Rabbi Ilana Garber graduated from the Double Degree program of List College (TalmudReferring to one of two collections, the Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmuds, edited in the 6th century, that contains hundreds of years of commentary, discussion, and exploration of the ideas in the Mishnah. One could describe it as Mishnah + Gemara = Talmud) and Barnard College (Religion) in 2000, and received her MA from the Wm. Davidson Graduate School of Jewish Education in 2003. She was ordained by the Jewish Theological Seminary in 2005, and immediately became an active volunteer in our RA (co-chair of Women’s Committee, served on Nominations Committee, Convention Committee, Zera’im: Seeds of our Future) while serving as Rabbi and Rabbinic Director of Lifelong Learning & Community Engagement at Beth El Temple (West Hartford, CT) from 2005-2020. A visionary Jewish educator, she created SULAM (Seek, Understand, Learn, Act, Marvel) in a complete overhaul of Beth El Temple’s religious school. Passionate about the mikveh, she wrote the curriculum to train mikveh guides for Boston’s Mayyim Hayyim: Living Waters Community Mikveh. Currently, she serves on the boards of Greater Hartford’s Mikveh Bess Israel and the Hartford Region’s Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

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