Welcome to Derekh
All who seek a deeper life crave companions along the road, those who can listen well, with compassion and wisdom, those who can guide and encourage our best selves.
Individually and jointly, we - Merle Feld and Rabbi Eddie Feld - have spent the past 50 years accompanying, mentoring and caring for students on campus; adults in congregations, havurot and retreat centers; rabbis and cantors well established in their careers and those at seminaries across the denominations in training to do sacred work .
Derekh provides a home base from which we can now respond to the challenge of sharing our gifts virtually – with those who already know us, and with others who don’t yet know us but who are also seeking resources to grow, enrich, deepen their spiritual lives. Other teachers will be joining with us as well to further these efforts, in fact, an exciting addition to our ranks is the introduction of Derekh Associates - clergy who themselves have worked with Merle over many years who will now begin to bring their gifts into the Derekh community.
Through Derekh, we provide individual mentoring, create small group programs, host virtual retreats and partner with you to design special programs meeting your particular needs and interests. Some of our programs center on preparation for holidays, others center on topical themes or concerns. Some of our Zoom programs feature Merle facilitating the use of writing prompts to inspire and guide self-exploration; in others, Eddie interactively teaches texts; and over the course of 2021-2022, Derekh Associates will begin enriching our offerings with their unique passions and commitments. Podcasts by Eddie and Rabbi Jan Uhrbach offer insight into prayer and prayer leadership, while podcasts by Merle will feature readings of her poems and reflections on their themes. (Note: Eddie is on sabbatical for 2021-2022 as he works to create the third prayer book in the groundbreaking Lev Shalem series, this one a weekday siddur.) Stay tuned as the year unfolds!
A primary objective of Derekh is to offer rabbis and cantors the benefits of self-care and personal growth; a secondary outcome can be the development of resources to use for your congregations, students, clientele. Equally, we will provide programs for lay seekers.
While this site announces and supports our virtual programs, it also provides free of charge a variety of materials for clergy and for communities. (We ask simply that you credit us as the source for what you use and consider making donations to Derekh to help us carry on this work serving you and others.) Additionally, we look forward to this becoming a kind of clearinghouse where we invite guests to post their writing, dvrei Torah, ideas, questions and projects in our forthcoming Conversation Corner.
Finally, Derekh will realize its full potential when you partner with us to create the programs you most need and want. To do that we need to hear from you with proposals, suggestions. We look forward to collaborating in creating something very rich and special together.
Lead Teachers
Merle Feld
Merle Feld is a poet, award-winning playwright, educator and activist. Merle is author of a memoir in poetry and prose, A Spiritual Life (1999; revised edition 2007); a book of poetry, Finding Words (2011); and a new volume of poetry, Longing: Poems of a Life (CCAR Press, forthcoming December 2022). Her most recent play, Returning, premiered nationally on Zoom as a pre-High Holiday program in 2020. The Gates are Closing (1985) has been presented by hundreds of congregations around the world as a powerful and moving introduction to the High Holidays; Across the Jordan was chosen for inclusion in the first anthology of Jewish women playwrights, Making a Scene (1997). Merle’s writing can be found in numerous anthologies and prayer books including Mahzor Lev Shalem, Siddur Lev Shalem, and The Torah: A Women’s Commentary. She organized and facilitated Israeli-Palestinian dialogue on the West Bank during the first Intifada and later at Seeds of Peace. Merle has pioneered teaching writing as a spiritual practice and since 2005 has served as Founding Director of the Albin Rabbinic Writing Institute, mentoring and accompanying rabbis across the denominations as they explore their inner lives and develop their authentic voices.
Edward Feld
Edward Feld has published widely on Jewish theology, prayer, the Hebrew Bible, and on halachic and ethical issues. He is the author of The Book of Revolutions: The Battles of Priests, Prophets, and Kings that Birthed the Torah (JPS, forthcoming Sept. 2022); Joy, Despair and Hope: Reading Psalms (Cascade Books); and The Spirit of Renewal: Faith After the Holocaust (Jewish Lights). He is the senior editor of the the groundbreaking Mahzor Lev Shalem, published by the Conservative Movement’s Rabbinical Assembly, for which he was listed as one of the Forward 50 – the 50 outstanding American Jews of 2010. Subsequently he completed the companion Siddur Lev Shalem for Shabbat and Festivals. In his distinguished career, Rabbi Feld has served as Rabbi-in-Residence at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America functioning as an advisor and mentor to rabbinical students, Rabbi of the Society for the Advancement of Judaism, and Hillel Director of Princeton University. He is a noted teacher, lecturing throughout North America.
Derekh Associates
Rabbi Beth Kalisch
Rabbi Beth Kalisch has served as the rabbi of Beth David Reform Congregation in Gladwyne, PA, since 2013. She serves on the Executive Committee of the Board of Rabbis of Greater Philadelphia, and on the leadership team of RAC-PA, the Reform Movement’s new statewide social justice project in Pennsylvania.
Ordained by HUC-JIR, she earned her BA with distinction in Religious Studies at Yale University and is a past fellow of the Clergy Leadership Incubator and CLAL’s Rabbis Without Borders fellowship. While living in NY, she was Associate Rabbi at the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue, and an Adjunct Rabbi at Central Synagogue. As a student rabbi, Beth served in diverse Jewish communities from Wyoming to Mississippi.
She lives with her husband and two young children in Philadelphia, where she nourishes her soul by hiking, singing, and making soup. Studying with Merle Feld through the Rabbinic Writing Institute has been a core piece of her spiritual practice for almost 15 years, so it is an honor to be part of Derekh.
Rabbi Daniel Raphael Silverstein
Rabbi Daniel Raphael Silverstein is a rabbi, educator, accredited teacher of Jewish Mindfulness Meditation and MC/poet. He lives in Israel with his family, where he directs Applied Jewish Spirituality, an online portal which makes the transformative spiritual wisdom of our tradition accessible to all who seek it. He is also a faculty member at Romemu Yeshiva and the Conservative Yeshiva. His recent teaching clients include My Jewish Learning, the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies, Nishmat, IDC Herzliya and the Orthodox Union. Daniel was born and raised in London, received a BA from the University of Cambridge and an MA from Warwick University. He spent three years studying at Yeshivot Ein Tzurim, Shvilei HaTorah, and Maale Gilboa before receiving semichah from YCT. Daniel has performed and facilitated all over the world as a spoken word artist, MC, and creative educator; he is a cofounder of Lines of Faith, a Muslim-Jewish hip hop and poetry collective that uses performances and workshops to challenge prejudice, and build meaningful bonds between communities.
Rabbi Eliana Jacobowitz
Rabbi Eliana Jacobowitz has been the rabbi of Congregation B’nai Brith in Somerville, MA since her ordination from Hebrew College in 2010. Born and raised in Israel, she studied law at Tel Aviv University, holds both a certificate in Fashion Design from Tel Aviv's Miriam College and an MA degree in Medieval History from Boston University.
For the past two decades, Eliana’s teaching has focused on Holocaust education and Jewish mysticism. She has been the facilitator of the Gvanim Leadership program of the AIC in Boston, as well as a guest lecturer on Judaism and Jewish mysticism at Simmons College, Boston College and Boston University. She is coeditor of the Hebrew translation of Arthur Green’s These are the Words, (Yedi’ot Acharonot, 2008).
On a less serious note, Eliana can be described as a pop culture loving nerd with extra appreciation of punk music and fantasy literature. She shares her home with her cat Shunra, and way too many sewing machines.
Rabbi Jason Fruithandler
Rabbi Jason Fruithandler has served as the rabbi of Woodbury Jewish Center in Woodbury, NY since 2018. He is a member of the Syosset Woodbury Interfaith Council and serves on the Long Island Rabbinical Committee of JNF-USA.
With a BA in Talmud from JTS and in Sociology from Columbia, Jason also earned an MA in Jewish Education from JTS and completed JOIN for Justice Clergy Community Organizing training. Upon ordination in 2011, he became an Associate Rabbi at Sinai Temple in Los Angeles where he served for seven years, especially enjoying working with young professionals, bringing together diverse demographics within the community, and helping to make a big place feel like home.
Jason lives with his wife and three young children in Syosset, New York. On his day off, he favors watching the latest superhero movie. Studying with Merle Feld has been a core piece of Jason's development as a rabbi, Jew, and person; 15 years later he continues to treasure his time writing with Merle and looks forward to this new phase as a Derekh Associate.
Rabbi Jason Rubenstein
Rabbi Jason Rubenstein is a proud product of Temple Micah in Washington, DC; Yeshivat Ma’ale Gilboa; and the JTS Rabbinical School (2011). After eight wonderful years teaching on the faculty of the Hadar Institute, he became the second Howard M. Holtzmann Jewish Chaplain at Yale, joining and leading a Jewish community that celebrates and interweaves a kaleidoscopic diversity of Jewish creativity.
As a teacher and writer, Jason focuses on the fullness of human experience and uses Jewish thought to give us language for the still, small voice within. Over the first month of the pandemic, he guided Yale’s dispersed Jewish community with a series of extended weekly pastoral letters touching on grief, the sin of anti-Black racism, and the precarity of hope. His most recent work (heavily indebted to Merle’s poetry), is a forthcoming long-form essay on the revelatory potential of parental experience in Jewish thought.
Personally, Jason is an avid-yet-unremarkable cyclist, chess player, and sourdough-baker. He lives in beautiful New Haven, CT with his wife, Arielle, and their two sons.
Rabbi Jen Gubitz
With her humor and insight, Jewish learning and pastoral gifts, Rabbi Jen Gubitz (HUC-JIR ‘12) builds communities and content that elevate Jewish wisdom’s capacity to speak to our human condition. She weaves ritual and lifecycle experiences full of music, poetry, honesty. Co-host of OMfG Podcast: Jewish Wisdom for Unprecedented Times, Jen’s writing has appeared in the Forward, EJewishPhilanthropy, OnBeing, the Mussar Torah Commentary, and Lilith Magazine. A Tisch Rabbinical Fellow who wrote her thesis on Jewish Death Education for children, Jen trained in community organizing and also holds a certificate in Spiritual Entrepreneurship from Columbia Business School through the Clal Glean START program.
As rabbi, Jen directed the Riverway Project young adult outreach program at Temple Israel of Boston for five years, and previously served Temple Shir Tikva of Wayland, MA. She LOVES extra dark roast cold brew, puns, Dar Williams, the Indiana Hoosiers, and living in Boston with her husband Matan and their rescue dog Joey. (Visit www.jengubitz.com for further details.)
Rabbi Michael Lezak
Rabbi Michael Lezak (HUC-JIR 1999) is the Rabbi at GLIDE, a radically inclusive, just and loving San Francisco community mobilized to alleviate suffering and break cycles of poverty and marginalization. At GLIDE’S Center for Social Justice, he helps magnify the impact of GLIDE’s justice machinery, forging covenantal bonds between GLIDE and area communities.
Michael brings 100+ civic, tech and health care leaders on Glide’s annual Alabama Justice Pilgrimage and is helping UCSF with Truth, Justice and Reconciliation work, connecting the dots between birth story slavery in Alabama and racial inequities in healthcare in San Francisco. He spearheads groundbreaking work with law enforcement and district attorneys from around the country to illuminate the challenges faced by people living in extreme poverty.
In his previous position as congregational rabbi in Marin County, he founded programs to love and support families and inmates at Pelican Bay, San Quentin, and Vacaville State Prisons; he serves on the national board of T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights. Michael is married to Rabbi Noa Kushner and is the proud father of three daughters.
Rabbi Shahar Colt
Rabbi Shahar Colt currently serves Nehar Shalom as the family program director and Gann Academy as an 11th grade English teacher. From 2015-2020, she served Congregation Dorshei Tzedek as Rabbi for Congregational Learning. Shahar graduated from Hebrew College Rabbinical School in Newton, MA in 2016.
During her time in rabbinical school, she founded the Teen Beit Midrash, a uniquely challenging and engaging chavrusa education program for post b’nai mitzvah students in Boston. She also served at Hampshire College, Temple Shir Tikvah (Winchester, MA), Jews United for Justice (Washington, DC) and Interfaith Power & Light of Greater Washington.
Shahar holds an M.A. Ed from Tufts University, a B.A. from Barnard College, has taught in special education classrooms, and has also shared with students her passions for swimming, dance, cooking and woodworking. She lives in Watertown MA with her partner and toddler, and has been perfecting her challah baking during the pandemic.
Rabbi Steven Exler
Rabbi Steven Exler serves as Senior Rabbi of the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale – The Bayit, a large Open/Modern Orthodox synagogue in the Bronx. He grew up in Baltimore, MD, has a B.A. in Biology from Brandeis University and an M.A. in Bible from Bernard Revel Graduate School, and has studied at Yeshivat Har Etzion, in the Yeshiva University Beit Midrash and at Yeshivat Maale Gilboa. His ordination is from Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School, where he was a Wexner Graduate Fellow. He is a member of the International Rabbinic Fellowship and sits on the Rabbinic Advisory Boards of Eshel, Yeshivat Chovevei Torah (chairperson) and Yeshivat Maharat, on the Advisory Board of Derekh, and the Boards of Plaza Jewish Community Chapel and UJA-Federation of New York. He lives in Riverdale with his wife Shira and their children Ilan, Talya, Yair and Aviv.
Rabbi Tamara Cohen
Rabbi Tamara Cohen (RRC '14) is a Jewish feminist educator, writer, activist and rabbi. She is VP and Chief of Program Strategy for Moving Traditions which partners with synagogues and other Jewish institutions around the country to create experiences of Jewish meaning, connection and community for Jewish adolescents, their families and educators.
The editor of the Ma’yan Passover Haggadah, Tamara’s publications include essays in Lillith Magazine, contributions to multiple anthologies including When We Turned Within: Reflections on COVID-19; Faithfully Feminist: Muslim, Jewish, Christian Women on Why they Stay; and liturgical poetry in the Conservative siddur, Lev Shalem (2016).
She previously worked at Ma’yan: The Jewish Women’s Project of the Manhattan JCC; at the University of Florida as Director of LGBT and Multicultural and Diversity Affairs; and as a spiritual leader and rabbi in Allentown, PA and Litchfield County, Connecticut. She serves on the board of Women’s March, Inc. and lives in Philadelphia with her partner and two sons.
Officers and Board of Directors
Merle Feld - President
Edward Feld - Treasurer
Rabbi Lisa Feld - Media Strategist
Rabbi Lisa Batya Feld was ordained by Hebrew College Rabbinical School in 2023, and proudly serves as rabbi of B’nai Tikvah in Canton, MA. Prior to rabbinical school, she worked as a writer and editor for a wide range of academic institutions and scholarly presses, including the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, the Jewish Women’s Archive, Oxford University Press, the Colorado Review, and the Rabbinical Assembly.
Rabbi Patty Karlin-Neumann
Rabbi Patricia Karlin-Neumann came to Stanford University in 1996. She is the first university chaplain from a tradition other than Christianity in Stanford’s history. In 2001, she was appointed Senior Associate Dean for Religious Life. She teaches and lectures widely on Jewish feminism, rabbinical ethics, the relationship between religion and education, and social justice. Rabbi Karlin-Neumann was ordained at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 1982. She has been a Hillel director and Jewish chaplain at UCLA and at the Claremont Colleges, a congregational rabbi in Alameda, California and a regional director for the Union for Reform Judaism, the congregational arm of the Reform Movement. At Stanford, she teaches courses including "Spirituality and Nonviolent Social Transformation" and "Rereading Judaism in Light of Feminism."
Rabbi Jamie Kotler
Rabbi Jamie Kotler is dedicated to teaching Torah to adults in the Boston area. A seeker all her life, she began studying Torah as a young mother of three, and fell in love. As a teacher, she brings a wide range of traditional and modern sources to inspire learning, and the development of a meaningful relationship with Torah. In addition to teaching, she has also served as a chaplain to elders.
Jamie has served on the boards of The Rashi School, Lilith, and Mayyim Hayyim, and on the building committee for Newbridge on the Charles.
The daughter of Holocaust survivors, Jamie grew up in Brazil and Mexico and has spent significant time in Israel. She is fluent in Spanish and Hebrew.
Jamie was ordained by Hebrew College in June 2016. She holds a BA in Biology from Brown University and an MBA from Stanford University Graduate School of Business.
Rabbi Jan Uhrbach
Rabbi Jan Uhrbach serves as the interim Pearl Resnick dean of the Jewish Theological Seminary Rabbinical School and dean of the Division of Religious Leadership, leading both the Rabbinical School and the H. L. Miller Cantorial School. She also continues to direct the work of JTS’s Block/Kolker Center for Spiritual Arts of which she is founding director. As such, she develops and oversees programs, discussions, prayer services and teaches courses on the meaning of liturgy, including a course she created titled “The Art of Leading Prayer.” She is tasked as well with developing curriculum and resources for professionals and lay people seeking to revitalize their leadership and experience of prayer. Uhrbach also serves as the founding rabbi of the Conservative Synagogue of the Hamptons in Bridgehampton, Long Island and played a key role in the acclaimed Lev Shalem prayer book series as associate editor of Siddur Lev Shalem and a member of the editorial committee for Machzor Lev Shalem. Ordained at JTS, she is also a graduate of Harvard Law School (‘85), served as Law Clerk to Federal District Judge Kimba M. Wood and then joined the New York law firm of Satterlee Stephens Burke & Burke LLP, where she specialized in media litigation, becoming a partner of the firm in January 1996.
Advisory Board
Rabbi Steven Exler
Rabbi Steven Exler serves as senior rabbi of the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale – The Bayit, a large open Orthodox synagogue in the Bronx. He grew up in Baltimore, MD, has a B.A. in biology from Brandeis University and an M.A. in Bible from Bernard Revel Graduate School, and has studied at Yeshivat Har Etzion, in the Yeshiva University Beit Midrash and at Yeshivat Maale Gilboa. His ordination is from Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School, where he was a Wexner Graduate Fellow. He sits on the Rabbinic Advisory Boards of Eshel, Yeshivat Chovevei Torah and Yeshivat Maharat.
Dr. Gail Reimer
Dr. Reimer began her professional career as a faculty member of Wellesley College shortly after receiving her Ph.D. in English and American Literature from Rutgers University. While at Wellesley she was awarded fellowships from the American Association of University Women and the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe College. From 1988 to 1995, she was associate director of the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities (MFH), the state-based program of the National Endowment for the Humanities. In the early 1990s, Reimer conceived and co-edited two pathbreaking anthologies of Jewish women’s writings — Reading Ruth: Women Reclaim a Sacred Story and Beginning Anew: A Woman’s Companion to the High Holy Days. This work led to the founding of the Jewish Women’s Archive (1995), a leading advocate for and center of education in Jewish women’s history whose award-winning website, jwa.org, has the most extensive collection of material on American Jewish women on the web.
Dr. Joe Reimer
Dr. Joe Reimer is Associate Professor of Jewish Education in the Education Program and the Hornstein Program for Jewish Professional Leadership. He received an Ed.D. and an M.Ed. from Harvard University. His areas of expertise include Jewish experiential education, professional leadership development and Jewish learning in summer camps. His particular interests are in experiential learning and in child development as that relates to creativity and caring. Some courses he has created are The Psychology of Student Learning, Creativity and Caring, The Psychology of Love: Education for Close Relationships. His many publications include To Build a Profession: Careers in Jewish Education (Brandeis University) and Succeeding at Jewish Education: How One Synagogue Made It Work (JPS) for which he received the National Jewish Book Award in Education. He also received the Human Development Research Award for research on moral development of kibbutz adolescents and young adults.
Rabbi Jason Rubenstein
Rabbi Jason Rubenstein is the Howard M. Holtzmann Jewish Chaplain at Yale. He previously served for eight years at Yeshivat Hadar, where he was Dean of Students and Alumni and where he also taught Talmud and Jewish thought. He was ordained by the Jewish Theological Seminary in May of 2011, and holds an MA in Talmud from JTS and a BA from Harvard College. An alumnus of the kollel of Yeshivat Maale Gilboa, the Wexner Graduate Fellowship, the Legacy Heritage Rabbinic Fellows program at JTS, and the Graduate Fellowship in Jewish Law and Legal Theory of the Cardozo Center for Jewish Law, he is also a recipient of the 2015 Pomegranate Prize for Jewish Education.