THE FIRST BLACK WOMAN RABBI IN AMERICA : ALYSA STANTON :

In 2001 Alysa Stanton embarked on her own audacious journey. She spoke about breaking barriers, building bridges and providing calling on people to join on their similarities rather than differences. Her decision to enter Rabbinical school in 2001 broke multiple taboos. On top of the age old tension between christian - the religion of her birth - and tension between christian - and Jews were budding hostilities between African American and largely white American Jews. She is 45 years old and spent the first eleven years of her life in the mid Western State of Ohio, then moved to Colorado. Her parents were Pentecostal Christian but from the age of nine she can remember looking for some thing else  " I was a Seeker" 
She was attracted to Judaism as she believe it encompasses not just religion, but also Spiritualism, Social Justice and Community, she began converting to the faith in 1987, driving 144 miles every week to a Synagogue in Denever.

The late 80's and early 90's were a period of great tension between Jews and African American people. The Jews and the blacks have a history of working together, particularly in the Civil Rights Periods when many young Jews campaigned alongside Black Protesters. Some 20.000 marriages between Jews and African American grew out of the movement.  There are over 400,000 African American Jews in America, one in five American Jews. he takes up her post in August as a Rabbi of the Bayt Shalom Temple in Grenville, North Carolina, she knows that her challenges is not over yet from Jews, Anglo's  and African American.