H eadlines
Reconstructing Judaism Creates New Position,
Hires Rabbi Sandra Lawson
L OCA L
JESSE BERNSTEIN | JE STAFF
RECONSTRUCTING JUDAISM
has hired Rabbi Sandra Lawson
as the movement’s first director
of racial diversity, equity and
inclusion. Lawson, 51, is a graduate
of the Reconstructionist
Rabbinical College, and
will be tasked with helping
Reconstructing Judaism to
“realize its deeply held aspira-
tion of becoming an anti-racist
organization and movement,”
according to a press release.

She’ll begin in March, working
remotely from her home in
North Carolina.

“We are joining together
to build and to sustain the
community we want to live
in. That means, necessarily, it’s
going to look different from
what it looked like in the past,”
said Rabbi Deborah Waxman,
president of Reconstructing
Judaism. “For us to really put
into place anti-racist policies,
it means transformation and
change. And that is a good
thing. It is not always easy, but
it is just and it is beautiful. And
it is worth working hard for.”
Though the leaders of
movement had held discus-
sions about the possibility of
creating such a position since
the fall of 2017, it wasn’t until
the past fall that such a move
became realistic. A grant from
the Jews of Color Initiative
gave Reconstructing Judaism
the necessary funding to act.

Lawson, who
has been a leading voice on
Reconstructing Judaism’s
Tikkun Olam Commission,
was a natural fit for the job.

“She’s really been a go-to
person for us,” Waxman said.

A musician, writer, power-
lifter and popular social
media personality, Lawson
was named to the Forward
50 last year and also recog-
nized by Keshet as an LGBTQ
Hero. The St. Louis native
and military veteran, who has
served as associate chaplain for
Jewish life and Jewish educator
at Elon University in North
Carolina since 2018, said that
she’s received more requests in
the past year than ever before
to speak with primarily white
Jewish groups about race and
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Judaism. She’s looking forward
to broadening her impact
beyond that of being the Black
rabbi brought in to lecture and
then leave.

“I’m invested in the
movement, I believe in our
movement, I believe in our
values,” Lawson said. “And
I just started talking to
[Reconstructing Judaism] and
we worked it out to get to this
position.” Lawson will work virtually
out of Waxman’s office, where
her role will include a wide
range of duties.

She’ll provide mentorship
and guidance to people of color
studying to become rabbis
at RRC, while developing
new courses and curricula
to guide all RRC students.

Lawson will work directly
with communities affiliated
with Reconstructing Judaism,
leading the effort to implement
anti-bias training and racial
equity in hiring practices.

She’ll work with the Jews of
Color and Allies Group, the
board of governors and the
aforementioned Tikkun Olam
Commission to “set priorities
and strategies related to diver-
sity and inclusion.”
“I don’t believe Jewish
communities are setting out
to be unwelcoming,” Lawson
said. “But they need to under-
stand that when they look at a
candidate and can’t get past the
candidate’s race or gender or
sexual orientation or [gender
identity], whatever, that they
are bringing biases that don’t
need to be there in hiring.”
She doesn’t know a single
Black rabbi, she said, who hasn’t
experienced some racial bias
during a hiring process. What
she wants is for Black Jews in
primarily white Jewish spaces
to not have their religious
credentials questioned. In five
years, Lawson hopes, students
of color entering RRC today
Reconstructing Judaism has
hired Rabbi Sandra Lawson as the
movement’s first director of racial
diversity, equity and inclusion.

Photo by Jordan Cassway
will step into religious commu-
nities that are more welcoming
than they are today.

Rabbi Micah Weiss, assistant
director of thriving communi-
ties/tikkun olam specialist at
Reconstructing Judaism, said
that Lawson’s work there will
have some continuity with
what the movement is already
doing, but will introduce novel
aspects as well. What could
prove especially valuable to the
work of racial justice, Weiss
believes, is Lawson’s status as
“a beautiful messenger and
communicator and teacher of
what that work looks like.”
Though Reconstructing
Judaism is still working to
secure long-term funding for
the position, Waxman said,
the hope is that Lawson will
remain in the position for as
long as she wants it. And after
that? “I really hope that this is a
position that, whenever Sandra
is ready to move on from it, we
will have institutionalized this
position,” Waxman said. l
jbernstein@jewishexponent.com; 215-832-0740
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