Having grown up with a love of the arts, Andrew has been delighted by finding through Aleph the many ways in which creativity thrives in Jewish Renewal. His rabbinic ordination in August, 2004 was a major step in an evolving process through which a secularly raised scholar-teacher has balanced academic and congregational careers. On moving from Cornell University to Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, NC as a professor of English literature, Andrew developed interests in academic Jewish teaching and congregational religious leadership. Holder of a Ph.D. in English literature from Washington University and a M.S.J.S. in Jewish religion from the Spertus Institute, he has introduced courses in Jewish studies in Wake Forest’s English and Religion departments, Graduate School, and Divinity School, and serves as the Jewish chaplain for the university and its medical school; he has also been preceptor for first-year Wake Forest medical students and taught courses in Jewish scripture for Shaw University’s Divinity School. His three scholarly books include Speaking Silences, connecting modern thought and Jewish tradition.
Andrew’s religious work has been in one-congregation communities, often as Judaism’s principal public representative. For over fourteen years he has been the spiritual leader of Temple Israel in Salisbury, NC, interspersed with two one-year stints as the full-time acting rabbi of Winston-Salem’s Temple Emanuel (a Reform congregation); he also advises the active fledging Concord, NC Havurat Olam. He was the religious director for the Blumenthal Home for the Aged and has served on boards of the Reform movement. Active in programs with the Christian, African American and Muslim communities, Andrew was honored with his university’s community service award for his work on behalf of the Jewish community and interfaith dialogue.
A singer and story-teller as well as a lecturer and scholar, Andrew also strives to be an attentive listener, thoughtful counselor, and an activist for progressive causes, especially gender and minority issues. He is glad to have spent most of his life in households with strong women, beginning in Jersey City and Newark, NJ with his grandmother Birdie Grace Vogel and mother Cecil Ruth Ettin, z’l, secular Jews who worked hard, read avidly, and cared about social justice. He was named for his maternal great-grandfather, Andrew Vogel, a kindly, self-educated man devoted to his family, opera, art, modern ideas and Judaism. Andrew’s unofficial teachers to this day include Carole M. Stuart and their adult daughters Emily Katherine Stuart and Anna Katherine Ettin. Carole and Andrew enjoy traveling, cooking (and eating), wine, books and music.
His official teachers have included professors at the Spertus Institute, notably Dr. Rachel Dulin, R. Dr. Byron Sherwin and R. Dr. Bernard Grossfeld, and Aleph mentors, especially R. Marcia Prager and Hazzan Jack Kessler, R. Shaya Isenberg and Bahyra Sugarman, R. Shawn Zevitt, R. Victor Gross, and R. Daniel Siegal. Numerous others probably never knew they were teaching him; they include R. Phyllis Ocean Berman, R. Shefa Gold, and R. Arthur Waskow. R. Zalman Schachter-Shalomi is a source of wisdom, knowledge, and inspiration.
