Rabbi Ayelet Cohen, is the Senior Director at the New Israel Fund, NY/Tri-State Region. She became a full-time rabbi at CBST in August, 2002, three months after she was ordained by the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. Passionately committed to progressive and feminist Judaism, she is an activist and an advocate for full inclusion and celebration of LGBT Jews in the Conservative movement and the larger Jewish world. She is also an advocate for LBGT civil rights.
Rabbi Cohen lectures and facilitates university, synagogue and other Jewish and interfaith groups on Jewish, feminist, and gay and lesbian issues. She worked as a volunteer chaplain at the Family Assistance Center for families of victims and survivors of September 11 and participated in an interfaith panel for Women's History Month at the Riker's Island Correctional Facility.
Rabbi Cohen has been profiled in The New York Times and was named one of the Heeb Magazine ’s “hundred people you need to know about.” She was honored at the 2005 Ma’yan Seder as a leading young Jewish feminist activist. Rabbi Cohen has received numerous awards for her scholarship and leadership. At her ordination, she received the Albert Pappenheim Prize for Practical Rabbinics and the Israel H. Levinthal Prize in Homiletics. Rabbi Cohen was a recipient of the Dorot Fellowship in Israel. She graduated with honors from Brown University in Comparative Literature and Judaic Studies in 1996.
