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Beth David Synagogue becomes CT’s first synagogue to welcome Orthodox scholar from controversial women’s yeshiva 

By Stacey Dresner

WEST HARTFORD – Jenna Englender is a Jewish scholar.

Currently enrolled in an in-depth course of study that includes Jewish law, Talmud, Torah, Jewish thought, leadership training, and pastoral counseling, Englender will use all that she is learning as the new director of outreach at Beth David Synagogue, a Modern Orthodox congregation in West Hartford. Englender took up her new post on August 1.
     Next year, when she graduates, she has a choice of using the title of either “Maharat” or “Rabba.” Maharat is an acronym for “Torah, spiritual and halachic leader;” Rabba is the feminine for “Rabbi.”
     Beth David’s spiritual leader, Rabbi Yitzchock Adler, says the title is really up to Englender, who this fall will begin her fourth and last year of study at Yeshivat Maharat, the Orthodox women’s yeshiva founded in 2009 by Rabbi Avi Weiss and Rabba Sara Hurwitz.

    “For me it hasn’t really been about the title. It is more about the skills,” she explains. “I think it is important to have had someone say, ‘You have been taught, you have knowledge, you are capable of teaching the community in a serious way.’ But I think the conferral of a degree is very important in that way. It gives a sense of authority to what you are doing that I think is very important.”

Read the full Article here.  

A Guide to Jewish Resources and events in the Greater Hartford Area

Grow West Hartford

Mikveh Bess Israel

The West Hartford Eruv

Our Day Schools:

Bess & Paul Sigel Hebrew Academy

Solomon Schechter 

Hebrew High School of New England

Hartford Kashrut Commission

Brit Milah

Purim Party Pictures:
Pictures from Beth David's community Purim party. Click here

These Beth David members, plus five others not in the picture (Aaron, Danny and Satah Cohen; Morton Weinstein and Stacey Nerenstein) were all in Washington DC recently.