Rabbi Sigma Faye Coran (March 23, 1966 – May 8, 2020) was Senior

Rabbi A rabbi () is a spiritual leader or religious teacher in Judaism. One becomes a rabbi by being ordained by another rabbi – known as '' semikha'' – following a course of study of Jewish history and texts such as the Talmud. The basic form o ...

at Rockdale Temple, Amberley, Ohio. She was the first woman to serve as the senior rabbi of a Cincinnati area congregation.

Biography

Coran was born in St. Louis, Missouri and grew up in Akron, Ohio. She studied

clinical psychology Clinical psychology is an integration of social science, theory, and clinical knowledge for the purpose of understanding, preventing, and relieving psychologically based distress or dysfunction and to promote subjective well-being and persona ...

and biology at Tufts University. She was ordained at

Hebrew Union College Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...

. Coran served as Assistant Rabbi at Temple Emanuel in Worcester, Massachusetts from 1994 to 1999. Coran was appointed Senior Rabbi of Rockdale Temple, the oldest Jewish congregation in the United States west of the Allegheny Mountains, on July 1, 2004. She was the first woman to serve as the senior rabbi of a Cincinnati area congregation. She married Rabbi Matthew Kraus with whom she had four children. Rabbi Sigma Faye Coran died on May 8, 2020, of metastatic breast cancer.

References

1966 births 2020 deaths Clergy from St. Louis People from Akron, Ohio Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion alumni Tufts University School of Arts and Sciences alumni Deaths from breast cancer Reform women rabbis 21st-century American rabbis {{US-rabbi-stub