Professional Staff
Rabbi
Michelle Dardashti
Prior to making her way to Cobble Hill this past summer to join the team at Kane Street, Rabbi Michelle Dardashti spent nine years on College Hill in Providence, RI, where she served as Associate University Chaplain for the Jewish Community at Brown University and Rabbi at Brown RISD Hillel. Rabbi Dardashti is the daughter of an American folk-singer and teacher and an Iranian-born cantor. She was raised on a brand of Judaism that is multicultural, meta-denominational, musical and global; she became a rabbi to share the gifts her parents’ eclectic Judaism afforded her: passion, hope, wonder, gratitude, empathy, responsibility and joy.
Her appointment at Kane Street has been covered by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, The Brooklyn Eagle, and the Brown Daily Herald.
Rabbi Dardashti was ordained and received an MA in Jewish Education from the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS). During her time at JTS, she was trained in Congregation-Based Community Organizing through JOIN for Justice and in Clinical Pastoral Education at Bellevue Hospital; she was also an educator for Interfaith Community and Director of Youth and Family Education at Congregation Shaare Zedek. She came to Brown University in 2013 after serving as the Marshall T. Meyer Fellow at Congregation B’nai Jeshurun in Manhattan and Director of Community Engagement at Temple Beth El in Stamford, CT.
Rabbi Dardashti spent time living and working in the Jewish community of Montevideo, Uruguay as well as four years in Jerusalem, where she was a student at Hebrew University, a Dorot Fellow, and a volunteer and staff member at a number of NGOs working in the realms of democracy, dialogue and cross-cultural exchange. Her writings have appeared in Sh’ma Journal, Jewschool and Siddur Lev Shalem (2016), and in three recent books, One Nation, Indivisible: Seeking Liberty and Justice from the Pulpit to the Streets (2019), Chaver Up: Allyship Through A Modern Jewish Lens (2021), and Jewish Theological Grace: Drashot In Honor of Chancellor Arnold M. Eisen (2022). She was also a 2021 Pedagogies of Wellbeing Research Fellow through M²: The Institute for Experiential Jewish Education and was named as one of the “NY Jewish Week’s 36 To Watch in 2023“. Rabbi Dardashti is married to Nathan Sher, who hails from Sydney, Australia; their three children– Eden, Miya and Lavi–attend Hannah Senesh Jewish Day School.