Founding Rabbi’s Departure to Test Kol Tzedek: JOIN Alumna in the News

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 JOIN alumnu Rabbi Lauren Grabelle Herrmannn (2006 Jewish Organizing Fellowship Alumna)  founded Congregation Kol Tzedek a decade ago in Philadelphia. Today she and her congregation are featured in the Jewish Exponent. Check out an excerpt below, and read the full article here.

Among a roomful of congregants at Kol Tzedek, debra kimmelman, who spells her name with a lower case “d” and “k,” was reflecting on the legacy of Rabbi Lauren Grabelle Herrmann, who will soon be leaving the Reconstructionist synagogue she founded a decade ago.

“If you had told my 20-something-year-old self that I would ever be a welcome part of a synagogue as a lesbian” and part of an interfaith family, “I never would have believed it,” said kimmelman, a 47-year-old West Philadelphia resident.

“I remember being a little skeptical because I had never been part of a synagogue,” she said, while attending the synagogue’s end-of-year religious school celebration earlier this month. She, her wife and their daughter “have been a welcome part of the community since Day 1,” she enthused.

That sort of experience is precisely what Grabelle Herrmann had in mind when she started Kol Tzedek a decade ago while still a student at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Wyncote.

We’re so proud of the amazing work our alumni are doing across the country, building vibrant and engaged Jewish communities working for justice.  Continue reading the full article on the Jewish Exponent website.
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