Baruch Dayan HaEmet: Rabbi Rachel Cowan
With sadness ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal mourns the passing of a luminary of our time: Rabbi Rachel Cowan, who succumbed to cancer just before Shabbat on August 31, 2018. A passionate activist, teacher and leader, her life-work supported visionary initiatives and vibrant new opportunities for engagement with Jewish spirituality and social justice. Her light in the world of justice, peace, and healing will not go out.
We join with her family and friends in mourning her passing, and extend our hearts to our colleagues at IJS, the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, which Rabbi Rachel Cowan supported first though her work with the Nathan Cummings Foundation and then as its second Executive Director. ALEPH, too, was a beneficiary of her vision when The P’nai Or Religious Fellowship and The Shalom Center merged to create ALEPH in 1993. Rabbi Cowan helped provide significant funding for the merger through her central role as the Program Director of Jewish Life at the Nathan Cummings Foundation.
ALEPH extends our deepest condolences to her family as we continue to honor her vision in our work. May her memory be for a blessing, zikhronah liv’rakhah.
Services will be held on Tuesday, September 4 at 9:30 am at B’nai Jeshurun, 257 West 88th Street in NYC.
The Institute for Jewish Spirituality which Rabbi Cowan, along with Rabbi Nancy Flam, co-founded, will be offering three virtual minyans: Tuesday, September 4 at 8 pm eastern; Wednesday, September 5 at 9 am eastern; and Thursday, September 6 at noon eastern.
To participate in the IJS virtual minyan for Rabbi Cowan, use this Zoom link:
Kol ALEPH 