SAN FRANCISCO (RNS) – A few years ago, Grace Elizabeth Dy, who then worked for the University of Washington’s Jewish studies center, was attending a conference in Jerusalem for Jewish lay leaders when several attendees began questioning Dy’s Jewishness. They said Dy, who is of Filipino and Taiwanese descent, didn’t look Jewish, among other insensitive remarks. Dy, who goes by the pronouns they/them, said they had a breakdown and felt like leaving.
Rabbi Angela Buchdahl, the first Asian American to be ordained as a rabbi and as a cantor, happened to be in Jerusalem that day, attending a different conference. Buchdahl heard that Dy was having a hard time and reached out on WhatsApp to invite Dy to Shabbat dinner at her Airbnb.
“We had an honest conversation about the challenges that Asian and Jewish women face in Jewish leadership roles,” Dy recalled.
Today, Dy, 28, is a Hebrew school teacher and chaplain at Seattle University. They were recently accepted to rabbinical school at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Buchdahl’s alma mater. Their choice is no coincidence.
Grace Elizabeth Dy. (Courtesy photo)
“She has made pursuing the rabbinate feel like an actual possibility,” Dy, who converted to Judaism in college, said. “I’m very grateful to be able to learn from her and ask the big questions in a way that doesn’t feel as lonely or isolating as it had earlier in my professional life.”
The Korean-born Buchdahl, who is senior rabbi of Central Synagogue in Manhattan, is the closest thing the United States has to a celebrity rabbi. She has lit Hanukkah candles at White House Hanukkah parties. On television, she has appeared on shows such as “Finding Your Roots,” with Henry Louis Gates Jr. She was a clue on “Jeopardy!” Earlier this year a clip of her singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” at an event with “The Late Show” host Stephen Colbert went viral on Instagram.
But for the tiny community of Asian American Jews, Buchdah …