RENCONTRE

Rabbi Rachel Dorit Goldberg

I like to think of learning as both a spiritual practice and a healing modality. When we are deeply learning, we are not only acquiring new information, we are engaging it reflectively in a way that will impact the ways we feel, perceive, and interact with the stimuli of our lives as a result. My first professional training was as a social studies teacher at the oldest teachers' college in the United States. In that training, I established a solid foundation and pedagogical creed as a constructivist educator, meaning I like to get to know what knowledge and understanding a learner enters with, and bring new material and experiences that will build upon and deepen what is already there.

Early in my career I served as the Director of Youth Programs at a large reform congregation, where I designed several experiential, student-centered learning programs that continue to thrive a decade later. While in that role, I also trained intensively in a Japanese healing art called Reiki, and spent the seven years that followed working as a Reiki Master - owning a therapeutic healing center in Chicago, producing international workshops, retreats, and seminars alongside world renowned spiritual teachings, serving diverse multi-national and interfaith communities.

In 2018 I began rabbinical school at ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal, and as part of that course of study have spent the last three years in Jerusalem learning immersively and serving as a rabbinic intern at Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies. I am also completing a program in hashpa'ah / Jewish Spiritual Direction, which is a form of spiritual counseling common in the chassidic and neo-chassidic worlds. If you are interested in Torah learning as a vehicle for healing and spiritual awareness, I am likely to be a great learning partner for you!