Kohenet Keshira haLev Fife is disrupting expectations about what it means to practice Judaism. As the Executive Director of the Kohenet Hebrew Priestess Institute and founder of Kesher Pittsburgh, she brings her community together and offers space to connect, reflect, and discover embodied, Earth-based spirituality. In this episode, she speaks with Ilana Kaufman about reclaiming ancient traditions and rituals to create an inclusive, liberated experience for all who seek it.
Kohenet Keshira haLev Fife is disrupting expectations about what it means to practice Judaism. As the Executive Director of the Kohenet Hebrew Priestess Institute and founder of Kesher Pittsburgh, she brings her community together and offers space to connect, reflect, and discover embodied, Earth-based spirituality. In this episode, she speaks with Ilana Kaufman about reclaiming ancient traditions and rituals to create an inclusive, liberated experience for all who seek it.
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[00:00:00] Ilana Kaufman: Hi, I'm Ilana Kaufman and you're listening to Just Leading, where we're thinking differently about leadership within and beyond the Jewish world. In each episode, we're talking to people who are leading through the complex challenges of today to understand how we can build a better future.
[00:00:18] Keshira haLev Fife: It's impossible to move toward collective liberation if our day-to-day practice of spirituality is not liberated.
[00:00:28] Ilana Kaufman: Keshira haLev Fife is a Kohenet, a Hebrew priestess, based in Pittsburgh, where she brings her community together with joy and warmth, Keshira reclaims ancient practices and traditions in service of a vibrant, inclusive, liberated future. Let's dive in.
Thank you so much for saying yes to this invitation, to join me for a podcast. How are you?
[00:00:54] Keshira haLev Fife: I'm well, I'm so glad to be here. Thanks for inviting me.
[00:00:57] Ilana Kaufman: Amazing. You are the founder and leader of the Kesher Pittsburgh Jewish community. You are an ordained Kohenet Hebrew priestess, one of the leaders, the executive director of Kohenet Hebrew Priestess Institute. I understand that your mother came from the Philippines, you were raised in Pittsburgh, you are part of a multi-racial Jewish family. Can you fill that out for us? And tell us a little bit about that?
[00:01:27] Keshira haLev Fife: Yes. I was raised in a multi-racial --and then I'm going to put an asterisks next to multi-faith home because it was complicated. My mom converted to Judaism when I was a child. And then through the course of her own journey returned to Christianity when I was a teenager. My parents divorced when I was in high school but I still consider myself to have both multi-racial and multi-faith lineages that have informed my identity.
And I can remember very, very young feeling the embrace of the Jewish community. And I can also remember certain implicit and explicit things that I was told about what I had to uphold in order to maintain that embrace. I can remember as a little kid people saying to me, "Well, if you're half Asian then you must only be half Jewish, right?"
Two halves make one whole, and even before I had language or understanding for how to integrate identity, the conclusion that I drew was that it's really better to be fully and wholly one thing rather than half this and half that. And it was also encouraged within my family context that I be part of a Jewish community, that I excel as a Jewish leader, that I go to summer camp and youth group and all of those things.
And what it meant was giving up the opportunity to understand my Filipinx lineage and history and heritage even though I grew up with my grandma, with my auntie and my cousin and lots of my mom's friends in and out of our house. But, you know, I had this conception that it was almost like it was a part of my family that carried until the generation before mine, but that as an American Jewish person, there were other ways to spend time or other places to focus. And I regret it now, even though I wouldn't have known to regret it then.
[00:03:23] Ilana Kaufman: Mm. It seems that you had this very kind of traditional Jewish training for lack of a better term as a young person, but it doesn't feel like that's where your spiritual self opened up.
[00:03:35] Keshira haLev Fife: I think I've always been spiritually inclined and spiritually connected. And when I think back to my childhood, I was discouraged because it manifested a sensitivity, as a sense of deep feeling. So I was taught to be independent, tough a leader, um, and was criticized often for being sensitive and shied away from that as best I could. And I like to say now that I was assigned conservative secular at birth, and now I'm Jewish nonconforming because I did all the requisite things, consecration and Hebrew school, Sunday school, confirmation, all of those things. And I learned, I think building blocks of the practice of Judaism, but I didn't learn-- to quote the title of one of the books from Reb Zalman --"Jewish with feeling." What it meant to be Jewish and not just to do Jewish.
[00:04:29] Ilana Kaufman: I love it. I was watching this video interview with you called Sofa Spirituality and you talked about this idea that Jews are often known to be people of the book...
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[00:04:40] Sofa Spirituality: Rev. Liddy Barlow : ...right? And we imagine that these faiths are about academic study and being at a library and about these really heady ideas.
[00:04:50] Sofa Spirituality: Keshira haLev Fife: I'm a lover of the book and of books and at the same time, there is definitely a need for us to reconnect with our own bodies.
[00:05:00] Ilana Kaufman: Something in your work and in your training created an opportunity to expand this kind of one dimensional notion of Jews as people of the book, to be people who are about reclamation of earth based embodied Judaism, where we're centering women and marginalized voices. Talk to us about that arc.
[00:05:27] Keshira haLev Fife: I wish I could say it was linear. But I think part of it has to do with the acknowledgement that we spiral through time, that we revisit particular points on the calendar or particular places. And we say this in Jewish tradition often they might not be different, but we are, it is possible to be highly accomplished and to just keep swimming.
What I've learned in more recent years is that true leadership is conferred by followership. And that, that asks of us to show up in our authenticity actually does not discourage us from being deep feelers, welcomes us to feel deeply and to make space for other people to do that as well. And as soon as I was able to give myself permission to be a person who is informed not only by the book, but by the body and the earth, it unlocked greater potential for authenticity, for vulnerability, for being bound to one another, that really fuels my desire and my knowingness that it's possible. Another world is possible and that we get to be co-creators of it.
[00:06:46] Ilana Kaufman: Amen to that.
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[00:06:51] Ilana Kaufman: Before we talk more about that world you've been creating, I want to talk about one more area of influence in your life, which is your scholarship at the Orphan Wisdom School. And I just want to share with the audience, one of the theses, the premises of the Orphan Wisdom School is that orphans are not people who have no parents, they are people who don't know their parents who cannot go to them from here.
[00:07:16] Keshira haLev Fife: Yes, the great success and the great lamentation of the American Jewish community is that we are collectively orphans, that we yearn to know our homeplace or our home places. Many of us have more than one homeplace and that we have a DNA blueprint of being diasporic. So we could collapse underneath that trauma and say, "we are this way, because that was that way." But the Orphan Wisdom School teaches us that we can go on. And in fact to go on with the lamentation is to be powerful in the world, is to be an agent and to be a maker of culture that doesn't ignore or excise the hard parts of our history, but allows us to be whole and to model for future generations, what it means to make community in a meaningful way with the parts that are easy and the parts that are not so easy. And of course this is in direct contradiction to our culture. It wasn't an accident that my dad chose for me to go to a school that would help me be independent. That's the American way; to be able to do it on our own. The idea of being independent and being able to do it on our own doesn't get us very far in a year of Shmita. In a year in which we come to rely on one another, in which we let go.
[00:08:52] Ilana Kaufman: Tell the audience a little bit about what it means by the Shmita year.
[00:08:56] Keshira haLev Fife: The Shmita year is the cycle in which the Torah teaches us to release every seven years, that in the seventh year, the land shall have a Shabbat, shall rest, shall lay fallow. We will release debts, rebalance, bring things into more equitable relationship. And of course it follows that if we are made of the earth, which we are, that we too must rest and remember cycles of rest, return to practice of Shabbat. Now, of course, for those of us living outside of Israel, Palestine who are not farmers and not money lenders, you could say, "well, this has nothing to do with me." And in actual fact, one of the greatest parts of being part of the Jewish people or a practitioner of Jewish tradition is that we get to make it relevant and resonant in this time. So we can bring a Shmita consciousness to this year and allow it to inform how and where we are as if we were still living in those ways.
[00:09:58] Ilana Kaufman: Mm, beautiful. Thank you. I would love for you to talk with us about being a Kohenet, a Hebrew priestess leader, a clergy member of ours and our Jewish community. And then you have literally created a home place with the Kesher Pittsburgh community. And so tell us about your works, not your nine to five vibe, but like tell us about your work.
[00:10:26] Keshira haLev Fife: Kesher Pittsburgh and Kohenet are two very different organizations and each of them holds a very special place in my heart and in my work. So I'm going to start with Kesher Pittsburgh and say that this is also a dream that I've had since I was a young person. I said, one of these days, I'm going to start a shul for cool people. When in actual fact, what I meant was I want a community where I can belong. I'm not a particularly cool person. We're not a kind of a hip vibey place. We are however, a place of belonging. We are a place where those who are loving and inclusive are embraced by those who are likewise loving and inclusive.
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[00:11:12] Keshira haLev Fife: We're explicit in our mission: we're not a Jewish community. We are a community underpinned by Jewish values, rhythms and practices that one's Judaism, one's birth lineage, one's education or experience is not a prerequisite for participation. Showing up with the desire to be present is all it takes. People are welcome as they are. And the fundament of this community is firstly to renew and enliven Judaism for our time. To set a path so that the next generation can likewise do the same, not necessarily the way we're doing it now, but the way that they will do it when it comes time.
And secondly, informed in large part by my experiences with the Orphan Wisdom School, the mark of a successful event is not whether everybody knows the words to the prayer. It's whether a small child feels comfortable asking the closest grownup for a glass of water. That we come to know one another primarily by making Jewish ritual and celebrating Jewish time together. And also that there is something deeper than just the transaction of offering our prayers, eating our challah and going home. So it's a lifelong project.
And then I think the other thing worth mentioning is that I'm sometimes referred to as a marginalized person and my community is sometimes referred to as a marginalized community. I rather think about the map of the Jewish world in all its richness and realize that we might be starting out on the margin, but by the time we're done building, we've changed the map.
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[00:12:57] Keshira haLev Fife: It strikes me as well... I recently had a conversation with some folks where I said that, "I'm not really into Judaism for the sake of preserving Judaism, that really this community is about gathering kindreds together around this project, this experiment called Judaism, so that we might sustain it while it's sustaining us, that it's a reciprocity that we are in service of something beyond, you know, when people say to me, "who do you serve?" In a kind of cheeky way I say, "Well, no one who's around here. I serve my ancestors and I serve generations not yet born. Everybody in between that's hanging around has a role to play in carrying this forward and we're still figuring out what the 'it' is as we go."
[00:13:43] Ilana Kaufman: I love that. And it invites us to talk more about your work as a Kohenet. I want to try to frame this for the audience who doesn't hang out with Kohenet very often. The way I experienced Kohenet is like you are reemerging for us this very deep set of ancient wisdoms and tools and capacities. And in some way you are revealing them to us so that we can deepen our relationship with them and together, our consciousness can rise.
[00:14:23] Keshira haLev Fife: On our best days we are doing that. Kohenet, in the biggest way, is a response to patriarchal hierarchical oppressionist systems, which says we could fight back. I could spend a lot of time having disagreements with people about whether I should be able to sing from the bimah in the congregation or feminize the Hebrew, or we could simply get on with our work building our community, creating spaces of depth and connection, of earth based practice, of embodied practiceand know that, that too is real. And so that's what we're doing.
[00:15:06] Ilana Kaufman: Amazing, amazing. As the wisdom, the rituals, the opportunities to daven together, to invite other people in, to daven with the Kohenot become maybe more robust, maybe more expansive, how do you feel about, think about kind of the bridge between your location --and that's a spiritual term, not a geographic one-- and the locations of like very traditional synagogues, for example, where the kind of process to become a clergy member is very narrow from my own observation and experience. And like who should be a clergy member is based on a set of criteria. Do you see opportunities for collaboration, bridges? What's happening there?
[00:15:56] Keshira haLev Fife: I think it's a "yes and." Over the last few years, there has been increased interest in bringing Kohenot into the fold in clergy conversations, in collaborative events and learning spaces. And we're delighted to be in conversation, particularly with folks who have an open mind and an open heart. I sometimes say that if Judaism is as worthy of preservation as we believe it to be, it can withstand some tinkering. We can play a little bit and experiment and see where it leads us. If it leads us into greater connection with the divine, with the earth, with ourselves, with one another, in my view, it's going to a good place. And so for clergy and institutions and organizations who are willing to entertain the possibility that something might look different, and that by creating something different, we're preserving it. We're actually giving it more space to thrive. That's a great conversation to have. We need a healthy, thriving ecosystem. We don't need to all be necessarily working together. I certainly don't insist that Kohenet is the new way and that everyone will ultimately arrive there. None of the denominations have ever been that and likely none of them will.
[00:17:20] Ilana Kaufman: All of that is beautiful. And I very much appreciate how the Kohenot, who are largely people of color, women, queer... there was a space to be taken up that in some ways doesn't require invitation or permission, but just to assume, and fill out the space that is already ours. And by doing that, we become deeper into our practice of Judaism. We come deeper into our relationship as Jews and we become to your point more meaningfully connected in ways that really matter.
[00:17:55] Keshira haLev Fife: It's impossible to move toward collective liberation if our day-to-day practice of spirituality is not liberated.
[00:18:02] Ilana Kaufman: That's right.
[00:18:04] Keshira haLev Fife: And sometimes that's confronting. The first time I came to Kohenet and we arrived to the Mourner's Kaddish and the person leading said, "We've arrived to the Mourner's Kaddish, please rise or fall as is your custom." and people are laying on the ground, bellies to the earth, saying the Mourner's Kaddish. I'm slowly backing away towards the door thinking, "well, this is not how the Mourner's Kaddish is said. Well, says who? Somebody somewhere told me that this is how you stand when you're saying the Mourner's Kaddish. And I believed it. And I couldn't quibble with the fullness of the experience that those folks were having as they laid on the ground. It might not be my way, but it doesn't mean that there can't be space for multiple ways.
[00:18:51] Ilana Kaufman: That's right. For some of us, it may not be that experiencing, expressing the Mourner's Kaddish on my belly is not my way. I may not even know what my way is because my training has been so narrow.
[00:19:07] Keshira haLev Fife: I think one of the liberatory aspects of Kohenet is that there is room to try things. There's room to try things on. It's a space in which a person's experimentation doesn't escort them to the exit. So it's okay to try. It's okay to question. And there are fellow seekers and questioners there that allow us to deepen our own conviction, our own understanding.
[00:19:33] Ilana Kaufman: Right. Beautiful.
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[00:19:40] Ilana Kaufman: Keshira, I wish we had more time, but let me end with this last one. What has sustained you over the last couple of years? Like where have you turned for your own nourishment, your own reenergizing, your own support?
[00:19:54] Keshira haLev Fife: Well, first, connectedness and grounded-ness with regular spiritual practice. One of the hidden blessings of this time has been the stillness. And I had previously been a person who was traveling every which way, and only in the pandemic, did I get to walk the same route for long enough to watch flowers, bloom and wither, to really firsthand be witness to the wisdom of the earth and of the seasons. So that, that stillness allowed me time for reflection. And then of course, in multiple communities that I'm in, people say to me, "Thank you for holding all of this together." And I say to them, "What you don't know is it took all of you to hold me together." One of the hallmarks that I strive for in community is one where we belong to one another. And so the very same communities that I have been nourishing and loving have been nourishing and loving me. And of course my partner supports and lifts up and holds down everything that I do. And we are both excited that as the world begins to open up, to have real deliberation and right pace in the yes and in the no, in choosing where we go and where we drink from and where we nourish so that we can sustain for a long time after this.
[00:21:16] Ilana Kaufman: May it be so. May it be so. Kohenet Keshira haLev Fife, I can't thank you enough for making this time for us today. Thank you for your leadership. Thank you for holding space in this community for all of us, even if we don't even know what space is being held for us.
[00:21:31] Keshira haLev Fife: Thank you for welcoming me. It's a pleasure and a blessing to be together.
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[00:21:38] Ilana Kaufman: Our goal on just leading is to think differently about leadership. Next week, I'll be passing the mic to Elana Wien. She'll be speaking with Ginna Green.
[00:21:49] Ginna Green: The opening in these last two years created the space for some of these conversations, but we can't just keep it at the conversation. We actually have to change the behavior and that's longer work.
[00:21:59] Ilana Kaufman: Just Leading is supported by the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation. It's produced by Wonder Media Network and Anna McClain. For more information about the organizations we work for, check out the Jews of Color Initiative at jewsofcolorinitiative.org. The SRE Network at srenetwork.org, and Leading Edge at leadingedge.org.