Hannah Dresner

Hannah Dresner believes it is her calling to work toward a revitalized Judaism integrating experiences of head, heart and physical being into Jewish practice so that our religious lives truly address the breadth of our human needs. She currently serves as full time spiritual leader of Or Shalom, a Jewish Renewal synagogue in Vancouver, BC. She is in the last cohort to have received rabbinic smicha from Rabbi Zalman Shachter-Shalomi through the ALEPH Alliance for Jewish Renewal, where she was also ordained as a spiritual director. Rabbi Hannah entered the rabbinate with an MFA from the University of Chicago and an exhibition, curatorial, and teaching record in visual arts. She is a Rabbis Without Borders fellow as well as a fellow in the second cohort of CLI, CLAL’s Clergy Leadership Incubator.


Articles by Hannah Dresner

Traumatized, Isaac Goes to Visit Hagar

Having, in many ways, healed past victimhood, North American Jews live in relative comfort, able to offer aid to less ...

Studying With my Father, 18 Years Dead

Will we ever be free of enumerating what we have, what we need, what will be enough, what will ensure our security, who will inherit, how much we can afford to give, who’s most needy or most worthy - all with a sense that there’s not enough to go around?

Everyday Miracles

A miracle alters our experience of everyday occurrences

Even the Secular New Year Calls for Teshuvah

Closing 2017 and closing the Book of Genesis.

Lech-Lecha – One More Layer of Goodbye

In memoriam, for Rabbi Samuel Dresner, HaRav Shumel Chayyim ben Yehuda v’ Malka z”l.

Summer Vacation – Gateway to Teshuvah

I offer my present lightness of being as Torah, the Torah of embracing our fullest selves, reverent and irreverent impulses equally inspired by the divine.

What’s Worse, Fear or Wandering?

Our Israelite ancestors wandered a wilderness of fear, scared to proceed, feeling small, wandering for the rest of their lives rather than moving forward through fear.

An Angel is Born

Chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek! Let’s be strong, and strengthen one another!

Spiritual “Hearing”

To what are we enslaved? How does our slavery hold us back, nailed to the doorpost? And what would we ...