From the Substack Newsletter of Michelle W. Malkin, Executive Director of ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal
For six days this winter, I watched 450 Jews pray, sing, discuss, learn, cry, and dance together in ways that felt both ancient and radically new. Seventeen rabbis, cantors, and chaplains were ordained — but the ordinations were not the most important thing that happened. What unfolded was something many Jews are quietly searching for: a form of Judaism that feels spiritually alive.
How do you describe praying Aleinu by chanting only its first line in call-and-response for two full minutes, until meaning replaces translation? Or an impromptu song session in a hotel lobby, voices echoing up stairwells and down hallways as strangers and friends become a choir? Or a hora that follows a tear-filled rite of passage—one that you’re sure must end soon, yet you hope never will?
Those steeped in Jewish Renewal often say, “You’ll know it when you see it.” After six days inside this world, I would add: you’ll feel it before you can explain it. Only one week later, I experienced a gathering of Jews in New York City and around the country to learn from inspiring teachers, pray in community, and have a different Jewish experience, together.
What was alive in both of these spaces was a Judaism rooted in profound connection; connection to one another, to the Divine presence, and to the deepest, most alive parts of ourselves. It was not Judaism as performance or obligation, but Judaism as encounter, and it spoke directly to a deeper challenge facing liberal Judaism: many Jews are seeking spiritual depth and connection that our institutions struggle to provide.
This matters because liberal Judaism is at an inflection point. A surge of spiritual seeking has brought many Jews back to synagogue doors—only to find melodies that no longer move them, language that feels inaccessible, and communities that struggle to foster genuine human connection. Too often, the spark that brought people in, flickers out.
From its very beginnings, Jewish Renewal has been tending that spark. It draws people closer to their own inner light, helps them recognize the holiness in others, and empowers Jews to move through daily life with greater meaning, intentionality, and purpose.
So what is Jewish Renewal?
It’s a fair question—and a complicated one. When a movement is built on ongoing transformation, its essence resists easy definition. What I do know is that the experience has a recognizable identity: safe, God-centered, musical, and choice-driven spaces, grounded in lived encounter, where Jewish expression can flourish and deepen.
Founded by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi (z”l), a postwar Jewish visionary and theologian, together with a generation of groundbreaking leaders, Jewish Renewal integrates Hasidic wisdom, contemplative practice, embodied prayer, and deep ecological and social consciousness. It is ancient and experimental at once.
Today, Jewish Renewal is also home to one of the largest and most diverse ordination pathways across the globe through the Aleph Ordination Program. Students of all ages and stages—many with years of life experience and prior careers—choose this path because they are educated as whole human beings. Learning is transmitted through relationship, in the classic Hasidic model, and spiritual formation is treated as essential, not extracurricular.
Perhaps because Renewal clergy are not trained to replicate a single institutional model, they have quietly become some of the most entrepreneurial leaders in Jewish life. Across the United States, Canada, Israel, Australia, and Germany, Renewal-trained rabbis, cantors, and chaplains lead independent communities, innovative nonprofits, retreat centers, and spiritual startups. Many also serve within Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist, and transdenominational settings, infusing established institutions with heart-centered prayer and deep pastoral presence.
Much of this work happens without fanfare. Renewal clergy tend to operate in the shadows, with small communities, more focused on impact than visibility. Often unrecognized by mainstream denominational institutions, they devote themselves to work that nourishes their own souls and those entrusted to their care. Nevertheless, the cumulative effect of their presence in these spaces is undeniable: lives changed, communities reimagined, and Judaism experienced not as inherited obligation, but as something alive and responsive.
Over the coming year, those of us stewarding this movement will be working intentionally to make Jewish Renewal more accessible to the broader Jewish community—to help people understand what it is, how to find it, and, most importantly, how to experience it. These efforts will build toward one of the largest Jewish Renewal gatherings in the summer of 2028.
We are eager to share Jewish Renewal more widely not because we believe it is the only path forward—but because we believe it speaks powerfully to what so many Jews are longing for right now: depth, authenticity, joy, and sacred encounter.
Jewish Renewal is not the only answer to this moment—but it is a compelling one. And for those who feel something is missing in their Jewish spiritual life, know this: the spark you’re seeking is already within you. Jewish Renewal simply knows how to help it catch fire!
Pardes Hannah is the Jewish Renewal synagogue of Ann Arbor in affiliation with ALEPH: The Alliance for Jewish Renewal.
ALEPH serves as the international umbrella organization for Jewish Renewal and supports a network of more than 50 Renewal communities throughout the world. It conducts retreats, offers rabbinic programs for rabbis, cantors, and chaplains, supports social justice initiatives, and provides leadership programs for young adults.