Molly lives to create opportunities for individuals to connect more deeply with themselves, with others, with their communities and with the natural world. Molly is an experienced community-builder and network-weaver who understands how essential connections are not only to a meaningful spiritual life but also to our physical and material survival. As a rabbi, Molly sees themself first as a lifelong learner and second as a teacher. She believes that effective educators are both open to learning the wisdom inside of each of their students and curious to the growth potential that lives within themselves.
Molly was born and remains rooted in Lenapehoking, the land of the Lenni-Lenape, and has been shaped by the traditions of their Ashkenazi Jewish and Lutheran family. Molly reveres their rabbinic ancestors for equipping them with the spiritual technologies of Shabbat, text study, shakla vetarya (the back and forth), nigunim and the land-based year-cycle. Molly both cherishes and is challenged by the ways Judaism dances between the cerebral and the embodied. She loves to find a balance between emphasizing the written word and the exchange of ideas, with Jewish connection to land, the natural rhythms of our world, and the magic that lives in our plants and our waters.
Molly is committed to the Bund’s principle of doikayt — “hereness” — and embracing diaspora as opportunity rather than punishment. She has traveled across the global Jewish world, witnessing the beauty and multiplicity of practice that Diaspora inspires and the resilience of Jewish culture that has survived from Babylon to Eastern Europe and Spain, to India and Argentina and beyond. Molly believes that diasporism is not a temporary status to run away from but rather the spark that ignites our creativity in the fight for justice.
הֲשִׁיבֵנוּ ה’ אֵלֶיךָ וְֽנָשׁוּבָה חַדֵּשׁ יָמֵינוּ כְּקֶֽדֶם׃
“Return us, The One Who Is
Always Becoming, to You
And let us return; Renew our days as of old!”
— Eicha 5:21
Molly offers gratitude to the community that anchors them — to the beloveds, family, mentors, teachers, hevrutot, classmates and dear friends who have journeyed with them on their path. To the spiritual practices that sustain her — to singing wherever, whenever and with whomever will sing along, to mikvehs in the Schuylkill and the Bay, and to hitbodedut in the Wissahickon and among the Redwoods. And to the Ultimate Source, Ribbono Shel Olam, who reminds her that we are all connected and that Her presence is everywhere.
קָדוֹשׁ קָדוֹשׁ קָדוֹשׁ ה’ צְבָאוֹת מְלֹא כל־הָאָרֶץ כְּבוֹדֽוֹ׃
“Holy, holy, holy, is The One Who Is Always Becoming;
The whole earth is filled with Her presence.”
— Isaiah 6:3
