About Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg
Hi, I'm Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg. 👋
I’m the award-winning author of eight books, most recently On Repentance and Repair: Making Amends in An Unapologetic World, which is a National Jewish Book Award winner, an American Library Association Sophie Brody Honor Medal winner, and was longlisted for the UK's prestigious Wingate Prize. It's about the work of accountability and transformation in our personal lives, the public square, in institutions, and on the national level, and, has been called "A must-read for anyone navigating the work of justice and healing" by Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley.
I was once a Sunday Washington Post crossword clue (83 Down).
I’ve written for outlets like The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Newsweek, Time and others, and have doing work fighting for a more just world for over three decades. (Here's something of a manifesto about that.)
My work for change has taken many forms. Sometimes that's happened in a more formal role–I worked to mobilize the broader Jewish community around economic justice during Trump 1.0 and organized 2500 Jewish clergy around abortion justice during the years leading up to and beyond the fall of Roe.
And more often, my organizing and activism has been an extension of, or in addition to, other things. It's included everything from anonymous work behind the scenes to preaching from a protest megaphone; from the White House to the holding cell after civil disobedience.
My North Star is the belief that we have a moral and religious obligation to care for one another, and to fight for a more just world.
(I've also won the Lives of Commitment Award from Auburn Seminary, and the Rabbinic Human Rights Hero Award from the human rights organization T’ruah, was named by Newsweek as a “rabbi to watch,” and as a “faith leader to watch” by the Center for American Progress, and all sorts of other nice things.)
A longer (but still condensed) version of my story is at the bottom of this page, if you want more background on who I am, exactly.
And yes, I believe there is beauty in my tradition that can transform everyone, religious or not, just as reading about Julian of Norwich and Muhammad were instrumental to me at various points on my long, weird, winding path.*
But I do think that we should all read widely, and learn broadly. It only makes us better and wiser and more capable of understanding our own life and our sacred texts (whatever our tradition or culture**) in a more thoughtful way. There's no downside.
*And yes, eg Joy Harjo, Mary Oliver, James Baldwin, Patti Smith and Faith Ringgold -- for starters, I could be here all day-- are sacred texts, I dare anyone to try to argue otherwise. Everyone, I would argue, has sacred texts, whether or not they consciously frame them as such.
**To clarify: I don't believe in the buffet model of spiritual practice (aka pick a bit from Column A, appropriate a bit from Column B, oh, and here's a Jewy thing that I can do or an Indigenous practice that I can appropriate that seems cool...)– that is, I think you should have a spiritual path that is your path and do that thing only (but, notably, investigating conversion is not the same as stealing someone's stuff to just add to your practice!)
About Life Is A Sacred Text
Life is a Sacred Text offers liberation-forward nourishment for your heart, soul, and noggin; it's for readers of any, and no, spiritual or religious inclination.
LiST uses ancient stories to help illuminate our lives and to help us to see ourselves and the moment in which we live more clearly.
This is a place where ancient wisdom and historical scholarship can teach us to become our best selves; to do better at the messy business of community care; and learn crucial lessons from those who've defied Empire before us.
And there are occasional side-quests to other intersections around history, culture, Cool Weird Stuff, and deep meaning.
This for everyone—for Jews and non-Jews, for people who believe in God, people who don’t, and people who are kind of *shrug emoji* on the subject.
This is a place to see ourselves more clearly, to illuminate what might have been hard to discern.
Your life is a sacred text.
It can be read in so many ways.
This, maybe, is one of them.
About the Community
Part of what's really staggering about this community of over 34,000 people and growing is that there really are folks from so many perspectives here.
All the quotes and data from our 2025 Readers' Survey
tl;dr there's plenty of room for you at this party.
- "LiST is such a warm, inclusive, no-pressure way to learn and grow at my own pace."
- "I find LiST to be a great source of wisdom and comfort week to week, especially in contrast to my habits of doomscrolling on news sites and social media."
- "I like things that nudge me out of knee-jerk and routinized thinking. You do that superbly."
- "It really helps affirm that there is a place for me in Judaism."
