Welcome to the online home of Rachel Barenblat. I've been creating bespoke rituals for lifecycle events (babynamings, bar/bat mitzvah celebration, weddings, and funerals) since 2000. In January of 2011 I'll be ordained as a rabbi within the Jewish Renewal movement. Between now and then, I hope this website will undergo some major revision! But for now, this is where you can find some information about who I am and the ritualcraft work that I do, as well as an archive of some of my ceremonies. Here, also, is information about my non-ritual writing work, both freelance and creative.

Most people come here looking for my Passover haggadah. The most recent version is 7.0 and can be found here: Velveteen Rabbi's Haggadah for Pesach [pdf].

Franz Kafka once said "Writing is a form of prayer." That may not always be true -- few of us manage to generate grocery lists which are genuinely prayerful, for instance -- but I do my best to spend my life at the intersection of writing and religion. I write articles and essays about religion; I blog about religion; I weave Judaism into my poems; and I write prayers and liturgies, custom lifecycle events among them. If this interests you, you've come to the right place!

Hopefully the links in the lefthand sidebar are pretty self-explanatory. If you're interested in learning more about the art of Jewish ritualcraft, or about the possibility of my writing a holiday or lifecycle ceremony for you, you'll want the top five items. The next four focus on my non-ritual-related writing work. And if you'd like to begin a conversation, you can reach me through that bottom link.

Please be aware that for now, this website is fairly static, and changes infrequently. My blog, Velveteen Rabbi, is updated often, so if you're looking for new material, that's the place to look.

Stop in and stay a while. Thanks for visiting!