Sixteen Years and Counting: Reflections from the Tisch Alumni Retreat

This June, I had the opportunity to travel to Montreal as part of the Tisch Alumni Fellowship for our annual retreat. I joined with 40 of my rabbinic and cantorial colleagues for four days of learning, question-asking, conversations that were deep and wide-ranging, and connection. Hosted by Rabbis Lisa Gruschow and Ben Luks-Morgan at Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom, we explored the city of Montreal, especially focusing on the progressive Jewish community.

I first joined the Tisch community as a third-year rabbinical student, back in 2010. This marks my 16th year as part of this incredible cohort of peers, first as students, and for the last thirteen years as rabbis and cantors. This is a community of colleagues who turn to one another in moments of celebration and crisis, to discuss matters of the intellect and questions of the soul. We all have moments of being each other's teachers and each other's students, and it is truly a blessing to be surrounded by such thoughtful, caring, and remarkable colleagues.

In Montreal, we learned from Rabbis Gruschow and Luks-Morgan about the unique qualities and richness of Montreal progressive Judaism - the interplay between francophone and anglophone cultures; the multiculturalism that is embedded in Canadian life; the incredibly high percentage of children in their community who attend Jewish day schools. We spoke with the president of their congregation about her experiences as a francophone, Moroccan, Canadian Jew living in Montreal; we explored the rich history of Mizrahi and Sephardic migration and community in the city, largely rooted in the fact that Quebec was a safe haven for French-speaking Jews.

One highlight was our "Beyond the Bagels" Jewish food tour of the city, in which we came to learn the history of the Jewish community in Montreal through food; we ate Montreal bagels (and participated in the perennial debate about which bagel is the best, Fairmount or St-Viateur), salami sandwiches at Wilensky, and smoked meat at Schwartz's Deli - all long-established restaurants - and potato knishes at one of Montreal's newest Jewish eateries, Chez Greenberg (I plan to go back to try their poutine knish!), among so many other delicious and fascinating stops.

One of the hallmarks of our Tisch Fellowship community, both as students and as alumni, is the chance to bring our joys and our sorrows, our milestones and our challenges, to one another. As part of our retreat we also spent time with one another in deep conversation about a particular question or problem we are individually facing in our work, to wrestle with it and seek input from colleagues. Gathering for a retreat like this every year gives rabbis and cantors the opportunity to step out of the day-to-day and think big, trying out new wonderings, new ways of thinking about the world, new ideas. We do so with such gratitude to our teacher, Rabbi Larry Hoffman, our Tisch alumni leadership council, Rabbis Sasha Baken-Rennert and Rachael Pass (outgoing and incoming Tisch program coordinators, also fellowship alums), and of course, to Sara Star, whose generosity funds the cantorial students, and Bonnie and Daniel Tisch for their incredible, enduring support of this community.