Dina Najman is the rabbi of the Kehilah of Riverdale, a synagogue in

Bronx The Bronx () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New Y ...

New York city New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

, founded in 2014, which describes itself as "an Orthodox Jewish Congregation dedicated to creating a serious and meaningful tefilah for our kehilah, committed to learning Torah and living by its values and seeking to promote individual and communal acts of chesed (kindness)" and as "supporting spiritual and lay leadership irrespective of gender."

Career

In 2006, Najman became the first Orthodox woman appointed as rabbinic leader of a synagogue, when she became the Rosh Kehilah of Kehilat Orach Eliezer in

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

. She was educated at

Jerusalem Michlala This is a list of universities and colleges in Israel. As of August 2021, there are ten universities and 53 colleges in Israel, which are recognized and academically supervised by the Council for Higher Education in Israel. In addition, Israel foun ...

Stern College for Women The Stern College for Women (SCW) is the undergraduate women's college of arts and sciences of Yeshiva University. It is located at the university's Israel Henry Beren Campus in the Murray Hill section of Manhattan. The college provides program ...

Drisha Institute The Drisha Institute for Jewish Education is a center for advanced Jewish learning located on the Upper West Side of New York City. Though initially founded to promote advanced scholarship for women, it has since expanded to offer an array of text-b ...

, and

Nishmat (midrasha) Nishmat: The Jeanie Schottenstein Center for Advanced Torah Study for Women is a Modern Orthodox Jewish institution of higher Torah learning for women, or ''midrasha''. It was one of the first educational frameworks to teach Talmud to women. It is ...

, where she served as a "shoel u’meishiv" — someone to whom students can turn for help in their learning. She is a

bioethicist Bioethics is both a field of study and professional practice, interested in ethical issues related to health (primarily focused on the human, but also increasingly includes animal ethics), including those emerging from advances in biology, med ...

certified by the Bioethics and Medical Humanities program run jointly by

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, the ...

and

Albert Einstein College of Medicine Albert Einstein College of Medicine is a research-intensive medical school located in the Morris Park neighborhood of the Bronx in New York City. Founded in 1953, Einstein operates as an independent degree-granting institution as part of t ...

. Due to her mastery of the arcana of the field, she remains in demand as a lecturer on bioethics and Jewish law for communities all over the world. Najman was ordained by Rabbi

Daniel Sperber Daniel Sperber (Hebrew: דניאל שפרבר) is a British-born Israeli academic and centrist orthodox rabbi. He is a professor of Talmud at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, and an expert in classical philology, history of Jewish customs, Jewish ...

and has been a Senior Rabbinic Fellow at

Shalom Hartman Institute Shalom Hartman Institute is a Jewish research and education institute based in Jerusalem, that offers pluralistic Jewish thought and education to scholars, rabbis, educators, and Jewish community leaders in Israel and North America. The institute' ...

. She is also the head of the

Gemara The Gemara (also transliterated Gemarah, or in Yiddish Gemo(r)re; from Aramaic , from the Semitic root ג-מ-ר ''gamar'', to finish or complete) is the component of the Talmud comprising rabbinical analysis of and commentary on the Mishnah w ...

department at the

SAR Academy Salanter Akiba Riverdale Academy, better known by the acronym, SAR Academy, is a coeducational, private Modern Orthodox Jewish day school. The school is located in the Riverdale section of the New York City borough of the Bronx. Its name de ...

Phyllis Chesler Phyllis Chesler (born October 1, 1940) is an American writer, psychotherapist, and professor emerita of psychology and women's studies at the College of Staten Island (CUNY). She is a renowned second-wave feminist psychologist and the author of ...

said of Najman, "She’s a rebbe, a Talmudist, the way she gets right to the point in so few words." Dina Najman was among the few Orthodox

women rabbis Women rabbis are individual Jewish women who have studied Jewish Law and received rabbinical ordination. Women rabbis are prominent in Progressive Jewish denominations, however, the subject of women rabbis in Orthodox Judaism is more complex. Al ...

to have received private ordination in the Orthodox Jewish context before the institutional change that resulted in the foudning of

Yeshivat Maharat Yeshivat Maharat is a Jewish educational institution in The Bronx, New York, which was the first Open Orthodox yeshiva in North America to ordain women. The word ''Maharat'' () is a Hebrew acronym for phrase ''manhiga hilkhatit rukhanit Toranit'' ...

. Other women in her position include

Mimi Feigelson Mimi Feigelson is an Orthodox Jewish rabbi, scholar and spiritual leader. Born in the United States, she moved to Israel at age eight and began studying with Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach at age fifteen. She says that in 1994, he granted her religious or ...

(ordained in 1994) and

Haviva Ner-David Haviva Ner-David (formerly Haviva Krasner-Davidson) is an Israeli feminist activist and rabbi. Biography She received her BA from Columbia University and her PhD from Bar Ilan University and wrote her thesis concerning the nature of the relations ...

(ordained in 2006).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Najman, Dina Living people Rabbis from New York City Year of birth missing (living people) 21st-century American Jews Orthodox women rabbis

Career

See also

References