My Story

A Life of Music, Spirituality & Sacred Connection

I have spent my life exploring how ancient wisdom can speak to the heart in ways that are alive, personal, and meaningful today.

My journey has taken me through rabbinic leadership, spiritual direction, meditation, teaching, writing, and music. Though these expressions have changed throughout the years, the intention beneath them has remained the same: to help people deepen their relationship with themselves, with one another, and with the Divine.

Music has become one of the most joyful expressions of that calling. I delight in bringing down music that opens the heart and raises the spirit—songs inspired by the Bible, Jewish liturgy, prayer, meditation, and the longings of the heart and soul.

A Path of Spiritual Leadership

My early adult years were devoted to secular teaching and to raising a wonderful family. After a spiritual awakening at age 36, I immersed myself in study and followed the call to become a rabbi. 

This led to heading the Academy for Jewish Religion, first as Executive Dean and later as President, becoming the first woman in Jewish history to lead a rabbinic seminary. During this chapter of my life, I worked to bring meditation, spirituality, and personal spiritual development more fully into the education of rabbis and cantors.

Later I served as Rosh Hashpa'ah, Head of Spiritual Direction, for the ALEPH (Jewish Renewal) Ordination Program and became the founding director of  HASHPA'AH, a training and certification program dedicated to preparing Jewish spiritual directors.

These experiences strengthened something I have long believed: spiritual leadership is not simply about what we know. It is also about how deeply we listen, how fully we are present, and how we help one another discover the sacred within our own lives.

Meditation & Spiritual Direction

Meditation and spiritual direction have been central to my work for decades.

I am deeply interested in creating spaces where people can become quiet enough to hear what is moving within them—to notice the questions, wisdom, longing, and Divine presence that can sometimes be difficult to hear amid the noise of everyday life.

My approach draws from Jewish and other mystical and spiritual traditions while welcoming personal experience, creativity, contemplation, and the wisdom found across spiritual paths.

Music as a Spiritual Practice

While I have always loved music and dance, I found that both of these paths offered me another language for prayer.

Sometimes a melody can reach a place that words alone cannot. A song can comfort us, awaken something we had forgotten, carry a prayer, or simply create a moment in which the heart becomes more open.

The original spiritual music on Waters of Healing grows from sacred texts, liturgy, prayer, nature, meditation, and my own encounters with Spirit, whether that be our Creator or angelic energies. After several unborn attempts to record, this album brings a number of my songs together as an offering for reflection, prayer, meditation, movement, healing, and simple listening.

My hope is not only that people will hear this music, but that they will make it their own—singing it, playing it, praying with it, and allowing it to become part of their own spiritual journey.

Teaching, Writing & Jewish Renewal

Writing and teaching have also been important parts of my life.

I have contributed to and edited or co-edited works exploring Jewish spirituality, prayer, healing, and spiritual direction, including Seeking and Soaring: Jewish Approaches to Spiritual Guidance and Development, The Fifty-Eighth Century: A Jewish Renewal Sourcebook, and other works devoted to making Jewish spiritual wisdom accessible and meaningful.

My work has been deeply influenced by Jewish Renewal and by my teacher Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi of blessed memory,  from whom I received personal ordination as a mashpi'ah ruchanit—a Jewish spiritual director and guide.

His teachings encouraged an approach to spirituality that honors tradition while remaining open to creativity, transformation, interfaith wisdom, and the changing needs of each generation.

My Education & Journey

My early education was secular– earning degrees from Wellesley College and Harvard University's Graduate School of Education. At age 40 I received rabbinic ordination from the pan-denominational Academy for Jewish Religion and then earned my Doctor of Ministry degree from New York Theological Seminary.

Yet some of my deepest learning has come not from degrees or titles, but from the people I have accompanied, the communities I have served, the teachers who have guided me, the music that has come through me, and the quiet moments in which something sacred makes itself known.

Where My Path Leads Today

Today, I continue to devote myself to music, meditation, personal growth, spiritual exploration, and meaningful connection.

I am especially interested in the places where these paths meet—where a song becomes a prayer, meditation becomes deep listening, ancient teachings illuminate a present-day experience, or a simple moment opens into something sacred.

Whatever has brought you here, I welcome you.

I hope the music, teachings, and offerings you find here give you a place to pause, listen, and reconnect with the wisdom of your own heart and soul.

May we continue to cultivate more love, joy, goodness, healing, and connection in our lives and in the world.