More Inspiration
More Meaning
More Connection
Enhance Your Spiritual
Practice - and Your Life!
with Rabbi Debra Orenstein
Meet Rabbi Debra
Named "One of America's Most Inspiring Rabbis" by The Jewish Forward.
Rabbi Debra brings the meaning and relevance of the Jewish tradition to audiences across North America as a guest speaker and scholar-in-residence. For twenty years, she was an instructor at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles, where she taught in the rabbinical, graduate school, undergraduate, conversion, Elderhostel, and continuing education programs. She was a senior fellow of the Wilstein Institute of Jewish Policy Studies and spiritual leader of Makom Ohr Shalom synagogue. In 2010, she returned to her home state of New Jersey and became spiritual leader of Congregation B’nai Israel in Emerson, while continuing her writing and public speaking. Her passion is connecting Judaism and spirituality to our everyday lives and ultimate concerns. The focus of her social action is ending slavery in our lifetimes.
Rabbi Debra on "Hope & Gratitude Through a Jewish Lens" at the Online Positive Psychology Hour (00:58:19). She introduced a new paradigm of hope at the lecture series co-sponsored by the Manhattan JCC and the Wholebeing Institute.
Rabbi Debra sent out this quick video (00:02:19) in March, at the start of the shut-down in New Jersey, to announce to Hebrew School families that she would be seeing them online for a while. The message of mutual respect and connection is still true - and even more poignant now, as politics and the pandemic have divided people more deeply and for longer than we could have imagined.
