Leah Novick (born 1932) grew up in Scranton, New Jersey. In her teens, her family moved to New York City where she attended both public high school and the Herzliah Hebrew Institute and considered herself a Zionist. Novick graduated from Brooklyn College and earned a master's degree in public policy. In the late 1950s, she was part of听sit-ins and lie-ins to integrate West Chester, Pennsylvania鈥檚 swimming pools. Later she moved to Westchester County, New York, where she helped organize Jewish groups to attend the 1963 March on Washington.
Novick听ran unsuccessfully for the New York state legislature in 1970 and moved to Washington to work as chief aide for Bella Abzug, an American lawyer, U.S. Representative, social activist, and a leader of the Women's Movement. In 1977,听Novick听helped to coordinate the National Commission on the Observance of International Women's Year. In 1978, she worked as a guest professor听at Stanford. During much of the 1980s she taught at UC Berkeley鈥檚 graduate school of public policy.
After a career in politics advocating for civil rights and feminist values, Novick听became an influential leader, teacher, writer, and rabbi in the Jewish Renewal movement. Ordained as a Jewish Renewal rabbi in 1987, Novick听has been a teaching ambassador for ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal, giving lectures, leading retreats, and teaching courses throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, and Israel. She founded two Renewal communities, Beit Shekhinah in Berkeley and Shabbos in Carmel in the Monterey area, and in the 1990s she helped found OHALAH: the Association of Rabbis for Jewish Renewal. Novick also founded ALEPH鈥檚 yearly retreat group Ruach Ha鈥橝retz, 鈥淪pirit of the Earth,鈥 which meets in different locations every summer. In 2008, she published her book On the Wings of Shekhinah: Rediscovering Judaism鈥檚 Divine Feminism, and is currently working on a number of other projects including a book on notable women throughout Jewish history.
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