Rabbinic Resources

Spiritual Counseling

In your difficult time, I promise you a listening ear, a supportive shoulder, the wisdom of Jewish experience and an open heart to guide you to a better place where you can see hope and healing.

Conversions

It's wonderful and humbling when someone comes to me to say they'd like to explore becoming Jewish. This is a journey on many levels, spiritual, peoplehood, study, customs, and ceremonies and I'll be there every step of the way for you. The Jewish people will, too, because, before anything else (be it religion, ethnicity, etc.) we are a people. If you seek to become part of our people, we will teach you what we know and welcome you into our work of tikkun and tzedakah, fixing the world and bringing justice where it is lacking.

Spiritual Counseling

A teacher of mine used to say,

“Rabbis are the first aid station on the battlefield of life.” While I hope that we all view life as a wonderful and precious opportunity rather than a “battlefield” I believe his is an apt metaphor. It is always humbling for me to be asked to listen to the difficulties that they are experiencing along life’s journey. I take it as a huge responsibility that you would put your trust in me. My responses for you will draw on my knowledge of my own tradition’s wisdom and other bits of understanding I’ve been privileged to acquire. With my teacher’s metaphor in mind, I am fully aware that my role for you is to share what my spiritual training and experience has to offer. One of the most productive components of spiritual counseling is that during our time together we might discover items you wish to explore further with your therapist. It is an honor to be in your trust.

"Rabbis are the first aid station on the battlefield of life."

Conversions

Over time, it has become the Jewish people's practice not to seek converts,

but rather to welcome those who, of their own volition and the authenticity of their own journey, come to us and wish to become part of our people.

Our perspective is based, among other sources, on this famous passage in the Talmud, In the first century B.C.E., a non-Jew came to Hillel the Elder and gave to him the following challenge: "Convert me to Judaism on condition that you teach me the whole Torah while I stand on one foot.” He [Hillel] accepted him as a convert and he He said to him, “What is hateful to you, do not to your neighbor: that is the whole Torah, the rest is the commentary; go and learn it.” (Shabbat 31a) Another famous source is from the Book of Ruth. As you may know, Ruth was a Moabite who married a Jewish man. Only ten years into her marriage both her husband and her father-in-law died. Ruth's mother-in-law, Naomi, told Ruth that she should return to her people. Ruth refused and said to Naomi: "Do not ask me to leave you, or to go back from following you, for wherever you go, I will go, and wherever you live, I will live; your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die, I will die, and there will I be buried." (Ruth 1:16-17)

It is an overwhelming honor for me to accompany a person on her/his journey toward Judaism. The usual process involves the Reform Movement's Introduction to Judaism class and then about a year of study with me so that you can live through a Jewish year of holidays and holy days. It would be a great pleasure for me to have the opportunity to help you on this spiritual quest. There is no fee.

“What is hateful to you, do not to your neighbor: that is the whole Torah, the rest is the commentary; go and learn it.”