Rachel Cowan was born Rachel Ann Brown in Princeton, New Jersey on May 29, 1941. She received a bachelor's degree from Bryn Mawr College and a master's in social work from the University of Chicago. In 1963, she met her future husband Paul Cowan while she was tutoring black children bound for newly integrated schools in Maryland. They married in 1965 and together registered black voters in Mississippi and served in the Peace Corps in Ecuador. They began exploring Judaism in their mid-30s. She converted in 1980 and became a Rabbi.
Rabbi Cowan was a leader in helping couples navigate the shoals of mixed marriage, injecting contemplative practices like meditation and mindfulness into religious life, and designing healing services to comfort the sick and dying. She was the program director for Jewish life of the Nathan Cummings Foundation for 14 years. She left in 2004 to run the Institute for Jewish Spirituality. She wrote several books including Growing Up Yanqui and Mixed Blessings: Overcoming the Stumbling Blocks in an Interfaith Marriage written with her husband. She died from brain cancer on August 31, 2018 at the age of 77.
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