{"id":99005,"date":"2016-06-19T15:41:15","date_gmt":"2016-06-19T23:41:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=99005"},"modified":"2016-06-19T15:41:15","modified_gmt":"2016-06-19T23:41:15","slug":"sandra-lawson-black-lesbian-vegan-rabbinical-student-hopes-to-redefine-where-judaism-happens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=99005","title":{"rendered":"Sandra Lawson, black lesbian vegan rabbinical student, hopes to redefine where Judaism happens"},"content":{"rendered":"

PHILADELPHIA (JTA)<\/a> \u2014 Sandra Lawson didn\u2019t expect to perform a public benediction at her local pub in this city\u2019s Roxborough neighborhood.<\/p>\n

But when her friend Jay, who was entering firefighter training, asked her for a blessing earlier this year, she stood with him in the middle of the room and put her rabbinical school training into action.<\/p>\n

\u201cAvraham, Isaac and Jacob, please bless Jay on his journey of being a firefighter,\u201d she said, placing her hand on his shoulder. \u201cCome back and have a beer with me.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Lawson, a bar is a natural place to create a Jewish ceremony. As a rabbi in training who herself is breaking barriers, Lawson is eager to take Jewish practice outside the traditional bounds of the synagogue.<\/p>\n

Lawson, 45, lives at the intersection of several communities while being in a small demographic within the American Jewish world. As an African-American lesbian who converted to Judaism, eats vegan and is now studying to be a rabbi at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, Lawson believes American Jews need to rethink how their community looks and where it should congregate.<\/p>\n

\u201cRedefining or helping people understand what the Jewish community looks like today is something I want to do,\u201d Lawson told JTA in a vegan cafe where she holds Friday night services.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the U.S., people can deal with a female rabbi, a queer rabbi,\u201d she continued. But, \u201c\u2018Oh, you\u2019re black, too? That\u2019s too much to deal with in one day.\u2019 When you put those identities together, it\u2019s too much to handle.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lawson grew up in a military family and, while Christian, wasn\u2019t raised religious. Her first exposure to Judaism came in an Old Testament course at St. Leo University in Florida while she was serving in the Army as a military police officer. Following military service, Lawson became a personal trainer in Atlanta, where one of her clients was Joshua Lesser, a Reconstructionist rabbi and local activist for racial justice. She began attending services at his Congregation Beth Haverim, a synagogue for the LGBT community, and converted in 2004.<\/p>\n

She decided to become a rabbi after representing the Jewish community at a LGBT memorial service for Coretta Scott King, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.\u2019s wife. She realized there that being an African-American Jew could allow her to strengthen connections among communities. She\u2019s on track to graduate from rabbinical school in 2018.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was able to help make those connections and build some of those bridges by being someone who wants to be clergy and help build more trust around interfaith stuff,\u201d Lawson said. She wants to get to a point where \u201cwhen I Google \u2018rabbi,\u2019 I see someone other than a bearded white guy.\u201d<\/p>\n

(Indeed, when you Google \u201crabbi,\u201d all you see initially are bearded white men.)<\/p>\n

Lawson says \u201cnobody\u2019s been horrible to me,\u201d but she has encountered different challenges to her identity, depending on where she is. At one synagogue, she was standing in a prayer shawl and kippah with a friend when a congregant approached her friend and asked him if she was Jewish.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know anyone who goes to a synagogue, wears a kippah and a tallit Saturday morning who is not Jewish,\u201d she said. \u201cEvery community has their own idea of who is a Jew and what does a Jew look like. If you don\u2019t fit that framework, they don\u2019t think you\u2019re Jewish.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PHILADELPHIA (JTA) \u2014 Sandra Lawson didn\u2019t expect to perform a public benediction at her local pub in this city\u2019s Roxborough neighborhood. But when her friend Jay, who was entering firefighter training, asked her for a blessing earlier this year, she … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,26,110,42752],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-99005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blacks","category-homophobia","category-rabbis","category-vegan"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=99005"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99005\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":99006,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99005\/revisions\/99006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=99005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=99005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=99005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}