May 15, 2025 | 17 Iyar 5785

Koleinu |our voice|

Reimagining Jewish learning and leadership for an interconnected world.

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For Every Generation:
New Books from Hebrew College Rabbinical Alumni

From mystical exploration and poetic searching to climate justice and spiritual memoir, members of the Hebrew College rabbinic community are publishing books that dig into many dimensions of Jewish culture. This diverse range of books for readers of all ages reflects the depth, passion, and moral conviction that define Hebrew College.

Rabbi Matthew Ponak `20 invites readers to engage with Jewish mysticism with his new book, The Path of the Sephirot. This 49-day Omer counter is a meditative journey into the Divine emanations of Kabbalah. Written for both beginners and experienced mystical seekers, The Path of the Sephirot helps readers develop spiritual balance and awareness. “My hope is that people unfamiliar with the Sephirot can connect with this beautiful tradition in a personal and reflective way,” says Ponak. “Our world could use all the self-awareness, love, integrity, and intentional living that it can get right now.” 

Rabbi Genevieve Greinetz `22 has just released her first full-length poetry collection, Animals Are Shouting Down from the Sky (Ben Yehuda Press). This "often heart-stopping" collection offers an unflinching look at the brokenness of the world and the resilience of the human spirit. These poems challenge, provoke, and nourish, offering flashes of humor and soulful honesty. As author Merle Feld writes, the poems are all the more meaningful because of "the poet’s delicious humor…and above all, because she tells the truth." 

Rabbi Adina Allen `14, Co-founder and Creative Director of Jewish Studio Project, one of Hebrew College's shared-campus partners, published The Place of All Possibility (Ayin Press), which reframes Torah as a contemporary guidebook for creativity. Drawing from the deep well of Jewish sacred texts, and the radical interpretive strategies of ancient rabbis, Allen provides teachings and tools for those who seek to employ creativity as a force of transformation. Rabbi Shai Held, author of Judaism Is About Love: Recovering the Heart of Jewish Life, writes: "In this warm, wise, and winsomely written book, Rabbi Adina Allen invites us to become creators of worlds—to engage the texts of Torah with everything we are, and to express our deepest selves by unleashing our inner creativity."

Rabbi Mónica Gomery `17, Rabbi and Music Director at Kol Tzedek Synagogue in Philadelphia, published Might Kindred (University of Nebraska Press), winner of the Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry. Conjuring mountains and bodies of water, queer and immigrant poetics, beloveds both human and animal, Gomery explores the intimately personal and the possibility of a collective voice. Anthems are sung and fall apart midsong; letters are exchanged with ancestors, a shadow sister visits and interrogates what it means to make a home as a first-generation American.

Rabbi Shoshana Meira Friedman `14 turns toward families and early readers with her new children’s book, The Tide Is Rising, So Are We!: A Climate Movement Anthem. Based on a song co-written with her partner, the book delivers a powerful message of collective action and hope. Jewish symbolism infuses the illustrations, and the book affirms a sacred covenantal relationship between people and the Earth.  "It doesn’t place the onus of action on the child’s shoulders," Friedman says. “Instead, the book brings the reader into the collective story of the climate movement,” offering an invitation to join a movement and believe in the possibility of change.

Looking ahead to the fall, Rabbi Minna Bromberg `10 will publish Every Body Beloved: A Jewish Embrace of Fatness (Wayne State University Press), a vital and necessary look at the intersection of theology, social justice, and body liberation. In this deeply personal book, Bromberg draws on Jewish tradition and her lived experience to call for an end to anti-fat bias and the full acceptance of all bodies. Through reflective letters and critical discussions, she weaves together a narrative of identity, autonomy, and spiritual wholeness. Rooted in the belief that all bodies are created in the Divine image, Every Body Beloved is an invitation to reshape our communities toward justice, dignity, and love.

SEVENTY FACES OF TORAH

Wild Hair, Mourning Hearts

By Rabbi Avi Killip `14, Executive Vice President, Hadar

There is something universal, perhaps, about the instinct to refuse a haircut as a way of making a statement, of declaring a commitment to someone or something big. This is ritual at its purest. In the pain of mourning we may be desperate for something concrete to do differently, some way to show that we are not okay, that the world as it is now is not okay. Not cutting our hair can provide this physical, visceral tool. My friends’ “wild” hair offers an external manifestation of their internal anguish.

Read 70 Faces...

Kavanah in 60: Counting the Omer

"The Counting of the Omer is generally considered a time of fragility and seriousness connected to our fears that the spring grain might not grow in time to support our families into the next season. In the middle of this time we have Lag BaOmer, this really joyful day... As we experience uncertainty now about the future, Lag BaOmer reminds us that the sustenance we're praying for may arrive in a different packet than what we're expecting."
— Aviva Herr-Welber, Hebrew College Rabbinical Student

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In Memoriam: Elizabeth Lehmann 

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