Rabbi Ilana Garber
Rabbi Ilana C. Garber was born in Toronto, Canada, and raised in Brookline, Massachusetts. She spent nine years at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in Talmud (2000), a master’s degree in Jewish education (2003), and rabbinic ordination (2005). She also received a bachelor’s degree in religion from Barnard College (2000), writing a thesis entitled, “Can One be an Observant Jew and a Practicing Buddhist?”. Rabbi Garber is married to Adam Berkowitz, a musician.
Rabbi Garber has worked as Director of Education at Camp Ramah in Canada, as the family education rabbi at Beth El Congregation in Baltimore, Maryland, and as the education programmer at the Makor/Steinhardt Center in New York. She has served as an interfaith chaplain at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center in New York and Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston. She held a student pulpit at Congregation Sha’are Shalom in Leesburg, Virginia.
Rabbi Garber’s expertise extends to both the young and the young-at-heart. She has led Tot Shabbat services in New York and Virginia, educated United Synagogue Youth (and was a New England region president in her day) and she has sung at nursing homes across the country. She has traveled as a guest teacher for Women’s League Torah Fund and as a representative of the Jewish Theological Seminary.
Rabbi Garber wrote a curriculum to train mikveh attendants for Mayyim Hayyim: Living Waters Community Mikveh and Education Center in Boston, and the curriculum was awarded a Covenant grant. She is passionate about mikveh resurgence, creating new rituals, learning with others, music of all kinds, and cheering for the Red Sox.