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Rabbi’s Spiritual
Dream Realized

By Gail Lacouture
Times Staff
7/22/10
Hannah Orden had searched for years. She longed to find the appropriate connection to her Jewish roots but never could – until now.

Orden, 57, of Milton, recently became a rabbi after graduating from Hebrew College in Newton with a Master of Arts degree in Jewish studies. She completed the five-year program in June and has joined Temple B’Nai Israel in Laconia, N.H., and will lead services two weekends per month.

She divides her time between Milton and New Hampshire. But, how did the one-time English teacher, novelist, and theater aficionado turn rabbi?

It started early. The daughter of academics – her father was a professor and her mother a sociologist – Orden grew up in Chicago, the youngest of three, with very little religious identity.

Even though her family was “very Americanized” and assimilated to life in the United States, Orden’s mother had a strong Jewish faith and hoped to pass that on to her children. She sent her three children, one boy and two girls, to religious school at synagogue.

“I don’t know why exactly,” said Orden. “But I felt a strong connection to Judaism and to God as a child. It’s funny because no one in my extended family believed in God. Something in those classes spoke to me.”

All four of Orden’s grandparents were Russian immigrants, and spoke Yiddish in the home, she said. Therefore, the family’s cultural identity was intact. But other than Hanukkah and Passover being celebrated, she said, Orden’s family enjoyed American traditions such as Sunday dinners instead of Friday-night candle lightings like most members of the Jewish faith.

“My parents were very interested in being American and fitting in, like many children of immigrants are,” she said. “I felt like part of my identity had been lost. There were all of these traditions that got lost in the next generation. [Even as a child] I was searching for my roots. I felt cut off and disconnected from what I was, but I didn’t know how to reach it.”

Unlike her siblings, Orden spent most of her young life trying to connect with “being Jewish in a way that was meaningful to me,” she said.

She lived in Israel for a few years, she said, but the roles of women were far too traditional for her to last there.

Meanwhile, she pursued a teaching career for about six years before becoming a full-time fiction writer and novelist.

She and her husband, Don Moskowitz, a social worker, also started a family. Orden’s daughter, Isabel, 21, is about to enter her senior year at Hampshire College in Amherst.

In fact, Orden’s daughter was a major reason she entered into rabbinical school in the first place, after years of trying to fit spirituality and religion into her life, she said.

In order to pass her faith on to her daughter, in a way similar to how her mother did years before, the family joined a synagogue in Canton. There, they quickly found a home.

“My husband I got very involved,” said Hannah. “We gave services, participated in Torah study. We liked the community. We made friends.”

It was there that Orden heard of a religious adult education program that she participated in for two years. She said it “filled in some gaps in knowledge but still didn’t fit my spiritual need.”

From there, Isabel celebrated her bat mitzvah and, Orden marks it as one of the best days of her own life.

“I couldn’t believe my daughter was up there, so poised, leading a service, reading the Torah. She looked so beautiful,” she said.

And after her daughter expressed to her how wonderful the day’s events had made her feel, Hannah said, she knew she had to pursue rabbinical school in order to make faith a permanent part of their lives.

“I had talked about [becoming a rabbi] over my whole life with my mother,” said Hannah. “The first woman to be ordained was in 1973, so growing up I didn’t even think it was a possibility. There were no women rabbis, so I never even considered it. The last time we talked before [my mother] died, I said, ‘I guess I’m not going to become one in my lifetime.’”

In addition, she said, there were no rabbinical schools in Massachusetts. Orden said because she and her husband were raising a child, a move at the time was unrealistic.

“I really wanted it but couldn’t see how it was possible” she said.

Then, Isabel’s bat mitzvah came and went, and a newfound inspiration was realized. In addition, a rabbinical school opened in Boston. Orden said she was thrilled.

Now, the former English teacher, writer, actor, and director – Orden wrote a play that was picked up and performed by a New Jersey theater company in 1988; she has also written and published two novels – found her spiritual connection and then some.

“Being a rabbi helps tie together my teaching, writing and my spirituality,” she said. “Even the theater part of it, sometimes [leading a service] is performing.”

Visit www.rabbihannahorden.com for a series of non-fiction vignettes that Orden plans to write in the coming months about her life and spiritual journey.