MEHADRIN CLASS OF 2001 FOR 25 YEARS OF SERVICE TO THE JEWISH COMMUNITY
RABBI MARALEE GORDON
RABBI MAGGID JUSTIN JARON LEWIS, PHD
I have been involved in Jewish communal life since my teens, when I attended and then was on staff at the Jewish summer camp now known as OSRUI. In college at Brandeis I was a founder of the Jewish Activist League which led to the student protest at the 1969 General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America. In the early 70’ s I was a founder of the havurah Am Chai in Chicago, and of a political collective, Chutzpah.
I was a synagogue educator until I was ordained as a rabbi by AJR, and served two congregations outside of Chicago, where I have lived my entire life, currently in Woodstock, IL, for 39 years. I was honored as a McHenry County Woman of Distinction in 2016. In addition to AJR, the Institute for Jewish Spirituality has had a major impact on my rabbinate and my life.
For 13 years through the Interfaith Community for Detained Immigrants I visited immigrants detained by ICE in the county jail two miles from my home. In addition, until Covid, I led an Intro to Judaism class in the jail for four years. I am part of a Rapid Response Team in McHenry County to monitor ICE activity and educate possible victims on how to protect themselves.
Leo Schlosberg and I have been married for 50 years, and I continue to serve McHenry County Jewish Congregation part-time between extensive travel to visit our three sons and their families, who reside in San Diego, CA; Melbourne, Australia; and Katzrin, Israel.
A few months after my semikhah, Jane Enkin and I welcomed our daughter, Sura Anna Shalom Enkin Lewis, into the world. Before long, Jane, Sura Anna, our eldest Shlomo Jack, and I settled in Kingston, Ontario. There I served as rabbi of the cleverly named Reform congregation, Iyr HaMelech, and Director of Jewish Studies at Queen’ s University. Meanwhile my AJR thesis became an online course on the Zohar. While in Kingston, I received my PhD from the University of Toronto, and my dissertation on Hasidic stories became a book, Imagining Holiness.
In 2008 I was hired for a full-time position teaching Jewish Studies and world religions at the University of Manitoba, and we relocated to Winnipeg. Here, we were soon involved in planning a celebration of the 200th yarzheit of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, in 2010. At that gathering, I received semikhah as a Maggid from Yitzhak Buxbaum, of blessed memory. Winnipeg has it own rich Jewish history, for example as the longtime home of Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi. My interviews with Winnipeggers who knew him during his twenty years here can be heard at the Winnipeg Jewish Renewal Oral History Collection on the University of Colorado( Boulder) website.
While my work is as a professor, now and then I offer a d’ var Torah at one of the synagogues we belong to, or conduct a wedding. At the university, I teach students from many backgrounds about the diversity of Judaism, from open-minded, open-hearted perspectives, the way I learned at AJR.
34 AJR 2026