When you’re a kid, you often have no idea what shape your life will take. Growing up in Missouri in a military, Christian, but not religious, family, Rabbi Sandra Lawson wouldn’t have thought that she would become a rabbi.
Yet in March, Lawson, who is Black, queer, an activist, social media pioneer, vegan, a veteran, and a musician, will become Reconstructing Judaism’s inaugural director of racial diversity, equity and inclusion. (Reconstructing Judaism is the central organization of the Reconstructionist movement of Judaism.) “Reckoning with racism — both systemic and personal — is one of the moral demands of our time,” Rabbi Deborah Waxman, president of Reconstructing Judaism, said in a statement, “Sandra has the substance, the