Rabbi Adina Lewittes

Adina (“Dini”) Lewittes founded Sha’ar, a values-driven Jewish community that for 20 years has provided innovative gateways into Jewish life in northern New Jersey and New York City exemplified by a commitment to diversity, creativity, scholarship, excellence and collaboration. She is currently writing a book on the changing landscape of identity and belonging, and speaking and teaching in a wide variety of settings, including in the Rabbinical School at the Jewish Theological Seminary, where she teaches a class in contemporary Jewish law. She recently served as the interim rabbi in residence at Kehillat Beth Israel in Ottawa, Canada. Lewittes is a member of the senior rabbinic faculty of the Shalom Hartman Institute and of the board of trustees of Keshet and of the Heschel School in New York City. Between 2017 and 2021, she served as scholar in residence at Congregation B’nai Jeshurun on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, where she developed and delivered robust text study and discussion relating ethical and halakhic challenges of contemporary Jewish life. She is married to Andi Lewittes, and is blessed with four children, two stepchildren and one awesome dog. When not with their kids in New York City or Toronto, Canada, or leading Jewish travel adventures around the world, they live in the beautiful Laurentian Mountains in Canada. There, Lewittes is leading a blossoming, nature-driven Jewish community, and designing and building a green Jewish cemetery.

Essays

Green vines growing across a pastel green wall.

Green Love: Expanding Jewish Empathy to the Planet

January 8, 2025

Nature’s embrace of our fragility is empathic, borne of the Earth’s deep awareness of its own vulnerability.

Rabbi Adina Lewittes

Essays

Green Love: Expanding Jewish Empathy to the Planet

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