Rooted. Open. Joyfully Jewish.
We’re Kehillah North London, a diverse, creative, and inclusive Jewish community in Stoke Newington. Whoever you are, however you show up, you’re welcome here.
Kehillah North London is a thriving and diverse Jewish community, based in Stoke Newington. We are proud of our inclusive, friendly, and innovative approach to building an intergenerational Jewish community. We are equally committed to the ancestral wisdom of the Jewish tradition, grounded in Torah study, and to a living Judaism relevant to London in the 21st century.
Thanks to our founders, our community leans local, politically progressive, multiracial, feminist, and LGBTQIA+. We are a trans inclusive community. We are from many different Jewish backgrounds. Our community and leaders include Mizrahi, Sephardi, and Ashkenazi Jews, Jews of Colour, Black Jews, Latino Jews, Asian Jews, mixed-heritage Jews and their non-Jewish families and chosen families, people who were born Jewish and Jews by choice. Children and adults of all ages are welcome and involved. We hold diverse views on Israel-Palestine and also believe that all Israelis and Palestinians deserve to live freely and equally. This stems from our anti-racist commitment to freedom and dignity for all peoples.
Most importantly, we seek to ensure that no one is marginalised, and where we miss the mark in achieving this important goal, we commit to keep learning and continue getting there. These values are rooted in the foundational teaching of our Jewish tradition (Genesis 1:27), that all human beings are created b’tselem Elohim, in the Divine image. Each of us is therefore enjoined to treat the other as of supreme value and to embrace our individual & infinite diversity.
What’s on at Kehillah
There’s always something happening in our community from Shabbat services and festival celebrations to adult learning, concerts, and social justice events.
We meet for Shabbat morning services twice a month, usually on the first and third Saturdays, and once a month for Friday night services. Everyone is welcome, but we do ask first-time visitors to register in advance so we can keep our community safe and welcoming.
Check out each event for details on how to attend!
Upcoming Events
We are a proud member of the Progressive Judaism movement
In 2025, Britain’s Reform and Liberal communities united into one to form Progressive Judaism for the UK and Ireland – the culmination of 250 years of history, progress, innovation and change. It is part of a global movement of 1.8 million people across 50 countries, and brings together timeless Jewish tradition with the diversity, richness and values of the modern world. At its heart is a commitment to every individual, couple and family being able to have full and equal participation in synagogue, community and Jewish life.
Our Leadership
Our spiritual life is guided by Rabbi Leah Jordan and Cantor Rachel Weston, whose thoughtful and creative leadership helps shape everything we do, from services and learning to justice work and community care. Alongside them, our elected management committee, administrator, wardens, service leaders and volunteers work together to keep Kehillah dynamic, inclusive and ever evolving.
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Leah (she/they) is Rabbi of Kehillah North London, as well Progressive Jewish Chaplain for university students.
Hailing originally from, as Bob Dylan wrote, a ‘country called the Midwest’, Leah has lived and worked since 2011 in Great Britain. Prior to Kehillah, they served as rabbi of the Norwich Liberal Jewish Community.
Leah has spent more than three years at various yeshivas and intensive Jewish learning centres, including Yeshivat Hadar in New York City, the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies and the Conservative Yeshiva in Jerusalem, and SVARA; inspired by what Torah is and can do, Leah is co-coordinator of Azara-Opening the Beit Midrash, an initiative creating Jewish text learning for everyone in the UK, .
They are also a current and founding member of Na’amod, a movement of Jews in the UK seeking to end our community’s support for Israel’s occupation and apartheid, and to mobilise it in the struggle for freedom, equality and justice for all Palestinians and Israelis.
Leah received semicha from the Leo Baeck College in London and also holds an MA in Jewish Studies from King’s College London, and a BA in English Literature from the University of Kansas, with concentrations in Modern European History and French language studies at the Alliance Française in Paris.
Leah loves speculative fiction and fan fiction. She lives in Maida Hill with her partner, Benji Stanley, also a rabbi, and daughter, Jules Pessie.
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Rachel Weston is a cantor, educator, song collector and performer of Yiddish song and Khazones (Ashkenazi cantorial music). She was ordained in May 2023 after five years of study at New York's Hebrew Union College School of Sacred Music, where she was the recipient of the Koret Foundation Scholarship and the Atara Scholarship for Merit, and received a masters of sacred music.
After being ordained, she was the cantor of Sinai Synagogue in Leeds, making history as the first cantor in the UK to serve as sole spiritual leader of a Reform community.
For the past fifteen years, she has coordinated and taught Yiddish song and niggunim workshop programmes for the Jewish Music Institute, SOAS, Kleznorth, Klezfest London, WOMAD festival, London and Brighton Yiddish choir, Limmud, Klezkanada, and Yiddish Summer Weimar.
Rachel performs Yiddish song and Khazones internationally including concerts in London, Montreal, Toronto, New York, Philadelphia, Weimar, Berlin, Krakow and Chrzanow (Poland), Vienna, and the University of Yale’s School of Sacred Music.
Alongside her synagogue leadership, Rachel is committed to music as a tool for healing and connection and facilitates therapeutic workshops for people with dementia and their caregivers.
Rachel is delighted to be co-serving the Kehillah Community as their interim spiritual leader.