Lauren Tuchman

Lauren Tuchman (born 1986) is the first blind woman ordained as a rabbi. She is known for her work as a champion of inclusive Torah and disability justice.

Biography
Tuchman was born in 1986, and has been blind since infancy. She grew up in Washington, D.C. to an interfaith couple with a secular Jewish father and Catholic mother. She was raised in the Catholic tradition, but her mother still viewed it as important to incorporate Jewish traditions into her children's upbringing. Within the Catholic community Tuchman faced several ableist incidents. She began embracing Judaism as a teen upon accessing a braille Siddur. As a young adult, Tuchman formally converted to Judaism.

Tuchman attended Dickinson College, where she majored in religion and became more connected with Judaism and academic Judaism. She then attended the Jewish Theological Seminary of America to earn her master's degree. Tuchman realized that she was often the only person with a disability in many Jewish spaces and that, while some progress had been made in terms of physical accessibility, a broader idea of inclusion had yet to be realized. Three years after graduating from the Jewish Theological Seminary and working, Tuchman decided to pursue rabbinical ordination.

Tuchman decided to continue at the Jewish Theological Seminary for rabbinical school. While there, she participated in many social justice focused programs, including a Jewish Organizing Institute & Network (JOIN for Justice) training class for clergy to learn community organizing and Jews United for Justice's Jeremiah Fellowship. She also served as a rabbinic intern for T'ruah, where she worked on several human rights initiatives. In 2017, she delivered an ELI Talk, "We All Were At Sinai: The Transformative Power of Inclusive Torah," which became popular.

Following her ordination in 2018, Tuchman began working at Avodah, a Jewish service organization, as the Washington, DC-based Ruach Rabbi-in Residence. In September 2019, she joined JOIN for Justice's board of directors. Also in 2019, she completed SVARA's Kollel as a part of their first cohort.

Tuchman learned with David Jaffe (rabbi)'s Inside Out Wisdom and Action Project from 2018 to 2020, which focuses on social justice leadership through Musar. Upon her completion of the training, she began teaching with the program.

Tuchman's work also includes speaking with congregations and consulting with individuals and organizations on access and inclusion and contributes Torah commentary to several resources.

Theology
While studying in rabbinical school, being the first blind rabbinical student her professors and peers had worked with, Tuchman regularly brought up parts of Jewish texts that were traditionally read to marginalize people with disabilities. She brought her own experiences to argue that the perspectives of people with disabilities could open new interpretive spaces for these texts.

Inclusion continue to be a central element of Tuchman's public theology and organizing work. She works to create a positive theology around disability and inclusion, focusing on the value of each person's embodied experience. She often connects her work to other perspectives, such as feminism.

For many years, Tuchman incorporated Hasidic teachings, particularly those of Kalonymus Kalman Shapira. In order to access Hasidic texts in Hebrew Braille, Tuchman developed a complex relationship with the modern Hasidic world.

More recently, Tuchman has shifted her main spiritual path to Musar, which she teaches with the Inside Out Wisdom and Action Project.

Awards and honors

 * 2017: The Jewish Week's 36 Under 36
 * 2020: Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance's Ushpizot