Goldenholz is first from state to be ordained
On Sunday, Jan. 7, Milwaukeean Aggie Goldenholz became the first in Wisconsin to receive smicha, or ordination, as a Jewish Renewal spiritual leader.
Goldenholz was one of five to receive ordination that day from Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi a co-founder with the late Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, of the Jewish Renewal movement. She is now, officially, a rabbinic pastor.
Of her fellow ordinands, one other was ordained a rabbinic pastor; two became rabbis; and one, a cantor.
Goldenholz said in a recent telephone interview that, like the others who go through this program, she came to it with a lot of experience.
For many years, she has worked as a Jewish educator, a social worker, a practitioner of alternative healing modalities and a spiritual adviser. She was also a rebbetzin, rabbi’s wife, though she has since divorced from Rabbi Gideon Goldenholz, former spiritual leader of Beth El Ner Tamid Synagogue.
As a member of the chaplaincy staff of Aurora Sinai Medical Center, Goldenholz’s work mainly consists of offering spiritual counseling to people who are seriously ill or facing the end of their lives.
“I have learned to develop trust [between myself and others] very quickly and create space for transformative conversation about [people’s] spiritual needs,” Goldenholz said.
“When I sit down and share with them who I am and what I do, the conversations are usually quite deep — conversations of the heart and soul. These are special skills that rabbinic pastors have. I often call myself a spiritual midwife. I help [people] give birth to their real selves.”
According to the Aleph: Alliance for Jewish Renewal Web site, the curriculum for rabbinic pastors prepares candidates to provide spiritual direction, support, and counseling in chaplaincy and in congregational settings.
It includes training in pastoral skills, life-cycle officiation, liturgical skills, Jewish literacy and personal/spiritual/emotional development. Goldenholz said that she also studied Kabbalah.
For Goldenholz, it was important to do this training with the Renewal program. Raised Orthodox, she lived for many years as a Conservative rabbi’s wife and lived a “fairly traditional lifestyle.” But this is different.
“I always felt that denominations answered a certain need but, for me, I always wanted to go beyond denominations. I just wanted to be Jewish,” she said.
‘Walk humbly’
The ordination ritual, which took place at the annual Jewish Renewal Ohalah convention, the professional association of Renewal rabbis in Boulder, Colo., was “magnificent” Goldenholz, said.
“The five of us created our own ritual for the smicha and that’s how Reb Zalman wanted it. The ordination was in the old European Chasidic style. We were isolated with our teachers for part of the day and [they] gave us counseling so that we could move forward with our lives,” Goldenholz said.
After each of the five ordination candidates spoke, their mentors and teachers stood behind them and the candidates leaned back and received a blessing in the arms of “those who came before them.” Goldenholz said.
Another highlight of the ceremony for Goldenholz was being “sung in” by a one-time fellow student and opera singer, who left their group to pursue ordination at the Conservative seminary. She wrote a song that incorporated the names of each colleague being ordained, and she sang it as they passed through a chuppah and entered the room, Goldenholz recalled.
But, she added, “The transformational event was not just the ordination, but the sharing in one another’s spiritual yearnings. It was remarkable and I walk around very humbly because I know I’m part of something so much larger than myself.”
Goldenholz’s older son was unable to attend the ordination as he is a medical student currently serving in an emergency room, but her younger son came to represent the family. “He was so touched; he said such beautiful words to me,” she said.
Asked if she should be called Reb Aggie, Goldenholz demurred. “I’m not really into titles. But this is fun. I’m a little embarrassed; this is all so new to me.
“I want to honor the tradition. I want to be respectful and come into this carefully, delightfully, quietly, playfully. Titles are nice, but ultimately it’s the person….”
Renewal in Wisconsin
While Goldenholz is the first ordained Jewish Renewal spiritual leader in Wisconsin, Congregation Shaarei Shamayim in Madison has a formal affiliation with the Jewish Renewal movement.
“When the congregation, which has membership of about 90 households, was originally founded in 1989,” said its spiritual leader Rabbi Laurie Zimmerman, “the members decided they wanted to affiliate with both the Reconstructionist movement and Aleph, the alliance for Jewish Renewal.”
Zimmerman, ordained at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, believes they may be the only congregation in the U.S. with that dual affiliation.
But, she said, they get much more support from the Reconstructionist movement, “probably because Jewish Renewal is not structured as a denomination. It’s more of an ideology” that seeks to infuse its ideas throughout Jewish life, she said.
“There is a handful of members [of Shaarei Shamayim] who see themselves as primarily Jewish Renewal Jews,” Zimmerman said. One of those, former Shaarei Shamayim president Celeste Robins, spoke to The Chronicle this week about Renewal.
Robins said that she first encountered Jewish Renewal when she attended a Shabbaton at Madison’s Hillel Foundation in the late 1970s. “It was the first time that my mind, body, emotions and spirit were fully engaged, in a Jewish context,” Robins said.
But she didn’t reconnect with Jewish Renewal until some 20 years later when, in the summer of 2000, she learned that Schachter-Shalomi would be teaching at the Elat Chayyim Retreat Center in Connecticut. “There I discovered a whole fabulous movement,” Robins said.
She described Jewish Renewal as “a very spiritually exuberant and joyful movement.”
There is song, dance and meditation: “It’s very much about one’s personal connection with the spiritual source.”
Noting that Carlebach was a songwriter and so song has always been important in Jewish Renewal, Robins also pointed to its commitment to social conscience, the arts, and equality of men and women in the liturgy as well as leadership.
“To me the movement represents a kind of integrity where your social values, creative expression and spiritual experience are all fully expressed and supported in your Jewish practice,” she said.
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