About Me
 A native of Cleveland, Ohio, I grew up in the midst of a large, boisterous, eastern European Jewish immigrant family. Infused with Yiddishkit, their kitchens were filled with stories, luscious dishes, laughter and warmth, the women, feisty and in control, the men gentle and determined.
As a teen a recruitment film for HUC caught my interest, and despite my rabbi's telling me that girls couldn't be rabbis, in 1970 I attended the University of Cincinnati in order to explore this option further. At U.C. it was my good fortune to enter into an extraordinary experimental learning program where I majored in Higher Innovative Education, Women's Studies, and Humanistic Psychology, graduating in 1974, following which I entered the rabbinate.
The early days of women's move into the rabbinate were filled with stories and challenges. I experienced both while serving in Petosky, MI, Yellow Springs, OH, and two very glorious years in St.Catherines, Ontario.
After ordination, I served at Larchmont Temple in NY graced by Rabbi Leonard Poller, may he rest in peace, whose smile and verve still touch my days, and his amazing wife, Priscilla, whom I deeply treasure, as well as their extraordinary daughters all, have long been dear to me.
In 1982, my incredible daughter came into this world. My first positions in the Pacific Northwest took me south of Seattle to Bet Hat'fliot in Olympia, WA and north to Temple B'nai Or in Everett, WA. University of Washington's Hillel, also allowed me to launch a Lehrhaus Judaica, where rabbis and teachers from of all streams of Jewish life offered an amazing range of classes for adults in the wider Seattle Jewish community.
When becoming a single mother in 1986, I served a conservative congregation, Herzl Ner Tamid, on Mercer Island, and had the gift of joining an outstanding team of colleagues, Cantor Brad Kurland and Joanne Glosser, both mensches and superb Jewish professionals.
In 1988 I entered post graduate studies in Marriage and Family Therapy, in an incredible program with outstanding faculty at the Presbyterian Counseling Service, a certified training center accredited by the American Association of MFT. Additionally I augmented my studies with several Masters level courses at Antioch University. Knowing going back to school as a single mother and older student would be grueling, I gathered a group of wonderful Jewish women in 1988, to celebrate Rosh Chodesh. We rented out the Center for Holistic Medicine, and thus I inadvertently launched my writing of liturgical poetry.
While in the MFT program, I interned with the outstanding team at Lutheran Social Services, and on weekends not with my daughter, commuted to Vancouver, B. C, working with Congregation Or Shalom, a Jewish Renewal congregation, and with her, traveled to the Jewish Community Center in Bremerton, WA , a Reform congregation.
After completing my training, I joined the interdisciplinary and dedicated team of Hospice of Seattle as their bereavement coordinator, receiving a grant that allowed me to research the top bereavement Hospice programs in the country, and then to build their bereavement program at Hospice of Seattle. Additionally I launched my private practice, continued to build an inclusive liberal congregation that reached out to unaffiliated Jews in Seattle, Congregation Eitz Or, and began to publish prose and liturgical poetry.
Congregation Eitz Or gathered some of the most amazing Jews I've met in my rabbinate. Their openness to innovation and exploration, their responsiveness and desire to grow as Jews, their support and belief in me, was one of the most extraordinary times thus far in my rabbinate. Eitz Or strove to be self aware, attending to process and Jewish values, with each person having a vote in determining directional and an active role in shaping a healthy, alive, Jewish community.
In 1996 when moving to Vancouver, BC, I started a therapeutic practice, and began lecturing and teaching. Joining the dynamic Rev. Cathy Campbell, an amazing Anglican priest as co-director of the Centre for Faith and Healing, opened yet another chapter. I later joined Lion's Gate Hospital as their bereavement coordinator and aided in the building of their bereavement services program, as well as helped to launch and then joined as core staff Langara College's Palliative Care training program, one of the two accredited training programs in the Provence teaching Death, Dying and Bereavement to some outstanding human beings.
Vancouver's School Board's Adult Education program wished to experimentally offer classes in spirituality and I was invited to create a class, which I did, on Women and Spirituality, which filled to maximum capacity. I also lectured at Vancouver's School of Theology, UBC's School of Medicine School of Rehabilitation Sciences for OT's and PT's on Spirituality, Grief and Loss, facilitated one of the adult groups at Canuck's Children's Hospice, as well as the adult group in the experimental and amazing program, Children's Support Beams with some very talented, creative, health care professionals.
With my daughter's graduation from University and departure to Americorps, I returned to the congregational rabbinate, joining the warm community of Congregation House of Israel, in Hot Springs, Arkansas.
In addition to serving the congregation, I joined the team at Levi Hospital's Psychiatric ward doing weekly spiritual care groups, joined their wonderful Hospice team, and also served as Service Coordinator to Levi Towers, a HUD building and their incredible team and amazing residents for four years.
Throughout my route stood my father, indeed a Renaissance man, a man of integrity, humor, and love, and my mother, whose recent death imprints my life, whose love for the natural world, and powerful spirit impacts my days, my amazing daughter, whose phenomenal spirit, deep heart, keen sight and incredible ability, leave me in constant amazement and awe, my sister whose laughter I cannot do without, and dear friends whose calls and emails and love keep me going, Pris, Lorraine, and Joanna and Lane, whose care and being in touch make the difference, my email sisters of heart, Karen and Christine and the Wonder Women of my women clergy circle in Lubbock, bless them all.
Currently, I'm living in Lubbock, Texas, serving Congregation Shaareth Israel, joining forces with some loving and wonderful human beings, and celebrating the many days of sunshine, the amazing breath of sky, the incredible cloudscapes and moon risings, and the funny figures of the prairie dogs, who keep me laughing.
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