Rabbi Avi Strausberg was always drawn to Judaism, but didn’t find “her people” and calling as a Jewish educator until a post-college program.
She described Adamah, a residential fellowship in Connecticut, as a turning point in her Jewish life, “in terms of experiencing what it meant to be Jewish in community.”
“Even though I had grown up going to Hebrew school, I was introduced to this world of Torah that I didn’t really know about,” the Chevy Chase resident said.
She said Adamah was the first time she fasted for Tisha B’Av: “I had never really experienced what it meant to fast as a part of a community, to not feel lonely in that.”
The group also harvested vegetables on Friday, then spent the afternoon cooking and preparing for Shabbat together before a communal Kabbalat Shabbat in the retreat center’s living room.
“That experience really drove home for me how important it is that Judaism is something that you can only do in community, and [that] the meaning of what it is to be Jewish is found in community and the people that you surround yourself with,” Strausberg said.
She also realized how little she knew about Judaism despite being raised Jewish in New Jersey, attending Hebrew school and becoming bat mitzvah.
“I was like, ‘I don’t know any of this stuff,’ and so I really wanted to do some serious study,” Strausberg recalled.
That realization led her to complete a year of study at the Hadar Institute, a Manhattan-based educational institution where she is now the senior director of national learning initiatives.
“At Hadar, I experienced Jewish learning and fell in love with Jewish learning, and that led me to want to go to rabbinical school, less because I wanted to become a rabbi at the time, and more because I was just really excited about six years of Jewish learning,” Strausberg said.
Her current role involves building strong relationships with DMV-area synagogues, Jewish organizations, schools, universities and Jewish community centers. Her work also encompasses teaching, pastoral care and overseeing Hadar’s regional directors in four other cities.
“I’m responsible both for bringing Hadar to D.C., but thinking about how to bring Hadar’s learning and resources to communities across the country,” Strausberg said.
She added that she enjoys building community with fellow Jewish leaders: “Hadar doesn’t have a physical base in D.C. [or] Maryland, so all of the work that I’m doing is out in the community.”
She teaches a twice-monthly women’s Torah study class at Ohr Kodesh Congregation, where she belongs, and helped lead a collaborative art-centered beit midrash at Milton Gottesman Jewish Day School in Washington, D.C., last fall.
“The Torah that I’m most excited about and that really drives me is Torah about how to be a person in the sometimes hard and messy and joyful and challenging world that we live in,” Strausberg said. “So I teach a lot about Torah that’s on faith and doubt, Torah that’s about what it means to live in uncertainty, Torah that’s about how to navigate the complexities of human relationship, Torah that’s about seeking and being in relationship with God, but basically Torah that, to me, feels honest and authentic and vulnerable, and speaks to the needs of this particular moment.”
She spoke to the “power of Torah” to help Jews make meaning of their lives and ground them in ancient tradition.
“I think that even when you’re learning Torah that can sometimes be about hard topics or hard moments, there’s a certain kind of joy in learning Torah and in making connections to your life,’ she said.
Strausberg has been accomplishing this through leading a monthly downtown beit midrash with DC Minyan at the Edlavitch DCJCC. Most of the nearly 35 attendees are young adults in their 20s and 30s, she said.
“The room is just full of energy, of people that are excited to be with each other and excited to be learning Torah,” Strausberg said.
She structures time for them to study in chavruta, paired learning, to parse through the text before a group discussion.
“Inevitably, when it’s time to bring them back from their paired learning to come back to debrief with the whole group, it’s almost painful to get them to stop learning because they’re so involved and invested in their conversations,” Strausberg said. “And I find that to be really meaningful and invigorating to see other people connecting to the text and connecting to Torah the way that I connect to it.”
She leads another beit midrash the fourth Wednesday of every month in partnership with Tifereth Israel Congregation and Minyan Segulah.
The rabbi’s teaching doesn’t stop at young adults — some of her students are in their 80s and 90s. In the DMV, the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington supports Hadar’s work with the 20s and 30s demographic, but Strausberg and the organization reach a “wide range of audiences.”
The most important aspect of her teaching style is to share Torah that’s “high-level,” going beyond an introduction to Judaism in a way that’s accessible, inspired by her former teacher and Hadar CEO Rabbi Elie Kaunfer.
“I try to create a teaching environment where people are getting to really go in deep with the Torah, regardless of their background and where they’re coming from,” Strausberg said. “I’m really interested in putting people in relationship to Torah and in getting them to draw out their own thoughts and make their own meaning and connections.”
Looking ahead, Strausberg is excited for Hadar’s immersive learning experience in New York this July.
“It’s going to be four days of digging deep into the theme of exile and redemption, and the ways in which exile and redemption shape Jewish identity,” she said. “I’m teaching for that, but I’m also in charge of that seminar, so I’m really looking forward to that.”
