-old
mother who raised her adopted child on
her own.
And when she says that next May, fol-
lowing her ordination as a Reform rabbi,
she will become the first black female
rabbi, the huge grin on her face lets folks
know she feels pretty good about that,
too.
But Stanton-Ogulnick, who is study-
ing at the Cincinnati campus of the
Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of
Religion, didn't set out to be the first. It
just kind of happened, like so much else
in her life.
"If I were the 50,000th, I'd still be doing
what I do, trying to live my life with kava-
nah and kedushah," she says, using the
Hebrew words for intentionality and holi-
ness. "Me being first was just the luck of
the draw."
Stanton-Ogulnick — she's still getting
used to the second part of her hyphenated
last name, the product of a recent mar-
riage — was in San Francisco for a con-
ference of ethnically and racially diverse
Jews and Jewish communities sponsored
by Be'chol Lashon, an organization that
supports their efforts to enter the Jewish
mainstream.
That's something the future rabbi
knows a great deal about — as a woman,
as a convert and as a Jew of color. She's
had to fight for success and acceptance in
a world that wasn't always welcoming.
"At this conference, there are people
from all over looking for their identity,"
Stanton-Ogulnick says. "Maybe I can help
them on the path by breaking down bar-
riers."
That's among her goals as a rabbi, she
says: breaking barriers, building bridges
and giving hope.
Moving On
Like many rabbinic students now,
Stanton-Ogulnick is on her second career.
She came to the rabbinate as a licensed
psychotherapist specializing in grief and
Alysa Stanton-Ogulnick, a rabbinical student at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati,
is preparing to be ordained in May 2009.
loss issues.
Stanton-Ogulnick has worked with
trauma victims in Colorado for the past
16 years, at the same time becoming more
active in Denver's Temple Emanuel. She
has served the synagogue as a Para-chap-
lain, religious-school teacher and cantorial
soloist.
Raised by Pentacostal parents, Stanton-
Ogulnick spent her childhood and
young adulthood as a spiritual seeker,
making the rounds of various Christian
denominations before finding her home
in Judaism. She converted more than 20
years ago.
"People look at me and ask if I was
born Jewish:' she says. "I say yes, but not
to a Jewish womb. I believe I was at Sinai.
It's not as if one day I scratched my head
and said, 'Timm, now how can I make my
life more difficult? I know — I'll become
Jewish!'"
Stanton-Ogulnick made her choice to
join the Jewish community as an adult,
well aware of the difficulties that might
arise. Her daughter Shana, now 13, didn't
get to choose; she was dipped in the mik-
vah as an infant.
The year they spent in Jerusalem,
Stanton-Ogulnick's first year as an HUC
student, was the most difficult. Shana,
then 7, faced daily prejudice at school.
"She was beat up, and once was liter-
ally kicked off the bus:' her mother says
Rocky Path
Stanton-Ogulnick relates some of the diffi-
culties of her life's journey in a monologue
she created last fall called "Layers."
First performed at a conference of
Reform religious-school educators in
October, the piece opens with her stand-
ing on stage with her head in a noose,
a shocking evocation of slavery. The
monologue deals with her journey to
Judaism and other major changes in her
life, including a recent weight loss of 122
pounds.
Pulling out an old picture of herself
at her former weight, Stanton-Ogulnick
shakes her head again. Is she really no
longer that person? Is she really about to
become a rabbi? It's all so remarkable, she
says.
At the end of one performance, she says,
a woman came up to her in tears, saying,
"You told my story. Thank you."
"It's those moments:' Stanton-Ogulnick
says, her voice trailing off as she smiles.
"Even though the journey is long and the
path difficult, if I can provide someone
with a little hope and a sense of purpose,
it's worthwhile."
It's experiencing those moments that
she is most looking forward to as a
rabbi, whether she ends up in a pulpit,
working as a chaplain or in some other
position.
"That moment, that `A-ha, I'm not alone'
that comes when I'm talking with a con-
gregant or an individual struggling with
something and I'm helping them find a
solution:' she says, "that a-ha moment is
what it's about for me." ❑
May 29 • 2008
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