JTS forum hears author-rabbi who heads Nashuva community

The Jewish Theological Seminary in Manhattan recently hosted Rabbi Naomi Levy, a writer who is the founder and leader of Los Angeles’ Nashuva community. Rabbi Levy, who graduated from JTS in 1989, also discussed her new book, “Einstein and the Rabbi: Searching for the Soul” with Rabbi Mychal Springer, director of JTS’s Center for Pastoral Education.

Nashuva is a Jewish spiritual outreach movement. Rabbi Levy’s book was inspired by a correspondence between Albert Einstein and a grieving rabbi. It “examines life’s polarities: birth and death, love, and loss, faith, and doubt,” writes bestselling author Jerome Groopman, and “shows how each duality is connected by the vital force we call the soul.”

Rabbi Levy is the author of “To Begin Again,” “Talking to God,” and “Hope Will Find You.” She was named one of the top 50 rabbis in America by Newsweek in 2010, and has appeared on the “Oprah Winfrey Show,” the “Today” and NPR. She was in the first class of women to enter the JTS’s rabbinical school and the first woman in the Conservative movement to head a congregation on the West Coast.