Congratulations to our own Rabbi Tamara Cohen, recipient of the Covenant Foundation Award. Here is her talk, presented on November 8, 2023:
Hineni, here I am, Tamara Rut bat Esther
Rachel v’ Shachna Pinchas, Zichrono Livracha.
Hineni, here I am, a Jewish feminist educator, nurtured by beloved
mentors and community and passionately committed to transforming Jewish
education by centering the experiences of Jewish women and girls, LGBTQ+ Jews
and Jews of color.
My work is the weaving together of ancient and new, the grafting
of tradition and innovation, the invitation to others to join me in sacred play
and holy community building. I gather and create texts, ideas and rituals that
have been rescued, excavated and revealed to us by Jewish feminist historians,
theologians and scholars and I offer them to Jewish young people, their parents
and educators, as keys, as pathways, as doors inviting our youth, especially
those who feel on the margins, to come inside, to make themselves at home in
Judaism, a richer, more multifaceted, more whole Judaism that with their
presence and creativity, can and truly serve as a home for all of us in our
diversity.
Jewish feminism starts by recognizing the vibrant Jewishness of
women but it doesn’t end there. It challenges structural inequity, asks us to
re-think our core assumptions, dares us to name what is sacred in ourselves and
in every being we encounter with ancient and new language.
Jewish education grounded in feminism is a practice of hope. Born
of necessity, loss, exclusion, oppression, revolution, it invites us all to
hold complexity, to dream that more is possible, and to trust that we have and
can create the tools we need, even for this intensely challenging moment.
We have practices of empathy and listening, midrash, ritual and
Torah study. We know how to honor each other’s experiences and embrace each
other’s questions, how to hold ourselves and others accountable, how to walk
the path of teshuva, how to envision justice and enact compromise, how to
cultivate the courage for the hard work of collaboration and connection across
difference, how to praise and cry out to God using Her many names.
The Israelites in the desert are said to have been sustained by
Miriam’s Well. Perhaps it was the same well that Hagar saw when God opened her
eyes in her moment of despair. That ancient mythical well is what I want to
help our youth see, drink from, and when needed, help us refill. It is a well
of sustenance, healing and hope.
Jewish youth need us to walk with them into the pressing questions
and challenges of our era as guides and as partners. They need us to be honest,
brave, and moral cultivators of hope even as we take seriously the threats we
face. They need us to see in them what they can’t always see in themselves or
in one another.
Hineni, here I am. Filled with gratitude and ready to answer the
ongoing call to teach, to lead, to widen the tent, to insist on a third way, to
do justice, love goodness and walk humbly with God.
The Covenant Foundation's Covenant Award, honor three exemplary Jewish educators who are each meeting a complex moment in Jewish communal history with a powerful blend of courage, commitment, and compassion.
The 2023 Covenant Award recipients are: Rabbi Tamara R. Cohen, Chief Program Officer, Moving Traditions, Philadelphia, PA; Allison Cook, Founder and Co-Director, Pedagogy of Partnership, Powered by Hadar, Cambridge, MA; Nicole Nash, Head of School, Hannah Senesh Community Day School, Brooklyn, NY.
