“What does God require of you, to do justice and love mercy and walk humbly with your God.”
Micah 6:8
Amy Grossblatt Pessah is a rabbi, educator, spiritual director, and author living and working in Boca Raton, Florida. She was ordained by Aleph: Alliance for Jewish Renewal and is a graduate of the Rhea Hirsch School of Jewish Education at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion where she received a Master of Arts in Jewish Education. Her undergraduate work was completed at Washington University in St. Louis where she graduated magna cum laude, double-majoring in History and Jewish Near-Eastern Studies. Currently, Rabbi Amy serves various synagogues and communities in South Florida.
Rabbi Amy’s professional journey began as a Jewish educator where she served the Jewish community in a variety of settings, ranging from formal to informal, religious schools, day schools, synagogues, camps, and JCCs and in a multitude of demographics, with a special emphasis on adults and families. One of Rabbi Amy’s strengths lies in her ability to connect to both young and old alike, which led her to obtain national certification as a Jewish Family Educator.
In the mid-90s, Rabbi Amy served as the Pearlstone Director of Jewish Family Education (JFE) at the Center for Jewish Education in Baltimore, MD. There she worked as a consultant to rabbis, principals, and teachers helping them integrate JFE into their institutions. Rabbi Amy was instrumental in creating the Jewish Family Education Network and taught at The Baltimore Hebrew University. Rabbi Amy’s work and publications were disseminated throughout the Baltimore’s Jewish community. Her expansive and varied training led Rabbi Amy to serve as a Jewish educational consultant for the Aspen Jewish community and other Baltimore area synagogues, helping them with grant writing and organizational restructuring of their education programs.
Rabbi Amy’s work has been published in two Jewish Family Education anthologies: Growing Together: Resources, Programs and Experiences for Jewish Family Education, edited by Rabbi Jeffrey Schein and Judith S. Schiller and Jewish Family Education: A Casebook for the Twenty-first Century, edited by Rachel Brodie and Vicky Kelman. In addition, Amy contributed to Beginning the Journey: Toward a Women’s Commentary on Torah, edited by Rabbi Emily H. Feigenson and Irreconcilable Differences? A Learning Resource for Jews and Christians, edited by David F. Sandmel, Rosann M. Catalano and Christopher M. Leighton.
After moving from Baltimore to South Florida in the late 1990s, Amy continued teaching parenting classes at the JCC of South Palm Beach County. Later, she became a teacher for the Florence Melton Adult Mini-School, teaching both parents and teachers about Jewish values, traditions, rituals, and history. In 2004, she became the founding president of Congregation Shaarei Kodesh, where she helped build the community from the ground up. Amy wore many hats as a Jewish educator, creating the infrastructure for the religious school and the family education programming, as lay clergy, leading services and delivering regular divrei Torah, as fundraiser, strategist, markerting/publicity, and community builder. Today the congregation has grown to 200 families.
For the past twenty years, Amy has focused much of her energy on creating and nurturing her own growing family. She credits her family with being her greatest teachers. An integral part of her parenting has included study and practice of Jewish mysticism, mindfulness, meditation, and music. While raising her children, Amy became trained as a Jewish Spiritual Director from 2009-2011 and during that time, she wrote and recorded a CD of original music chants that has been sold across the country.
Compiling the wisdom that Amy has gleaned over the years as both a parent and an educator, she has written a book on Jewish Spiritual Parenting, entitled, Parenting on a Prayer: Ancient Jewish Secrets for Raising Modern Children, (Ben Yehuda Press). Through her book, she hopes to transmit the depth, breadth, and relevancy of Jewish prayer to the sacred task of parenting.
As a trusted and sought out spiritual leader in the Boca Raton community, Rabbi Amy has been leading services, officiating at lifecycle events, providing spiritual counseling, teaching, and consulting. She believes that Judaism as a spiritual practice can provide a life filled with joy, meaning, purpose, and connection.