Chloe Zelkha’s earliest spiritual practice was watching her parents transform their home into a place where people could land — family from Iran, her father’s closest friends and many others gathering around the dinner table.
She was fortunate to attend schools with creative, transformative pedagogies — from Ohlone Elementary School to The Mountain School in Vermont — communities that showed her what education could be. At Carleton College, she graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in Religion.
These early experiences led Chloe to The Food Project in Boston and Urban Adamah in Berkeley, Calif., where she designed immersive programs connecting young adults to the earth, to Jewish wisdom and to each other. Her interest in transformative learning brought her to Harvard University, where she earned a master’s degree in education.
Grief has been a profound teacher on her path. After a season of personal loss, Chloe completed a chaplaincy residency at UCSF Medical Center, offering spiritual care to pediatric and adult patients and their families. When the COVID-19 pandemic emerged, she co-founded the Covid Grief Network, building a national support system for people grieving loved ones. Through the Fellowship for Rabbinic Entrepreneurs at Atra: Center for Rabbinic Innovation, she developed and led grief retreats for those in mourning, and authored Being with Grief, a creative workbook for loss.
More than most things, Chloe trusts in the Torah of song and silence. A dedicated meditation practitioner, Chloe has sat over 150 nights on retreat and regularly teaches classes, retreats, contemplative song and prayer for organizations around the country.
During her time at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College as a Wexner Graduate Fellow, Chloe has served as director of community learning at Eden Village Camp; created innovative programs as a rabbinic intern with The Center for Small Town Jewish Life; studied at the Pardes Institute in Jerusalem; and offered spiritual leadership at Centre College and Dayenu: A Jewish Call to Climate Action. She is particularly grateful to Reconstructionist affiliated Congregation Kehilat Shalom, where she was lucky to serve as sabbatical rabbi.
Chloe is profoundly grateful for her teachers, mentors and loved ones who have supported her path to semicha. She especially thanks her dad (z”l), who taught her the Torah of beauty and wild love; and her forever hevrutah, Jesse.
“This is the Torah: a person.”
זאת התורה: אדם
— Me’or Eynayim on Numbers 19:14
כל שֶׁאֵינוֹ בְּהֶסְתֵּר פָּנִים אֵינוֹ מֵהֶם
“Anyone who doesn’t experience G-d’s hiddenness isn’t from among them [the Jewish people].”
— Talmud, Hagiga 5a
“Look, I don’t understand a thing at all, Hallelujah! That’s the only moment that we live here fully as human beings.”
— Leonard Cohen
“My cup overflows.”
— Psalms 23:5
