Dear Members of Adat Shalom:
As you probably know by now, I will be the rabbinic intern working with the clergy team while Rabbi Fred is on sabbatical in the coming year. I’ll be joining you at the Retreat this year, for one weekend in July, and then will be starting in earnest in September. I am very excited about this wonderful opportunity and I look forward to meeting you and getting started!
By way of introduction, I am entering my fifth and final (!) year at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. For this past two years I have served as the Mid-Atlantic Regional Director for JRF, as well as in a variety of service leading and teaching positions. Prior to my coming to RRC, I spent four years in Israel, the last two as an English teacher in the high school in the northern Israeli town of Nahariya.
I will be active throughout many areas of Adat Shalom life, including on the bimah and in the Torah School, working with the b’nai mitzvah families and with the teens, and teaching adult education. My particular areas of interest are Israel/Zionism and Jewish approaches to voluntary simplicity—about which I wrote an article in a recent issue of Reconstructionism Today. Ask me about it sometime!
I’m very excited about the chance to come to Bethesda, to work with Rabbi Sid, Rabbi George, and Hazzan Rachel, and to get to know the Adat Shalom community. I look forward to having the opportunity to meet all of you and do a little learning, a little davenning, and a little celebrating.
See you soon!
Kol tuv (all the best),
Moti Rieber