In just over a fortnight, history will be made when the UK’s first Orthodox female communal rabbi is ordained.
After four years of study, Miriam Lorie, 36, will be celebrating her graduation from New York’s pioneering Yeshivat Maharat.
Lorie was appointed rabbi-in-training by Kehillat Nashira, a partnership minyan in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire and has been leading the community during her training. She will remain with the community after her graduation.
For several years, Maharat graduates have been assuming leadership roles in American communities, but it is the first time a UK community has appointed someone from one of its programmes.
Lorie told the JC she was “excited” for the graduation ceremony, which will take place on June 3.
“Americans know how to do a ceremony. There will be 400 people there, and it will be a bit like a wedding.”
She said that growing up, becoming a rabbi was not something she “thought was possible” despite a career counsellor at her non-Jewish school telling her she should be a priest.
“It is quite funny really. It was based off the fact that I said I liked working with people. I also love teaching and being with people at both happy times and sad times, so I was building up to [becoming a rabbi] before I even knew it was a thing I could do.”
Miriam Lorie (second from left) learning at Yeshivat Maharat in New York
While the Chief Rabbi and United Synagogue do not recognise women rabbis or accept partnership minyanim, Lorie hopes that will change in her lifetime.
“They are not there yet, but I think we will see it in the future,” she said. “Individual rabbis say good things and are encouraging in private.”
Since Kehillat Nashira, one of half a dozen partnership minyanim in the UK, started in 2013, tensions in the United Synagogue over the participation of women in services have eased. (In a partnership minyan, women are able to lead prayers, and, in some cases, read from the Torah.)
Kehillat Nashira meets in a hall for Shabbat services every month, alternating between Friday night and Saturday morning, as well as running educational and other events.
“We have around 100 or so participants. It is a lovely and open community, and it is also intergenerational, which is great.”
Miriam Lorie leading Kehillat Nashira, the partnership minyan in Borehamwood
Lorie, who has managed her training alongside having a family, said the reason more women are not leading communities in the Orthodox world is that “the barriers are bigger”.
“You don’t just get a job. You have to set up from scratch and fundraise and not everyone has the support to do that.”
A Cambridge University theology graduate, Lorie grew up in the local Borehamwood and Elstree United Synagogue.
She said that Orthodox Judaism had always felt “like my natural home”, which was why she had wanted to practise within the setting.
“People might say: ‘Why not leave?’ But I love it, and I enjoy the commitment to Jewish law. I'd rather work from within it.”
Lorie is also a keen interfaith advocate and was part of the Cambridge Interfaith Programme and the Woolf Institute, also in Cambridge, which specialises in relations between Jews, Christians and Muslims.
The hardest part of her study was the Jewish law, she said. “Halacha is a rigorous discipline, mostly written in Hebrew and Aramaic. It takes years to master.”
She paid tribute to past alumna Rabbi Dina Brawer, the first woman from the UK to graduate from Yeshivat Maharat four years ago.
Lorie said: “She was a big inspiration to me. What is nice is that we all support each other, and there is a network of women rabbis from around the world.”
Another graduate of Maharat is Rabba Dr. Lindsey Taylor-Guthartz, who is a teaching fellow at the London School of Jewish Studies.
Lorie added: “It has been an incredibly difficult time to be Jewish since October 7. For me, this feels like a step forward and a chance to celebrate being Jewish, show we are developing and that Jewish identity is thriving.”
