Heart of a Stranger

by Angela Buchdahl

Angela Buchdahl was born in Seoul, the daughter of a Korean Buddhist mother and Jewish American father. Profoundly spiritual from a young age, by sixteen she felt the first stirrings to become a rabbi. Despite the naysayers and periods of self-doubt—Would a mixed-race woman ever be seen as authentically Jewish or chosen to lead a congregation?—she stayed the course, which took her first to Yale, then to rabbinical school, and finally to the pulpit of one of the largest, most influential congregations in the world.

Author: Angela Buchdahl is an American reform rabbi. She was the first East Asian-American to be ordained as a rabbi as well as the first East Asian-American to be ordained as a cantor. In 2011, she was named by Newsweek as one of America’s “Most Influential Rabbis.”