Alysa Stanton

Alysa Stanton (born August 2, 1963, Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.) is an American rabbi who on June 6, 2009, became the first female African American to be so ordained. Though the Reform and Conservative movements in Judaism had begun ordaining women rabbis in the 1970s and ’80s, Stanton’s ordination drew national attention to the growing number of African Americans converting to Judaism.

Stanton was raised as a Pentecostal Christian. She first became interested in Judaism as a child, when her family moved to a predominantly Jewish neighbourhood in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. She converted to Reform Judaism in 1987 while a student at Colorado State University (CSU), where she earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology in 1988. The unmarried Stanton, mother of an adopted daughter, was unusual among converts to Judaism, most of whom would make the conversion for the sake of an upcoming marriage. Stanton then earned a master’s degree in education from CSU in 1992 and received a professional counselor’s license in 1998; she earned another master’s degree—in Hebrew letters—from Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion in 2009. Working as a psychotherapist in Aurora, Colorado, she specialized in grief and loss counseling, often working with abused and neglected children. After the Columbine High School shootings in Littleton, Colorado, in 1999, she counseled the grieving students.

In 2002 Stanton became a student at Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion, studying first in Jerusalem and then in Cincinnati, Ohio. While a student, she was assigned a summer internship for a Jewish congregation in Dothan, Alabama. Although the arrival of a black rabbinical intern in a small Southern town at first created a stir, Stanton won over her congregation with her warmth and kindness. Following her ordination in June 2009, she became the spiritual leader at Congregation Bayt Shalom in Greenville, North Carolina, a predominantly white congregation affiliated with both the Conservative and Reform movements. Her contract was not renewed, however, and she left in 2011.

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