Ellen Roth was visiting her family in New York on September 11, 2001 and saw the World Trade Center buildings collapse. This event and the death of her mother three weeks later combined to change her view of life. A longtime advocate and activist in the Deaf community, Roth eventually left her job as a senior public service administrator for the City of Chicago’s Office of Rehabilitation Services, a position she had held for a decade. It was time, she decided, for a change, time to do what she calls her “soul’s work.” In September 2002, Roth began rabbinical studies at the Hebrew Seminary of the Deaf in Skokie, IL. A month later, she received a cochlear implant. While she’s still learning how to speak, Roth can now hear sounds and voices. Her implant has come in handy for learning Hebrew. It will be her fifth language, after English, American Sign Language, French and French Sign Language.

At the end of her five-year course of study at the Skokie seminary, Roth will be a rabbi–only the third Deaf rabbi in the world, according to her seminary mentor, Rabbi Douglas Goldhamer. But instead of serving a traditional congregation, either hearing or Deaf, she wants to become a Kabbalistic teacher and healer. The focus of her rabbinical studies with Goldhamer is the Kabbalah, the Jewish mystical tradition assembled in a number of books, all written in Hebrew, collected throughout the ages.

Kabbalist mystics believe the remedies to all of life’s difficulties–including physical maladies–can be found in the texts. Roth explained that the Kabbalah, which literally means “to receive,” teaches that the body and mind can become a vessel for messages and energy that can be healing for the recipient and others. “To still your mind so that you can receive the message,” she said, “that’s what the Kabbalah is, though not a lot of us know how to do that. I don’t know what real work I’m going to do, but, you know, I’m pulled here. I haven’t figured out what I’m going to do with it, but I’m staying.”

If she completes her studies, Roth will be the only Deaf woman Kabbalist in the world. Traditionally, the Kabbalah has been shrouded in secrecy, studied almost exclusively by an elite group of male rabbis. “The contribution she’ll be making to Judaism is enormous,” said Goldhamer, who established the Seminary for the Deaf in 1992. There are about 50,000 Deaf Jews in the United States. “The Deaf are thirsty for knowledge of Judaism and spirituality …. The Deaf are thirsty because there are no deaf educators in [Jewish] religious fields. They just don’t exist.”