Rabbi Rachel Barenblat is a founding builder at Bayit: Your Jewish Home and serves Congregation Beth Israel, a small Reform and Renewal congregation in western Massachusetts. Author of five volumes of poetry, among them Texts to the Holy (Ben Yehuda, 2018) and 70 faces: Torah poems (Phoenicia, 2011), she holds an MFA from Bennington and ordination as a rabbi and a spiritual director from ALEPH.
She has blogged since 2003 as the Velveteen Rabbi. She is an alumna of the Emerging Jewish and Muslim Religious Leaders retreat organized by RRC and ISNA, as well as a Rabbis Without Borders fellow. She lives in western Massachusetts with her son.