Rav Michaela Brown

Show Notes

This week I talk to Rav Michaela Brown, the Jewish chaplain at Carleton College and St. Olaf College, both in Northfield, Minnesota. We talk about what brought her to work on college campuses, what led her to rabbinic school, and the story behind the title of Rav, on this week’s Who The Folk?! Podcast. 

Sponsor: Smith Jewish Academy

The Who The Folk?! Podcast is part of the Jewfolk Podcast Network, a product of Jewfolk, Inc. Episodes are produced by Jewfolk editor-in-chief Lonny Goldsmith. If you have questions, comments, or a guest to nominate, send an e-mail to [e-mail]. For more information, go to TCJewfolk.com/podcast

Creators and Guests

LG

Host

Lonny Goldsmith

Host/Editor/Producer

What is Who The Folk?! Podcast?

This is the Podcast home of TC Jewfolk's Who The Folk?! Podcast. Hear from interesting Members of the Tribe from all over the Minneapolis and St. Paul area.

Welcome to this week's Who the Folk podcast, I'm Lonnie Goldsmith, the editor of TC

Jew Folk, and this week I talk with Rob, Michaela Brown, the Jewish chaplain at Carlton

College and St. Olaf College, both in Northfield, Minnesota.

We talk about what brought her to work on college campuses, what led her to her venex

school in the first place, and the story behind her use of the title "Rov" on this week's

Who the Folk podcast.

But before we hear from Michaela, this week's episode is sponsored by Smith Jewish Academy.

At Smith Jewish Academy, education is both intellectually rigorous and deeply meaningful.

The school builds a vibrant Jewish community dedicated to experiential learning, meaningful

connections and critical thinking, empowering individuals to embrace their heritage and

lead with purpose.

Students thrive academically and emerge as successful lifelong learners and leaders rooted in Jewish

values.

Learn more at SmithJA.org/page/admissions.

Rob, Michaela Brown, welcome to The Who the Folk podcast.

Thank you for joining me.

Thank you for having me.

I'm excited about it.

Very excited to talk to you.

You are the chaplain at both St. Olaf College and Carlton College, both helpfully in Northfield,

Minnesota.

So you don't have far to go between buildings.

It's got to be very helpful on days when you have to go to Northfield.

Yes.

I know Northfield well and love the five minutes that it takes to go between the two in case

I happen to have to be in both places on the same day.

That's nice that if that ever were the case, they are right there.

Yeah.

So you've been in your role since August of 2024.

What was it that brought you to these two Northfield schools?

Sure.

So I got smithra.

I was ordained as a rabbi in June 2024.

And so I was looking in that last school year of rabbinical school for what was next.

And I was pretty confident that I wanted to work with college students or young adults

more generally.

I had worked at American University Hillel for two years between my own undergraduate and

going to rabbinical school.

So I have worked on a college campus doing Jewish life previously.

And yeah, so I saw the job posting and I had the opportunity to come out to Minnesota.

It was my very first time in Minnesota when I flew out for the job interview.

I didn't even see the Twin Cities when I was out here for my job interview.

I was in Northfield the whole time.

And I really fell in love with the student bodies at both schools.

And I was really excited about the teams that I was joining at both schools.

And yeah, I think there's a lot of elements of the job that speak to my strengths as well

as just my hopes that I had for a job.

There's lots of things you could do as a rabbi and have worked, well, you were in Boston

at Hebrew College.

Your training I would imagine includes sort of a regular pulpit rabbi sort of training.

You could go and do that.

What is it about working on a college campus though and working with young adults that really

spoke to you as you were preparing for and thinking about what next look like?

Totally.

I think there's a couple things that play the funny but also serious answer is that I get

to sleep in on Saturday mornings.

I have always been a big sleeper and have come to embrace the fact that a big part of my

Shabbat practice is not setting an alarm on Saturday.

And so I am off the hook on Saturdays because college students very few colleges host Saturday

morning services.

It would have to be a very particular type of school to have a Saturday morning Shabbat

service.

In general, I am on campus for the high holidays and for a lot of Friday nights but not

every Friday night.

So there's a good work life balance I think compared to being a synagogue rabbi.

I can have my own Jewish life that I'm still building here on Minneapolis and also help

my students build Jewish community in Northfield.

So that balance was really important to me especially as a young person and still building

community and finding this next chapter of my life.

I also really do appreciate the inner faith component of it.

So I'm not employed by a Jewish organization.

I'm employed by the two colleges which means that I have a lot of the benefits that any

other sort of professional at these colleges has which was very attractive to me.

I think that there's a lot of beautiful things that I would prefer to your organizations

and some less beautiful things about them.

And they're small so they don't have jar teams and whole tech teams and the same infrastructure

that a college has.

So it's been really awesome to have as an employee the benefit of working at a college.

Those are the kind of like selfish personal answers.

I think when it comes to the work itself, I love working with college students in particular

because they're at a crossroads in their life where they are for the first time figuring

out what religious life looks like to them without the direct influence of their parents.

So for some students it means that they grew up going to Jewish day school and we're

heavily involved in Jewish community their entire childhood into adolescence.

And college is the first time that they can say, you know, I don't want to do that.

Or you know, the way that I grew up Jewishly is not what I want to do.

And then I also encounter the complete opposite.

I have students who know that they have some amount of Jewish heritage, either a Jewish

grandparent or a Jewish parent and they weren't necessarily raised Jewish or were raised very

secularly and colleges the first place that they can see what does it mean to go to Shabbat

services?

What does it mean to learn Torah?

Who is a rabbi, right?

Because if they haven't had a relationship with a rabbi before they might have preconceived

notions and so I'm the first rabbi that they get to build a relationship with and my role

as a college rabbi is to really just support them on their journey.

I'm not affiliated with a denomination.

I intentionally went to a non-denominational rabbinical school and so I'm not telling students

what the correct or incorrect way to be Jewish is.

I'm there to provide them with resources and sometimes I do answer questions about, you

know, according to Jewish law, this is how this works or there are certain ways that

people have innovated or adapted certain practices and that's what this is what they look like.

I can provide those answers but I'm not making decisions for them and I think they really

appreciate that.

And I work on interface teams so while I do work with the Jewish communities on both campuses

I'm also participating in interface events at Carlton.

We have a chaplains associate program where students are basically interns for a chapel

and work 10 hours a week and so I get really close with the Jewish students but also the non-Jewish

students and they are seeking out that job because they're interested in the work that

the chaplains does and I'm doing a lot of sort of education formally and informally with

them about what Judaism is, what particular holidays are, and showing up in those spaces as

a participant.

You said a lot of really interesting things in there so I'm going to try to like.

I'm going to work.

No, you're great at talking which is awesome.

It's a free record for being a rabbi actually.

Yes.

So one of the things that really jumped out to me what you said is like for a lot of people

is maybe their first time meeting a rabbi and I think that might be true but if they grew

up in stereotypically Jewish existences they may have met a rabbi but there is also the

possibility that they haven't met a rabbi who is maybe quite as close to their age as you

are.

Yeah, I mean I didn't even consider becoming a rabbi until college and even in college

I was really skeptical about it because I had a particular idea of what a rabbi was.

Thought they were kind of like boring old men, no offense to any older male rabbi's listening.

And that Judaism and like being Jewish was their entire personality and I never wanted to

give up the other parts of myself that I care about and I try to make that apparent with

my students.

I love reality television, I love repulse drag race and like anything on Netflix and like

always looking for students to chat with about that because you know I have their things

that I enjoy besides Judaism.

That's great.

And I want them to see that.

I also take really seriously that I am a fully confidential resource on campus.

I'm not required to report anything that students are sharing with me unless there's

imminent danger.

So I might be the first adult or sort of non-peer that they feel comfortable talking to

about their relationships and exploring them, their lives sexually and romantically in

college.

The first time they're encountering party culture and substance use like I am meant to be

a safe space for that.

And yeah I take that really seriously because being judgmental just kind of closes the

door on those conversations.

So when did you realize that there was a different way to be a rabbi and that rabbi could

look different from what you grew up with or what you experienced or what you sort of

had in your head was the stereotypical way of it being?

Sure.

So I grew up going to a conservative synagogue.

I also grew up in an interfaith family so my dad's not Jewish.

And like many folks who go to conservative synagogues my experience was that the rabbi

was what I would now call showmer meets vote traditionally observant.

But by and large the remainder of the community and congregation was not showmer meets vote

in terms of Shabbat observance or Cossary observance there's always diversity but the rabbi

was really like holding that down and that was different than the rest of the community.

On the other hand when I had been in reform spaces because I had grown up conservative the

aesthetics of reform prayer services have never spoken to me and I think that's just because

of how I grew up.

Probably yeah. English and like particular melodies or yeah just a different relationship

to Jewish law that also didn't feel quite right for me.

And so I think one of the first open questions I had was like okay where do I even fit in

Jewishly?

I was really involved in BBYO which is not affiliated with the particular denomination and I saw

the power of how Jews coming together beyond or outside of the synagogue can be really

powerful and it was in college my undergraduate advisor rabbi doctor Vanessa Oaks who told

me about this place called Hebrew College and said I think it is the only place that will

nourish your soul and I was like well that's a very intense sort of you know statement

to make right?

It's a huge statement and I was like I have never even heard of this place and so I started

researching it and I quickly found out a lot about this place called Hebrew College that

not only was it non-denominational which was helpful for me especially feeling like I didn't

really fit into a particular box.

It still took Jewish text and Jewish tradition very very seriously and a big component of

its curriculum is based in reading primary Jewish texts in the original so if you look at

the sort of course schedule for a week in the life of a Hebrew college student there

are hours built into the schedule to be in the BBY DRAWS with the Havruta with a learning

partner studying Talmud and like just staring at you know a traditional doff of Talmud,

no punctuation, no vowels even and that was really attractive to me because I think regardless

of how fun lives their lives Jewishly that Jewish tradition is something that we all equally

inherit and as someone who was really who was and is very passionate about Jewish feminism

and Jewish queer innovations that the only way that I could do that was in deeper relationship

with the tradition and so the Hebrew College curriculum really excited me and felt like

okay they're not going to worry or police the way that I spend my Shabbat you know they

want me to have a Shabbat practice and I certainly do but they don't care if I uber to my

friends house for dinner but they do really care that I'm learning what traditional halacha says about

Shabbat like and understanding that and being able to articulate it and being able to teach it

with others and getting to do it in a community where both the faculty and the student body are all

in different places as well I could go on and on Hebrew College really is like such a special thing to

me and I will say Hebrew College is the first place where I started meeting a ton of people who

had lived in Minnesota really so yeah I went to school with a lot of Macalester alumni I'd barely

even heard of a I had no idea what Macalester was and a bunch of people who had grown up in the

Twin Cities and to the point that like it was a joke at Hebrew College that Minnesota was like

disproportionately represented at Hebrew College and actually now that I live here there are

nine Hebrew College alumni who work in the Twin Cities and we featured one just last week of

Rabbi Tamar McGill Grimm at her upcoming. Oh so here in Solution we get later this week so yeah it's a

it's it's fascinating how that works out and I've talked to a couple people recently who suggested

story ideas not just as it relates to Hebrew College but just the number of people across the board

in rabbinic programs that are from the Twin Cities and it feels like super disproportionate to

to the size of our population of our Jewish community here. Yeah yeah that's that's why moving you know if

you had told me like right after I graduated college I went to the University of Virginia and I'm

from the DC area the Virginia suburbs originally if you had told me I would be living in Minnesota I

would be like what like you know no understanding of just how vibrant both the Jewish community is but

also like there's a great art scene there's great food. I happen to like the general vibe of the

state politics you know I think there's a lot going for it and it became more and more viable because

of my classmates and then really have continued to lean on my Hebrew College Revra who have

who live here and work here as mentors and helping me find dentist and haircut and you know all those

sort of personal life things as well. Those things are those can be hard those can be really hard

to find and it is really important to be able to you know to have those people to lean on when you

come to a totally new kind of foreign place. And I get to have Hebrew College rabbis as my rabbis so

I'm a member at Shirtikva in my sort of private life and it's the first time I've ever belonged to a

Reform synagogue and the only reason I belong to it is because it's the services are more I would

call them Hebrew College style than before. There's certain things that happen at Shirtikva services

that I've never seen at other reforms in the Gags and I'm into it. And both rabbis or Hebrew College

alum. Yeah as well as their intern is actually living out here this year and commuting back and forth

and runs the conversion program. Okay. So yeah. That's great. That's amazing. That's also I mean

kind of crazy how that works out of just having that many Hebrew College folks from here.

Yeah it's nice. And I'm sure that I mean that couldn't have been a reason

why you took the job you did or was it? It wasn't a reason but I think it made the move feel viable if

that makes sense. No totally. I was pretty geographically I tried to be geographically open-minded because

I knew that was going to allow as many possibilities as possible and yeah moving here I knew so many people

who had lived here who had such positive experiences in the Jewish community who currently live here.

Yeah. And obviously you're living in the Twin Cities area your commute is a 45 minutes ish?

Yeah. It's not bad. I mean it's not bad. It's not bad. It's not bad at all. Right so you know

you're you're commute to Northfield but you're you're working in pretty small town and pretty

small college campuses. You're from you're from the DC suburb's large areas large metter. You

went to school in Massachusetts you know what's what's the adjustment like not just for the job but

in a community that's sort of small. Sure. Yeah so I think something that I haven't even touched on is

that I really do serve not only students but also any staff and faculty who want to take advantage of

Jewish community in Northfield and there are some folks who are not affiliated with either college

who live in Northfield who participate in programs such as high holidays or Passover Seder because

we're the only game in town. Right that's really that's really cool that the community can take part in that.

Yeah it's uh that became really evident in my interview process that this role is formally employed

by the colleges jointly and the community really needs it as well so yeah I'm the only rabbi working

in rice county and I try to show up as often as possible to the Northfield inner Northfield area

interfaith alliance which is the local inner-faith group because if I didn't show up there'd be no

formal Jewish voice in that space. Yeah moving to a small or like moving and working

to Minnesota even though Minneapolis is bigger I still find that a lot of young people who

move here in their young adulthood are maybe moving from much more rural parts of Minnesota so they

also might not have grown up around Jews and may not notice the Jewish community that does exist here.

Yeah in the Twin Cities I think a lot of it is is education there's there's been interesting

moments where like in the inner-faith space people kind of forget that there are people that don't

believe in Jesus in that space and so you know it's my voice to remind people I also think that

there are particular basics of Judaism that I assume non Jews know that are not even

like Shabbat is the Sabbath that happens from Friday night to Saturday night. Sometimes that's not

even an awareness that folks have which to me again I don't know it that feels obvious

certain elements of Jewish food and culture I just uh you know people just don't know about.

I also it's an important part of my job that I take bagels from the cities down to Northfield for

my students because there's not really any good bagel options down there. There is a problem.

There is a problem. Really? I say are there any bagel options down there?

No so I live pretty close to the St. Paul Bagelry in Minneapolis. Sure. Total misnomer they have no

St. Paul locations. In Northfield they carry frozen St. Paul Bagelry bagels so okay. But yeah and then

there's two different places to get Hala in Northfield, Brickov and Bakery and Bread People.

Okay that's awesome. For their Hala options. Listen it's better than having to

slap that with you too. I mean yeah it's good. It's good for the community that get exposed to that.

And then I also just think about the student bodies in general that again so much of my work is

inner faith and so students who come from a place where there may not have been a lot of Jews.

Both schools have a lot of international students who are coming from all over the world and

particularly non-Jewish parts of the world. And so I'm the first uh rabbi that they get to

meet and get to ask questions too and I take that to heart and also a big part of my work is advocating

for my students within the administration. Making sure that they have accommodations for missing

class for the high holidays that they have access to kosher food or at the very least that their

dining hall is labeling stuff that has support and shellfish in it which is also you know a great

opportunity to collaborate with the Muslim students and we have a new Muslim chaplain so uh you know

the ways in which my students need advocates and the schools are lovely and really do support the

Jewish students and also sometimes people don't know things because they don't know to know them

if that makes sense. Right. That makes that makes total sense. It's you know sometimes it's not

it's not ignorance or malice it's just you don't know what you don't know and if you've come from

you know I mean we're such a small piece of the population basically anywhere you go

outside of Israel it's you're just not gonna know. Right. Like the odds of you not understanding

Jews and they're plenty of Jews you don't understand Jews but there are it's a different podcast

entirely I think. You're a kid of words. But the idea that they they made just not know sometimes it's

not malice sometimes it's definitely not and that's I always sometimes you just have to explain

them your perspective. Yeah I always assume good intent um and always happy to have conversations

with people to learn because people don't know and that's okay. Yeah it's absolutely okay and it's good

it's good that they're open to learning I mean I spent you hope they would be especially being

college students on a college campus but you don't want to take that for granted either. Yeah.

I also just really have to speak to how awesome the Carlton and St. Olaf student bodies are

they are really devoted curious students they they are good eggs and that also makes my job a lot

easier. Yeah that absolutely matters. Yeah I mean rabbis work at all different types of colleges and I

I know that yeah there's just other sort of college environments where I would be

in a very have different types of students and working in a different environment and having

different challenges and so while I wish that my students focused less on their homework and we're

more open to going to Jewish events like I'm really competing with homework I'm not competing with

parties which is you know not the same as other colleges so it's an interesting thing. No not at all

I mean and I've you know I've gone through one college search with with an older child I am in the

middle middle of it with a younger and so the things that they look for are they're vastly different

so the college searcher in the second time around feels very different than the first time

in terms of what what kind of things they're looking for both in you know college life and

in Jewish life are just very different things. Yeah a big part of my job is also talking to

prospective students and in particular prospective parents. Parents yep. But I get it and I think that

I've been working in the Jewish world long enough that I know that Jewish parents have a lot of

well-placed anxiety they love their kids and they want their kids to thrive and it's my job

to tell them the truth and the truth is that their kids are gonna be okay.

They are we know they'll be okay we know that the path is different for all of them and they figure

it out that's absolutely part of the experience. So one of the questions I had for you and you

you launched into an explainer before we started recording and I thought this was a really

interesting answer so I wanted to ask you again that were live and everything. Yeah. You go by by

Rob instead of Rabbi. Yeah. Why did you make that decision? Yeah. I would say through my

rabbinical studies which really started the summer before I went to rabbinical school. I did the

summer Yashiva program at Hadar in New York which is a traditional egalitarian program and I was

a full-time Yashiva student for the summer. Their entire faculty go by Rob first name so I had

Rob Aitan and Rob Ellie and Rob Avey so that was that. In adhypric college itself we didn't call

our teachers by titles and I think there's always a weird gray area when you are both learning from

someone but then eventually becoming colleagues with them all about to say as we didn't call folks

by Rabbi within school but then I was a member of a synagogue in Boston while I was in school there

Temple Beth Zion in Brookline and their whole rabbinic team goes by Rob first name so Rob

Claudia and Rob T. Farrett and now one of my classmates is there in his rough laya so those started

to be some of the places that I was being Jewish during my time in rabbinical school and I think

that left an impact on me. I'm also interested in this idea that in Israel today all of the rabbis

are Rob famously one of the most famous rabbis in Israel of the 20th century is Rob Cook

Rob in the Talmud is is given to rabbis who live in Babel and Babylon because it has this sort of

like diasporist or like post post Moses sort of component to it okay and I think the last thing is

in Israel they go by Rob blank because that's just the Hebrew way that you say rabbi right?

rabbi is Rob Shelley Robby my Rob and I don't like giving the anglicized version of something just to

appease non Jews right? I like to say things in Hebrew as much as possible when I'm at work if I'm

giving a sermon to a primarily non Jewish audience and I'm talking about Sefer Bereishite I will say

Sefer Bereishite and then I will translate it as the book of Genesis but I'm always going to start with

Sefer Bereishite because I think it's important for people to know that we have a language and we use it

and we are of the Hebrew language and it's part of who we are as Jews and so Rob is also just a

connection to the real Hebrew. Also it's also really cool because it is not as well used as a sort of

honorific as Rabbi is. Yeah it's just cool. Thank you yeah I think aesthetically I just kind of like

the way that it sounded I did not anticipate the sort of Minnesota accent and it's love of like

that sound so I get rav a lot more than I get wrong which is okay it's not wrong it's just not quite

right. Also people think that I'm a reverent you know they'll put a period after it because they

think it's a abbreviation or something and it's like no Rob is the whole word that's the word

that is the word it's not short for anything but yeah I think it's also an opportunity to engage in

teaching with someone right that actually go to Israel or if you look at the history of

rabbis that come before us they're more likely than not Rob blah blah blah when I'm called to the Torah

I am Harav Mikhaila Bacci Mona right that Rob is is actually part of my name. Yeah that's that's awesome

well Rob McAillard it has been a pleasure getting to meet you but before we let you go last couple of

questions we always like to end on first what is your favorite Jewish holiday? Ooh I think

Shavuot particularly because I started appreciating it later in my life I feel young but later like in

adulthood I guess my mom always jokes that the reason that no one knows about it is because Hebrew

school is not in the session during it so if you only start learning about holidays through Hebrew

school you're not in Hebrew school during Shavuot. That's true. But I like staying up late I like learning

Torah and I like ice cream and cheesecake so what what do you need? Right nothing wrong with those

absolutely and what is your favorite Jewish food? Ooh I think Kala probably both eating and making it

yeah I am do you so you are a baker of Kala? Yeah I've kind of gotten out of practice I learned how to

make it during the pandemic but I really love the way that it connects me to my female ancestors I

think that there's a lot of unwritten Jewish spirituality that happens in the kitchen and there's

some record of the ways in which Jewish women would pray over kneading Kala and like use the kneading

as a meditative practice and so I yeah I like to think about the sort of nontraditional or

less discussed ways that we connect spiritually and I think that baking and kneading is a great

way to do that so yeah and also Kala is great making Kala French toast and everything so you know

Kala is great good Kala is really really great correct yes absolutely

Ravel Michaela Brown thank you so much this has been a joy to get to meet you and get to talk to you

and best of luck as you continue your journey with the Jewish students and Jewish communities of

Northfield at St. Olaf and Carlton thank you so much the who the folk podcast is a part of the

Jew folk podcast network and a product of Jew folk ink please subscribe right in review wherever

you get your podcasts if you have suggestions for other podcast guests please email them to me

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