Another Kansas City native daughter has chosen to serve the Jewish people by becoming a rabbi. Last month Leah Greenwald Jordan, the daughter of Congregation Beth Torah members Beth and Jerry Jordan, was ordained by the Leo Baeck College in London. Leo Baeck College reaches out to support the growth of today’s Jewish communities across Europe and beyond. It trains rabbis and educators to develop progressive Jewish congregations throughout the U.K. for the 21st century.
Rabbi Jordan explained that by American standards, LBC is a bit unusual in that it’s technically the only non-Orthodox rabbinical school in Britain. She noted it trains rabbis for the British Reform movement, the Masorti movement (the international term for Conservative Judaism), as well as many Liberal rabbis.
“The Liberal Movement being another leftwing but slightly different movement like Reform Judaism. So Leo Baeck is small ‘p’ progressive Jewish, I often say,” Rabbi Jordan said.
Rabbi Jordan discovered she had a passion for Jewish learning while studying with Cantor Paul Silbersher and Ida Mour for her Bat Mitzvah at The Temple, Congregation B’nai Jehudah.
“They were both very amazing in very different ways,” she said.
She explained her family always made it clear how important it was to live Jewishly, but when she was studying for her Bat Mitzvah she realized the average Jew, including herself then, doesn’t really know a lot about our heritage, Jewish history or the texts.
“I was also really turned on about doing what Ida and Cantor Silbersher did, which was teaching and passing this information on to other people,” she continued.
“It became quite clear to me that I was definitely more interested than a lot of other people and that it was kind of unusual. At that point I started thinking about wanting to become a rabbi,” Rabbi Jordan said.
Rabbi Jordan was selected to the Bronfman Youth Fellowship program following her junior year in high school where she got her first taste of intensive Jewish study. Bronfman Fellows spend five weeks in Israel studying Judaism and traveling the country. After graduating from Shawnee Mission East, she attended the University of Kansas Honors Program and earned a degree in English.
She was accepted to rabbinical school immediately after graduation and went to Jerusalem in 2008 for the Hebrew Union College’s first year program. This is where she met her fiancé and newly ordained fellow Rabbi Benji Stanley. He was a student at Leo Baeck and at that time those students — in this case he was the only one — studied with the HUC students in Jerusalem for a year.
Rabbi Jordan, 27, attended HUC-Los Angeles for her second year of rabbinical school, then took a year off and attended Yeshivat Hadar, an institute for prayer, personal growth and learning in New York City. Rabbi Stanley studied with her that year in New York as well.
She decided to complete her studies at Leo Baeck in London.
“I’ve always enjoyed studying and living abroad, having spent a year in Jerusalem and a semester in Paris as an undergrad,” she said. “But honestly I ended up at Leo Baeck mainly because my fiancé is a Londoner, and we wanted to be near one of our two families — and there’s no rabbinical school in K.C.,” she said.
During her studies Rabbi Jordan interned for a summer at Congregation Beth Torah, working closely with Rabbi Mark Levin. Rabbi Levin’s personal relationship with the Jordan family goes back a long way. He officiated at the wedding of Beth and Jerry Jordan, as well as preparing Jerry for conversion before their marriage and baby naming of Leah. So Rabbi Levin traveled to London to participate in the ordination ceremony and said it was a pure delight.
“To have the privilege to formally bring Leah into the world’s greatest profession was an honor and a great joy. The ordination was the continuation of a tradition of passing the responsibility to learn and teach Torah to a new generation, maintaining the chain of tradition as it has been passed for over two millennia,” Rabbi Levin said.
Rabbi Jordan spent a little time in July and August here at home with her family. Upon her return to London, where she will be based, Rabbi Jordan will begin serving as the new full-time student and young adult chaplain for Liberal Judaism in the United Kingdom.
“That basically means acting as rabbi for ages 18 through 35-ish and being what I’d call an ‘itinerant Hillel college rabbi,’ traveling around to the Jewish communities on university campuses in Britain,” she said. She estimates there are about 290,000 Jews in the U.K. and two thirds of them live in London.
The student organizations she will serve are called Jewish Societies and the majority of colleges in the country have a JSoc, as they are called. Some are very small with maybe six participants while others are quite large. She will travel to different universities every couple of weeks, planning programs and events for the students.
“The main challenge will be planning programs and events from afar,” she said.
She will also do a little pastoral work for Liberal Judaism.
“They occasionally get calls from unaffiliated Jews who need someone to officiate at a funeral or need some counseling or who are looking for a rabbi who isn’t’ affiliated with a synagogue,” she said. She may travel to a small community in East England once a month and serve as its part-time rabbi.
Rabbi Jordan is eager to begin working and said she hasn’t lost that excitement she first had as a young pre-teen just beginning to study Judaism.
“I’m really excited that I’m going to be doing student chaplaincy,” she said. “I like the thought of being with students and talking with them and being able to answer their questions. I’m really excited to get other people excited about Judaism.”
But like many people who begin a new career, she’s a little apprehensive as well.
“I’m basically going to be the person to come to if you’re having trouble. I’m scared about that, about having that kind of responsibility. But I also think that will be a good thing to be able to do.”
Rabbi Jordan’s fiancé will be the working at West London Synagogue, one of the oldest synagogue’s in London. As the congregation’s fourth and newest rabbi, his specialty will be adult education. The two rabbis are planning an October wedding at Congregation Beth Torah.
