Memoir

Rabbi, Your Cleavage is Showing

Michal Mendelsohn | Memoir

Rabbi, Your Cleavage Is Showing chronicles Michal Mendelsohn’s extraordinary journey from a lonely childhood in Manhattan to becoming one of the first women ordained as a rabbi by Hebrew Union College in 1975. She details her struggles as a child raised in hotel apartments by parents who were emotionally detached. The memoir narrates her strained relationship with her father after the death of her mother and her unexpected belonging experience in Israel during the Six-Day War, where she lived on a kibbutz, served in the IDF entertainment corps, and discovered her Jewish identity. Returning to America, she faced relentless sexism in rabbinical school and congregations that scrutinized her app...

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