Rabbi Michelle Dardashti serves as Senior Rabbi of the historic Kane Street Synagogue in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. Prior to this return to New York last summer, Dardashti spent nine years 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.
At Brown, Dardashti nourished a Judaism that is broad and deep and engaged with the world. She represented Judaism at university events and multi-faith programs and nurtured Jewish life at Hillel and also birthed a number of initiatives that critically explore allyship, antisemitism, activism, and the American Jewish relationship to Israel. Rabbi Dardashti has 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. They live in Carroll Gardens with their three children, Eden (13), Miya (11) and Lavi (7), who attend the Hannah Senesh Jewish Day School.