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 Rabbi
Jody Cohen is the Temple Israel of Greater Miami’s newest
spiritual leader, not that it’s much of a surprise.
Ordained as a rabbi in 1984,
Cohen moved to Connecticut to serve as associate rabbi to the
Congregation Beth Israel in West Hartford, where she initiated
and established Noah’s Ark Day Care Center, the first
synagogue-run day care center in North America for children ages
6 weeks to 5 years. For the next six years, she was the sole
rabbi at Temple Beth Hillel, becoming the first woman in the
state to serve a synagogue as associate rabbi and first to have
an extended tenure as rabbi of her own congregation.
Cohen was the first recipient
of the Hartford College for Women's Pioneer Woman Award in 1985,
organized the first Conference for Clergywomen of Greater
Hartford in 1986 and was co-president of the Women's Rabbinic
Network from 1991 to 1993, a national organization of reform
women rabbis. Rabbi Cohen also served as the American Jewish
Committee’s assistant national specialist on inter-religious
affairs.
Cohen — the
former southeastern regional director for the Union for Reform
Judaism, where she served as the Reform movement liaison to
almost 100 congregations — also has conducted creative High Holy
Day services at the Lincoln Theater on Lincoln Road in Miami
Beach.
Rabbi
Cohen was born and raised in Newark, N.J., received a bachelor’s
degree in political science from Mount Holyoke College and a
master’s degree in Hebrew letters from Hebrew Union College.
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