Born and, for the most part, raised in Germany, Rabbi Elisa Klapheck belongs to a generation whose first task was to create a path to a positive Jewish identity. For her, Jewish education was focused around the premise that Jews, in fact, were no longer existent, that a vibrant Jewish community life would never again be possible in Germany. The path she tread had many milestones, including a private Torah reading group while she was a student of Political Science. That was followed by Jewish Studies at the “Free University” of Berlin, parallel to her profession as a political journalist; and it led to her current position as editor-in-chief of "Jüdisches Berlin." Since the 90‘s she has been strongly engaged in a revival of Judaism in Germany.
She co-founded an Egalitarian Minyan in Berlin and co-established the Jewish women’s organization "Bet Debora," which invites European female rabbis, cantors and activists to bi-annual conferences and publishes a regular journal. She also published works on forgotten personalities of our modern religious Jewish heritage, such as the world’s first woman rabbi, Regina Jonas (Berlin 1902 – Auschwitz 1944) or the prayers of Bertha Pappenheim (Vienna 1859 – Isenburg 1936). As a rabbinic student, she opened new horizons in Berlin’s synagogue Oranienburger Strasse, for example, by establishing a regular Learner’s Minchah, which relates Talmud, political-social questions and mysticism to each other.
Along her path, numerous teachers accompanied her, each appearing in her life at just the right moment, seeing the rabbi in her long before she herself did. They included a non-Jewish university lecturer at the Department of Jewish Studies, who taught her Aramaic; an orthodox Ba’al Koreh and Mashgiach, who studied Talmud with her for years; and one of Berlin’s cantors, who opened the world of the liturgy to her. Even the departed accompanied her. Regina Jonas‘ halachic treatise "Can a Woman Be a Rabbi?" guided her not only through all the ages along exemplary rabbinical texts, but also confronted her again and again with the question: "Can you be a rabbi?”
Later she studied with some well-known rabbis, especially her mentors: Rabbi Peter Natan Levinson, the last of the "Grandseigneur" of German Judaism; Rabbi Andreas Nachama, who today represents Jewish renewal in Germany; Rabbi Moshe Waldoks, who has a genuine relationship to the “good old Jewish Europe”. She also studied with other teachers in the ALEPH Rabbinical Program, foremost Rabbi Daniel Siegel, Rabbi Judy Abrams, Rabbi Miles Krassen and Rabbi Sami Barth. Elisa particularly notes her very special trail-blazers who helped her with embedding her path into a greater spiritual dimension, which is so much needed in the world, and to whom she is deeply grateful, Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and Rabbi Marcia Prager.
