Rabbi Rachel Gross-Prinz

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion | 2020 - Present

• Dean of Students, Seminary | July 2025 - Present

• Jewish Ideas Fellowship Director | 2022 - 2025

  • Create and launch a rapidly growing new fellowship for emerging Jewish leaders

  • Design and evaluate all aspects of the fellowship experience

  • Collaborate with a wide variety of stakeholders to provide mentorship, coaching and experiential learning

  • Manage budget, operations, marketing, recruitment

  • Facilitate thinking about scale, diversity and strategic plans for the fellowship

• New York Dean of Students | 2022 - 2025

  • Led all non-academic aspects of the student experience: orientation, retreats, extracurricular learning, student governance, community events

  • Create communal transformation and flourishing for a diverse community

  • Coach, mentor and organize student leaders

  • Manage student calendar, administrative staff and volunteer leaders

  • Facilitate think tanks, working groups and reflection sessions to support organizational change and progress

• Assistant Director of Recruitment & Admissions | 2020 - 2022

Congregation Emanu-El of the City of New York | Assistant Rabbi | 2019 - 2020

In addition to the full range of pulpit responsibilities: 

• Youth and Teen Engagement

  • Led teen service-learning program

  • Launched racial-justice working group

• Relationship building and leadership development: 

  • Collaborated strategically with lay leaders to create a small group initiative called “Gather"

  • Empowered and trained lay leaders to lead groups of fellow congregants

• Spiritual Leadership:

  • Worked one-one-one to nurture the spiritual journeys of conversion students

  • Created a mindfulness meditation community at the synagogue

Isaac M. Wise Temple | Rabbinic Intern | 2018 - 2019; 2015 - 2016

Cincinnati, Ohio

• Regularly led Shabbat morning services for a 1,200 member congregation

• Delivered words of Torah at Shabbat morning services

• Led services in the religious school for elementary grades

• Created a semester-long educational experience for teens connecting Tikkun Olam with self care

• Led community building programs for elementary age students

• Led an entire cohort of adults through the Adult B’nai Mitzvah process. This included: coordinating faculty, community-building experiences, and teaching Hebrew and Jewish study seminars/lectures

• Taught various adult education programs on relevant topics such as contemporary spirituality and Jewish text & the #MeToo movement

• Organized, planned and implemented annual family retreat

• Led family education and parent-learning programs in the religious school

Temple Sholom | Rabbinic Intern | 2017 - 2018

Cincinnati, Ohio

• Led shabbat services and offered sermons on Shabbat and High Holidays for groups of 30 - 300.

• Served as spiritual leader while the senior rabbi was on sabbatical

• Created innovative High Holiday worship opportunities to engage families with young children

• Initiated a Shabbat morning mindfulness meditation group

• Led Shabbat morning Torah study on a regular basis

• Sustained relationships with congregants in nursing homes, making regular visits and phone calls to provide pastoral care and some Jewish ritual.

• Provided grief counseling in moments of crisis, loss or illness

Mercy Health/Jewish Hospital | Clinical Pastoral Education | 2017 - 2018

Cincinnati, Ohio

• Catalyzed sacred moments for diverse patients receiving in-patient care

• Empowered families experiencing death and crisis

Congregation B’nai Abraham, Portsmouth, Ohio; Temple B’nai Israel, Kokomo, Indiana | Student Rabbi | 2014 - 2017

• Served as sole spiritual leader to a series of post-industrial communities, including the town considered ‘Ground Zero’ for the Opioid epidemic. Led all services, offered all sermons for Shabbat and festivals

• Performed life cycle rituals, including baby namings and funerals

• Collaborated with lay leaders to increase opportunities for community building and ritual observance, including holding one of the largest Passover Seders in recent memory in Kokomo, Indiana

Interfaith Hospitality Network/Family Homeless Shelter | Education and Counseling Fellow | Summer 2015

Cincinnati, Ohio

• Facilitated intake process for families experiencing homeless

• Supported families during their time in the shelter

• Led mindfulness experiences for parents in shelter

• Created training curriculum to educate volunteers about structural racism and generational poverty in the United States

Adath Israel Synagogue | Education Fellow | September 2014 - May 2015

Cincinnati Ohio

• Facilitated student’s application of Jewish values to daily life and the transition to young adulthood in preparation for B’nai Mitzvah

• Created experiential learning opportunities for language acquisition, cultural exploration and text awareness

Avodah: The Jewish Service Corps | Program Associate & Recruitment Coordinator | 2009 - 2013

New York City, NY

• Organized campus leaders, secular activists and the Avodah community to spread awareness about Judaism and social justice

• Coordinated and supported dynamic events and community building experiences for young Jews in their 20s and 30s at the intersection of Judaism and social justice

• Engaged, supported and organized a growing alumni community and nurtured potential Jewish leaders across the United States

• Led information sessions and public relation campaigns to recruit participants from college campuses across the country, resulting in an increased number of applicants to the program

Jewish Outreach Institute | Program Officer | June 2008 - July 2009

New York City, NY

• Trained Jewish professionals and lay leaders on inclusion, diversity and community building and synagogue change

• Supervised and coordinated Big Tent Judaism, a national advocacy coalition of organizations working for inclusion and diversity in the Jewish community

• Administered an education and dialogue program for intermarried families in over 40 sites across North America (The Mothers Circle). Supported and coached faculty of the program

EDUCATION

Wexner Graduate Fellow

Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion | Cincinnati, OH

• Rabbinic Ordination: May 2019

  • Thesis: Sh’ma Yisrael, Notice Israel: Jewish Mindfulness Meditation & The Reform Rabbinate

• Masters in Religious Education: May 2016

  • Thesis: Joy & Judaism, a Parent Experience for Family Education

Hampshire College | Amherst, MA

• Bachelor of Arts, May 2008

  • Concentration: Anthropology, Social Theory, Religion

  • Thesis: Disorganized Jews, an ethnographic study