Our Clergy
Talk to Cantor Lisa about:
Shabbat and holiday services
Planning life cycle events such as weddings, conversions, and funerals
Pastoral needs/requests for support
Participating as a Darshan or Leyner
Kabbalat Shabbat
Participating in communal singing or music making
Cantor Lisa B. Segal (she/her)
Contact Cantor@kolotchayeinu.org
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Cantor Lisa B. Segal is the senior clergy for Kolot Chayeinu, thrilled to be working with our interim team of extraordinary co-clergy. A founding member of Kolot, she has served as co-and senior clergy for over 20 years. Ordained in 2011 by the Academy for Jewish Religion (AJR), Cantor Lisa also served as their Cantorial Director for two years (2012-14). With her unique voice and energy, Cantor Lisa crafts and leads Shabbat, holiday, and High Holy Day services and observances. In addition, she teaches, creates and leads all ranges of life cycle events to enhance Kolot members’ spiritual lives. She composes music, leads community events, and has regularly performed in numerous concerts, on Facebook, and on bimahs around the country.
In partnership with Rabbi Lisa Grant, Cantor Lisa served as Consulting Editor for their award-winning and ground-breaking book and app, The Year of Mourning: A Jewish Journey, recording 14 songs for its companion app. Included in the app you can find Cantor Lisa’s original composition, Ratzo VaShov/Ebb and Flow, was featured at the opening of the 2021 ACC Convention, and she was commissioned to write a piece for T’ruah’s 2021 Gala, entitled Na’aseh V’Nishma, along with (now) Cantor Ze’evi Levtov. Notable performances include D’var Shirah – Music Meets Text at the Red Sea at the Eldridge Street Synagogue, a benefit she created and produced for the Academy for Jewish Religion, featuring spoken word artists and Jewish musicians in improvisation (music directed by Frank London of the Klezmatics), and Zero Church; the Prayer Project where she sang with The Roches at St. Ann’s Warehouse.
Cantor Segal curated and appeared in many concerts created for Kolot - “Off the Bimah!” - featuring a range of notable and innovative Jewish musicians including Joey Weisenberg, Marty Ehrlich, Marc Ribot, Alicia Jo Rabins, Roy Nathanson, Alicia Svigals, and others, and she has performed with numerous cantors and choirs throughout the New York metropolitan area and beyond.
Cantor Lisa is a Member of the ACC (American Conference of Cantors), an active alumna of AJR and Hevraya, the Institute for Jewish Spirituality’s Mindfulness meditation clergy cohort, and a longtime member of the Women Cantors Network. Cantor Lisa and her husband, writer and maggid Arthur “Ari” Strimling, live in Park Slope, Brooklyn.
Rabbi Abby Stein (she/her)
Contact RabbiAbby@kolotchayeinu.org
Student Rabbi Madeleine Fortney (she/her)
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Rabbi Abby Stein joined Kolot as part-time Rabbi in fall 2024. She is a known activist for justice, especially justice for trans people. Her role includes a series of Elul teachings, as well as crafting and co-leading High Holy Day services with Cantor Lisa and the rest of the team. In addition, Rabbi Stein will co-lead Shabbat services once a month, co-lead services on other holidays, provide pastoral care, and occasionally lead Torah study and adult education offerings. You can learn more about Rabbi Abby Stein here.
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Student Rabbi Madeleine Fortney is in her final year as a rabbinical student at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and will be ordained in May 2025. She joined the Kolot team in fall 2024, bringing her creativity, her singing, and her passion for liturgy and justice. In addition to her active role in High Holy Day services, she will be on the bimah–usually with the Cantor–most Shabbat mornings. She will also provide pastoral care, teach adults and sometimes children, and meet with members as often as possible, both one-on-one and in small groups. Madeleine is a self-described queer Jew who looks forward to working with a congregation that shares her values.
Student Rabbi Hadar Ahuvia (she/her)
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Student Rabbi Hadar Ahuvia, who is in her third year at Hebrew College in Boston, is a beloved and long-time leader of prayer at Kolot. Over the summer months, she co-led services with Cantor Lisa and led some outdoor services in August. As part of the High Holy Day clergy team, she will take a lead role, especially in Yom Kippur afternoon creative interpretations. She will continue to co-lead our beautiful monthly Kabbalat Shabbat services with Cantor Lisa.
Ellen Lippmann, Rabbi Emerita (she/her)
Contact RabbiEmerita@kolotchayeinu.org
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Ellen Lippmann is the founder of Kolot Chayeinu. Rabbi Lippmann is the former East Coast Director of MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger, and former director of the Jewish Women's Program at the New 14th Street Y in Manhattan.
Rabbi Lippmann was Co-chair and served on the board of T’ruah: the Rabbinic Call for Human Rights for 18 years. She served as the first social justice chair for the Women’s Rabbinic Network. She was the founder of the Soup Kitchen at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York, and co-founder of the 15-year Children of Abraham Peace Walk: Jews, Christians and Muslims Walking Together in Brooklyn in Peace. She worked with NYCC and others on the Fight for $15, and with JFREJ on the early fight in NY State for the rights of domestic workers. Before retiring, she helped establish the system of working groups at Kolot Chayeinu to ensure broader embrace and a path to activism on racism, Israel and Palestine, and the rights of queer and trans people.
Currently she sits on the boards of JFREJ and Integrate NYC, and mentors rabbis and activists through CLI and Taproot, and is founder and former co-chair of CAMMEERR, where we gather as multiracial and cross-faith leaders to nourish relationships and to start to build a political and spiritual framework to interrupt and transform stuck and harmful dynamics that attempt to divide our communities from each other.
Rabbi Lippmann was ordained in 1991 by Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, and also received there the degree of Master of Hebrew Letters. She holds a BA in English Language and Literature from Boston University and an MS in Library Science from Simmons College. Rabbi Lippmann and her wife are long-time Brooklyn residents and believe to be absolutely true what a Kolot Chayeinu member once said in jest: "IT DON'T GET ANY BETTER THAN BROOKLYN!"