Kohenet Hebrew Priestess Institute was co-founded in 2005 by Rabbi Jill Hammer and Taya Shere, as a clergy ordination program, a sisterhood / siblinghood, and an organization working to change the face of Judaism.  For 18 years, Kohenet Hebrew Priestess Institutes founders, graduates and students reclaimed and innovated embodied, earth-based feminist Judaism, drawing from ways that women and other marginalized people led Jewish ritual across time and space.  In this time, the Kohenet Institute ordained 137 women and non-binary spiritual leaders and practitioners as kohanot, and educated thousands more through in-person and on-line retreats, classes, prayer services and other programming.  While Kohenet Hebrew Priestess Institute closed in 2023, the Kohenet movement continues to innovate new kinds of earth-based, feminist Jewish leadership, drawing on history and contemporary spiritual imagination, and widen Jewish understanding of what spiritual practice can be.  Kohanot serve as prayer and ritual leaders, chaplains, sacred artists, writers, musicians, scholars, educators, rabbinic leaders, community activists, and much more. Find Kohenet publications here including The Hebrew Priestess by Jill Hammer and Taya Ma Shere. To connect with the Kohenet movement as it continues to evolve, find Jill Hammer's work here and here and Taya Mâ Shere's work here and here.

While the role of priestess is not foregrounded in the Hebrew Bible, we can infer from characters from Miriam the prophetess to the tzovot (shrinekeepers) of the Tabernacle and the women drummers of the Temple that such spiritual leaders did exist.  Throughout Jewish history, in spite of restrictions on gender, healers and visionaries, ritual artists and scholars, dreamers and prayer leaders who are women or otherwise on the edges, have continued to exist and to serve the community.  This legacy is a part of Jewish history and can inform a vibrant Jewish practice today.  Reclaiming the title of “kohenet” reminds us that the spiritual practices of women, genderqueer people, and others outside the religious authority structure matter to our past, present and future as much as the sages and teachings widely regarded as the core of Jewish culture.

Kohenet Kavannah (organizational Intention)

Kohenet Hebrew Priestess Institute reclaimed and innovated embodied, earth-based feminist Judaism. Kohenet's spiritual leadership training, ordination programs, publications and community offerings centered ritual as transformative practice. 

We drew from ways women and other marginalized people have led across time - shrinekeepers, prophetesses and wise women of the Hebrew Bible and beyond. Kohenet honored the ways in which Shekhinah appears to us through traditions, imaginations, prayers, dreams, ancestors, and role models throughout Jewish history. We celebrated the sacred in the body, the earth and the cosmos.

Kohenet was a training program, a sacred community, and a movement changing the paradigm of Jewish spiritual leadership. 

Kohenet Shabbat, holidays, and Virtual Temple / online classes were open to all.

The three-year Kohenet training and ordination program welcomed applications from trans women, cis women, and nonbinary people, who are drawn to Kohenet’s kavannah.

Why We Reclaim This Ancient Title

The first known poet, Enheduanna, served as a priestess of Inanna in Sumer, and there were priestesses in many cultures throughout the known world.  Yet the title of priestess does not appear to exist in the Hebrew Bible, and indeed, the patriarchal authorities who compiled the Bible eliminated most references to women's spiritual leadership. However, some aspects of women's spiritual power shine through. From these hints, we can deduce how women participated in the sacred cult of the Israelite nation: as mothers, prophetesses, and even ritual officiants. We know, for example, that women baked cakes for the Queen of Heaven as part of a sacred rite honoring the Divine feminine. 

Our later Jewish foremothers did not entirely abandon the priestess role even after it was written out out of the tradition.  The title "priestess" appears several times on Jewish gravestones during the Roman period. Other titles such as "eldress" "mother of the synagogue," and "head of the synagogue" on similar gravestones lead one to believe that women served in leadership functions in pre-Talmudic and Talmudic times.  However, following this period the title fell entirely out of practice. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, women served as dreamers and diviners in communities of Jewish mystics in Sfat and elsewhere.  In their names, we seek to re-establish this sacred tradition.