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