Welcome to our smicha
We are the ALEPH Ordination Program Class of 2021. Thank you for joining us as we become rabbis, cantors and rabbinic pastors in the lineage of Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, z”l. You can use this website to learn more about us and ALEPH, to follow details of the ceremony, and even to watch the ceremony live.
The ceremony is Sunday Jan. 10th at 4pm Pacific, 7pm Eastern, and 11am Monday in Sydney. Please adjust for your time zone.
Oh, and welcome.
Who We Are
Click on the name or photo of one of our musmachimot (ordinees) to find out all about them and to offer your blessing in their guest book.
We are Proud and Grateful
We are proud to be receiving our smicha through the ALEPH Ordination Program, where we have spent the last years deepening in our learning of history, mysticism, ritual, text, prayer, song and holy time. The program design has enabled us to go deep in our learning together while at the same time serving Jewish communities from Australia to Florida (and online!) as clergy, innovators and educators.
Now we are grateful to receive the smicha – the holy transmission – of our teachers and their teachers before them as we step fully into our roles as rabbis, hazzanim (cantors), and rabbinic pastors. We do this with deep joy.
It is obvious that this is not the ceremony we had been anticipating for years. We fully expected to be together with you in Broomfield, Colorado, side by side with each other, feeling the hands of our teachers on our shoulders. But nimbleness and creativity are part of the toolbox of Jewish Renewal, and certainly part of the readiness we achieved through our experience in the ALEPH Ordination Program. And so we are ready to receive our smicha and feel the fullness of the kedushah (holiness) of the moment and the connection among us, even as we all attend from our own homes.
Please explore this website to learn more about us, what matters to us jointly and individually, our music, ALEPH Alliance for Jewish Renewal, and this ceremony. We are glad you’re here.