В некоммерческую организацию The Den в Вашингтоне наняли нового раввина с театральным образованием

The newest addition to the Den Collective brings Midwestern roots, a theater degree and a knack for storytelling. Rabbi Anna Wolfe started as the Den’s second community rabbi this summer alongside Rabbi Aderet Drucker, the Den’s executive director and community rabbi. “It’s a pretty big blessing that this job was available when I was looking for [work] after rabbinical school because it fits all of the hopes and dreams of what my rabbinic work would look like,” said Wolfe, who lives in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of Washington, D.C. The Den is a nonprofit organization that seeks to build intentional Jewish community with adults in their 20s, 30s and 40s throughout the DMV. “We’re building out a network of community rabbis [at the Den],” Drucker said. “Our vision is additional rabbis because the DMV is so large and complex.” The decision to bring Wolfe onto the team was simple. “We loved Rabbi Anna’s sense of groundedness in who she is and what she offers,” Drucker said. “The way she reads text and teaches and draws people into deep text study was really beautiful and came through in her interview.” Wolfe knew she liked focusing on creating “experiential moments of gathering” through classes, ritual, one-on-one pastoral care and leadership building — areas that are all part of the Den’s mission. As a community rabbi, Wolfe will provide pastoral care, lead learning spaces, officiate life cycle events, host gatherings, maintain donor relations, bolster community building and strategize for the Den’s bigger picture with Drucker. The Den is centered around relationships and trust and allows community members to connect closely with its rabbis, Wolfe said. “My first goal is pretty simple: it’s to be here and get to know people and have one-on-one experiences and group experiences with folks,” she said. She’s already started that introductory work in the form of coffee and ice cream chats — Wolfe said she recently had two ice cream meetups in one day. “Something that’s really special about the Den is that there is a lot of room for the rabbis and staff to tailor what’s happening to what the community actively needs and to support people in their journey of discovering what their Jewish life is going to look like,” Wolfe said. “I look forward to continuing in the direction of what I think the Den is already doing beautifully.” Part of the reason for Wolfe’s hiring was a high demand for these coffee chats with only one community rabbi to serve the entirety of the DMV. “We never want to schedule people out for three months from now,” Drucker said. “That just doesn’t feel akin to what we’re trying to do here. It’s just a question of human power and bandwidth.” Wolfe brings years of Jewish communal leadership experience. She first began working at Mishkan Chicago in family programming. During rabbinical school, Wolfe spent three summers as a program fellow and performing arts educator at the Brandeis Collegiate Institute. She received clinical pastoral education at Massachusetts General Hospital. Wolfe is no stranger to hosting 20 guests at her home for Shabbat dinners or holiday gatherings — she did so as the founding rabbinic fellow of Base Jamaica Plain in Boston through Mem Global. “We loved that Rabbi Anna gets the depth of relational work and community building, and she had that experience as a fellow at Base,” Drucker said. The rabbi also plans to incorporate her artistic background into programming. Before rabbinical school, Wolfe built her career in Chicago’s theater world. She studied improvisation and wrote and performed solo work on stages. “I think that a huge element of what I bring to my rabbinic work … is bringing more of that wonder, that amazement,” Wolfe said. She described the awe that some theatergoers experience when some scenes have them on the edge of their seats. “I want that to be a bigger part of what our Jewish lives are like and bring that to the people in the Den community,” Wolfe said. “I want to find more ways for that playfulness, that creativity, that feeling part of something larger than ourselves, to become an avenue in which people connect to their Jewish life and feel inspired, moved, motivated by Judaism.” On Sept. 8, Wolfe is scheduled to lead an evening of Jewish learning and conversation in preparation for Rosh Hashanah. The group will use a variety of creative arts methods to explore Sarah and Hannah’s biblical stories in Genesis, including bibliodrama — an interactive, improvisational group method. “You’re going into stories of the Torah and narratives of the Torah in order to gain a more personal insight into what was going on, and to make the texts feel that much more alive and breathing, as they have the ability to,” Wolfe said. “We’ll use the tools of art exploration in order to … think, ‘What was Sarah feeling when she finds out she’s going to become a mother?’ or ‘What is Hannah feeling when she prays alone and is weeping?’” The focus for Wolfe is using art to make Torah learning accessible. “Something that I love about being creative is it takes away the need to have a ton of Torah knowledge,” she said. “I think it really evens the playing field,” Wolfe said of theater and the arts. Having recently moved from Boston, Wolfe and her young family hadn’t previously spent much time in the nation’s capital. “It was really an act of faith and hoping that this job was the right reason to come here,” she said. “We’ve been really pleasantly surprised by how wonderful it is in D.C. so far.” They’ve received a warm welcome from the Den. “It’s been wonderful meeting a lot of people in the Den community and getting to hear from them what drew them to this community, what they love and want to see continue, and where are the places they’re excited to see grow now that there is another rabbi on board,” Wolfe said. [email protected]