New England native joins Emanu-El community as rabbi

Providence has just gained a new multitalented resident: a rabbi who is also a performing arts lover and new mother. Rabbi Rachel Zerin, 29, has recently returned to New England to start her first full-time rabbinical position at Temple Emanu-El in Providence’s East Side.

After completing a master’s degree program earlier this year, Zerin started at Temple Emanu-El on July 1. While it’s her first full-time gig, her resume is long and geographically diverse; her experience spans four continents and four – now five – states within the United States.

Zerin, who has always had an interest in both religion and music, got a joint-degree in both at Syracuse University. “I’m not formally trained as a cantor, but as a singer, I enjoy the cantorial aspects of Jewish leadership,” she explains.

Having acted in a number of plays in her youth, Zerin was attracted to Emanu-El’s music and arts programming. Her degree also includes a concentration in interfaith dialogue, an interest which Zerin says goes back to her formative years in North Billerica, Massachusetts.

“In some ways I think the groundwork was really laid in my upbringing. My parents’ friends, my friends who weren’t Jewish – they would often come with me to synagogue. I went to church. There was a lot of interfaith activity going on,” she says.

Zerin went on to explain how a somewhat sticky situation in college ended up leading to her pursuit of interfaith dialogue at the college level.

“It was kind of an accident,” she started with a smile. Her decision to become Shabbat observant during college, she said, made dorm living a little difficult until she opted to live on an interfaith floor. She then pursued alternative spring break opportunities that promoted interfaith activities and dialogue, including a trip to Turkey with visits to multiple religious institutions and community centers to do interfaith work.

Upon completing her bachelor’s degree in 2009, Zerin went to the Conservative Yeshiva in Jerusalem, Israel, where she studied Talmud for a year. This was a crucial turning point in her life, as it’s where she met her husband Sam and fell in love with Talmud.

“And I had a nice apartment there, too!” she adds.

Then it was onward to the Big Apple to simultaneously pursue two degrees: a master’s degree in Talmud and a rabbinical ordination at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. This was also a crucial turning point, as it’s where she and Sam had their first child. Ezra was born in 2015 during Passover.

“I was parenting full time, doing my master’s degree during his naptimes,” she says with a laugh.

New York, says the rabbi, was where she found a sense of community and belonging. “I wish I could have transplanted my whole community,” she says. “If there was an emergency, [I had] half a dozen numbers of people I can call.”

Now, she is very excited to come back to her New England roots and to become a part of Temple Emanu-El’s community.

“I am really excited to be working with a lot of young people and young families. Certainly my own process of becoming a young mother and a parent is making me aware of ways that the Jewish community can be there for you,” she says.

She is also looking forward to community organizing with other communities in the area, Jewish social justice work, and combining with them her passion for Jewish text and ritual.

“It’s the chance to connect with people. We celebrate together, we cry together, and we’re there for each other. That’s what community means. I’ve been blessed enough to experience that and I want that for others,” she says. “And to don my superwoman costume and save the world.”

ARIEL BROTHMAN is a freelance writer who lives in Wrentham, Massachusetts.