Clergy @ TOS - Temple Ohabei Shalom

Rabbi Audrey Marcus Berkman

A graduate of Oberlin College and Harvard Divinity School (Masters of Theological Studies), Rabbi Audrey Marcus Berkman was ordained by the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in 2007, where she also received a Wexner Graduate Fellowship. She has served as a teacher, service leader, and officiant in a wide variety of Jewish contexts and communities. Most recently serving as Campus Rabbi and Hillel Director at Wellesley College, for six years she was rabbi of Shir Hadash, a congregation in Newton, MA. Rabbi Berkman has also served as a chaplain for Hebrew Senior Life and for Newton-Wellesley Hospital, an educator for the prestigious Bronfman Youth Fellowships in Israel, a cantor at Congregation Mishkan Tefila, and a teacher for Parenting Through a Jewish Lens, through Hebrew College.

Rabbi Berkman has spent time learning and living in Israel, at Pardes Institute for Jewish Studies, Hebrew University, Ben Gurion University, among others, and deeply loves the language and cultural landscape of Israel. She has officiated at many life-cycle events for unaffiliated families throughout the Boston area, and loves the work of engaging all who wish to connect to Jewish life and community, from any background.

Rabbi Berkman believes that it is our Jewish obligation to create an ongoing dialogue between our individual torah (our life experiences, passions, challenges, and questions) and Torah (Jewish text, tradition, culture, and wisdom in all of its many forms). When we bring our own voices into conversation with Torah, we are participating in the sacred task of the creation of new wisdom, and a better world.

Rabbi Berkman is married to Rabbi Jethro Berkman, Dean of Jewish Education at Gann Academy in Waltham. They have three sons, Gavi, Ami, and Edan, and a very sweet dog they adopted named Coco Rose. They live in the village of Auburndale in Newton.

Rabbi Berkman believes in the life-giving and transformative power of humor, time spent in nature, poetry, music, dance, dogs, coffee, and time spent with children.

Reach Rabbi Berkman at amberkman@ohabei.org.

Rabbi Daniel Schaefer

Following his ordination from Hebrew College, Rabbi Daniel Schaefer joins Temple Ohabei Shalom as our Assistant Rabbi. While in school, Daniel served as the student Rabbi of the Martha’s Vineyard Hebrew Center and the Bethlehem Hebrew Congregation, as well as the Director of Graduate Student Engagement at MIT Hillel.

Daniel grew up in Connecticut before attending Stanford University, where he studied History and Jewish Studies. His award-winning honors thesis, American Judaism Reconsidered: Religion & Nationalism in the Thought of Irving Reichert, explored visions of American Judaism before World War II. At Hebrew College, his final project, The Way of the Wilderness, focused on connections between nature and Torah in the book of Numbers.

After college, Daniel worked as an entrepreneur and ghostwriter, taught at a wilderness school, and served in AVODAH: The Jewish Service Corps, before returning to rabbinical school. In addition to Hebrew College, he has studied at Mechon Hadar, the Hartman Institute, the Jewish Theological Seminary, and Hebrew Union College.

He is passionate about Torah study, experiential learning, spiritual exploration, and building multi-generational Jewish community. In his free time, he loves spending time at Walden Pond, in the White Mountains, and cheering on the Boston Celtics. He is excited to be part of the community here at Temple Ohabei Shalom.

Reach Rabbi Schaefer at dschaefer@ohabei.org.