Welcome to The Emergent Torah!
My name is Lindsey – I am a lifelong spiritual seeker, ordained rabbi, teacher, and writer.
In my work, I cultivate intimate, grounded, and personal connections between our authentic selves, one another, the earth, and the Sacred.
I believe that Torah is an evolving conversation – between our innermost selves, our wisdom traditions, our embodied experience, our communities and the Divine Presence. Spirituality is what we create, and what we allow to be created through us.
My story
I began my rabbinical training with a focus on traditional text study. I wanted to immerse myself in the Jewish textual tradition that I find so nourishing to be able to share it with others. During my time in rabbinical school, as I started a family and juggled classes, internships, and my home life, I found myself stretched to my limits and in a state of depletion. Even as someone becoming a spiritual leader, I was experiencing a profound disconnect between the intellectual, the spiritual, and the reality of my embodied experience.
Like many people socialized in modern Western societies, I had been taught to prioritize the intellectual over all else. I learned to override or discount my emotions and bodily signals from a young age. And that is what I had been doing, until my body stopped me and forced me to rest. Even then, I fought it hard. Fortunately, I was able to slow down enough to recover and regain the energy to explore my continued sense of being cut off from sources of joy, aliveness, and connection.
With help from coaches, mentors, and guides I gradually reconnected with parts of myself that had been forgotten or pushed to the side. I explored giftedness and what that means for me as an adult. Along the way, I was also identified as Autistic and ADHD. I learned to understand, love, and appreciate my complex, wild mind and nervous system. I reconnected with my creativity and regrounded in the natural world and cylces of the earth. And I started to attune to the gifts of holy listening and intuition.
Through my process of exploration and reintegration, I realized I am not alone in that feeling of disconnection. And it’s no one’s fault. Whether in Jewish or other communities, secular Western culture teaches us to operate in a society that prioritizes the mind over the heart, body, and spirit; that values productivity, achievement, and material wealth over happiness, wellbeing, and connection.
I feel called toward a re-integration of the mind, heart, body, and spirit.
While I have a deep love for the intellectual stimulation and challenge of academic and traditional Jewish study, I also know that we are not floating brains or disembodied spirits. I am a creature of the earth, who experiences the world and expresses myself through my body, who is intellectually curious, spiritually inquisitive, passionate, sensitive, creative, and in relationship with the people around me. And you are, too.
The Jewish tradition offers us a variety of metaphors to understand Torah in all its beauty and complexity. Torah is a word that means “teaching” or instruction in Hebrew. It is said that there are 70 faces of the Torah -it is a multifaceted gem, reflecting different aspects to each person who encounters it. The Torah is also identified with Chochmah, the feminine personification of Wisdom herself in the Book of Proverbs. She is compared to a Tree of Life, an abundant ever-growing source of wisdom that nourishes those who hold onto it and help it to flourish.
I hope you will join me in bringing to life the wisdom that needs to be born in our time.
Educational and Professional Experience
Here are some highlights of the experience that informs my work:
- Over 6 years of experience as a community rabbi, with previous years of internship experience in communities
- Passion for and extensive experience in teaching Jewish educational programs for adults, including ongoing Introduction to Judaism courses, thematic series, and one-time workshops
- Over a decade of practice as a leader of prayer and ritual facilitator
- Ongoing creative writing practice
- Rabbinic Ordination, Jewish Theological Seminary, 2018
- Master of Arts degree in Talmud and Rabbinics, Jewish Theological Seminary, 2018
- Clinical pastoral education experience
- Master of Arts degree, Museum Studies, New York University, 2009
- Undergraduate study in anthropology and philosophy
- Usui Reiki Level 2 practitioner