Sam brings to his rabbinate a deep love of text and distrust of certainty. He relies on imagination and generative dissent to surface new meanings, believing that when we do so we tend the growth of the Tree we call Torah. A close reader and careful listener, Sam cultivates spaces where others learn to trust their personal resonances with Jewish ritual and text. Recognizing that the secrets buried in the text may be beyond words, he also celebrates our capacity to surface these mysteries in song, movement, art and the transcendent moments of life.
Growing up in Bangor, Maine, a small town with a small Jewish population, Sam learned Jewish community as a relational project where we are each responsible for shaping the Jewish world we need. He has deep gratitude for his family, who demonstrated the many ways of being Jewish in the world, especially his parents and grandparents, and the many community organizers and activists who nurtured his love of justice.
Sam weaves ecological awareness into his spiritual practice, drawing on his love of the mountains and oceans of the Pacific Northwest, where he lived for 20 years, and on his studies of environmental science. He offers gratitude to the friends and mentors he met there who inspired him to deepen into creative forms of Jewish inquiry, including Rabbi Seth Goldstein, Zann Jacobrown and Sam Schrager. Sam developed his skills as a service leader with Rabbi Arik Labowitz at Congregation Eitz Or, where he later served as spiritual leader.
He has benefited immensely from the guidance and support of Rabbi Alanna Sklover and Rabbi Erin Hirsh at Or Hadash: A Reconstructionist Congregation. Last, but not least, his work with Rabbi Mira Wasserman at the Center for Jewish Ethics at RRC consistently anchors his understanding of his work as rabbi.
הַרְבֵּה תּוֹרָה לָמַדְתִּי וְלֹא חִסַּרְתִּי מֵרַבּוֹתַי אֲפִילּוּ כַּכֶּלֶב הַמְּלַקֵּק מִן הַיָּם
“I have learned much Torah, and I have not taken away from my teachers even like a dog lapping from the sea.”
— Babylonian Talmud Sanhedrin 68a
“The symbol does not express anything, does not mean anything. … Each symbol is an experience, a radical change that has to be lived, a leap that has to be made. There is no such thing as a symbol, only a symbolic experience.”
— Maurice Blanchot, The Secret of the Gollum
“Tell Him that I cling. We cling. He made us, He can never shake us off. We will always find Him out. Promise Him that. We will always find Him, no matter how few there are, tell Him we will find Him. To deliver our complaint.”
— S. Ansky, The Dybbuk
