Minna Scherlinder Morse

Minna Scherlinder Morse has been a Jewish social justice professional, magazine writer and editor, nonprofit director, freelance editor and project manager. Most recently, she has proudly reclaimed the official status of student, in a program in Jewish Ethics and Social Justice at the Jewish Theological Seminary. This program has provided a framework for studying adoption and child welfare through a Jewish ethical lens, something she has been wanting to focus on for many years. She is an adoptive parent--with her husband Rabbi Fred Scherlinder Dobb, RRC '97, of two amazing kids, both being raised in open adoptions. Minna serves Reconstructing Judaism as a member of the Jews of Color and Allies Advisory Committee, and through the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association, has been facilitating an interdenominational support group for Jewish clergy and their spouses or partners who (like she and Fred) have adopted or are fostering transracially. Raised by secular Jews in Ethical Culture — a humanist movement founded by former rabbi Felix Adler — and on Adler's version of the golden rule ("Do so as to elicit the best in others, and in so doing, elicit the best in yourself") she has always had a keen interest in the study of ethics. Thirty-plus years after coming "back" to Judaism as a religion, she is delighted for this chance to pursue it formally and through a particularly Jewish lens, while exploring an area she says deserves much greater scrutiny and care.