Meet Alysa Stanton, Judaism’s very first black female rabbi. Ordained last June at Cincinnati’s Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Rabbi Stanton, who now presides over the only synagogue in Greenville, N.C., likes to say that she didn’t choose Judaism, it chose her.
A spiritual person who has explored a tasting menu of religious philosophies and once practiced psychotherapy, Stanton first studied with a Conservative rabbi in Denver to convert to Judaism in 1987. A Reform rabbi, Steven Foster of Denver’s Temple Emanuel, later became her mentor. Stanton calls him her “Jewish dad,” and he encouraged her to consider rabbinical school.
