About Me

I'm a rabbi, ordained in January of 2011 after years of intensive study in the ALEPH rabbinic program; in 2012 I was also ordained by ALEPH as a mashpi'ah (spiritual director). I serve Congregation Beth Israel in North Adams as their rabbi, a responsibility which is humbling and awesome. I'm also a writer: blogger, essayist, and poet. I have a book-length collection of poems, 70 Faces: Torah Poems, published January 2011 from Montreal-based Phoenicia Publishing. (Learn more at the "Creative Writing" tab linked in the left-hand sidebar.)

I've been writing prayers and liturgies, and creating rituals, for several years, starting with the Williams College Feminist Seder Project back in 1992 and my first babynaming back in 2000. I want to empower people to engage with their spiritual lives and their tradition(s), to take their religious experiences into their own hands, and to experience religious moments in a joyful and meaningful way.

I was born and raised in San Antonio, Texas, though I've lived in smalltown Massachusetts since 1992. My Jewish background is first Conservative and then Reform; today I'm most at home in Jewish Renewal, and I'm a regular retreatant at Elat Chayyim. I'm co-founder (and was for six years executive director) of Inkberry, a literary arts nonprofit which aimed to foster the literary life, to strengthen the connections between writing and life, and to create a place where everyone can discover their voice.

In addition to being ordained as a rabbi I hold a bachelor's degree in religion from Williams College, where I focused on Judaic Studies, and a MFA in writing and literature from the Bennington Writing Seminars, where I focused on poetry. I'm author of four chapbooks of poems (and my fifth collection, as I mentioned above, is now published by Phoenicia!) Many of my poems are Judaic in nature, and they've appeared in a range of publications; I've also written some nonfiction about Judaism, which appears in publications ranging from Lilith to Bad Subjects, The Guide to Jewish Interfaith Family Life to The Women's Seder Sourcebook.

I live with my marvelous husband, Ethan Zuckerman, our son Drew, and our small creamsicle cat, on a hilltop in Lanesboro, Massachusetts. If you'd like a glimpse into what my life looks like, feel free to browse my photos at flickr.

If you'd like to learn more, or to read about this in someone else's words, you might enjoy the article Rachel Barenblat: "When Can I Run and Play with the Real Rabbis?", by David Verzi, originally published in The Berkshire Jewish Voice in December of 2006. Or, for a more recent glimpse, here are two other articles, both published in 2011: Poems enrich rabbi's ministry, by Abe Levy in the San Antonio Express-News and David Verzi's 2011 follow-up, Rabbi Rachel Barenblat: Heat and Light (also in the Berkshire Jewish Voice.)