SPEAKER: Rabbi Michal Woll
Raised in a Reform synagogue in Chicago with a dynamic music program, she has been singing in shul since she was eight years old. Prior to joining Shir Hadash in 2017, she has served congregations in Vermont, Michigan and Milwaukee. Rabbi Michal Woll brings her passion for music, teaching, and creating ritual, and deep appreciation of Judaism. She has maintained her interest in medical ethics and end-of-life care. As a rabbi, she integrates her passions for music, movement, learning, self discovery, pastoral care, and community building.
A gifted rabbi, liturgist, pastoral counselor, physical therapist, and yogi with 25 years experience and three advanced degrees.
After graduating from Northwestern University and M.I.T. in bioengineering she worked in the medical device industry developing dialysis and burn care products. There she discovered a passion for medical ethics and quality of life issues. eventually turning to clinical medicine and chaplaincy. After years of lay leadership in her communities she entered the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, in Philadelphia, graduating in 2007.
Rabbi Woll was active in the Interfaith Council of Greater Milwaukee and Tikkun Ha-Ir/Repair our City and is affiliated nationally with T'ruah: The Rabbinical Call for Human Rights as well as Dayenu: A Jewish Call to Climate Action.
She now lives in Middlebury, Vermont with her husband, writer and publisher Jon M. Sweeney, and their daughter Sima
A Little History...
The annual Reichert Bible Talk is a tradition that reaches back to the years just after World War Two, when poet Robert Frost invited Rabbi Reichert to visit him at the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference in Ripton.
Frost had met Reichert while giving a reading in Cincinnati, where Reichert was rabbi of the Rockdale Temple, the oldest synagogue west of the Alleghenies, from 1924 to 1964. Their friendship deepened, and Rabbi Reichert and his wife Louise eventually bought the old one-room schoolhouse near Bread Loaf as a summer cottage (now the corner of Frost Highway and Reichert Lane).
For many summers, the Reicherts attended the nearby Ripton Methodist Church, and Rabbi Reichert would give a talk in the late summer on one of the books of the Hebrew Bible, of those scriptures common to Jews and Christians.
The "Bible Talk" became an annual event, and the Ripton congregation named Reichert the church's "Rabbi in Residence." Since Rabbi Reichert's passing in 1990 at the age of ninety-three, Havurah of Addison County, and the United Methodist Church of Middlebury, East Middlebury and Ripton have collaborated to sustain this ecumenical tradition, co-sponsoring the Bible Talk every year.
Another recent comment by Professor Shine: “Rabbi Reichert liked to stress certain aspects of the program: one, it's a ‘talk’, not ‘lecture.’ He liked the informality of calling it the annual ‘Bible Talk.’ Second, it's about the Hebrew Bible. Third, he liked to give the talk a title that was a puzzle, alluding to, but not naming, the book of the Bible on which he would speak.”
Rabbi Victor & Louise Reichert
The Reicherts were founding members of Havurah and loaned the community its first Torah scroll.
Havurah House is home to a Reichert Library, which was in part endowed by Louise and includes a collection of the Rabbi's books.
Though no longer living, Victor & Louise's legacy lives on in the Ripton & Havurah Communities.
Be sure not to miss this wonderful annual event!!