14 | NOVEMBER 28 • 2019

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Jews in the D

and prepare to lead and educate
others.
She graduated in June with
four classmates who completed
the seminary’
s four-year pro-
gram and three who finished
the shorter “executive track” for
women who already had a high
level of scholarship and lead-

ership experience but lacked
formal ordination.
It wasn’
t easy for her. Most
of Englander’
s classmates had
grown up in Orthodox families
and attended Orthodox day
schools. Even with her Pardes
experience and a year of inde-
pendent study, she said, “I felt I

was jumping in the deep end.
”
But the Maharat program
was “amazing,
” she said. Every
morning, the women studied
Halachah (Jewish law), focusing
on life cycle events, death and
mourning, conversion, Shabbat,
kashrut and family purity. “We
spent a whole year on the laws
of family purity, probably a lot
more than most male rabbinic
students,
” she said.
Afternoons were devoted to
Gemarah (Talmudic commen-
tary) and pastoral education,
where the women learned how
to provide support for people
suffering from family problems,
depression, alcoholism and
other difficulties of modern life.

DETROIT ROLES
Last spring, Sam, who grew up
in Southfield and Beverly Hills
and graduated from Michigan
State, accepted a position as
community outreach manager
for Detroit’
s JCRC/AJC. In June,
just before Jenna graduated, she

and Sam and daughter Maya,
3, moved to Oak Park. The
Englenders’
second daughter,
Esther Meira, was born Nov. 13.
Jenna spent the summer get-
ting acquainted with the Detroit
Jewish community. This fall, she
is teaching three Melton adult
education. She’
s also assisting
Rabbi Asher Lopatin of Kehillat
Etz Chayim in Oak Park as a
resource person for congre-
gants’
questions about taharat
hamishpacha, family purity.
“Many Modern Orthodox
communities have seen the
need to have a woman as a
resource for taharat hamish-
pacha question, along with
the rabbi,
” Lopatin said. “We
are excited that now we have a
woman who has been trained
on these important halachic
issues and is willing to answer
questions and give advice.
”
As comfortable as a woman
may be with a male rabbi, it
may be easier for her to discuss
intimate questions with another

For Rakia Sky Beimel, working
the land has religious signifi-
cance. When she and her ex-hus-
band started Kibbutz Detropia in
northwest Detroit five years ago,
they saw it as a spiritual expres-
sion of their Judaism.
Two years later, Beimel
decided to delve deeper into
Jewish spirituality by enrolling
in the Kohenet Hebrew Priestess
Institute. In August, she and 21
other women in the institute’
s
seventh graduating class were
ordained as kohenot or priest-
esses.
Rabbi Tamara Kolton takes a
somewhat different approach.
She is focusing on Eve as a rep-
resentative of the feminine divine.
She says the story of Eve, whom
she regards as the first victim
of the #MeToo movement, “is
actually the story of the first body
shaming of a woman” — and the
perpetrator was God. That found-

ing Judeo-Christian myth granted
generations of men permission to
violate women, she said.
“This man-made figurehead
of the patriarchy is not my God,”
she said. “It’
s time for the one
truly loving, compassionate God
— the God who wants nothing
more than to see Eve rise and
resume her place as ‘
the Mother
of All Living Things,’
to make
herself known and available to
all of us.”
Kolton grew up at the
late Rabbi Sherwin Wine’
s
Birmingham Temple in
Farmington Hills and became the
first rabbi ordained in Humanistic
Judaism. She no longer identifies
as Humanist and isn’
t affiliated
with any denomination. She
offers clerical services including
weddings, baby namings and
funerals, teaches about spirituali-
ty and also offers counseling as a
psychologist.

Kolton’
s first book, Oranges for
Eve; My Brave, Beautiful, Badass
Journey to the Feminine Divine,
will launch at 1 p.m. Dec. 1 with
a party open to all at the Baldwin
Public Library in Birmingham.
Beimel says the Kohenet
Hebrew Priestess Institute’
s
program aims to help women
reclaim “the divine feminine”

by focusing on “the ancient
practices of our foremothers,”
though there are no documented
instances of women in Jewish
history being called kohenot.
The institute was founded by
Rabbi Jill Hammer of New York,
who was ordained at the Jewish
Theological Seminary, and Taya
Shere from the San Francisco

Local Women Celebrate the “Feminine Divine”

The Englender
family: Sam, Jenna,
Maya and Esther.

COURTESY ENGLENDER FAMILY

Rakia Sky
Bemiel

Rabbi
Tamara
Kolton