#43: Reclaiming Feminist Judaism
Tune into Episode 43 of The Bridging Connections Podcast showcasing Kohenet Priestess Institute and its movement to the reclaim and innovate feminist Judaism.
“Kohenot seek to reclaim voices...ancient voices that predate the rabbinic period that have been erased, suppressed or forgotten over time.”
THE KOHENET HEBREW PRIESTESS INSTITUTE
Featuring: Keshira HaLev Fife, Executive Director
Embodied, Earth-based Transformative Jewish Ritual
Mission: Kohenet Kavannah (Organizational Intention):
Kohenet Hebrew Priestess Institute reclaims and innovates embodied, earth-based feminist Judaism. Kohenet's spiritual leadership training, ordination programs, publications and community offerings center ritual as transformative practice. They draw from ways women and other marginalized people have led across time - shrinekeepers, prophetesses and wise women of the Hebrew Bible and beyond. Kohenet honors the ways in which Shekhinah appears to them through traditions, imaginations, prayers, dreams, ancestors, and role models throughout Jewish history. They celebrate the sacred in the body, the earth and the cosmos. Kohenet is a training program, a sacred community, and a movement changing the paradigm of Jewish spiritual leadership. Kohenet Shabbat, holidays, and Virtual Temple / online classes are open to all.The three-year Kohenet training and ordination program welcomes applications from trans women, cis women, and nonbinary people, who are drawn to Kohenet’s kavannah (intention).
Kohenet’s Why:
The first known poet, Enheduanna, served as a priestess of Inanna in Sumer, and there were priestesses in many cultures throughout the known world. Yet the title of priestess does not appear to exist in the Hebrew Bible, and indeed, the patriarchal authorities who compiled the Bible eliminated most references to women's spiritual leadership. However, some aspects of women's spiritual power shine through. From these hints, we can deduce how women participated in the sacred cult of the Israelite nation: as mothers, prophetesses, and even ritual officiants. We know, for example, that women baked cakes for the Queen of Heaven as part of a sacred rite honoring the Divine feminine.
Our later Jewish foremothers did not entirely abandon the priestess role even after it was written out out of the tradition. The title "priestess" appears several times on Jewish gravestones during the Roman period. Other titles such as "eldress" "mother of the synagogue," and "head of the synagogue" on similar gravestones lead one to believe that women served in leadership functions in pre-Talmudic and Talmudic times. However, following this period the title fell entirely out of practice. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, women served as dreamers and diviners in communities of Jewish mystics in Sfat and elsewhere. In their names, we seek to re-establish this sacred tradition.
“The Hebrew Priestess: Ancient and New Visions of Jewish Women's Spiritual Leadership”
Learn more about Hebrew Priestess journey through history with this book written by Jill Hammer and Taya Shere
“We cannot know fully what it was like to be a Hebrew priestess in ancient time. We cannot know whether this tradition will continue after us, or how it will evolve. The priestesshood has been born and has been lost many times, in many cultures. We make this leap of faith: that there is a thread joining what was, what is, and what will be. We are repairing this thread as best we can. The rest is up to God/dess.”
Definitions and Clarifications
Brit Shalom-lit. Covenant of peace; alternative to medical circumcision, welcoming a baby into Jewish tradition
Kohain- priest
Kohenet/ Kohenot- priestess / priestesses
m’beit- from the house of
Mizrahi (s) / Mizrahim (pl) - A Jewish member or descendant of the Jews who lived in North Africa and the Middle East and whose ancestors did not reside in Europe.
Pogram- an organized massacre of a particular ethnic group, in particular that of Jewish people in Russia or eastern Europe.
Safardi(s) / Safardim (pl) - a Jewish person of Spanish or Portuguese descent. They retain their own distinctive customs and rituals, preserving Babylonian Jewish traditions rather than the Palestinian ones of the Ashkenazim; any Jew of the Middle East or North Africa.
Shoah - Holocaust
Tashlich- Jewish religious ceremony that entails visiting a body of water following the afternoon service on Rosh Hashana
Organizations Mentioned in the Episode:
