Jews in the Woods
I had only known urban or suburban living until I moved to Vermont. Having grown up in Montreal in the suburban shtetl that is ironically called Cote-Saint-Luc, I moved to the west coast, then New York City, and finally, to Boston for rabbinical school at Hebrew College. Rural living was as foreign to me as […]
Re-Thinking “Spiritual” Communities—Jewish Cohousing
Jews love community. We pray in groups (minyanim). We study in pairs (chevruta). We eat and celebrate together in joyous gatherings (smachot). Historically, Jews also typically lived in community. We stayed together as a people through persecution in Biblical times and dispersion in diaspora by living connectedly in Jewish villages, neighborhoods, and yes, even shtetls. […]
Rethinking “spiritual” communities—Jewish women’s wisdom circles
In 2018, after a fall full of Jewish holidays, six women sat around a kitchen table in Washington, D.C. to answer two questions: What are Jewish women* missing and needing in a communal setting most urgently in this moment? And how do we ensure that the structure of “Jewish community” is operating as a tool […]
Rethinking ‘spiritual’ communities — a Jewish eco-village
The Living Tree Alliance (LTA) is a Jewish cohousing village in central Vermont that weaves together a residential community with a working homestead and a nonprofit educational center. The idea took shape in 1997 when, on our second date, my future husband Craig and I realized that we shared a dream of living in an […]
Creativity as a Window Into All That Can Be
Recently, my three-year-old began the splendid quest to understand the world around him, with the word “why” now the most commonly spoken word and question in our house. I will admit, it can be exhausting, the seemingly endless echo of this one-word question. There are times when I feel like I’ve run out of answers, […]
Between the Pulpit and the Stage
As rabbinic school enrollment has dropped dramatically over the past number of years, it seems that fewer and fewer young people are looking to make a career in Jewish spiritual leadership. While some have posited that the non-denominational rabbinical schools are faring better than the others, there is still an overall decrease in those currently […]
Experiencing Shiva with A Sacred Fire
Growing up in an observant Jewish community, attending a shiva gathering was not an unusual occurrence. When I first became a congregational rabbi, I discovered that many people in my community had no experience attending a shiva minyan. We began educating people about the power of this gathering following the funeral of a close loved […]