“The learning was stimulating and challenging, but what has lasted are the relationships and the memories of being with my class and my teachers,” said Shannie Goldstein of her time at Hebrew College in Prozdor and in the college’s undergraduate program in the 1950s-60s. “That was such a positive experience and I want others to have that kind of experience.” To pay that experience forward, Shannie and her husband, Rabbi David Goldstein, have made a generous annual commitment to dedicate the rabbinical school and cantorial program Shabbaton each year. 

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“We know that Robin will bring her passion, creativity, and deep knowledge about teaching and learning and Jewish content as a member of the MaTaRoT team. She brings the skills, experience, and leadership that will allow us to further strengthen and diversify our MaTaRoT offerings and to thrive in new ways.” — Dr. Susie Tanchel, Hebrew College Vice President 

MaTaRoT: Hebrew College Center for Jewish Professional Learning & Leadership offers graduate certificates, a Master of Jewish Education, non-credit workshops, coaching, communities of practice, project-based learning, and more.

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Rabbinical alumna Minna Bromberg sees Torah as a key tool to combat fat stigma. “When we read Jewish texts through a fat liberatory lens, they offer an untold number of teachings and blessings, from Isaac including ‘the fatness of the land’ in his blessing to Jacob to the Song of Songs praising the lover’s belly because it is ‘like a heap of wheat,’" says Bromberg. A favorite teaching of hers is to take the interpretive translation of mitzrayim (Egypt) as “The Narrow Place” and then read (and try to live!) the story of the exodus from Egypt as a story of being willing to let go of narrow ideas of what bodies should look like.

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My father, Howard Adelman (z”l), passed away on July 23rd and was buried on Tisha be’Av. Though he was eighty-five, and had lived a full, vigorous life, his death still came as a terrible shock to me for I thought he was immortal. He had survived so many near-misses in his life—from an attack of pericarditis when I first moved to Israel in the mid-‘80s, to a full cardiac arrest in March 2020 at the onset of the Covid pandemic. Each time, he rose from near death—a cat with nine lives... Just before he passed away, I was able to convey these last words in a video recording, drawn from the lullaby that he used to sing to us as children: Swing low, sweet chariot, coming for to carry me home…

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