Rabbi Lila Kagedan

Director of Bioethics New York Medical College

Shma. Judaism is a faith of listening. The word shma is repeated over and over in the Torah. Listening is an imperative. It is a spiritual practice. It is a directive. A call to action. There is great power and potential in the practice of listening. Encounter invites Jewish leaders to… truly listen to the stories of Palestinians and hear their experiences.

Rabbi Lila Kagedan joined Encounter’s Intensive Leadership Seminar in June 2017. Reflecting on her experience she says, “Encounter uses the holy act of listening to teach participants to pay attention, to internalize, to observe, to feel and then to take this listening and hearing and do something with it. Only through listening will Jews and Palestinians be able to coexist.”

Rabbi Kagedan holds degrees and certificates from Midreshet Lindenbaum, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, The University of Toronto, Harvard University, The Medstar Washington Hospital Center and Massachusetts General Hospital and is a Shalom Hartman Institute RLI fellow and faculty member. She is also a Hadassah Brandeis Institute-Gender, Culture, Religion and Law Research Associate. Rabbi Kagedan was ordained in 2015 by Yeshivat Maharat and is the first Orthodox woman to adopt the title of rabbi. She served until recently as rabbi of the Walnut Street Synagogue in Chelsea, MA. Rabbi Kagedan is the director of bioethics at New York Medical College and is a clinical ethicist as well as a chaplain in hospitals and hospices.