I am a chaplain, rabbi, educator, leader, coach, and a student of everyone I meet. In each role, I witness and help you reflect on your life story, your thoughts and feelings. We all possess inner resources of strength, resilience, and coping.
Even if I offer you skills or insights, my goal is to build on your lifetime of acquired wisdom. To heal from our collective and individual traumas, I believe we need to nurture culturally humble, sensitive communities that are inclusive by every measure.
Listening to people during their times of struggle, crisis, grief, and growth is a primary role for me. I have been board-certified by the Association of Professional Chaplains. My love of teaching first formed when I periodically played hooky from high school to assist my mother, a master schoolteacher, in her third-grade classroom. As a teacher and frequent presenter at conferences, my lectures and workshops reach health care workers, spiritual leaders, and members of communities.
I was ordained as a rabbi by the ALEPH Ordination Program in 2006, then completed a year of Clinical Pastoral Education at Stanford Health Care. I have worked at Stanford Health Care ever since, first as the Cancer Care Chaplain, then the Director of Spiritual Care, and now as a Triage Chaplain. I also work as a Chaplain for Montage Health Care and teach continuing education courses for health care workers there.
In my first career, I was an attorney specializing in appeals and civil rights cases and have used strategic and analytic approaches to problem-solving in leadership positions I have held with ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal and Stanford Health Care’s Spiritual Care Service. My spiritual home communities include two congregations, Chadeish Yameinu Jewish Renewal Community of Santa Cruz and Temple Beth El , as well as the Santa Cruz chapter of Threshold Choir. I am a member of a few clergy organizations: OHALAH, the Northern California Board of Rabbis, and Out In Our Faith.
For my own resilience, I seek out joy, beauty, gratitude, and peace every day. Dancing, walking in nature, reading, time with my best beloveds, singing – every day I ask: what do I need today to stay in balance? What do I need to heal? What do I need to keep working toward a healing world?