“The program is a marvel”: Inaugural Cohort Member Hadar Aviram on the Virtual Pathway

For Hadar Aviram, being in the inaugural cohort of Hebrew Union College's rabbinical school Virtual Pathway doesn't just represent everything she has been working toward in her own career - it's a multi-generational expression of her family's values.

"In many ways, my dad is the inspiration for this journey," says Hadar. Though she grew up in a secular Israeli household, she explains, her father "came from an Orthodox background and had an incredible facility for, and love of, Jewish sources, and started studying Talmud with me when I was a little girl." At that time, Hadar recalls, "we traveled a lot in developing countries because of his job as a transportation planner, and he became the de facto rabbi in every community that we were in - in Ecuador, Barbados, and other places. He would teach the local kids for their bar mitzvahs, and he became the center of Jewish life wherever we went."

When Hadar lost her father prematurely, it strengthened her resolve to go to rabbinical school, as a next step after getting a Master's degree in Jewish Studies at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. This endeavor took Hadar "back to school" after many years as a law professor at the University of California, with law and criminology degrees from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a Ph.D. in Jurisprudence and Social Policy from the University of California at Berkeley - and years of socio-legal scholarship alongside two fruitful decades of pro bono civil rights work on behalf of incarcerated people.

While Aviram knew she wanted to go to Hebrew Union College, she also knew she couldn't relocate away from her position as the Thomas Miller '73 Professor of Law at University of California College of the Law in San Francisco, where she lives with her longtime partner and their son. "I didn't see how I would make it work logistically since our life is in San Francisco, we work in the Bay Area, my kid goes to school there."

But then two things happened: Hebrew Union College revised its expectations for clergy students in interfaith relationships, removing the obstacle of Aviram's partner being from a Christian background (Mennonite and Evangelical). And then, she learned about the launch of the Virtual Pathway.

"And suddenly, the things that were impossible became possible," Hadar says, allowing her to pursue a second career that will include "joining a team at a vibrant, diverse congregation, as well as working in prison chaplaincy to offer people hope and compassionate, no-nonsense spiritual direction behind bars."

Aviram says Hebrew Union College's leadership and faculty did an excellent job assembling an inaugural Virtual Pathway cohort where "everyone has decades of experience in leadership roles, many of them in the Jewish world, everybody has advanced degrees in Judaism, everybody has easy facility in Hebrew, and many people in Aramaic as well. It's a really terrific minyan of 10 people, and I have a lot of respect and affection for all the people in the cohort. We all help each other, and we've become friends. It's a very warm community of study."

"The program is a marvel," Aviram says.