about
Chloe Zelkha is the incoming rabbi at Congregation Eitz Chayim in Cambridge, MA, and would love to learn, sing, and build community with you there. She is drawn to Jewish spaces where we can both taste the world as it could be—full of spirit, alive with song, and grounded in care—and practice being with things just the way they are.
Her earliest spiritual practice was watching her parents transform their home into a place where people could land—family from Iran, her father’s closest friends, and many others gathering around the dinner table. That spirit of welcome and easy belonging continues to guide her work.
Rabbi Chloe has spent the past fifteen years designing immersive, transformative experiences for both young people and adults. As the Fellowship Director at Urban Adamah in Berkeley, she led cohorts of emerging adults through residential, semester-long deep dives into organic farming, Jewish spirituality, mindfulness practice, and social action. She began her career as a community organizer in Boston, training with JOIN for Justice and building youth power around environmental justice at The Food Project.
Grief has been a profound teacher on her path. After a season of personal loss, Chloe completed a chaplaincy residency at UCSF Medical Center residency program, offering spiritual care to pediatric and adult patients and their families, and earning 3 units of CPE. When the COVID-19 pandemic emerged, she co-founded the Covid Grief Network—now a project of Reimagine—building a national support system for people grieving loved ones. Through the Fellowship for Rabbinic Entrepreneurs at Atra: Center for Rabbinic Innovation, she developed and led grief retreats for those in mourning, and authored Being with Grief, a creative workbook for loss.
Chloe has served as the Director of Community Learning at Eden Village Camp and as a rabbinic fellow with communities across the country—including Centre College, Dayenu: A Jewish Call to Climate Action, The Center for Small Town Jewish Life, Svara's Communal Loss Adaptation Project, The Jewish Learning Collaborative, and in synagogues such as Congregation Kehilat Shalom, Anshe Emeth, Wise Temple, and Beth Israel. She was also blessed to learn Torah at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem.
More than most things, Rav Chloe trusts in the Torah of song and silence. A dedicated meditation practitioner, she has sat over 150 nights on silent retreat, and regularly teaches classes, retreats, contemplative song, and prayer for communities around the country. She also serves on the board of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality.
She holds an M.A. in Education from Harvard University, where she focused on transformative experiences, and a B.A. in Religion from Carleton College. A Wexner Graduate Fellow, Chloe was ordained by the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in 2025, where she was awarded the Pinkenson Prize in Rabbinics, the Sokoloff Writing Prize, and two Auerbach Grants for rabbinic entrepreneurship. She writes the Substack Between Chaos and Light, sharing Torah and reflections on finding beauty in the tumult of life.
Rabbi Chloe lives in Boston with her husband, Jesse, and their toddler, Akiva.