I decided to become a rabbi when I was 13 years old.

Yes, I know, that sounds like I had a great Bat Mitzvah and wanted to keep the party going — but that’s not my story. At 13, I experienced a significant loss in my family: the death of my stepmother, Linda Pass. At the time, I had a rabbi who sat with me and guided me through my grieving processes. That rabbi showed me that Judaism wasn’t just something you learned at summer camp or in Hebrew school: it was an entire world that could support me in my lowest lows and celebrate me at my highest highs. This experience shaped what I believe a rabbi is: someone who sits next to you, wherever you are, shows you what possibilities lie ahead, and empowers you to make your own sacred choices.

For me, being a rabbi means building deep relationships, fostering rigorous learning and enacting relevant ritual, and enabling you to live the Judaism that you choose.

My life has, obviously, changed a lot in the 20+ years since I made that decision, and my reasons for choosing the rabbinate have expanded. But ultimately, that model of relationship-learning-living-choosing has stayed at the core of my work.

I attended Brandeis University for my undergraduate degree, studying Near Eastern and Judaic Studies, Psychology, and Education Studies. Every summer, I worked at URJ Goldman Union Camp Institute, first as a counselor, then unit head. Eventually I returned to serve as their Director of Education. After college, I worked in the field of informal Jewish education at synagogues in Boston, running middle- and high-school programs at Temple Emanu-El of Marblehead, Shirat HaYam of Swampscott, and Temple Shir Tikva of Wayland.

While at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Jerusalem and New York, I specialized my learning in feminist Jewish thought, ritual, and liturgy. I delivered my senior sermon on the evolution (and dissolution) of ancient Israelite goddess figures, and the need for gender-inclusive liturgical language and metaphors for God. I wrote my rabbinic thesis, entitled “B’chesed uv’rachamim: How Jewish Rituals Theologize Abortion” on the theology embedded in creative Jewish rituals for people who have abortions. During rabbinical school I also co-founded a two-year experimental community called “Wondrously Does/n’t: A Space for the Jewish Body,” in which we built community and creative ritual around the experience of invisible and chronic illness. This community was built not only on accessibility, but on a Judaism that could embrace every body as we are.

After ordination, I worked as the Associate Rabbi and Director of Spiritual Counseling for The T’shuvah Center, a Jewish addiction recovery community in New York City. It was there that I honed the skill of sharing some of my own vulnerabilities in order to encourage others to feel safe in showing up as their whole selves.

I intentionally share my own stories, personal and vulnerable, so that others will see that they are not alone, that they can share their personal and vulnerable lives with me.

I put this ideology into action when I started to share publicly the story of my abortion. I now go around to different Jewish communities to teach about abortion in ancient and contemporary Jewish thought, law, and ritual, using my own story as a doorway for others to step through.

For the past three years, I have returned to the field of education, this time teaching adults. As a “Super Teacher” educator at the Jewish Learning Collaborative, I teach ~20 adults one-on-one who work in Jewish settings on a wide array of learner-led topics, from feminist Jewish thought to basic Hebrew to Jewish approaches to meeting mental health challenges to Jewish ethical traditions. As the Senior Educator at Modern Jewish Couples, I write curriculum and work with couples on how Judaism can show up authentically and meaningfully in their lives as they think about marriage, moving in together, becoming a family (however that’s defined!), and more.

I believe that this work, one-on-one or community-based, learning centered or ritually motivated, opens the door for us to live a life of meaning and hope — a Jewish life — of our own making.