Rachel Barenblat, the "Velveteen Rabbi," is an American poet and blogger who was ordained as a rabbi in 2011 and as a spiritual director in 2012. In 2013 she was named a Rabbis Without Borders fellow by Clal, the Center for Learning and Leadership, and in 2015 was named co-chair of ALEPH: the Alliance for Jewish Renewal along with Rabbi David Markus.
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Background
Born in San Antonio, Texas in 1975 to Marvin and Liana Barenblat, Rachel moved to New England in 1992 to attend Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts. She holds a BA in religion from Williams and a Masters of Fine Arts in writing and literature from the Bennington Writing Seminars, as well as rabbinic ordination from ALEPH: the Alliance for Jewish Renewal and a secondary ordination as a mashpi'ah, also from ALEPH.
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Work
In 2000 Barenblat co-founded Inkberry, a literary arts non-profit organization, with Sandy Ryan and Emily Banner. From 1999-2002 she was a contributing editor at Pif Magazine and for several years in the early 2000s served as contributing editor at Zeek magazine, a Jewish journal of thought and culture. From 2009-2011 she served on the board of directors of the Organization for Transformative Works. As of 2014 she serves on the board of directors of ALEPH, the Alliance for Jewish Renewal.
Barenblat is author of three book-length collections of poetry: 70 faces: Torah poems (Phoenicia Publishing, 2011), Waiting to Unfold (Phoenicia, 2013), and the forthcoming Open My Lips (Ben Yehuda Press, 2015), as well as a variety of liturgical works, most notably her haggadah for Pesach and her machzor (prayerbook) for the Days of Awe.
Her first full-length collection of poems, 70 Faces--a collection of poems which arise out of a full year's cycle of weekly Torah portions--was published by Montreal-based Phoenicia Publishing in 2011.
70 faces received critical praise:
and has received generally positive reviews:
although the Forward reviewer argued that the book's fatal flaw is "its failure to live up to the claims the author makes for it."
Her second book, Waiting to Unfold, was also published by Phoenicia (2013):
Barenblat is also author of several poetry chapbooks, among them the skies here (Pecan Grove Press, 1995), What Stays (Bennington Writing Seminars Alumni Chapbook Series, 2002), chaplainbook (Laupe House Press, 2006), and the self-published Through, a collection of miscarriage poems (2009.)
From 2005 to 2010, Barenblat was a student in the ALEPH rabbinic program; she was ordained a rabbi in early 2011. Her blog, Velveteen Rabbi, was named one of the top 25 blogs in Time.com's First Annual Blog Index in spring of 2008. She has guest-blogged at Jewess, Kesher Talk, Sojourner, and the Best American Poetry Blog, and she spent a year writing weekly Torah commentaries for Radical Torah. Her poetry appears in The Heart of All That Is: Reflections on Home (Holy Cow! Press, 2013), Before There Is Nowhere to Stand (Lost Horse Press, 2012), and The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Poetry (Bloomsbury, 2013), among others.
With Thurman Hart, Barenblat co-founded the first Progressive Faith Blog Con, a gathering for bloggers of progressive faith which took place in Montclair, New Jersey in 2006.
Her Velveteen Rabbi's Haggadah for Pesach, a free and open-source haggadah which combines traditional texts with poetry and creative interpretations, is used worldwide. As of 2015, the most recent edition is version 8 and can be downloaded here.
Barenblat lives in Lanesboro, Massachusetts and has a son with Ethan Zuckerman. As of 2011, she serves as the rabbi for Congregation Beth Israel in North Adams, MA.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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