About

This is the new Congregation Beth Israel From the Rabbi page, where you can find the latest updates from Reb Rachel. Learn more about us and/or more about our rabbi… or just read on!

Rabbi Rachel Barenblat was ordained by ALEPH: the Alliance for Jewish Renewal in January of 2011. (Here’s some information about the ALEPH rabbinic ordination program.) Born and reared in San Antonio, Texas, Rabbi Barenblat grew up first Conservative and then Reform; since 2002 she has been involved with Jewish Renewal, a transdenominational movement to revitalize Judaism and Jewish practice. To Rabbi Barenblat, Jewish Renewal means — first and foremost — engaging with Judaism in a way that’s full of joy.

Before rabbinic school, she was co-founder and executive director of Inkberry, a literary arts nonprofit which brought writing workshops and a reading series to northern Berkshire and aimed to help all writers discover their own unique “voice.” She holds an MFA in Writing and Literature from the Bennington Writing Seminars and is author of four chapbooks of poems, among them chaplainbook (Laupe House Press, 2006, a collection of poems arising out of hospital chaplaincy.

Rabbi Barenblat is most recently author of 70 faces (Phoenicia Publishing, 2011), a collection of poems which arose in conversation with the Torah. The book contains one poem for each parsha in the annual cycle. Rabbi Shefa Gold writes that “through Rachel’s skillful, joyful, playful and profound poetry, the Torah opens her secrets to us and invites us into an intimate conversation with truth.”

Since 2003, Rabbi Barenblat has shared her prose, her poetry, her musings about Judaism and Torah, and her Jewish learning and teaching on her blog, Velveteen Rabbi, which in 2008 was named one of the top 25 sites on the internet by TIME magazine. Here are a few samples from the Velveteen Rabbi archives: This is spiritual life (2011), On holy community (2010), Thirteen ways of looking at Yom Kippur (2007). Her haggadah, The Velveteen Rabbi’s Haggadah for Pesach, is used by thousands worldwide. She is a contributing editor at Zeek: A Jewish Journal of Thought and Culture.

Her favorite parts of rabbinic work include pastoral care and spiritual direction (she is studying now in ALEPH’s spiritual direction / hashpa’ah ordination program, and will receive formal ordination as a spiritual director in January 2012), leading services (with contemporary poetry and traditional liturgy, with guitar and song or silent meditation), and most of all, serving the Jewish community and helping to connect people with the tradition and with God.

Here’s how she sees the coming year of serving as CBI’s interim rabbi:

“My goal for the year ahead is to create space in which I can help the Congregation Beth Israel community discern its best path ahead, while providing continuity so that CBI can continue to be a place of joyful service, compassion, learning and access to tradition. In these ways, I aspire to serve this community’s needs, offering each person opportunities for connection to God and our traditions while serving as an instrument of both stability and innovation so that we may find blessing in this season of transition.”